The legal academy must find ways to recontextualize its educational process. It requires undertaking something far more difficult: continuing to teach rigorous legal analysis as well as other lawyerly skills, such as the emerging curricula in alternative dispute resolution, while making all of it morally relevant. The first step toward making the legal academy operate as a moral community is for it to begin to perceive itself as a community that is part of the larger moral community of the profession. An essential purpose of legal education should be to teach the Holmesian skills of legal...

The legal academy must find ways to recontextualize its educational process. It requires undertaking something far more difficult: continuing to teach rigorous legal analysis as well as other lawyerly skills, such as the emerging curricula in alternative dispute resolution, while making all of it morally relevant. The first step toward making the legal academy operate as a moral community is for it to begin to perceive itself as a community that is part of the larger moral community of the profession. An essential purpose of legal education should be to teach the Holmesian skills of legal analysis and prediction. But it should also be to teach and practice professional ideals. Both law students and faculty should feel the presence of those ideals in the work of law school. The competitive grading system is a primary instrument separating students from faculty in law schools and separating students from other students. It is a central impediment to construction of an effective law school community.