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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Is Law School Becoming a Fool's Errand?


That's the question Mr. Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, addresses in this video with his fellow legal scholars John Yoo and Richard Epstein.

Having watched the whole 18+ minute video, I'm not exactly sure anyone ever suggested an answer. If you were to ask me whether law school is a waste of time, my response would be the same general response that lawyers tend to give to a question posed to them/us by a non-lawyer: it depends.

Putting aside the fact that many, if not most, states make possession of a valid law degree a prerequisite to taking their bar/licensing exams, I would say law school is generally a waste of time if all you want to be is a practicing attorney.

If, however, you wanted to be a legal academic like Messrs Reynolds, Yoo and Epstein, then law school would obviously be necessary.

Given these short answers, I suppose I wouldn't have been a very good guest on Instapundit's web show. Not that I would have been invited anyway, since I'm just a regular "working class" lawyer in a state where I understand there are more of us than in the entire country of Japan.

h/t Volokh Conspiracy

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