Skip to:
The Center on the Global Legal Profession can be defined in two words: applied research. Professors Bill Henderson and Jay Krishnan, internationally recognized leaders in the study of the legal profession, are incorporating cutting-edge research to teach today’s students how to be the great lawyers of tomorrow. The Center on the Legal Profession incorporates three key components to help understand how the practice of law is changing and where it is headed.
A partnership between Indiana Law and the American Bar Association, the Law Firms Working Group maintains the largest database of empirical research on the legal profession. Its members are researching issues facing large law firms and why they are undergoing a major restructuring. Members include top scholars from Harvard, Cornell, the University of Michigan, and Stanford.
FutureFirm 1.0 brought together leading legal minds from across the country to envision and chart the ideal law firm of the future. Teams met for two days, collaborating on ideas for how law firms can survive economic challenges and thrive decades into the future. Scott Flanders, former president and CEO of Freedom Communications, said he could have saved over $1 million in legal expenses from lessons learned during the competition. Hildebrandt Inc. awarded $15,000 in prize money to the top teams, which were comprised of law partners, associates, academics, students, and business leaders from top institutions and industries. Plans for FutureFirm 2.0 are underway.
Partnering with, among others, the Jindal Global Law School in India, the Comparative Legal Professions program is unmatched in its breadth and scope of defining what globalization means to the legal profession. Students are trained to understand how the law works in countries like China, India, and South Korea, and how their knowledge translates across the globe. Research gleaned from the Center will feed directly into Indiana Law’s innovative Legal Professions course, which prepares first-year students for life inside a legal career. Going beyond case law is a critical step in molding future lawyers.
"The profession has changed so much so quickly," Henderson says. "The traditional way of law school instruction is based on the case method, which is 120 years old. That’s a cost-effective way to teach, but is it effective? The center will take legal analysis and industry-level data, distill the trajectories of successful lawyers, and have that find its way into our curriculum."
Students will not be the only beneficiaries of the center’s work. Krishnan notes that professionals already in the field will also see gains.
"We want this to be about relationships," Krishnan says. "We want to connect lawyers from different continents, who can work for the broader good. We can’t do that without relationships. This is not just about research; it’s about research that is going to have a real-world impact. We hope what we produce will help broaden perspectives and offer insights into how fluid and changing the legal profession is today."
Ethan Michelson, the first social scientist to conduct rigorous empirical research on the Chinese legal profession, and Indiana Law Professor Ken Dau-Schmidt, a nationally recognized teacher and scholar on the subjects of labor and employment law and the economic analysis of legal problems, will also be key participants with the center.
As the legal profession evolves at an increasing pace, Indiana Law will continue its mission of ensuring that future lawyers have every possible tool at their disposal to assist in their pursuit of excellence. The Center on the Global Legal Profession will truly make a world of difference.
Indiana University Maurer School of Law is accredited by the American Bar Association | Contact Us | Site Index
Copyright © 2009 The Trustees of Indiana University | Copyright Complaints