Carlo A. Pedrioli (Southern), Exploring Conflict over the Professor's Role in U.S. Legal Education: Theory v. Practice (Carolina Academic Press 2024): 

In the United States, the professionalization of the role of the law professor began in the late nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century, occurring along with the professionalization of the legal field in general.  Although the current role of the law professor is well-established as mainly academic, much controversy has taken place over this role throughout the decades.  With longstanding critiques of legal education as impractical preparation for the practice of law, which came with renewed vigor after the economic meltdown of 2008, this controversy acquired new intensity and significance. 

This monograph opens with an overview of post-2008 critiques of U.S. legal education, which implicated the role of the law professor.  The project then offers historical background on legal education in mainland Europe, England, and the U.S. before the late nineteenth century.  The book proceeds by examining the development of the law professor role in the U.S. from the late nineteenth century to the present and discusses, in detail, the ongoing conflict between supporters of the scholar model and the practitioner model of the law professor.  Several hybrid models also receive attention. 

Both traditional and contemporary rhetorical theory, including Aristotelian rhetoric, invitational rhetoric, and cooperative rhetoric, inform the discussion.  The project, as a treatment of a communication problem in the legal field, concludes with an explanation of how alternative discourse on the subject would be more productive to all stakeholders in legal education.  

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