A recent op-ed in the NY Times makes the "case" for de-regulating the legal profession and doing away with both law schools and the bar exam. Obviously, as a bar review provider, I have a bias in preserving my business, but I also happen to believe in the importance of professional testing.
The article's author, Clifford Winston, a Sr Fellow at the Brookings Institute is a fan of deregulation of all types but here he makes a series of bizarre assumptions about what lawyers do and why the free market would improve access to legal services. If lawyering was simply a matter of filling out templates in routine matters, he might be right, but that's a very small part of the profession. In fact, the need to analyze and rigorously advocate for a client (in court, in writing and in negotiation) should not be something only the wealthy have access to while the rest of the population can just make do with non-lawyers.
Winston's proposal that we simply allow anyone to practice law including corporations (since the Supreme Court thinks they're just dandy - WalMart Legal Services anyone?) is fanciful free-market foolishness. It appears that the only people who would actually have access to trained lawyers under his proposal would be the very wealthy. Too bad for all those alleged criminals and poor people who currently rely on legal aid and public defenders.
Really? Seriously? I'm wondering who Mr Winston would use for HIS legal work?
I suppose that deregulation thing worked so well in the financial industry and the airlines and the telephone business that we ought to just try it once more and see if we can get it right this time. Or, we can continue to improve legal education and the testing methods and standards that currently exist to work towards a better level of legal service for everyone.
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