The Cost of Clinical Legal Education

Abstract

Critics of clinical legal education often malign its expense and look to clinical budget cuts as the primary means of reducing costs in legal education. This narrow focus, however, ignores the important function that clinical legal education plays in training law students to be ready for practice and assumes other legal education expenses are more important. The 1992 MacCrate Report, the 2007 Carnegie Report, and other studies demonstrate that clinical education is necessary to produce a well-rounded and practice ready law student. Though clinical legal education should not be immune to cost constraints, neither should any other type of law school expenditure. To succeed in economically difficult and demanding times, law schools must put every aspect of legal education through a cost-benefit analysis for cost-saving potential.