Professor Deborah Merritt of the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University talks with Dan Hunter and Mike Madison about the sources of critical challenge in US law schools today and describes paths to re-invention, including a new focus on clients, for herself, for current students, and for law faculties.

Professor Michele Pistone from the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University in Philadelphia talks with Dan Hunter and Mike Madison about disruption in law practice and legal education, about change management in higher education, and about working across the university to build new, cross-disciplinary training for law.  

In this interview, we chat with Prof Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law School about the changes that he’s seen in US legal education over his illustrious 50 year-long career, and discuss his views about the way that law schools need to change to respond to the challenges ahead. 

US law schools today face a double shot of post-2008 challenges. They face changing demand for legal services and legal education, plus changing demographics of prospective students. Law faculty are just now starting to accept that those factors point to large scale disruption of the traditional law school.  Lisa, Dan, and Mike take an inventory of how US law schools got where they are, look at the likely shape of change to come, and – as always – deliver some practical take-aways.