Preaching What They Don't Practice: Why Law Faculties' Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy

Abstract

Law professors, as a class, express themselves as scholars in law review articles much more so than in scholarly books and typically are evaluated for promotion and tenure based solely on such articles. 4 7 In that way, they differ from other types of professors, especially those in the humanities, who consider books the highest form of scholarship and the measure by which they typically judge their peers. 48 There are nearly 1,000 law reviews in the United States, the vast majority of which are traditional student-edited journals. 49 Those law reviews publish approximately 150,000 to 190,000 pages per year.soYet the majority of those pages-I submit the vast majority-provide little if any social utility (other than to their authors) and represent a colossal amount of wasted resources and opportunity costs.Although somewhat hyperbolic, Chief Judge Jacobs's remarks reveal that, unlike in the past, when more of a "symbiosis between the 52 professoriate" and the profession existed, relatively few members of the bench 47.See