Legal Education: Less Is Not Necessarily More

The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday discussing the ongoing debate whether the traditional course of study for a law degree, which is a prerequisite in most states for admission to practice, should be reduced from three years to just two. Even President Obama, who is both the product of a traditional three-year Juris Doctor program and a former legal educator, weighed in somewhat in favor of a change. The biggest factor spurring this debate seems to be the skyrocketing costs of law school.

I approach this question with the following background. I graduated from a high second-tier law school in 1993. I paid my own way through law school, amassing about $80,000 in loans. I had accepted an offer at an insurance defense firm where I had been clerking for 2 years; my starting salary was $52,000. It took me about 11 (painful) years to pay off my student loans. I give this background to make clear that I don’t come at this issue from the perspective of the academic elite, nor did I finish school without a job.

My experience working for various small firms, mid-sized litigation firms, and now at an AmLaw 150 firm tells me that reducing the amount of training, whether it is Socratic classroom lectures or on-the-job clinical training, will not serve anyone’s interests. Beyond reducing the cost/debt of law school, it will not benefit newly-minted lawyers, who would spring from the costly but generally encouraging womb of  law school with even less to offer than at present. It will not benefit most law firms that (unlike my own) do not or cannot afford to invest in providing their lawyers with systematic, ongoing training on how to write, argue, advocate at trial or negotiate. Most importantly, it will not benefit clients who find themselves saddled with a new lawyer that was not sufficiently trained before being ejected from the nest.

The rising cost of law school, and resulting debt for students who may or may not be able to secure a job that exploits their training and compensates them accordingly is a real problem. It’s a terrible problem. But I do not believe that the solution lies in grinding future lawyers harder during their first two years, then turning them loose to commit malpractice at the expense of unsuspecting clients any sooner.

I have written here and here that law schools should increase the amount of real-world experience students receive before they graduate. If this can be done in a way that reduces the expense of the third year of school, then it would be a win-win. Even after I secured my first paying job as a law clerk, I still did some pro bono work in a law clerk capacity, both because it made me feel good and I gained experience I could include on my resume. Providing there is adequate supervision, many third year students could earn credits performing similar activities, which should both reduce their education tab and boost access to justice for the underserved.

BigLaw firms like my own have increasingly become involved in pro bono initiatives in which they “partner” with client legal staffs to tackle larger pro bono opportunities. This is clearly a win-win for the law firm, which gets to show off its lawyers’ skills, and for the beneficiaries of the pro bono projects, who enjoy enthusiastic, top drawer legal talent. Perhaps such “partnering” could be expanded to include third year law students, creating a win-win-win, as students get to interface with law firm leaders while showing off their enthusiasm and talent. Just a thought.

I applaud educators and others in the profession for trying to improve the situation for folks who want to practice law, a goal which should be pursued with boundless verve. On the other hand, snipping off that third year with no better substitute would be a regrettable choice.

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Should the California State Bar Add a Skills Requirement?

The California State Bar has apparently formed a task force to explore whether to “develop a regulatory requirement for a pre-admission practical skills training program” for new lawyers.  Is this a good idea?

I think requiring a prospective new attorney to complete some kind of practical skills training is a really good idea.  With some caveats.
First, the requirement  shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all.  In the perfect world, every prospective lawyer would get some exposure to various practices before he/she focuses, by choice or necessity, on a single area.  Many of us litigators will wonder until we retire what it would have been like to practice as a transactional lawyer (and vice versa).  That said, it would take a major overhaul of  the American style of legal education to expose everyone to a little bit of everything.  A more palatable approach would be to give prospective admittees a range of reasonable options for fulfilling the requirement.

The second caveat would be to avoid attaching a mandated proficiency level to the skills requirement.  In California, at least, passing the bar examination is hard enough.  Of the 4,382 people who took the California bar exam this past February, only 42 % passed and only 53% of those taking it for the first time passed.  Those kind of statistics can be really discouraging to someone who invested  3 or 4 years of their life and roughly $100,000 toward a professional career.  We don’t need to make the admission process more intellectually challenging.

I would argue that we do, however, owe both new practitioners and the consuming public an obligation to help ensure someone who holds a license to practice law has some basic practical skills.  By the time I graduated law school and passed the bar examination in 1993, I had already “clerked” for two litigation firms.  I had been exposed to depositions and court (as an observer), I had written, copied, blue-backed (remember those?), served and filed pleadings and motions.  In short, I had a decent idea what courtroom lawyers did for a living.  Although the early 1990s are typically remembered as a “challenging” job market for students and new admittees, most of my classmates who desired experience during the summers and their second and third years of law school found it.

From what I read and hear, the present legal job market makes the “challenging” early 1990s look almost like a “boom” period.  At a time when new admittees who graduated at the top of their class from a top-tier school are struggling to find a position as an associate anywhere, it makes me believe the opportunities to gain practical experience before passing the bar examination are more limited.  This will need to be addressed or our profession (and reputation) will (further)erode.

The major criticism of a skills requirement is that it will increase the cost of legal education.  I fail to see the link between ensuring that bar applicants have some skills to go along with their theoretical training and higher law school cost.  It may be necessary to adjust the nature of what is taught, meaning more clinical programs.  Or, the solution could  be training through volunteer or pro bono programs which, in addition to fulfilling the skills requirement, provides the disadvantaged with greater access to needed legal services.

Without the training I received during my two years as a “law clerk,” I still would have received training at the first firm who hired me as a lawyer.  The problem now, as I see it, is that many are graduating law school, passing the bar and entering the marketplace without a job, forcing a great number of those who intend to enter private practice to open a solo practice without any skills training.  These newly minted professionals will learn, eventually, by a process of trial and error, but woe to those who hire them!

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Sage Advice to New Law School Graduates: Keep In Touch

Congratulations 2012 law school graduates!  Welcome to the war.  Wear sunscreen.

Seriously, though, I have a piece of advice I wish I had known and followed almost 20 years ago.  Make a list of every person with whom you attended law school (not just your graduating class, but all 3 or 4 years) that you know/knew even remotely.  Don’t limit it to people you hung out with or even liked.  Make it every single person who would recognize you or your name.  For every person you list, do everything thing you can to gather that person’s contact information and put what you have (even if it’s only an email) in your Outlook or digital or old school address book.  Then, as often as you feel comfortable, but at least every Christmas (or commonly recognized holiday in mid-December, Kwanzaa or whatever), reach out to that person with some kind of communication (written or phone) wishing them well.  A holiday card on actual stationary will do the trick.

This process will be a lot easier if you start right away with an email or other note wishing the new graduates among them good luck on the bar exam.  When bar results are announced, reach out and congratulate those on your list who passed.  Suggest you’d like to keep in touch.

I cannot overemphasize how much of a career shaping or changing habit this can be.  Many (ok, let’s face it, most) of you are going to struggle for the next 12-24 months trying to secure agreeable employment.  But every graduate will eventually find something.  This is just the beginning.  The people on your list will move.  Their career and life choices will take them in directions both vertical and lateral.  Yours will, too.  From my experience, the farther we get from college or law school, the more we wish we’d kept in touch.

If you adopt my suggestion, fast forward 20 years and picture that classmate you marginally knew in 2012, but with whom you made an effort to keep in touch, in the year 2032.  He or she is no longer a fresh law school graduate.  He or she is a senior partner at a firm, or active in business, or maybe at home raising a kid.  Or maybe, he or she has just been hired as assistant general counsel of a potentially great client who, as it turns out, needs counsel in your practice area.  Or he or she is a rising star at a prosecutor’s office or other government position and in a position to influence lateral hiring.  The possibilities are endless.  The point is that, with a minimal, but regular,  expenditure of effort, you could be positioned to leverage relationships to help shape your career in ways you cannot presently imagine.

And I don’t mean to suggest that such relationships exist just to be leveraged.  Who knows, with just an occasional email or note, that acquaintance from law school could grow to be your best new friend.

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