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Abstract

The MacCrate Task Force Report, with its muted criticisms, copious commendations and gentle recommendations sought mightily for consensus. Controversy, however, continues to be the legacy of the Report's primary conclusion that there is too great a disconnection between what law schools teach and what students need to learn for initial competence in practice. This conclusion, and most importantly, the steps that should logically follow from it, are presently being vehemently debated in the scholarly and popular media and in local and national fora that include law faculties and their various trade associations, state bar associations, the American Bar Association's various policy-making bodies, state bar admissions committees, and courts sitting as both adjudicators and bar regulators. It is still too early to tell whether history will mark the Report as the product of political naivete and frustrated idealism, on the one hand, or political savvy and visionary statesmanship, on the other. Although the odds that meaningful educational reform will emerge from the controversy over the MacCrate Report are long, it is, nevertheless, critical to analyze the variables likely to determine the outcome of that controversy so that more effective strategies can be found for advancing the Report's goal of improving the way law schools prepare students for practice.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

1

Issue

2

First Page

363

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