David Segal of the New York Times has spent the better part of 2011 skewering American legal education. Academic reaction, though never favorable, reached a nadir when Segal assailed legal scholarship and the process for hiring law professors. This post is intended primarily as a way of documenting the Segal critique and some (though by no means all) of the academy's reaction to it.
Segal's articles:
- The economic irrationality of the decision to attend law school
- Allegedly deceptive practices in the awarding of law school scholarships
- The economics of law school admissions
- How the curricular priorities and hiring practices of law schools depart from legal employers' expectations
- A Times "Room for Debate" forum, The Case Against Law School
- A Times staff editorial, undoubtedly inspired by Segal's series, urging reform of legal education
- Paul Caron's compilation of academic responses to David Segal
- Paul Caron, Are Law Review Articles Worth $575 Million ($4,000 Per Student) Per Year?
- Sarah Krakoff, David Segal's Paper Chase and Some Musings on Legal Education
- Dan Farber, The Unexamined Life of the American Law School
- Bill Henderson, The Hard Business Problems Facing U.S. Law Faculty
- Michael Froomkin, Links to Postings on l'Affaire Segal
- Daniel Martin Katz, Thoughts on the State of American Legal Education — The New York Times Editorial Edition
- John Steele, 1.5 Cheers for Segal's Article
- Matt Bodie, A Recipe for Trashing Legal Scholarship
- Orin Kerr, What the NYT Article on Law Schools Gets Right
- Frank Pasquale, New York Times Financial Advice: Be an Unpaid Intern Through Your 20s (Then Work till You’re 100)
- Brian Leiter, Another Hatchet Job on Law Schools
- Scott Greenfield, Those Who Can't, Teach Law
- Peter Tillers, Sequelae to Law School and Law Practice, and A Bit of Progress Immersed in Murk
- Bruce Ackerman, The Law School Experience (letter to the editor of the New York Times
- Stanley Fish, Teaching Law