The legal profession today is not what it was even a generation ago. Lawyers now practice from early in their careers in highly specialized areas in which unique tools and knowledge, in addition to traditional training in law, are essential. A lawyer doing corporate transactions needs different skills from a lawyer working on the frontiers of intellectual property. A lawyer working in health law needs a different base of knowledge from a lawyer serving as general counsel to a high-tech firm.

Equally important, an ever-growing number of graduates do not go into law at all. They take their legal training into government service, private sector start-ups, children’s services organizations, or a myriad of other fields. This is a wonderful change. It highlights an aspect of law that attracted many of us to law school in the first place—namely, the relevance of legal training to so many areas of society.

But this change underscores a weakness of traditional legal training. We purport to be training young men and women to perform the multiplicity of roles that lawyers play, yet the education we offer remains too narrow and technical. Incoming students and their future employers recognize this shortcoming, and are increasingly demanding programs that provide broader educational opportunities. It is no longer enough to offer survey courses in basic areas of law. Potential students expect law schools to have large international and clinical programs, along with programs in intellectual property, corporate governance, labor, national security, environmental law, and many other areas. They want opportunities to earn joint degrees, study management science, or learn about subjects in other disciplines.

Large law schools have responded to these demands by becoming even larger, supplying all of these programs inhouse while adding huge numbers of new students to fund the necessary growth in faculty and support. Some small schools have responded by trying to do the same or by boxing themselves into a niche. The challenge Stanford faces is how to compete in this new environment without losing the smallness and intimacy that has helped make it great.

I believe we can preserve the small size of our student body and faculty while offering students opportunities to explore outside the traditional boundaries of legal education. We can do this by making better use of the resources of the entire university. This will provide students with an unparalleled range of opportunities without having to enlarge Stanford Law School. It will, moreover, allow us to offer law students these opportunities at a higher level of quality than if we tried to do it all ourselves.

But this is about more than enhanced skills training or keeping up with the Joneses. Lawyers are actors in all of the most important aspects of governing a liberal democratic society. The world needs lawyers who are more than technicians. It needs lawyers with the perspective and vision to make positive contributions to the problems we face, and who can do so with responsibility and comprehension, not merely by settling into the role of lawyer/advocate.

The next generation must find ways to solve incredibly complex problems. It must find ways to preserve our air and water and to supply the resources, food, and energy needed to sustain the world’s population and economy. It must secure peace and international order from dangers that threaten people everywhere. It must find cures for diseases that even now are wiping out whole portions of the global population. The solutions to these problems do not lie in any single discipline or field. They require understanding and coordination among life scientists and computer scientists, policy makers and legislators, political leaders, religious leaders, businesspeople, bureaucrats, and yes, lawyers.

We have already begun making some changes to create a more interdisciplinary environment at Stanford. We reached an agreement with the Graduate School of Business to cooperate on teaching and course offerings. Faculty at the business school will offer basic financial and business courses for law students, while law faculty will offer basic legal courses for business students. Advanced courses in each school will now be open to business and law school students alike. We hope to reach similar agreements with other schools and departments of the university.

Making interdisciplinary education work will not be easy. To do it right we will need help and thoughtful consideration from all of the stakeholders in our shared enterprise. The faculty and I look forward to your wisdom and good counsel as we embark on this new endeavor.