Lower the Bar for Legal Eagles Who Don’t Go to Law School

You shouldn’t need three years of ABA-accredited education to provide basic advice on a contract.

By Clifford Winston. He is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Excerpts:

"Legal advice is what economists call a “credence good” because, like auto repairs and medical procedures, its quality is difficult for consumers to evaluate accurately, even after purchase. Thanks to technological advances, many industries have made strides toward reducing the cost of imperfect information associated with credence goods. Websites like Angie’s List (now Angi) and Yelp, as well as social media platforms, inform consumers about the quality, reputation, and performance of service providers, such as plumbers, electricians and landscapers. Similar websites, such as Avvo and Martindale-Hubbell, let consumers search for lawyers.

The consequence of unnecessary restrictions on legal education is to pad lawyers’ pockets, not to benefit consumers of legal services. Indeed, limited access to justice, which subsumes access to legal representation and to the courts, is a reality for most people. The nonprofit Legal Services Corporation estimates that the legal profession fails to serve 80% of the public and limits access to their services. Nearly 90% of the civil legal problems reported by low-income Americans “received inadequate or no legal help,” according to the organization’s 2017 “Justice Gap” report.

Considering the limited extent of legal representation, does anyone believe that a graduate of the Yale M.S.L. program couldn’t improve access to justice by providing some legal services? At the very least, graduate students at a great university learn the best material to read and the best people to consult for advice. Apparently, the self-taught can provide effective legal advice, because a 15-year-old high school student became the most requested legal expert on the website AskMeHelpDesk.com. Graduates of Yale’s M.S.L. program, who wouldn’t be burdened by three years of debt and absence from the labor force, could provide inexpensive civil legal help to people who otherwise wouldn’t even consider hiring a lawyer because of the cost."

"Alternative educational institutions would offer new programs, including night school and vocational and online courses that could be completed in less than a year and provide certification for specialized practitioners. New programs could let undergraduates major in and receive a bachelor’s degree in law—as universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and other countries do. Some college graduates could immediately provide legal services that don’t require advanced study or considerable practical experience, such as small-claims court representation and advice on simple contracts."

The Problem With Law Schools

See Schools for Misrule Reviewed posted by Walter Olson at Cato.

"Today was a banner day for my new book on legal academia, Schools for Misrule. It was reviewed at the Wall Street Journal by John McGinnis, professor of law at Northwestern, and at the Weekly Standard by George Leef, director of research at the North Carolina-based John Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. (One or both reviews may be behind subscriber screens.) Both reviews were highly favorable.

McGinnis:

American law schools wield more social influence than any other part of the American university. In ‘Schools for Misrule,’ Walter Olson offers a fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions. One of his themes is that law professors serve the interests of the legal profession above all else; they seek to enlarge the scope of the law, creating more work for lawyers even as the changes themselves impose more costs on society.

Leef:

At most law schools—and emphatically at elite ones such as Obama’s Harvard—students are immersed in a bath of statist theories that rationalize ever-expanding government control over nearly every aspect of life. ... They learn that the concepts of limited government and federalism are outmoded antiques that merely defend unjust privilege. ... Schools for Misrule explains how most of the damaging ideas that lawyers, politicians, and judges are eager to fasten upon society originate in our law schools. ...

The most recent explosion of legal activism involves making the United States subject to international law. Olson notes that at a New York University Law School symposium, speakers declared that international law requires nations to guarantee all people the right to health, education, “decent” work, and freedom from “severe social exclusion.” Columbia has created a campaign called “Bring Human Rights Home,” which is intended to generate pressure to make American policies consonant with the collectivist notions of “the international community.”"