The Problem with Legal Education for Transactional Lawyering and Policymaking

It predisposes lawyers to be negative

You ay have heard that former FTC chair Lina Kahn is starting up a center at Columbia Law School designed to train future lawyers in “key areas of economic law and policy.”

The Center for Law and the Economy will have two key missions. The first is to serve as a hub for work that fills major gaps in scholarship and policy research on the laws and tools that shape, structure, and govern economic activity. The center will bring expertise to advance work spanning public economic law, including in antitrust, administrative law, banking law, consumer protection, corporate governance, financial regulation, and tech policy, among other areas. Drawing on top government experience, the center’s fellows will focus on developing timely research that can move from scholarship into practice. The center’s Project on Public Economic Law will support students and scholars as they prepare for careers in legal academia, and it will host the Public Economic Law Colloquium to convene scholars and teach students pursuing this work.

The second part of the center’s mission is to educate, train, and support current students through its Law and Economy Student Network. Students from around the United States will have the opportunity to participate in events with leading scholars and policymakers; contribute to timely, original scholarship and policy projects; and submit work for annual awards. Through the network, the center will help train the next generation of legal and economic scholars and policy leaders and position them to advance careers in public service.

Or, as a cynic might say, to generate stovepipe law review articles and train aniother generation of progressive anti-business antitrust crusaders.