“We your committee on Legal Education beg leave to submit the following report:

We believe that no part of our machinery for administering justice in Texas is more urgently in need of immediate overhauling than our system of admitting new members to the bar. Under the existing laws and the rulings of our Supreme Court, the state is being flooded with young lawyers from every state in the union, many of them with little preparation for the duties that devolve upon them as the guardians of the life, the liberty, and the property of the citizen…

Before going into the details of the situation that confronts us, your committee believes it wise to lay down a few general principles and to make some observations of a general character …

There are too many lawyers in this country. That this is true is evident to anyone at all familiar with the facts. In proportion to population, there are more than twice as many lawyers in the United States as in Great Britain, and nearly five times as many as in either France, Germany or Holland. If all our lawyers were busy and rendering a useful service, there would be little reason to complain, but many of them are not busy. On the contrary, many of them are on the margin of starvation and are constantly tempted to foment litigation, to indulge in legal blackmail and to engage in other reprehensible and illegal practices. It is not merely a waste of man power. It is a prolific source of injustice and social corruption.

“Such are the standards, or the lack of standards, for admission to the bar of Texas. Our bar, already overcrowded, is held out as an asylum for the lame, and the halt, and the blind from the law schools of this country. And they are coming. ”

Not me.  Nuh uh. Bar Section, Resolution Adopted By Dallas Bar Association, 10 TEX. L. REV. 326 (1932).

  “At its annual meeting in 1933 the Association of American Law Schools considered at length the economic condition of the Bar . . .  Among lawyers there was some difference of opinion about the present situation of the Bar. One man, himself successful, remarked that most lawyers could make a living if they were not lazy, and another that there were not too many lawyers, not enough, in fact, if conditions became better. But the general opinion indicated anxiety: lawyers were having a hard time—there was little work for the young lawyer—there were too many lawyers—a man couldn’t get started unless his forebears had been lawyers—banks and trust companies were taking away the business—and even collection agencies obtained powers of attorney to represent clients in the small claims court.  . . .   Many remedies were suggested by the lawyers interviewed. Real estate men and banks should not do so much legal work. Possibly the lawyer should be paid a certain amount by the state and do minimum work for people at large. Average earnings should be published, so the public could see they are not large. The law should be changed so that lawyers must certify that income figures are taken from records. A law might be passed that no legal instrument is legal unless a private lawyer attaches his signature. There is too much talk about crooked lawyers. It is all right to go after the crooks, but to talk and do nothing gives the public the impression that all lawyers are crooks. The Bar should keep its skirts  clean, but does not. It should disbar those that need it, instead of letting them degrade the entire Bar. And finally a feeling that the public regarded lawyers as unreliable, and lumped the good with the bad, led many to be in favor of advertising, traditionally so at variance with the profession’s ethics.

The lawyers’ earnings are low, and there is a great deal of legal work undone which might become what the economists call ‘effective demand’ under other conditions. “

Not this either. Charles E. Clark & Emma Corstvet, The Lawyer and the Public: An A.A.L.S. Survey, 47 YALE L.J. 1272 (1938).

“Students trained under the Langdell system are like future horticulturists confining their studies to cut flowers, like architects who study pictures of buildings and nothing else. They resemble prospective dog breeders who never see anything but stuffed dogs. And it is beginning to be suspected that there is some correlation between that kind of stuffed-dog study and the over–production of stuffed shirts in the legal profession  …

[T]he acceptance of the Langdell-Harvard method meant that the university law school teachers, with few exceptions, were those who had never practiced or practiced for only a brief interval. It is probably true that a majority of the teachers in some of our university law schools have never met or advised a client, consulted with witnesses, negotiated a settlement, drafted a complicated contract, lease or mortgage, tried a case or assisted in the trial of a case or even written a brief or argued a case in an upper court.”

Nor this. Jerome Frank, Why Not a Clinical Lawyer-School?, 81 U. Pa. L. Rev. 907, 909 (1932).

“The United States is the only country of the Western world where a man can be admitted to the bar without having had any contact with, or any real knowledge of, the active profession.”

Not even this. Elliott E. Cheatham,  Legal Education – Some Predictions, 26 Tex. L. Rev. 174, 180. (1947).

It’s been going on for a long time, and as the foregoing clearly shows, the arguments haven’t change much.  On the one hand, this shows that the nature of the complaints flows downhill, with each generation claiming the next to be lame, lazy and unprepared, and the profession on the precipice of collapse.

On the other hand, not even the most talented oracle would have predicted that lawyers with a few months experience, disbarred lawyers or pathological self-promoters would have created a cottage industry in teaching hungry lawyers the art of “rainmaking,” branding or internet marketing.

If they looked at the practice of law today, would they recognize it?  If lawyers from the 30s thought the money was inadequate, how would they feel about the earnings potential now?  If the lawyers from before the Second World War were asked whether leaving law school a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt made sense, would they have nonetheless pursued their legal careers?

I’ve piggy-backed on the research of Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions, whose point is that the current attacks on the legal academy and the profession are nothing new, and who has backed it up with some strong language.  One additional quote, from Professor Myres McDougal, who taught me jurisprudence and influenced me more than any other law professor:

“Proposals for escape from all of this confusion and inadequacy have, of course, been legion . . . . Lecture versus case; large class versus small class; seminars versus courses; group work versus individual work; specialization versus “well-rounded” training; vocational training versus cultural training; Bills and Notes (substitute any course) in the second year versus Bills and Notes in the third year; prescribed pre-legal training versus eclecticism; three-year curriculum versus four-year curriculum—these and many similar questions have been raised like quills on a startled porcupine.”

{Legal Education and Public Policy: Professional Training in the Public Interest, 52 Yale L. J. 203, 206 (1943).]  At no time during McDougal’s class was there mention of using a  catchy jingle to get business, to employ search engine optimization to get a website on the first page of Google or purchase promotional content extolling your virtues as the greatest twit ever from ghostflawgers. 

Things have changed, perhaps more slowly than anticipated, but where we find ourselves today is pretty far down the slippery slope of the lame, the halt and the blind.  It may be taking longer than anticipated, and the road may have some unforeseen twists, but it’s not at all clear yet that we won’t end up in Texas.