Standing at the crossroads: Law schools, universities, markets and the future of legal scholarship

Law schools, together with other departments of the university, are caught up in what some social theorists call a power-knowledge relation. For law school, pressing issues of policy and administration presume positions on matters of institutional and intellectual politics. The economic analysis of university policies and practices has become predominant since the 1970s. A proficiency in the language of economics has transformed university administrators into managers, and academic leaders into bureaucrats. Many law academics would echo the general complaint of the decline of collegiality brought about by a shift of management styles. As law schools appoint directors of research, and exhort their academics to apply for large grants, the performance of legal scholarship within law schools is increasingly under examination. Moving law academics and their students into the field provides them both with a greater personal appreciation of what the profession of law means in practical terms.