Reviewing Legal Education

This volume arises out of a seminar on the future of legal education organized by the Society of Public Teachers of Law held at All Souls College, Oxford in May 1994. The debate surrounding legal education, to which this volume makes a distinguished contribution, rages today as it has not done since the early 1970s when the Ormrod Report published in 1971 made recommendations for the future of legal education. Nearly a quarter of a century later another great review of legal education is under way under the auspices of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct. Its report is expected in Autumn 1995 and it can be reasonably assumed that changes will follow. It is the purpose of this volume to enrich and influence the debate by following the expression of a variety of viewpoints all of which have in common a desire to see legal education which is at once demanding, properly located within the learned tradition of humane scholarship and at the same time fitted to the needs of the modern legal profession.