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KP's avatar

This isn’t just a problem in Law Schools. The Arts, more broadly, has a similar problem, only it’s worse. Even the remaining academics who are not critical theory activists are retiring and their students, read the writing on the wall don’t bother even entering academia. It’s very difficult to get funding full stop, let alone funding that doesn’t have a ‘sexy’ ie critical theory twist, or is not directly relatable to some kind of technological ‘innovation.’

No one is willing to fund archive ratting, (history/politics) real quantitative studies (in sociology) or anything that might vaguely reflect positively on Western Civilisation (aside from a few private colleges). There are few academics interested in properly teaching those ‘non-sexy’ bread and butter courses like ‘Introduction to Western Civ’, or World Politics, or even just Classical literature and poetry. With Law we risk forgetting how society and justice works. If we forget the Arts, we forget who we are.

Is it any wonder our young people are adrift and going nuts?

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Paul R's avatar

I enjoyed your post, Katy, thank you. I am not a lawyer but I do negotiate complex contracts. It is self evident that the contracting process proceeds at the pace of the slowest corporate lawyers ( or their chosen legal advisors). Forget Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping or the second limb of Hadley vs Baxendale, warranty, liability and indemnity clauses are negotiated as if Monty Python’s Fish Slapping Dance was the primary reference source for both parties. The commercial balance of power determines the “negotiated” position during interminable back and forth about “departures” from the client’s original Ts&Cs.

Meanwhile, far away, in another part of town, business practitioners and procurement people are urging agility and NEC4 contracts avoid the “lawyers at ten paces” that both slows contracting and drives up legal fees. Cui bono? My point is that exposure of academics to practitioner issues is not just about philosophical points of principle about remoteness. I’m listening to Subterranean Homesick Blues as I write this, and his Bobness sings “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!”

There will always be contractual disputes but I think the big legal practices are clinging to anachronistic “model contracts” which drive up their billings but are no longer fit for purpose in a world where the parties want to compress cycle times.

If i was a cynical and grumpy old man i would suggest that there will be increasing supply of forty-something lawyers who have been made redundant from the large legal practices by AI-driven contract negotiation, the business imperative to compress contract negotiation cycle times, the impatience of clients with practices that serve the interests of their legal advisors and the emergence of new contractual vehicles to deal with uncertainty.

I doubt many would want to enter academia given the stories that are now being told by Janet Albrechtsen and others but I would suggest it would be a step forward for the legal profession and a huge benefit for the students. It would address (some of) the succession issue, but not address the need for academics to leave the gardens of academe for the grubby corporate world from time to time.

But who knows? The times they are a changing, and perhaps mass redundancies at larger practices might create some part time vacancies? 😎

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