ABSTRACT
Birks’ collection is striking in many ways particularly in the fact that no women contributed to the collection and that the writing throughout comes from a particular place; a white, male, elitist place which leaves little doubt as to who does and does not belong in university law schools. This chapter begins by painting that picture before highlighting that our own experience as law students around the time the collection was published does not support the collection’s narrow view of who law schools are for. In this chapter, we argue that while there has been change and law schools are more diverse than they were, recent events such as the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), Brexit and COVID-19 highlight just how little progress has been made since we were students, and the collection was published and how the same arguments and issues that were highlighted in the collection are still being debated now.
