Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Weighs In On The Length Of Law School Debate

Would you rather be a lawyer or a plumber? Justice Ginsburg's opinion is amusing.

If you just needed the skills to pass the bar, two years would be enough. But if you think of law as a learned profession, then a third year is an opportunity for, on the one hand, public service and practice experience, but on the other, also to take courses that round out the law that you didn’t have time to do.

Two years—it does reduce the respect, the notion that law is a learned profession. You should know a little about legal history, you should know about jurisprudence. [Two years] makes it more of a craft like the training you need to be a good plumber.

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explaining why she thinks law school should remain three years in length, in an interview with the National Law Journal.

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