“The Legal Profession and Legal Education in the United States: A Law School Dean’s and Former Practitioner’s Perspective”

Master Martin H. Brinkley is Dean and Arch T. Allen Distinguished Professor at the School of Law of the University of North Carolina, the oldest public university in the United States (1789).  He is the only person in the 145-year history of the Law School to come to the deanship directly from the private practice of law, in which he was engaged for 22 years.  He is the youngest person to have served as President of the North Carolina Bar Association (2011-12), which presented him its H. Brent McKnight Award in recognition of his “trustworthiness, respectful and courteous treatment of all people, enthusiasm for intellectual achievement and commitment to excellence in work, and service to the profession and community during a multi-faceted, accomplished life, inspir[ing] others.”

This event is for members only.

Click here to see details of the QS Requirements and how to be credited with the QS for this session

Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify and explain key features of the U.S. legal system and how legal education and the legal profession operate in the U.S., with discussion of the differences between the U.S. system and that which operates in the U.K. and other parts of the world.
2. Recognise how their future American colleagues have been trained and the settings in which they carry out their law practices, with the goal of preparing them to engage in cross-border collaboration when they enter practice.  Given the close ties between the U.K. and the U.S. in so many fields, this perspective will prove valuable to students in ways that are hard to predict at the outset of a legal career.

Links to the Professional Statement, wider workings of the Bar, administration of justice or a public interest matter

This session will engage students in understanding how the legal system of the United States, which derives in important ways from the U.K. system but has developed in a exhibits certain fundamental differences, operates. 

• It will introduce the key characteristic of the U.S. federal system, in which a national government of only limited constitutional powers is nevertheless enabled to enact statutes which are the supreme law of the land in the areas they touch; and in which state governments have wide powers to legislate in areas not specifically reserved to the national government.
• The session will address how American law schools are attempting to deal with critical issues of diversity, equity in and inclusion at a time when there is tremendous public concern about these issues among the American public
• It will cover briefly the subject of separation of powers and the respective roles of the courts, legislative bodies, and the executive branch in a system of shared powers.  There is immense public interest in the turf wars between the U.S. Presidency in the age of Donald Trump, Congress and the federal courts.  The U.S. constitutional system is being tested as never before.  Will it survive?
• It will cover the arrangement of the U.S. legal profession, in which there is no solicitor/barrister distinction and in which significant parts of lawyer training are left to relatively unstructured practice experiences.  It will discuss the self-regulation of the bar in the U.S. and periodic pressures for greater government intervention.

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