<p>Law schools are trying to get more practical. Not only is the demand for new hires down, but some clients are pushing back against big firms who expect new associates to bill lots of hours despite their lack of experience. </p>
<p>Strategies mostly involve less theory and more practical coursework and training. "Clinical placements" (students working in real environments on actual cases as part of their coursework) have been rare but are growing in popularity. </p>
<p>Indiana's law school is offering courses in project management and emotional intelligence, while New York Law School is adding topics like negotiation, counseling, and investigation.</p>
<p>Many law schools have had legal clinics for several decades, but not until the recent rapid decline of biglaw placement opportunities combined with the recent increase in the number of ABA accredited law schools &, consequently, the increase of newly minted lawyers from ABA law schools (now at about 200 in the US) have law students & law schools fully appreciated the need for practical, hands-on experience & training prior to graduation.</p>
<p>There are several reasons behind the downfall of the legal profession’s promise of almost certain prosperity. The downward economy, the soaring costs of law degreees (due in large part to the 2006 changes in the bankruptcy laws) and outsourcing of legal work to India are some well known leading causes.</p>
<p>I have long held & advocated the belief that the final year of law school, the third year, should be restructured from theoretical coursework to mandatory clinical practice & full-time study for the bar exam. Much of the unnecessary coursework is a hold-over from the 1960s when a law degree was a bachelor’s degree (LLB) and not a doctorate (JD). Essentially, today’s lawyers are over-educated, yet undertrained.</p>
<p>I have a friend going to law school because he doesn’t have anything else to do, and I can’t talk him out of it to save my life. It’s frustrating how stubbornly persistent people get when they decide to go to law school because they have nothing else to do. It’s like they know they shouldn’t be going, deep down, but are in a state of denial. Well, let them be that way. They’ll be in denial all their lives if they keep it up, and unhappy at that.</p>
<p>But what does frustrate me is that I may be in a room full of these idiots when I graduate law school. Something needs to change to quit making law school so easy an option for people who seem lost in their lives. They should change it to require premeditated action, such as prerequisite courses like med school and pharmacy school require, in my honest opinion, to keep this from happening.</p>
<p>I know of many Tier One law students in the top 25% of their class, some with & some without law review, who have no job prospects. I know one student at a very well respected Tier One regional, top 2%–thought he was safe & didn’t need to compete in the write-on for law review, with no job prospects (every interviewer asks why he isn’t on law review). Top 1% to top 2% of his class. Tier One law school. Nothing. Well, not “nothing” as he has a lot of law school debt.</p>
<p>I would be willing to bet that the number of late-blooming law school applicants far outweigh those of medical school or pharmacy school, especially in ratio to those who have been planning to enter these institutions since entering undergrad. Again, just my opinion, but I find this to be a big issue.</p>
<p>In California, you really needed to get practical – I think it probably started in the early '80’s when the Bar Exam format changed from 2 days of essays and 1 day of multi-state to 1/2 day of essay; 1/2 day of “performance” tests x 2, plus multi-state. It was the performance portion with tasks that a “real” lawyer might face that really changed the face of the exam.</p>
<p>For me, it made it that much easier. Because it is designed to test an applicants ability to understand and apply a select number of legal authorities in the context of a factual problem.</p>
<p>As for the comments of “nothing else to do”, don’t pooh pooh them. I was one. I wanted to be a writer. Well, I am one. I just write lots and lots of briefs. My dad was a lawyer. My mom was a lawyer. My husband is a lawyer. My cousins are lawyers. I guess it was in my blood, and the little field I got myself into nearly 30 years ago I LOVE – it is still absolutely fascinating and interesting to me. I wake up in the morning, and can’t wait to get to work!</p>
<p>I think the fact that law schools are getting “practical” is fantastic! I mean, you really need to know theory; you need to know how to analyze and dissect the info – but the nuts and bolts are the practical aspects – how to communicate with clients, from whatever backgrounds; how to respond to motions; understanding what the technical stuff is and not get sued, like deadlines. I remember the first time I transitioned from transactional to litigation, I was hit with a demurrer. And I asked my husband what the hell that was! And he said, “it’s the ‘so what’ motion”.</p>
<p>When law schools were award LL.B.s in the sixties, they still (generally) required their students to have received bachelor’s degrees prior to matriculation.</p>
<p>law school is easy…nothing more then just philosophy, it is for med school rejects. law is just made up as we go, there is no right or wrong. so, we get way to many lawyers graduating and no jobs…then we get all the slip and fall attorneys, fraudulent workman’s comp lawyers, fake eeoc claims lawyers , bogus class action lawsuit lawyers etc… law schools need to be scaled back in size and number.</p>
<p>That a course in “emotional intelligence” is considered a move towards “practicality” is symptomatic of a larger problem, IMHO. </p>
<p>Yes, client interaction is important, but pre-economic crash, I talked to scads of lawyers who firmly believe that they all add value to a business (i.e. they laughed when I said that lawyers are usually an overhead expense). Rather than teaching them “emotional intelligence”, why not teach them the financial and time constraints under which their clients operate? Why not teach them that regulating a business is not the same as creating it or understanding the technology/economics/distribution chain/etc. behind said business? At the very least, why not send them to the auto mechanic to fix a car or to get a scheduled tune-up, and explain that law firms have a shinier, classier version of functionally the same business model - i.e. selling your time?</p>
<p>Beyond that, I’m sort of perplexed as to why these are separate courses and not integrated with normal 2L and 3L coursework. A wills and trusts class, IMHO, should include drafting an estate plan; a patent course, drafting patents; civil procedure, drafting discovery requests. Most science courses have labs attached; perhaps law schools could develop a similar model.</p>
<p>Law school deans and profs have always been very sensitive to being seen as “real” university academics rather than trade school trainers. Like other university academics, they want their prestige to be tied to research not teaching.</p>
<p>Law schools have never done a good job training students for employment. But the academic model works fine if the law grads can still get jobs. So long as there was a good job market, law schools have been university profit centers, which has lead to more law schools, bigger law school classes and higher law school tuition. </p>
<p>Here’s what I think law schools need to do to really get practical – shutter one third of the existing law schools (and/or shrink law school class sizes), make law school 2 years rather than 3, and include much more practical coursework.</p>
<p>While that would serve law students much better, it is a death sentence to about half the people currently making their living at law schools.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is a lawyer, and he told me he liked his legal education for being theoretical rather than practical. He said lawyers should first be “philosophy kings,” and that the real practice of law should begin when one becomes an attorney.</p>
<p>Some like to see themselves that way but it has very little to do with the practice of law and more to do with maintaining an aura of elitism. I don’t believe there is any justification for post graduate work for becoming a lawyer. It should be an undergraduate degree with a requirement for a practicum.</p>