Thursday, November 30, 2006 8:18 PM
Larry Kramer Wants a Revolution in Legal Education says the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. And, it points out that Dean Kramer's comments in the school’s 1,600-word press release are particularly interesting. I agree.
“Business, medicine, government, education, science, and technology have all grown immensely more specialized,” Kramer said. “Legal education must adapt. How can a lawyer truly comprehend and grapple with a complex intellectual property dispute without understanding anything about the technology at issue? What counselor can effectively advise a client about investing in China or India without understanding their particular legal structures, to say nothing of their different cultural expectations and norms?” A “3D” JD: Stanford Law School Announces New Model for Legal Education
As I read further into the press release, I was particularly struck by the following paragraph:
Although lawyers were historically called upon (and trained) mainly to identify problems, they are increasingly being called upon to help solve them. To do this, especially in a world where the problems have grown more intricate, lawyers need to understand what their clients do at a much more sophisticated level than can be taught through the existing law school curriculum or in the traditional law school classroom.
To do this, Stanford Law is embarking on what it calls the 3D JD, which by my reading is all about expanding the breadth of one's legal education to touch on other disciplines, especially in the second and third years.
This model is remarkably reminiscent of lawyer Charles Munger's Latticework of Mental Models and makes me wonder if Stanford's 3D JD has it origins in Munger's Latticework. Munger, who helped start Munger Tolles & Olson, and has since claimed significant fame as an investor and part of Berkshire Hathaway, made a speech to students at the University of Southern California back in 1994, that outlined his views of the Latticework [A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business - Charles Munger]. Here is an excerpt from that speech (note: I can't guarantee this is verbatim):
I'm going to play a minor trick on you today ‑ because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom ‑ a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way.
...The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. After all, the theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.
So, emphasizing what I sometimes waggishly call remedial worldly wisdom, I'm going to start by waltzing you through a few basic notions.
What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.
You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience ‑ both vicarious and direct ‑ on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models ‑ because if you just have one or two that you're using, the nature of human psychology is such that you'll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you'll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.
It's like the old saying, "To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." And of course, that's the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that's a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you've got to have multiple models.
And the models have to come from multiple disciplines ‑ because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That's why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don't have enough models in their heads. So you've got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.
You may say, "My God, this is already getting way too tough." But, fortunately, it isn't that tough ‑ because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly ‑ wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.
After reading the Stanford 3D JD press release, followed by Munger's speech, I am struck by the common themes. Whether the 3D JD in practice actually follows the ideals Munger espouses remains to be seen. But the goal of worldly wisdom through a wide-ranging cross-disciplinary legal education seem self-evident.
Dean Kramer ends with this:
“At Stanford, we think lawyers have a valuable role to play—not just in modernizing the way that law is practiced, but in helping to solve the world’s problems. And we think we are uniquely positioned among law schools to produce lawyers who do that...”
As for Munger, when it comes to his Latticework ideas, i've found him to be a man ahead of his time. While I don't agree with all of his views, on many topics he simply makes a lot of sense. The Munger family has done a lot for Stanford (as they have for a number of other schools, as well) and have a presence there. Perhaps Munger's long-standing views on what constitutes a worldly education sunk in among those who determine the legal education curriculum at Stanford. Perhaps not.
Regardless, I expect Stanford's 3D JD announcement has opened the door to some lively conversations in the halls of academia.
Good stuff.