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Too many doctors at law schools
A PhD is fine for arts and science lecturers but law students need to be taught by experienced practitioners, as well as academics, writes Lee Stuesser.
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The same can be said for a number of other professions,eg. education, nursing. Students appreciate recent practitioners.
I agree with the direction of Lee’s message.
1. University legal education has been criticised incessantly for over a century from every angle –see Carnegie (2007); Stuckey (2007); Pearce ( 1987); MacCrate (1992) etc. Adding a PhD as an entree or promotion card for faculty does not address, or remedy, any of these critiques.
2. I am a regular marker of the current traffic of “legal” PhDs in Australia. In my experience the form and content of these add no more to the discipline than a traditional long law review article—and certainly no more that a traditional law “book”.
3. One major historical and now revived critique of law schools is the failure to teach “skills” in other than a nominal and Mickey Mouse manner. The PhD shibboleth clearly fails to respond to this current wave of criticism.
4. Some measures of competence and excellence obviously remain necessary for both appointments and promotion of staff at university law schools. A non-conformist law school should clearly have diverse methods of measurement of staff competence. The PhD route by itself is a failure.
Professor John Wade, Faculty of Law, Bond University.
This piece and the supportive comments downplay the importance of constructing the legal discipline – and the other disciplines that support the professions – as a development of rather than replication of current practice. This is important for all disciplines, but particularly important for law in which only about half of graduates enter practice.
Lee’s message is supported by feedback from firms. The problem is the two groups who need to read this won’t.
Those directing recrutiment policy, because they know better even if they’e never been within cooee of a law office and have little to do with the profession.
And those doing the recruitment, selective blindness is convenient when constrasting active selection requiring careful analysis (real effort) or a simple tick box elimination process which requires no understanding, and little effort.
How much proven talent is being wiped off the HR desktop for the sake of convenience and central planning.
It is irony that the argument raised for a PhD only recruitment policy for entry level permanent appointments in every discipline is because that qualification is demonstrable of a capacity for academic rigour. Something this type of one size fits all approach to recuitment singly avoids.
Another trite, and arrogant, argument has been ‘ Universities are not TAFE Colleges’ no they’re not. I suspect not a few of the university ‘elite’ could learn something from how TAFE Colleges approach education. Yet another irony.