Transcript U.S. Legal Education 1870-1890

U.S. Legal Education
1870-1890
The Future of Legal Education
Prof. Cunningham
By: Diana Grant
1870
• Modern legal education begins in Harvard, under Dean
Christopher Columbus Langdell’s model emphasizing a
more academic, less apprenticeship-based approach.
Langdell believed that legal education should be based
on scientific, testable principles,and invented the “case
method” of legal instruction—where cases were
assigned and the students were required to figure out
the guiding principles. The students took part in Socratic
exchanges with the professors, ideally until they
understood the “true” rule of the case. This method was
meant to sharpen analytical skills and advocacy skills.
Langdell also started the movement of hiring men to
teach the law who were not themselves lawyers, as well
as requiring 3 full years of instruction and an
undergraduate college degree.
1870 Continued
• Not incidentally, five years after the end of the Civil War,
the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was
passed, including the following:
• Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.
• Starting in the 1870’s, about 100 years after the
American Revolution, bar associations began to be
formed around the nation. The legal profession had
come under much criticism, and the methods of
preparing attorneys were disparate and the subject of
much disagreement among scholars and practitioners.
1873-1880
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1873- New Hampshire Bar founded.
1874- Iowa and District of Columbia Bars founded.
1875- Connecticut Bar founded.
1876- New York Bar founded.
1877- Illinois Bar founded.
1878- American Bar Association was founded, as well as
the Alabama, Nebraska, New Jersey, Vermont and
Wisconsin Bars.
• 1880- Missouri and Ohio Bars founded--Only 552 of the
more than 64,000 lawyers in America were members of
the ABA
1881
• The ABA passed a resolution recommending a 3
year law school curriculum and that states
requiring apprenticeships give bar applicants
credit toward the required apprenticeship hours.
The bar leaders advocated uniformity in legal
education for better quality control of bar
entrants, thus creating an alliance between the
bar associations and the law schools. The ABA
even created a separate section to focus on
legal education and bar admissions.
1887
• Thomas Goode Jones created the
Alabama Code of Ethics, building on
earlier such codes by adding a Bar
policing mechanism. Although Jones was
not himself a lawyer, as an Alabama State
Representative, he was dismayed with the
unscrupulous behavior of some members
of the Alabama Bar.
1890
• About 4500 students are enrolled in 61
American law schools.