Not Your Father's Law School

In the last year or two, much ink has been spilled (or electrons excited since a lot of this is done without paper these days) about the issue of law schools adequately preparing students for the rigors and challenges of modern-day practice. In some states, bar groups have explored the issue and hectored their resident schools that they needed to reshape their programs. By contrast, the Connecticut Bar Association put together a committee a few years ago, headed by Superior Court Judge Ken Shluger, which studied the issue and found that our schools, being the three local law ones and Western New England, were very much on top of this. In the words of Quinnipiac professor Carrie Cass, “law school today is not like when most of us went to school.”

My colleague Pat King recently wrote about Quinnipiac’s annual trip to Nicaragua, where they study the development of modern jurisprudence in the crucible of the poorest country in the Americas. From the year I spent teaching and lecturing there, I can vouch that this is only one of many ways in which the ivory tower no longer exists at that institution.