The criticism focused on law schools in recent years tends to ignore that legal education does not exist in a vacuum. We operate among pressures for change that confront all of higher education and our graduates seek to enter a profession that is itself undergoing rapid change. This panel will introduce us to the context and issues with which any consideration of the future of legal education must deal.
The panel will cover:
• university financing of legal education in times of shrinking university budgets;
• the changing nature of financial aid in legal education, especially the trend away from need-based grants and towards the use of financial aid as a tactic in U.S. News & World Report rankings competitions, and the implications of this for access to legal education;
• trends toward outcome-based regulation and assessment, including questions of how to measure outcomes;
• continuing, despite cost pressures, to fulfill law schools’ mission in providing legal services to underrepresented persons hand-in-hand with student training.