But the effect is to make success more dependent on networks. (If they are using AI as an excuse to make networks more relevant than skills, it relieves competitive pressure.)
First, a main draw of law journals is the filing cabinet of past exams as remembered by past students, available only to journal members i.e., friends of connected people. Reducing one's ability to remember what was in a lecture only increases the advantage insiders have.
Second, the "Socratic" Method for teaching law is nothing like it is in philosophy; it's more of a weird combination of hide-the-ball and distraction that again ensures people who can see through the clouds are using out-of-band information, and share it only with those they seek to enlist or join.
> all students will be required to engage in an oral discussion of their SRP with their supervising professor, in an in-person setting
I'm surprised anyone could get through otherwise. When did it become legitimate to dump your paper and not answer for it?
How so? In my view, the socratic method is one of the few useful parts of law school. Most people, even quite smart people, think in a fuzzy way. Their ideas can seem superficially compelling in written form, but often fall apart when you start questioning their assumptions and chain of logical reasoning.
The biggest problem is that most law schools don’t use socratic method, because it’s a lot of work for teachers. Just cold calling a student and asking them to explain what happened in a case isn’t socratic method.
That all being said, I would be entirely unsurprised if the "mythology" of "YES the journals have the secret fancy sauce that no one else can get" lived on.
Also -- and I don't necessarily want to denigrate law school professors, it's another thing that's just gone on so long that "this is how we do it" -- yes, the law School "Socratic method" (at worst) is an effective form of possible professor laziness; they can just "ask questions about the cases" and not really teach.
Related to how law school "textbooks" aren't textbooks. They're literally just a bunch of cases slapped together with a tiny bit of commentary (unless that's maybe changed too, I hope?)
Again, not all professors, you CAN still teach very well under this framework. -- but it is an out for those fancy people who's forte isn't teaching.
> "smart guy with access to AI tools" can perform as well as any other trained lawyer
You are seriously understating the ability of a trained lawyer and overstating the ability AI tools.
What I am saying is that going to schools no longer is the only way for smart people to be able to do the job of a lawyer.
But maybe I was too subtle in my previous comment. I absolutely agree with you. What I am trying to say is that these schools trying to come up with policies about tests and applications in the age of AI have nothing to do with education. They are all just grasping at whatever straws to try to keep the idea that their institutions are somehow special.