The ABA Section on Legal Education is again considering lifting its ban on paid law school externships (ABA Interpretation 305-3). The feedback from law professors and from law professor groups such as SALT has been overwhelmingly negative, with one score-keeping professor
stating a couple of years ago that he counted 7 law
professors in favor of abolishing the rule and 159 law professors opposed. [1]
The main objection
to abolishing the rule is that legal employers who pay students would be less inclined to
defer to the exacting standards devised by law professors, thereby disrupting
the educational experience and maybe even undermining students’ high ideals of
public service.
It is the case that ABA Standard 305 mandates a series of requirements to ensure
vigorous law school oversight of field placements. But protesting law professors assert that Standard 305 would not effectively ensure the educational quality of employer-paid field placements, what with mercenary law firm supervisors incentivized to extract value from compensated labor in lieu of mentoring young legal fledglings in their learning
process.
Consider the
following quotes from written comments or testimony in opposition to abolishing the
paid externship ban:
* "Why are we now driving students, quite frankly, out of those public interest opportunities and into more paid positions? I think that’s wrong. I think that’s wrong. I think this is about education. It is not about making money." -- Bob Kuehn, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Washington Univ. at St. Louis School of Law, ABA Section on Legal Education, Public Hearing re: Amendments to Standards, April 25, 2014, p. 58.
* "I believe that the opportunity to receive pay would induce students to take paid positions in-house (for example, at Chanel or MTV) rather than enroll in credited positions in our nonprofit-based clinics (for example, the Consumer Rights Field Clinic)." -- Becky Rosenfeld, Director of Externships, Cardozo School of Law, Comment to ABA, April 18, 2014.
* "Ultimately, the goals and objectives of paid employment and those of education are often in conflict. Among the goals of legal education are to instill the value of service to society and the obligation of lawyers to contribute. Paying law students to obtain their own education seems at odds with this principle." -- Prof. Margaret Moore Jackson, University of North Dakota School of Law, Comment to ABA, April 16, 2014.
* "There is no way to overstate this issue: employers are busy and are not in the role of providing legal education. I have seen students come away from paid internships with distorted ideas of ethics and no sense for why they are have been taught to proceed a certain way in particular job tasks.. .. I think revoking this rule will end up with a larger percentage of unhappy new lawyers who leave the field due to lack of mentorship when they could have instead been directed to a legal field more in keeping with their particular gifts." -- Clinical Prof. Yvonne Troya, University of California-Hastings College of Law, Comment to ABA, April 18, 2014.
* "If some schools allow students to be paid, schools that refuse to do so will be at a disadvantage at a time of fierce competition for students. Students will more readily see the loss to their pocketbooks from being denied the option of payment than the loss to their educational experience from being paid." -- Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), Letter to the Council Chair of the ABA Section on Legal Education, July 10, 2015.
Even if these fears are warranted, and I do not think they are, the impact on
legal education due to abolition of the no-paid-externship rule will be minimal
because so few law students would be effected.
There simply will not be a whole lot of law firms or public sector agencies prepared to offer even minimally compensated externships. Lucrative law school externships at Chanel and MTV will be rarer still, especially for matriculates at no-prestige joints like Cardozo. Hell, law student interns are often said to
be a lot more trouble than they are worth even when they are working for free.
What bothers me about
the stand taken by all these law professors is its hypocrisy and assumption of virtue. The lawprofs are stalwart defenders of the purity of the educational mission against a proposed reform that
might put a few bucks in the pockets of a small number of their own heavily indebted
students. But did they similarly defend the noble enterprise of legal education against highly questionable developments and practices that put
money in their own pockets?
But for a very
few brave and honorable dissenters, law faculty did not protest the dizzying tuition
spiral. They did not protest the astonishing decline in admissions standards. They
did not protest the accreditation of new bottom-tier law schools. They did not
protest the absence of peer review for their matchless scholarship. They did
not protest the existence of the unnecessary 3L year. They did not protest filling law faculties
with professors who have extremely meager, or even nonexistent, backgrounds in actual legal practice. They did not
protest the extension of academic credit to obvious boondoggles such as most study
abroad programs or even study-aboard-a-cruise-ship programs. They did not turn down the paid vacations masquerading as academic conferences. Such defects in legal education law professors are happy to overlook, no
matter how deleterious the impact or expense to their students.
But where these pampered
six-figure-salaried control freaks draw the line is at
giving a kid two credit hours towards his or her JD degree to supplement his or
her $2,500 employer-paid summer stipend at a public defender office or small
firm. Personally, I am more troubled by the fat salaries and perks galore corralled by law professors than I am by the meager stipends that might be paid to a small number of externing law students.
-------------------
note:
[1] Bob Kuehn, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Washington Univ. at St. Louis School of Law, ABA Section on Legal Education, Public Hearing re: Amendments to Standards, April 25, 2014, p. 62-63.
note:
[1] Bob Kuehn, Associate Dean for Clinical Education, Washington Univ. at St. Louis School of Law, ABA Section on Legal Education, Public Hearing re: Amendments to Standards, April 25, 2014, p. 62-63.
Anyone who went to law school, and understands the scam, and still is a liberal or a Democrat, has to seriously re-evaluate their thinking on political views.
ReplyDeleteIs there any clearer demonstration of the absolute disaster that is liberalism in the real world? And what is it exactly? It is a bunch of privileged people, many times born into privilege, exempting themselves from the rules they want to impose on everyone else, while using the most poor and desperate amongst us to facilitate that imposition.
Their thought process can be summarized as follows: I am a trustfundarian who went to Harvard, and I must be paid 200k plus, with complete job security, for half a year's work, where said "work" involves opining on legal matters in an abstract matter, completely divorced from reality. I am entitled to this. The government will give this to me. I will take those tax dollars, and if you don't give me those tax dollars, well then you are [fill in the blank with an anti- politically correct view]. You will go work for free, you don't need money. You need to sacrifice. If you don't want to sacrifice, then you are [fill in the blank with an anti-politically correct view]. Moreover, that thought process is supplemented with a particular sentiment: complete contempt for their students and/or constituents, especially the ones from more modest backgrounds who did not attend the "finer" educational institutions of this nation.
Essentially, liberalism accomplishes the will to power, at the expense of the great majority, by exploiting the naive and charitable sentiments of less informed producers, and the complete desperosity and ignorance of the lower classes.
Cancer. It truly is cancer.
Scammers and exploiters come in all ideological flavors and from both major political parties.
DeleteI haven't forgotten Operation Iraqi Freedom, the born-to-the-manor Yale trustfundarian right-wing Republican who led the thing, the huge no-bid contracts to politically favored corporations, and the bullying of patriotic correctness. A gruesome tax-dollar funded scam based on the involuntary sacrifices of a huge number of Iraqi civilians and poverty-drafted GIs.
The rich always pay the poor to die for them.
DeleteEnriching one's self at the expense of others, using the power of government, is not confined to any particular political ideology. Yes, the law school scammers are mostly limousine liberals. But look at how much waste and outright fraud and theft occur in the defense industry. Most Republicans actually want to increase spending in that area. And don't get me started on farm subsidies.
DeleteDybuk/BamBam,
DeleteThere is no question that Republicans, especially the Bush administration, did and so some incredibly evil things. However, today's liberal is a much more effective predator than today's Republican.
Jeb Bush is finished as a political candidate because of that realization. Everyone acknowledged that Iraq was a catastrophe, and if you follow the debates, one of Trump's biggest selling points is that he opposed the Iraq war.
Now let's compare that to the present situation. Clinton is going to win the Democratic nomination. This is a person whose husband abolished Glass/Steagall, signed us onto numerous international treaties that obliterated our working class, and is a prime architect of TPP (the nails on the coffin of this country). She has taken millions from Wall Street and the banks, yet, she has convinced working people she is antiestablishment and is for their interests. She's the nice lady who cares, just like those nice people you quoted above.
Now tell me, who inflicted more damage, is going to inflict even more damage, and is going to convince people that she is doing the right thing? Who is more effective as a predator?
Let's take some more examples: we have destroyed at least two more countries in the Middle East for no good reason, but I don't hear a peep about it on the media. Why? Because the left is much more effective at doing what the Republicans do, except they do it 1000 times worse, with more subtlety, and with better propoganda. Let's take another example, the economy. The economy is in abysmal shape, nothing has improved for the majority of people. Yet, just like how the liberal fraudsters at law schools engineered fake statistics, whose legality was then sanctioned by the governments/court, they have engineered fake statistics about how the economy is great, and the establishment legitimizes that. Millions and millions are suffering, we never recovered, but they are winning the information war (for now). We knew George Bush helped wrecked the economy in a few months, but Obama has been able to convince people shit is ok for 8 years. Same thing for the wars.
The analogy is snake and insect predators vs large mamilian predators. Republicans are like wolves and lions. You see them coming, and when the prey on you, you can react immediately. The community can rise up immediately and punish them. Liberals are like snakes and spiders, i.e. By the time they atteck you, you don't even know what hit you, and you may not even know what happened to you. Moreover, since they are so unassuming, it's likely they'll screw you again.
It's like my law school professor who cried when Obama was elected. He was crying and saying that the election was about hope, and treating people with respect and this was a transformational moment in America. A few months later, I confronted him about the jobs situation, and I asked him how he reconciled that with his political views, Considerint that most of the victims were the poor and middle class kids. A direct quote still etched in my mind: "This is a business, they need to wake up. We are selling a product, caveat emptor." The nice liberal man. I bet he would quickly want to punish a product manufacturer for a missing label, or some other minute bullshit. He really cares about the poor, as long as they are poor and desperate, so they keep voting for crap that puts money in his lazy and parasitic pocket. And while he is feeding himself real well, he'll be sure to remind his victims that they need to sacrifice more and more for the poor.
Just remember, the Preamble was amended from "To Promote the General Welfare" to "To Promote the General's Welfare."
DeleteI'm no right-winger, but I can't say I'm a left-winger either; those on the Left do plenty of evil and shameful things themselves. Case in point: As much as they rail against the big bad corporations, they don't mind taking over "higher education" and turning it into a big cash cow of their own. It's no coincidence that Democrats get much more donations from schools than Republicans.
DeleteThe shameful money grab of higher education is a willful blindspot on the Left's part, and they know it. For instance, I know of one "news" site which does nothing but spew heavily-slanted, Left-wing news, even total BS which is later proven false but they never retract (I'm not going to say what website it is, because I don't want to give it more traffic), but I remember reading one article of theirs like "4 ways to get through college without owing lots of money to a bank." So the banks are the big bad guys in all this, while the colleges themselves are absolutely blameless, hmmm?
Also gotta love the fact that as much as the Left claims to be for freedom and against slavery, they're taking their own students and throwing them into a new kind of modern loan debt slavery -- ESPECIALLY all the historically oppressed minorities who they claim to care so much about.
Like dybbuk said, both major political parties and all ideologies have their share of scammers and exploiters.
And as someone who has spent lots of time reading both left-wing and right-wing blogs, here's one solid truth, an observation of my own: If either side does anything right, it's chronicling and detailing what the other side does wrong.
Both parties are terrible, but this is a peculiarly limousine liberal trait. Academia is extremely left wing, and so are many graduates, at least for a short while.
DeleteOne of the things you notice is academics and recent grads are always quick to point out right wing issues, but as soon as left wing structures are criticized they are very quick to insist it is not a left wing issue, and rush to sweep it under the rug and obfuscate.
We have more than enough discourse on the evils of the right wing. We don't obfuscate that. There is a platform for that. Same as there is a platform for left wing corruption.
Let's allow the criticism without rushing to defend it and hide it. We need it badly.
Pelosi, Reid and the academics are all in bed together. And I agree with OP, OP wrote that brilliantly and accurately.
Ripping off "buyer beware," using the tax base for subsidies, sounds like free market capitalism to me, just like in the orginal Robber Baron days.
DeleteGuaranteed federal tax payments to private interests, irrespective of performance, isn't capitalism. It's fascism.
Delete1:00PM--100%--you nailed it.
DeleteI guess it's fair. The law scamblog movement has taken a position against paid professorships.
ReplyDeleteLet's compromise: get rid of 80% of the students and 80% of the professors. That's fair, isn't it?
Delete"There is no way to overstate this issue: employers are busy and are not in the role of providing legal education."
ReplyDeleteNeither are law schools, I'll warrant. But they don't mind charging hefty fees for the "service" and drowning their students in debt to do so, while complaining about the pittances these students could receive under this change.
Well done, dybbuk, thank you.
ReplyDeleteGotta love the bold two-faced hypocrisy of the highly-paid law school professors... if they don't get their big fat salaries, then they won't be able to train the next generation of lawyers for this "noble" profession, but if those same students get any kind of payment, suddenly they're a bunch of greedy little pigs.
ReplyDeleteEspecially with the historic and unprecedented (and outrageous and brutal) cost of "higher education" these days, I find it totally hypocritical, if not vomit-worthy, how the same students who are taking out all these massive loans to pay for their education are somehow also expected to work for free on top of that.
Absolutely disgusting. These higher-ed fat cats deserve to spend their later years sleeping in cardboard boxes and eating out of garbage cans.
I've never seen a profession that is so obsessed with giving away work and services for free.
DeleteYes, pro bono work is a good thing, but many lawyers--especially recent graduates--are struggling to make a living these days. It seems like the loudest voices calling for mandatory pro bono (yes, an oxymoron, I know) come from those in the cushiest jobs (state bars, law professors).
I know it's because the law is seen as uniquely important to our society, but it's not. Our needs for, say, food and shelter are more urgent, but no one is calling on farmers or construction workers to be forced to give away food or houses for free.
If you have services worth giving, you don't give them for free, outside of the specific auspices of a charity. To start doing so only cheapens what you offer, as people who can pay try to worm their way into getting the free version.
DeleteIf the law professors had to practice law for a living, their obsession with requiring pro bono work would disappear in a hurry. Doctors for one got this right.
"If you have services worth giving, you don't give them for free, outside of the specific auspices of a charity. To start doing so only cheapens what you offer, as people who can pay try to worm their way into getting the free version. "
DeleteYeah, but you gotta explain to them that the free version is "Legal Beta 1.01", and that it hasn't been fully bug-tested as yet.
"If the law professors had to practice law for a living, their obsession with requiring pro bono work would disappear in a hurry."
The other thing that would develop in a hurry would be a newfound obsession with finding food.
It is obvious that these professors want to prepare activists, not professionals. Students go to law school to prepare to earn a living. Yes, they should be taught to be ethical attorneys. Yes, they should be encouraged to serve the public. But these professors should not be using law school to indoctrinate students in their leftist propaganda. Just look at what is happening at Louisville. Forced diversity (indoctrination) training. Let law students have paid internships in whatever they want as long as it adds to the educational experience!
ReplyDeleteWith Ethics, these Prawfs are doing shitty job. Ethics and theft of client funds have nothing to do with any political agenda. These newbie retards that these Prawfs are putting out are stealing client funds and neglecting cases. One newbie in my jurisdiction blew off a federal court law suit by several teachers and has a 500K malpractice judgement entered against him. Typical bullshit. And this guy had an Outstanding AVVO rating.
Delete9:55 AM nails it. Law Schools left the refinement and maintenance of the "profession" long ago, probably in proportional measure to the declining economy and lack of lawyer jobs.
DeleteIn classic redirection and obfuscation, the rallying cry became activism. Yes, we need activism. No, we do not need it to the tune of $45k per year.
Saving dolphins and open road narratives will always be sexier than defending DWIs. The former tugs at the heart-strings and gets ill-informed people to put money on the roulette wheel. The latter is somewhat discouraging and makes ill-informed people consider other avenues.
Which narrative is the more profitable for the law schools? Follow the money.
The Prawfs play it wrong. Defending a DUI/DWI is actually a Constitutional act. You are a Constitutional actor. You have to think Talmudically. It's not just a human being of flesh and blood, but a Whole World. Every time one steps up on behalf of a criminal defendant...no matter how small the case. You are the face of justice....That's very cool.
DeleteGood point. There is more actual "social justice" taking place when actual lawyers defend the rights of citizens, rather than the silver-spoon-screeching of socialist law review articles from inside the bubble. This should be advertised in the right way.
DeleteI had one (Con Law) Prof who actually defended the occasional inmate in Federal Court. One. The rest, by and large, were overpaid posers.
I agree with dupednontraditional's comments.
DeleteThe Madoff scandal popularized the term "affinity fraud"-- which refers to scammers who target members of the same cultural group. I see law schools that trumpet their social justice orientation as enacting an ideological affinity fraud on idealistic students.
However, outside the academy, one encounters lawyers who represent indigent clients, some as public sector employees. Few of these lawyers are rich, and their pleadings and briefs are notably free of critical theory slop. They are kept honest in their professional work because their arguments are countered by opposing counsel (audi alteram partem) and evaluated by a neutral and skeptical arbiter. Also because, unlike lawprofs, they are governed by rules of professional conduct.
I hope that law school scam victims do not view lawprofs, with their posturing and pretentious pseudo-scholarship and their meager backgrounds in actual practice, as the true face of progressive lawyering.
These Prawfs and Deans should be jumping for joy that somebody would pay for legal services in this over saturated legal market. These externs aren't even lawyers! Further, public service law jobs with salaries and benefits are the now considered the Golden Ticket. Hoards and Hoards of attorneys are applying, even for salaries as low as 32K. I know, I applied. I need the work and I know that my law degree even from a ranked school has lost value like a rusty Chevrolet. It is not special to be an attorney. Open the Yellow Pages in your community.
ReplyDeleteI decided to have a look at my local phone book. In a Verizon phone book for the 703/571 area code I found
Delete* 220 phone numbers for 'Attorneys' and a helpful note to also check the 'Lawyers' section of the phone book
* 2 phone numbers for 'Law Citation Retrieval Services'
* 6 phone numbers for 'Lawyers Commercial'
* 5 phone numbers for 'Lawyers-Information and Referral Services'
* 8 phone numbers for 'Lawyers' Service Bureaus'
* 5 phone numbers for 'Legal Clinics'
* 1 phone number for 'Legal Forms'
* 20 phone numbers for 'Legal Service Plans'
* An nigh-uncountable number of phone numbers for 'Lawyers'. I had to take a ruler and measure and estimate to keep my sanity. I came up with approximately 1234 'Lawyers'. Also there was a helpful note to look at the 'Lawyers Guide'
The 'Lawyers Guide' was mostly Ads which I'll get to, but there were also 54 phone numbers in this section.
*** For phone numbers we come to a grand total of 1555 telephone numbers for lawyers and such.
There are also the Ads for Lawyers. I counted
* 2 two page ads
* 4 full page ads (to be fair one of these was an almost full page ad, leaving just one column for numbers)
* 16 less than full page color ads
* 36 less than full page black, white and red ads
*** 58 ads of various sizes in total.
Granted not every ad was bought by a unique firm. Both two page ads were bought by the same firm, and one shop bought a quarter page color ad in 'Lawyers' plus a small black, white, and red ad for every practice area in the 'Lawyers Guide'
I also noticed some phone numbers would be bigger than others. I imagine that if you paid nothing your number would be printed in really small font and you can pay more for bigger font or for the inclusion of an email address or website. Some of the Lawyers with email addresses ending in aol.com probably didn't have a lot of extra money to be giving to the phone book people.
All of this law busking takes up approximately 22 pages in the yellow pages of the phone book.
People still use printed telephone directories? I haven't seen one for years.
DeleteI got mine from the telephone company when I got service at my place. Didn't ask for it, just came in the mail one day.
DeleteA bonus I missed now I think about it. The back cover of the phone book was an add for a law firm.
The professors fear what they don't know (real-world practice) and want to protect their own turf (cushy jobs).
ReplyDeleteI've learned far more in 1.5 years in my current position than in 4 years of college. The idea that education and gainful employment are at odds with each other is the sort of nonsense I would expect of a law professor. For the many law school graduates who end up working in shitlaw, gainful employment is the most "useful" education they will receive.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this. Most blogs like this ignore the fact that law schools are not just exploiting law students to line their own pockets. They are also trying to indoctrinate a servant class that will support their Marxist ideals.
ReplyDeleteToday most law schools are like socialist summer camps. George Orwell was right. 2+2=5.
"I think this is about education. It is not about making money."
ReplyDeleteNews flash: People go to professional schools to make money, repugnant as that is to those in the ivory tower.
Please please stop this. Law schools need to have professors who know about actual legal practice and have had careers outside of academia. Is this all falling on deaf ears?
ReplyDeleteThe law school pigs can't admit that their legal clinic$ are useless - and are geared towards attracting the wannabe "environmental protectors" and "saviors of the planet." Hell, if VermonTTT Law Sewer didn't have the supposed 1st or 2nd "best" environmental law program, how would they market themselves to morons?
ReplyDelete"I have seen students come away from paid internships with distorted ideas of ethics and no sense for why they are have been taught to proceed a certain way in particular job tasks"
ReplyDeleteWhy does a public school law professor know more about legal ethics and good practice techniques than real-life practice lawyers?
I understand and agree with dybbuk's point about hypocrisy, but the hubris of these people is ridiculous.
But what would be the difference between paid internships and paid clerkships? In reality, the only difference is that the student would receive credit toward the JD in an internship, which means a diminished role for the faculty. Accordingly, SALT should answer these two questions:
Delete1. Why would students have "distorted ideas of ethics" in a paid internship and not a paid clerkship, and
2. Why do law schools actively seek firms who have available clerkships for their students since the same practioners would supervise the students in both clerkships and internships?
Totally ridiculous. Schools need to require their professors to periodically take jobs as lawyers so they can become even slightly informed about these things.
ReplyDeleteThis.
DeleteAnd they should be required to be GOOD jobs too. What a spectacle it would be to see these eggheads hitting today's job market with nothing on their resumé except a couple decades of scholarshit on the social justice implications of 18th century homoerotic Transylvanian poetry.
DeleteLaw professors should all be experienced and capable lawyers. Instead, more than three years' experience in practice will spoil one's chances of getting a teaching position (other than as adjunct for $3000 per semester) at any law school. The ideal is about one year. Zero and two years are also common. Three is pushing it. With four, forget it. You're too old anyway.
DeleteThis is so totally fucked. In almost every other jurisdiction, a paid internship is part of the attorney licensing process. Only in the US can a a law student grdauate from law school, take the bar and become licensed without ever working with a practicing attorney. Let's take the system prevalent in the UK for example. The law students spend three undergarduate years in law school, then go on the serve Articles at a law firm (a paid position) for two years before they become a licensed solicitor. In Canada, Articles is only one year. No, US law professors have a virgin complex. They really don't want students to be able to compare the expertise of practicing attorneys with the more limited knowledge of law professors. I don't know how they sleep at night.
ReplyDeletePeople with legal practice experience probably don't want to become law professors, so that's probably partially responsible for disconnect.
DeleteYou need to do an article about what's going on at Louisville. It sounds like 1984.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the law profs should have to take an ethics class.
ReplyDeleteThey should have to be licensed in the state where they teach. There is no excuse for state law schools not to have this basic requirement.
DeleteLots of law schools have professors with no JD or other training in law. Indeed, hiring these privileged know-nothings to teach law has become fashionable.
DeleteNice work, Dybbuk. Let me demolish these one by one.
ReplyDelete* "Why are we now driving students, quite frankly, out of those public interest opportunities and into more paid positions? I think that’s wrong. I think that’s wrong. I think this is about education. It is not about making money."
—— Oh, no? How much money does your jive ass make off "education"? How much public-interest work do you do? Where's the evidence that unpaid public-interest work fosters "education" more than paid jobs do? A lot of people in these "internships" spend their time running the photocopier or even sitting on their hands.
* "I believe that the opportunity to receive pay would induce students to take paid positions in-house (for example, at Chanel or MTV) rather than enroll in credited positions in our nonprofit-based clinics (for example, the Consumer Rights Field Clinic)."˚
—— You think that people would flee your shabby-ass "Consumer Rights Field Clinic" and possibly put its overpaid administrators out of a job. And you're crazy to think that big corporations are eager to bring in law students, especially people from a toilet such as yours. By the way, what is stopping your dumb clinic from paying the students for their work?
* "Ultimately, the goals and objectives of paid employment and those of education are often in conflict. Among the goals of legal education are to instill the value of service to society and the obligation of lawyers to contribute. Paying law students to obtain their own education seems at odds with this principle."
—— Instead, those students should pay tens of thousands a year to attend your toilet. Begrudge them the few pennies that they might make from a paid position; after all, only you should get any money. And how exactly do you fulfill your "obligation ... to contribute"? How the hell have you contributed to "service to society"?
* "There is no way to overstate this issue: employers are busy and are not in the role of providing legal education. I have seen students come away from paid internships with distorted ideas of ethics and no sense for why they are have been taught to proceed a certain way in particular job tasks.. .. I think revoking this rule will end up with a larger percentage of unhappy new lawyers who leave the field due to lack of mentorship when they could have instead been directed to a legal field more in keeping with their particular gifts."
—— Organizations allegedly acting in the public interest are also busy and are not in the role of providing legal education. Anecdotal evidence of students who get little out of a paid internship doesn't prove that paid internships are worse than unpaid. And most graduates—particularly from your toilet—won't have the luxury of choosing work "in keeping with their particular gifts" (if any); they'll be lucky to get any job at all.
* "If some schools allow students to be paid, schools that refuse to do so will be at a disadvantage at a time of fierce competition for students. Students will more readily see the loss to their pocketbooks from being denied the option of payment than the loss to their educational experience from being paid."
—— O woe! Schools will suffer! We must move heaven and earth to prevent that, even at the expense of students' financial well-being.
All true. If doing paid legal work in a law office is so inconsistent with the objectives of legal education, then there is something terribly amiss with legal education.
DeleteAt least if you pay someone, you have motivation to get bang for the buck you're putting into them. When you have an unpaid intern, it's very easy to simply let them shuffle papers endlessly while you focus on the actual business. The experience then is of no value to the intern.
DeleteThis is a tempest in a teapot, however. There just aren't many paid jobs of this sort for law students, or even for licensed lawyers. Maybe 3½ law students would get paid internships.
DeleteCount on law profe$$ors to raise a hue and cry (on the wrong side) over something insignificant while not uttering a peep about any major issue.
So true, Old Guy, so true.
DeleteIn fact, it sounds very much like the law prawfs and deans are projecting their own greedy selves onto the students.
Same thing happened in pharmacy. It went from a paid year to an unpaid (and tuition added) year. Total hypocracy. The main concern a skuul has is to not upset the rotation/employer, selling out the student at the soonest notice, even if illegality was involved. I'm looking at you, a small Christian pharmacy school in Nashville.
ReplyDeleteI do like the term, "Employers are too busy..." That's true, which, along with the great boot licking my pharmacy school gave every employer for my free labor (to the exactness of said employer), I learned nothing, my rotations being an exercise in cover up and feigning knowledge.
Also, what's with the adoption of the word "clinical"? I mean, this isn't medicine here.
Also, what's with the adoption of the word "clinical"?
DeleteThey use it because "prissy dorks dressing up and playing lawyer" sounds embarrassing and is much too wordy.
Calling their dumb programs "clinical" lets them claim the prestige of the medical profession, which they emphatically do not deserve.
DeleteImagine the horror if medical schools admitted students on a par with the nincompoops that get into every toilet law school from the Univershitty of Texas on down. We'd end up with physicians who couldn't distinguish the islets of Langerhans from the rectum.
Also, imagine if medical school classes were taught be people who despised practicing medicine and looked down on people who did!
Delete