Washington and Lee law professor Jim Moliterno has published two articles dealing with the ongoing crisis in the American legal system. In “Crisis Regulation,” published in the Michigan State Law Review, Moliterno explains that the American legal profession has regulated not in a forward-looking way, but only as a form of crisis management. As a result, the profession has regulated itself poorly and without forward vision.
In addition, Moliterno published “The Future of Legal Education Reform” in the symposium issue of the Pepperdine Law Review. This essay outlines the need for reform based on the new challenges that law graduates face in the marketplace and the profession. It urges reforms in the bar exam and in law school curricula that will add value to graduates and make them more successful in the new regime of law practice.
Prof. Moliterno delves more deeply into these issues in his forthcoming book from Oxford University Press. In the book, titled The American Legal Profession in Crisis, Moliterno argues that with striking consistency, the legal profession has resisted societal change and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. In addition, Moliterno demonstrates how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history, including during Watergate, communist infiltration, waves of immigration, and the current economic crisis.
