The Sound of One Hand Clapping?

The Report of the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Education is out! A press release, and the Report itself, are on the ABA website here:
https://bit.ly/2QHJDJE. Two years of truly hard work lie behind the Report's (intentionally) short pages. I can attest to that, since I had the privilege of working with the Commission behind the scenes.

The Commission found that legal education and licensing urgently need reform. The obstacles to attaining that are set forth with stark eloquence in the Report:
And yet--the Report holds out hope, and lays out a road map for overcoming these hurdles. 

Has it landed at the wrong time, in the midst of the Corvid-19 crisis? Maybe, in the sense that it is difficult for it to compete for attention with genuine issues of life and death. But maybe not, because the existential crisis has -- literally overnight -- required changes of legal education and the licensing process that were unthinkable just one month ago: 
  • all 199 ABA accredited US law schools are now teaching online, and
  • no normal bar exam can be given for the Class of 2020, but the graduates will need to practice.

I would argue that the new world we will emerge into should be vastly more ready for change.


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