[In the following essay, Kornstein presents a brief summary of literature and law study over the past two decades, emphasizing that the future of the discipline lies in engaging the interest of actual practitioners of law.]

Law and Literature has much to be proud of. In two decades or so, it has grown from an abstract idea to a contemporary school of jurisprudence. It has started to permeate the legal consciousness. It is taught in colleges as well as law schools. It has produced an expanding body of writing that is probing, controversial, and fascinating. It has drawn people to many conferences and symposia, some of them international. Special journals devoted to Law and Literature, such as this one, have sprouted up and continue to flourish. Wonderful accomplishments these are, especially for a fledgling intellectual movement, but they are not enough.

The greatest shortcoming in Law and Literature to date has been its failure to reach and engage the ordinary practicing lawyer. For the most part, Law and Literature has remained firmly entrenched in legal academia, its realm of origin. The shirt-sleeve lawyer is essentially untouched. If Law and Literature is to thrive the way it should, this situation must be changed.

Practicing lawyers are highly eligible candidates for the Law and Literature Movement. Not only do we read for a living, but we have been trained, in law school, to read analytically, much the way that literary critics do. We are taught to read and to apply statutes and precedent in strategic ways; to look behind texts and to use them as tools of advocacy. Literary critics approach their subjects in a similar fashion, seeing them not only as products of the creative process, but as tools for understanding the era and culture from which they spring. Practicing lawyers are well-suited for participation in the Law and Literature Movement.

This kind of participation, moreover, would be highly enriching to any practitioner. Reading and reflecting upon books and plays that feature other lawyers as characters, and that explore the role of law and courts in worlds such as Shakespeare's, Kafka's, and Flaubert's, can give lawyers a sense of pride, and perhaps provide them with insights into the role they play in their own society.

Despite this natural affinity between practicing lawyers and Law and Literature, practitioners have not taken part in the Movement to any appreciable degree. Look at the books and articles written on Law and Literature. They are written by academics, not practitioners. Look at the speakers at Law and Literature conferences. They are academics, not practitioners. Look the at people who read such writings or attend such conferences. They are academics, not practitioners. Look at the membership of Law and Literature organizations. You know the rest.

This state of affairs has to change, or else Law and Literature will never realize its tremendous promise. It will remain no more than a fringe intellectual movement unless and until it can interest and mobilize the hundreds of thousands of practicing lawyers in the United States. The proud boasts of Law and Literature—its claimed ability to change the way people think about law and about literature—will be hollow if the audience for the message excludes as a practical matter the overwhelming bulk of the profession.

Law and Literature must enthusiastically embrace the practicing lawyer, lest Law and Literature become a promise to the ear, broken to the hope. This means we have to make a special effort. If we are fishing for practicing lawyers, we have to think from practitioners perspective, one not necessarily aligned with law professors. We have to change places with the practicing lawyer. We have to think of topics that are of interest and accessible to them. Do such persons want to read about esoteric critical literary theory and deconstruction as applied to law? Probably not. Might such persons be interested in “Dickens and the Law” or “The Law in Pride and Prejudice”? Most likely yes.

Annual conferences on Law and Literature are great, but miss the point as far as the practicing lawyer is concerned. He or she would undoubtedly be more interested in attending a bi-monthly meeting to discuss, informally, an accessible Law and Literature topic. We all are familiar with the widespread popularity of book groups that meet every month or so to talk about a book the group has chosen to read. No special speaker is imported; one of the group, home-grown, acts as discussion leader for that particular book.

The same could be done for Law and Literature, and attendance by practicing lawyers would rise dramatically. Imagine a meeting to discuss, say, “The Law in Kakfa's Trial.” Such a topic is accessible—and probably attractive—to practicing lawyers, as it combines their literary interests with their professional cast of mind.

One attractive possibility is greater involvement of bar associations. On a sporadic and ad hoc basis, bar associations have occasionally hosted a few Law and Literature events, including debates, discussions and moot courts based on literary works, which have added something special to the practicing lawyer's professional community, sometimes to standing room only audiences. But such bar association events are much too rare. Why not create a Law and Literature committee at the bar association? Such a committee could organize group discussions about certain books or Law and Literature topics, as well as readings and presentations.

Much has been accomplished in the world of Law and Literature, but much remains to be done. Law and Literature is still young. It will continue to grow and shape our mindset in wonderful ways. But it will not achieve its full potential if it fails to make a sustained and energetic effort to bring within its stimulating contours the large numbers of practicing lawyers who may truly be the future of Law and Literature.