Book Forum 

# *Failing Law Schools*

(University of Chicago Press, 2012)

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Date and Time 

January 16, 2013 1 - 2:30 PM EST 

Location 

1st floor/Wintergarden 

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##### Featuring 

Featuring the author **Brian Tamanaha**, William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law and Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow, Washington University Law School; with comments by **Neal McCluskey**, Associate Director, Center for Educational Freedom, Cato Institute; and **Paul Campos**, Professor of Law, University of Colorado at Boulder and Author, *Don’t Go To Law School* (Unless); moderated by **Walter Olson**, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute and Author, *Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America*. 

[](http://www.amazon.com/Failing-Law-Schools-Chicago-Society/dp/0226923614/?tag=catoinstitute-20)

[![Failing Law Schools](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/optimized/public/images/failing-law-schools.jpg?itok=EpEy_iN8)](/sites/cato.org/files/images/failing-law-schools.jpg) 

For decades, American law schools enjoyed one of the world's great winning streaks. Amid swelling enrollments and what seemed an insatiable demand for new lawyers, they went on a spree of expansion; even as tuitions soared, the schools basked in an air of public-interest rectitude symbolized by Yale law dean Harold Koh's description of his institution as a "Republic of Conscience." Then came the Great Recession—and a great reckoning. New graduates were unable to find decently paying legal jobs even as they staggered under enormous debt burdens; it became impossible to ignore long-standing complaints from the world of legal practice that the law curriculum does not train students well in much of what lawyers do; and creative efforts to reduce the cost of law school were stymied by an accreditation process that closely constrains the format of legal education.In [*Failing Law Schools*](http://www.amazon.com/Failing-Law-Schools-Chicago-Society/dp/0226923614/?tag=catoinstitute-20), one of the most talked-of books in years about higher education, Brian Tamanaha of Washington University has written a devastating critique of what went wrong with the American law school and what can be done to fix it. None of the key contributors to the problem—faculty self-interest, university administrators' myopia, cartel-like accreditation—escape unscathed in his analysis. Please join us for a luncheon on January 16 at which Tamanaha will discuss his book.