The American Bar Foundation (ABF), in collaboration with Stanford Law School and the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, hosted the second biennial William C. Hubbard Conference on Law & Education on March 25-26, 2024, which took place in person at Stanford Law School.
The William C. Hubbard Law & Education Conference Endowment, honoring its namesake Dean and Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina William C. Hubbard, funds conferences recognizing and disseminating innovative and significant scholarship on law and education. The conference, endowed by ABF Philanthropist Fellow and World Justice Project founder William H. Neukom, celebrates Hubbard’s lifelong contributions to the legal profession and his enduring interest in law and education.
This year’s in-person conference at Stanford centered on the ABF’s After the JD study, a twenty-year longitudinal study of legal careers in the U.S., and celebrated the newly released capstone book, The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession (University of Chicago Press, 2022).
The first day of the event started with a session highlighting the key insights from The Making of Lawyers’ Careers, followed by an open discussion of the project’s methodology, results, and impact. The panel featured coauthors Ronit Dinovitzer (ABF Faculty Fellow), Robert L. Nelson (ABF Research Professor), and Bryant Garth (ABF Affiliated Research Professor), and readers Robert W. Gordon (Stanford Law School) and Elizabeth Chambliss (University of South Carolina School of Law).
The second session of the day, titled “Studying Legal Services,” considered the key questions researchers should be asking about the future of legal services in civil and criminal law. They considered pressing topics like the role of AI in aiding legal service delivery, nonlawyer advocates and paraprofessionals, as well as the regulation of legal services. The session was chaired by Deborah Hensler (Stanford Law School), and panelists included David Freeman Engstrom (Stanford Law School), Benjamin Barton (University of Tennessee College of Law), Shaun Ossei-Owusu (University of Pennsylvania Law), and Matthew Clair (Stanford University).
The final panel of the day considered mental health, substance abuse in the legal profession, and a comparison of the legal and medical professions with chair Diego A. Zambrano (Stanford Law School) moderating the conversation between Joseph Bankman (Stanford Law School), Mickey Trockel (Stanford School of Medicine), and Ronit Dinovitzer.
The second day of the event opened with a Keynote Address by Hon. Justice Goodwin H. Liu of the Supreme Court of California, titled “The Many Faces of Legal Education,” which focused on how the demographic composition of law students has changed since the Great Recession. He shared his research findings from examining law school enrollment data by gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality and conducted a novel analysis of enrollment demographics by law school ranking.
The first panel, titled “From Legal Education to Legal Careers,” considered the future of legal education, the profession, and the legal industry. The session chair was George Triantis (Stanford Law School). Comments from Aaron N. Taylor (AccessLex Institute), Meera E. Deo (Southwestern Law School; Director of the Law School Survey of Legal Engagement), Elizabeth Mertz (ABF Research Professor), and Fiona Trevelyan Hornblower (NALP Foundation) addressed new research agendas that hold great promise for addressing the issues of the legal profession. Topics discussed included innovations in law schools, the role of legal educators in reforming educational methods, and reducing the impact of early-career hurdles on racial and ethnic representation in the profession.
The last session of the second day considered lawyers’ core responsibilities and how they differ from the past in “Going Forward: Challenges, Opportunities, Responsibilities.” Nora Freeman Engstrom (Stanford Law School) chaired the conversation between panelists William C. Hubbard, Daniel B. Rodriguez (Northwestern Pritzker School of Law), Norman W. Spaulding (Stanford Law School), and Judge Diane P. Wood (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; University of Chicago). They discussed the prospects for reform, addressing the legal needs of low-income and disenfranchised populations, and the future of the rule of law.
The event concluded with remarks from ABF Executive Director Mark C. Suchman. He noted that the conference illustrated not only core themes from the After the JD project, but also core themes of the ABF, such as a commitment to ambitious interdisciplinary empirical research on the condition of the American legal profession.
Suchman concluded by suggesting that, while it’s hard to imagine a future without lawyers, the conference challenged researchers, bar leaders, and practicing attorneys alike to consider, “Who will those lawyers be? Where will they practice? What services will they provide, and how will they provide them? When, both in the history of the profession and in the careers of individual lawyers, will practice changes arise? And why, in light of those changes, will law nonetheless remain a profession whose aspirations are worth pursuing?”
Through the William C. Hubbard Conference Endowment, the ABF continues to lead vital discourse on enhancing legal and educational practices. The insights from this event are set to significantly influence the future direction of legal education and the profession and reaffirm the ABF’s commitment to fostering a justice system that upholds the rule of law and fair and equitable access to justice for all.
Other recent ABF events supported by this endowment include the webinar, “Democracy at Risk: Can Understanding Our Past Protect Our Future,” which spoke about the importance of education in safeguarding against democratic decline. A recording and event recap can be viewed here.
You can learn more about the William C. Hubbard Conference Endowment on Law & Education here.
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About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.