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Abstract

The MacCrate Report provides a strong statement about the need for legal education to take seriously its responsibility for training students in the values of the profession and skills of legal practice. It is this central focus of the Report that makes it of interest to those of us who recognize the particular contribution clinical education makes to legal training. The Task Force, appointed and supported by the American Bar Association's influential Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, affirmed in its Report the importance of clinical education and the vital role it can play in the training of future attorneys. It recognized the last twenty-five years of work by many clinical and nonclinical teachers to improve and make available clinical opportunities for law students. Perhaps even more importantly, the Report's publication promised to serve as a catalyst for reexamination of legal education in which the benefits of teaching professional values and practice skills would be the starting point for discussions about curriculum reform. This essay is neither a critique of the entire Report nor a critique of all of the discussions within legal education generated by the Report. Instead, the purpose of this essay is to consider how some of the commentary on the Report serves to maintain legal education in its present form. I will focus almost exclusively on the predominant reactions to the Report at a conference on the Report that took place from September 30 through October 2, 1993, in Minneapolis. This conference was sponsored by the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the University of Minnesota Law School, and West Publishing Company. At the conference a number of speakers expressed concern about the cost of implementing the recommendations of the Report and resisted any suggestion that those recommendations be viewed as mandatory. Much was made of the need for flexibility. Frequently expressed was the view that legal education is improved by allowing the schools the freedom to experiment. In contrast to the expressed concerns about costs and law school autonomy, conference speakers largely ignored the Report's statements about multicultural diversity in the profession. I want to explore the implications for legal education if the themes emphasized at the conference dominate future discourse about curriculum reform.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

1

Issue

2

First Page

349

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