Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean and the Raymond Pryke professor of First Amendment law at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.

Law schools provide a structured learning experience that helps to ensure that clients and society are served by attorneys who have the basic skills and knowledge needed to practice law. A century ago, the training of lawyers moved away from apprenticeships and into universities to provide standardized, in-depth education across an array of subjects. The law and the problems that it must address are obviously far more complex today, making law schools more important than ever.

Although law schools have been subjected to criticism in recent years, some quite deserved, the reality is that they do an excellent job teaching basic skills that all lawyers need to know.

Although law schools have been subjected to much criticism in recent years, some quite deserved, the reality is that they do an excellent job of teaching basic skills that all lawyers need to know: how to analyze legal issues, how to read cases and statutes and regulations, how to develop legal arguments, how to do legal research and writing. Law schools ensure that all students are taught foundational substantive and procedural law.



In their second and third years, students take specialized courses in areas of their greatest interest and learn from experts in particular fields. Clinical education in law schools allows students to gain practical experience while being carefully supervised by faculty members. Legal education certainly can be improved, especially in preparing students for practice, but overall law schools have served society well.

Apprenticeships also can train lawyers, but the education is likely to be much more uneven and depend on who is providing the training. Thoroughly training an apprentice in what is needed to be a lawyer is a daunting and expensive task and it is unlikely that many attorneys would undertake this responsibility. Besides, no supervising lawyer can begin to approximate the breadth and depth of knowledge of a law school faculty.

Nor can apprenticeships provide the beneficial knowledge that comes from an interdisciplinary university education. Corporate lawyers are well served learning about economics and business. Criminal lawyers benefit from knowledge about psychology. Environmental lawyers gain from knowing about public policy.

If you or a loved one were found to have cancer, would you want oncologists and surgeons who were educated at top universities and then were trained by experts, or ones who learned medicine entirely through apprenticeships? The answer is obvious and is no different for law than for medicine.



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