Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

What are Law Schools for?
continue to shrink, then there could well be a very sharp drop in
demand for this kind of education. 28 In short, strong versions of the
professional school model imply a quite radical contraction in the
scale of the legal education system as it is today.
Against this background, I propose to consider first the claims
that law is potentially a good vehicle for general education and
then, in the next chapter, how far contemporary academic legal
culture promotes or obstructs the realisation of this potential.
THE CASE FOR LAW
In the 1970s it was a widely held view among governments of
newly independent states and donors of foreign aid that law was
largely irrelevant to development: at best a low priority, at worst a
brake. 29 It was in this context that the International Legal Center
Committee on Legal Education in Developing Countries, of which
I was a member, felt that it should devote a whole chapter to articulating
the case for allocating resources to legal education even in
very poor countries. 30 The argument was built around five main
themes: first, in many countries law-trained people gravitate to
positions of pre-eminence in public life, so legal education is an
important avenue to the world of affairs; secondly, because of the
pervasiveness of law in society, legal education is a good vehicle
for the study of affairs in society: in this respect, "the study of law
can be a particularly useful discipline to enable its students to relate
general theory to particular, sometimes intractable, concrete problems"
31 ; thirdly law has a number of characteristics that combine
to make it an excellent vehicle for general education 32 ; fourth,
"development" implies material and cultural change, involving
issues of social justice; law and the legal system are important features
of these processes, especially when guided by basic values
of fairness, justice and equity 33 ; and finally, legal education can be
a particularly good vehicle for developing important human skills:
"People in law roles are often active participants in transactions which
may be very significant to development. They may define and analyze
problems; counsel and plan a course of action; negotiate and settle disputes;
define and advocate a position; frame and implement rules. Good
professionals exercise these skills—indeed, such skills are part of the
essence of 'lawyering'; good legal education can encourage (in the view
of some, it should demand) the use and development of these skills
through various methods of legal education." 34
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