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[quote]
President Obama urged law schools on Friday to consider cutting a year of classroom instruction, wading into a hotly debated issue inside the beleaguered legal academy.</p>
<p>This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck. I am in my second term, so I can say it, Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style meeting at Binghamton University in New York. I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years.
Not sure - perhaps the same quality of lawyers - but I imagine that law school tuition will increase even more, to account for the lost revenue, and law schools will just take more students per class.</p>
<p>I wonder how this would work with 2L summer associate positions. BigLaw will not like their inability to do a two-month trial for new associates, which is really what 2L summer is all about.</p>
<p>If law schools just increase tuition to match 3-year prices, the point of cutting the additional year will be lost. I suppose BigLaw could do their 2-month trial during 1L summer instead.</p>
<p>Horrible idea. Here’s why (ASSUMING they simply cut off 3L courses and keep 1L and 2L the same): </p>
<p>1) Many people who get their job offers get them after completing their 2L summer associate program. Beyond the fact that this would require either many law firms to change the way they hire new associates (since now the grads would be ready to work beginning in August/September instead of next June or whatnot) or have the graduates wait around for a while such as a few months of a year. They would also need to take the bar exam, which will delay them from being able to be employed by these firms yet (thus the bar exam would need to be changed around too in terms of scheduling).</p>
<p>2) For those who don’t receive 2L offers, they often spend much of their 3L year job-searching. Instead of giving them a cushion to job-search while taking relative easy elective classes, this would throw them right into the market mess. </p>
<p>3) The 3L year still has some use. It allows people to gain more courses/certificates in the kinds of law they want to specialize in (M&A vs tax law, etc). Most lawyers say that law students simply don’t know enough law yet to be worthwhile for even a summer associate position until the end of their 2L year, and even then it’s barely so. The 3L year gives the ‘cream on the top’ that has allowed them to extract all they can/need from the academic world.</p>
The article points out that AZ recently passed law allowing LS students to take the bar exam while still attending LS - so no requirement for a JD or tutorship under a judge. The article hints that many states may follow suit.</p>
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You mean the relatively easy elective courses that are argued as having no real added benefit to an LS student’s practicum of the law? These elective classes on average require the student to take on $25 - 35k more debt. That doesn’t seem like a “cushion” to me. Making $0 is better than losing tens of thousands (plus interest).</p>
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Yet, according to the article, the majority of LS grads joining big firms are being “retrained” within the firm anyway, effectively wiping out the majority of what the student learned that last year.</p>
<p>I remember going to the School of Infantry for the Marine Coprs not so long ago now. The instructors taught us the textbook styles of combat, marksmanship, weapons employment, and field survival. The very first thing I was told by my leadership at my very first field exercise after graduating that school - “Forget everything you learned at SOI. We’ll teach you how things are really done.” I can imagine the same type of thing can happen in other “industries”.</p>
<p>And just to add: an attorney my wife works with told her that after graduating from Stanford LS (many years ago), he thought he knew a lot. After his first week in his first attorney job, he realized he knew absolutely nothing and that the paralegals that had been working at the same firm for about 18 months knew way more than he did. He felt like he was playing “catch-up” for at least the first couple years there.</p>