Lisa’s post on international law in legal education brought to mind an ongoing internet debate about the impact of the supposed demise of “Big Law” (large firms) on law schools. The argument is that, if large firms hire fewer lawyers, law schools won’t be able to command the same tuition or attract the same number of students and will have to become more like trade schools, emphasizing the practical and putting aside more theoretical and interdisciplinary course offerings. Law professors will need to become more “instructor” (in a narrow sense) than professor and scholar. (The point is not that Big Law wants more theoretical and interdisciplinary courses – there is a seperate debate about that – but that large starting salaries induce students to be willing to pay for them.)

Part of my reaction to debate like this is that it something that is largely irrelevant to the majority of American law schools who neither offer a steady stream of courses on Kantian Perspectives on Third Party Practice nor limit themselves to the graduation of superannuated paralegals. Nor does it seem that the nature of legal education at these schools is much related to the health of Big Law since most of their students know that they will never be at a large firm (and that is not necessarily a bad thing).