BROADENING LEGAL EDUCATION

The adoption of the case-method was a wild venture into the unknown, and even now, after a half century of experience, its wisdom is not proved in any strict sense. I remind the reader of this in order that there may be between us a clear understanding that any discussion of legal education moves in the realm of opinion. And there are other difficulties. Legal education is an eminently practical business, a tangle of conflicting factors.

Wisdom lies in compromise and patient shaping of details. I shall therefore concern myself not so much with formulation of principles as with details of their execution. Yet the reader must fill out most of the picture for himself. He will, I hope, strive to see the useful applications of my several theses; he must not subject them, as he easily can, to the logical process of reductio ad absurdum.