The history of the American law school since the 1850s is discussed. During the period after 1800, the replicas of the English legal profession were almost nonexistent in the United States, and Jacksonian Democracy was characterized by a decline in formal standards for legal education. In the early 1850s, law began again to be seen as a learned profession. The expansion of law schools and the extension of the power of lawyers were related to the economic expansion and social restructuring of the country after the Civil War. The growth of Columbia University's law school after 1850 was ultimately overshadowed by the rise of the Harvard Law School in the decades after 1870. The case method was founded at Harvard University, which also took the lead in creating new structural standards and a new type of educator thought to be needed by American legal education. In addition to the growth in the number of law schools, the legal profession was institutionalized, which made it difficult for women to become lawyers. Attention is directed to attempts of the establishment to control the market, criticisms of the case method, the interaction of law and the social sciences, the Realist movement, rising standards, the era of civil rights activism and radicalism, and legal theory. A bibliography is appended. (SW)