ABSTRACT
The research literature points to the stifling effect of academic legal education upon student justice orientation; the external forces reshaping legal education also militate against student idealism and prosocial professional aspiration. This chapter looks at challenges for legal educators and some means to confront them. More significantly perhaps for legal education is an ideological shift, a “globalisation of the mind”, under which “markets trump politics; law’s mission is to make the world safe for markets. The chapter argues that an explicit values dimension in legal education that focuses on the relation between law, justice and morality, and promotes an ethic of service in professional work. Law, it is widely said in reviews and statements of objectives of legal education, is a public profession and its practitioners assume responsibilities of a public character. Official reviews of legal education have repeatedly asserted the public character and public responsibilities of the legal profession and the importance of nurturing those values during legal education.
