View Karen Sloan's original article here. Posted by LST on January 06, 2012.
Excerpt:
Better. Faster. Cheaper.
That three-word mantra, coined by former New York Law School Dean Rick Matasar, will sound familiar to legal educators who have made the rounds of conferences focusing on the reform of legal education during the past three years.
Matasar, who stepped down from his deanship effective Jan. 1, delivered a cautionary speech during the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in Washington on Jan. 5.
“We know there are storm clouds on the horizon,” Matasar said, as he ruminated about the poor job prospects facing students, the growing debt load of graduates and the possibility that outside regulators will force changes upon law schools. …
He has long argued that real change would be painful for administrators and professors alike. His views that law schools need the flexibility to take different approaches toward education, such as having faculties that do not enjoy tenure or produce scholarship, have not always been popular. …
[Judith] Areen offered a less dire picture of the future of legal education, but agreed with Matasar that some changes are needed and that law schools need room to experiment. “Obviously, we in legal education need to do more to keep costs down,” she said.