Today's story, about plans at GU Law School to create a two-year accelerated program, had plenty of connections to the bigger picture. In particular, legal education is going through a period of intense self-scrutiny, as school administrators realize students don't want to spend three long years before getting out and competing for work.

We were reminded that the Kaplan Test Prep company recently did a survey of law school admissions officers. The key findings, which in this case are pretty obvious once one looks at the real world:

• 78 percent of law school admissions officers think that “the U.S. legal education system needs to undergo significant changes to better prepare future attorneys for the changing employment landscape and legal profession.”
• On this point, they agree with the vast majority of pre-law students (79 percent and recent law school graduates (87 percent) who answered the same way in June and August Kaplan surveys, respectively.
• Near-term pessimism: 67 percent don’t think the steep,  three-year decline of law school applications will reverse itself in the 2013-2014 admissions cycle.

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