Last week, Stanford Law School channeled Captain James Tiberius Kirk  (via its affiliate, the Sacramento Bee), to announce the completion of the first phase of its very substantial curriculum reforms. I described the claims included in the press release article in this post.

It is unclear whether anyone at the Bee vetted the story, or fact-checked it.  But Dean Larry Kramer made a bold claim worthy of some review–one which may influence decisions now being weighed by accepted applicants and transfer candidates.  Hence this follow-up post.

What we’re doing here no other law school has done, and no other law school can do, because no other university matches Stanford in the number of top-notch programs and departments relevant to lawyers. We’ve utilized the whole university to create a multi-dimensional legal education, because we think lawyers have a valuable role to play in helping to solve the world’s problems and that calls for more than knowing how to analyze case law. And we think we are uniquely positioned among law schools to produce lawyers who do that. (Emphasis added….)

Hyperbole is always worrisome.

In this case, although I welcome (and have long and testily awaited) each and every one of the curriculum and other changes listed among Stanford’s reforms,  I am concerned that their transformative power might prove less compelling once evaluated with a clear head.  I offer here a brief and rather shallow rebuttal, given the tiny piece of the blogosphere even vaguely intrigued by news of another Harvard-Stanford slapdown (interest is especially low now, as we are all exhausted from Valentine’s Day and the Beanpot).

A few thoughts, regarding Stanford’s claim, in an open challenge to its competitors, to be breaking new ground.  Among the claims that will be tough to make true: that the new program is “comprehensive” and “interdisciplinary” and, as a reminder, something “no other law school has done” (or “can do”).

In fact, a good number of the innovative new offerings announced are already in play elsewhere in various forms.

• Stanford is offering multi-disciplinary project courses addressing “real-world business and policy problems”. But see this piece from the Harvard Bulletin, making comparable claims that graduates of HLS  also have a chance to understand “the real world”.
• Stanford students may undertake full-time (no course or exam conflicts) clinical work in a broad range of practice areas, including SCOTUS cases and transactional law.  But although 65% of the Stanford Law student body already participates in the clinics, Harvard offers 30 clinics, including Scotus and transactional law, with current participation running at 70%.

• Another component of the new program: Sophisticated team-oriented, problem-solving courses, co-taught by multi-disciplinary faculties.  I’m trying to find out more about these offerings (How many are there? are they full semester courses?) but it’s been done at HLS, as well, though on a smallish scale.

• Substantially greater emphasis on the international curriculum, a tough area in which to compete.  HLS appears to lead the world in research and instruction in the vast arena we call globalization.
• Expansion of the numbers and variety of student and faculty research opportunities and public interest resources.   Too vague to fact-check. Worth checking out Harvard’s research programs, or “idea laboratories”, as they are described on the website.

• Stanford has built a new academic building AND five-building housing complex in which it will mix law students with graduate students in other disciplines. This is, no question, a truly “new concept in interdisciplinary living”, at least at law schools.  I’m not second guessing this one.  Although Harvard has built a wondrous and spacious (266,000 square feet) new center for student (only) life, the dorms remain pretty dismal by comparison.

Conclusions?  Dean Kramer’s hyperbole invites skepticism, but may well be the appropriate strategy on the elite school platform.  Certainly, the best defense to widespread media criticism of legal education is a vigorous offense.  I await–so far in vain- the Ivy-press story on Stanford’s reform. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal only recently concluded that both legal education and the firestorm spreading across the legal profession constituted news. A tad late.  So we need to give them some time to crosscheck the Bee story.

Still, the beauty of the Stanford strategy, to my mind,  is in its comprehensive, university-wide reach.  And I am grateful for Dean Kramer’s loud call to arms.  Whether “no other law school” can do what Stanford has done (whatever that is precisely), or not, doesn’t matter.   If Stanford’s program fulfills its promise, then we will indeed have a game changer.

I, for one, wish them well.