This report from Canada would apply to the US, too: lawyers find that they never learned basic business skills during law school.
Indeed, who would teach such skills? Scam-professors look down their noses at the practice of law. Few of them have any real experience in it. No course on anything practical was offered throughout my time n law school.
Imagine medical school without any practical training: graduates would not know rudimentary first aid. That is reality in the legal realm: people are thrown into the practice of law with no experience, no guidance, nothing. And most of them do not even know very much law.
Not learning basic business skills is the least of the problems for law graduates. It's an article of faith that upon graduation, no law school graduate knows how to practice law. It's almost unbelievable but it's the reality.
ReplyDeleteThis is very true, and has been a well-known problem for over a century. The really shameful thing about it is that US law schools are three years long, and the third year is widely known to be entirely unnecessary. Law schools could and should use the otherwise worthless and redundant third year to have students enroll in internships with government agencies, law firms, and even working for solo practitioners. In real life, as matters now stand, law students often use their 2L summers for either paid work or unpaid internships with, say, a local prosecutor's office, in hopes of learning the ropes, making a good impression, and securing a job their post-graduation. The problem is one of money. Greedy law schools want sanctimonious professors, who do not know or care how to actually practice law, to be highly paid for three full years of "teaching", and that way they can squeeze over $150,000 tuition dollars, typically student loan money, from their hapless students. Factually, these professors don't teach at all, of course. They just drone on, blabbering all semester, and at the end hand out one exam, often recycled from the year before, and that is it. Even teaching is beneath them, apparently! Graded papers, quizzes, midterms, they can't be bothered with any of that. There are so many problems with US law schools, they're too long, they don't teach practical skills, and grades/journal/class rank are literally fetishized. . .I am thankful every day that I was, after many years in low paid jobs, finally able to monetize my law degree, at least to the extent that justified the time and expense of attending law school in the first place. My secret was opening my own solo practice, instead of laboring endlessly for other lawyers, in arrangements where associates do all the work, and partners reap 90 percent of the profit.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that two years of law school would suffice. Already most students don't learn much law in three.
DeleteBut that has to do with the poor quality of the students and the decadent curriculum. With only capable students, a law school could pack basic legal training into two years and add a year or two of practical training, something like that of physicians.
Even at an élite law school, good students are less common than many people suppose. Friends and I concluded that only 5% of the class at our élite law school was capable.
They even told us in law school, on the days you take the bar exam (and presumably pass) you will know more about the law than you ever will, but little about being a lawyer as you ever will. Which for many is forever.
DeleteBut I tend to agree with Dilbert about the third year of law school in a classroom setting as being unproductive. The courses are all electives. Most, although probably some, are not covered on the bar exam. It would be better if the time were spent in an actual internship setting, even if tuition had to be paid but with some nominal salary returned. Human beings should not have to pay to work or work for nothing. Maybe we can compromise and make the last semester internship. It won't work well for the night schools though. Some people might have choose between quitting an already decent paying job or the internship.
I certainly agree that nobody needs a year, or five minutes, of Law and Popular Culture or Hip-Hop and the US Constitution. I don't agree that the curriculum without that crap is just fine.
DeleteA jail house lawyer knows more about the law in a practical sense than 99% of law school graduates
ReplyDeleteBusiness skills? LOL. At least in Canada they have articling (paid) where you learn how to actually practice. In the USA you know neither the business NOR the actual practice when you graduate. Contracts? You don't look at any contracts. Torts? Not a word about taking depositions or doing discovery. Property? Well I guess you become something of a medieval historian.
ReplyDeleteAbout the only thing US law school does is teach you appellate work. Anything that has anything to do with disputed facts and you have no idea what you're doing. OK fine there's the occasional optional clinic or whatever, but its entirely optional and really just pays trial level work lip service. Transactional stuff, same.
So yeah, I'd settle for an apprenticeship system where you learn how to at least practice. Getting to the point where you're griping about not learning how to run a business is a few notches up on the ol' maslow's hierarchy.