Perfect Storm for Legal Education: Privatization, Polarization, and Pedagogy

Law is one of the three high-status professions that gained prominence, along with medicine and theology, in England in the late medieval period. 1 At the time, these professionals served the landed gentry: doctors cared for the body, lawyers tended to financial affairs, and theologians addressed reckonings with a higher power. 2 In these transactions, lawyers aspired to be trustworthy experts, serving elite clients with efficiency and aplomb. 3 Today, we would say that these early attorneys' legitimacy turned on demonstrating expert professionalism: effectively marshalling the knowledge and skills to achieve a client's goals. 4 As law practice evolved, over