Ralph Nader Says Law Schools Help Corporate Interests

Ralph Nader, the consumer rights advocate, attacked the current American system of legal education in a speech last night at the Law School.

Nader, a 1958 Harvard Law School graduate, said that if the goal of law schools is to "develop necessary analytic and empirical skills to further justice," they are actually working against their professed creed.

Using examples from his own days at the Law School, Nader said that its heavy competitiveness caused a "narrowing of imaginative play" on the part of law students.

Law students are not encouraged to enter new public interest areas of law, Nader said, but are directed toward the "corporate market," the largest employer of law school graduates.

Nader also said the "obsolesence of the faculty," was a problem in law schools. It is too easy for the same course to be taught the same way for 20 years, he said.