A new proposal in Arizona would allow people to defend people against criminal charges on the strength f a one-year "Master's of Legal Studies". Only charges with a possible death sentence would require a lawyer.
Dave Byers, director of the Arizona Supreme Court, is touting this proposal. He maintains that it is needed to fill a dearth of defense lawyers. He also suggests that a single year of study would give practitioners adequate, even superior training in law. In his view, all that is needed for criminal work could be condensed into two semesters.
Old Guy would like to see how. Constitutional law alone is usually a full year, and it may not proceed well if taught at the same time as criminal evidence. Or is it proposed to dispense with constitutional law as an allegedly unnecessary course? When lifelong imprisonment is at stake?
Old Guy also wonders why the abundant lawyers who cannot find work are not flocking to Arizona if there is so much unfilled demand.
Lowering the standards seems like a big mistake, and criminal defense is by no means less deserving of proper legal services than corporate law or civil litigation. Perhaps the idea is to stick criminal defendants with a cheap warm body, with the advantage redounding to the favor of the prosecution.
in response to the previous posting, someone said that South Dakota now allows graduates of the University of South Dakota to become lawyers without passing the bar exam. After failing it three times, one is permanently disqualified. A new scheme, however, allows people to work in a supervised setting for a while and gain admission in that way.
ReplyDeleteOld Guy opposes this practice. Why can a capable graduate not pass within three sittings? It just isn't that difficult. This looks like yet another way to admit incompetent people to the practice of law.
It's also a way to circumvent ABA Bar Exam passage requirements and sanctions.
DeleteHere's the reality: there are plenty of lawyers...but nobody wants to pay a lawyer. This is especially true when it comes to providing legal representation to criminal defendants. The reimbursement rates for panel attorneys in most jurisdictions are pathetic. There is no shortage of attorneys in Arizona-or anywhere else in the USA. Instead, it's a pretty simple issue: nobody wants to pay the attorneys. So instead they invent "limited" law practice license, allowing those who don't attend law school to still practice. And it's not just AZ; both WA and CO allow limited practice-and there are probably other states, too.
ReplyDeleteSo the advice on this blog is don't go to law school, as it's overpriced and finding a job is tough. Allowing non-attorneys to practice law will make finding a job even tougher.
With non-lawyers now in the mix for competition, why in the world would anybody want to attend law school.
Why would people want to go to law school? Because it beats working
DeleteWhy would people want to go to law school, given its bleak career prospects? Because it beats working. Look, many people skate through 4Y of college, relaxing and having a great time, all subsidized by student loans that they will never repay. Then they graduate, and can 1) move back in with their parents and start a near minimum wage job, something that happens in my neighborhood every May, or 2) go to law school, defer repaying their student loans for 3 more years, and enjoy 3 years of relaxing fun, once again, all paid for by student loans. This really happens. I know a guy who graduated with a worthless bachelor's degree, lived with his parents, worked joke jobs, and then decided to take a 3 year long, all expenses paid vacation in warm, sunny Florida. He called it "law school" but didn't even bother to sit for the Bar Exam the summer he graduated. He had 7 years of fun, all funded by the tax payer, and he never repaid a dime of his "student loans". This is part of the reason the US has gone bankrupt. . .
DeleteThat's also why law-school scamsters dress their toilety offerings up with trips to Italy and the like, all in the name of legal study but really just constituting free vacations.
DeleteYes, and many law schools have annual "Barrister's Balls" which are big, showy dances, essentially a Senior Prom but for Law School, instead of High School. I attended the best law school in my state back in the early 90's. Everyone there was very serious, and there were no overseas trips, no school dances, none of that. The social scene was non-existent. In addition, paid work for law students was the norm "unpaid internships" were for suckers. There were only 2 law schools, in a state with over six million people, and literally everyone I graduated with who passed the Bar Exam and was serious got a job, I graduated in the mid 1990's. Going to that law school, in that state, in that era made very good sense. Going to just about any law school in the US today does not make sense, and will not lead to a good career for most graduates. Nowadays people graduate law school, pass the Bar Exam, and hustle to find work as a Paralegal, because there simply are no jobs for most JD's. But, with trips to Italy and fancy school dances, at least they can have fun on the taxpayer's dime for 3 more years at law school, after four years of free fun at college.
DeleteThis is what I don't understand. Though lawyer hourly fees have stagnated in the face of high inflation, what hasn't? Why aren't there two tiers of lawyers, cheap and normal rates?
DeleteJust grant diploma privilege over this stupidity.
ReplyDeleteArizona already has "legal paraprofessionals" who can represent people in in the areas of Family Law, Administrative Law, Limited Jurisdiction Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Juvenile Dependency Law with either pure experience-based qualification or based on education including but not limited to the MLS, other options being stuff like an associates in paralegal studies. https://www.azcourts.gov/cld/Legal-Paraprofessional
ReplyDeleteSo this is not a proposal. It (and more areas of practice to boot) is actually a current rule. Click the link above. I see no limitation on criminal practice at all, other than the fact that separately and elsewhere there is death penalty qualification that parapro could never meet.
What I do know, however, is that there simply aren't that many of them. See the directory in the link above. There's well under 100 of these paraprofessionals statewide, and a good number of them aren't in those rural counties they're talking about.
So it seems to me that this is more about increasing the uptake on a program that already exists, as opposed to creating something new, and one way he hopes to do that is partner with the law schools (ASU and UofA) to offer something tailored to the objective and priced accordingly.
I don't necessarily have a problem with making that option available, I suppose. In my experience, most people picking these kinds of providers would've represented themselves otherwise; in no scenario could they have paid lawyer rates out of pocket. But whether that can be made the *only* option *for an indigent* seems questionable. Would a lawyer who isn't a lawyer satisfy Gideon in the context of a public defender assignment? It feels like it wouldn't, and I'm not aware of any public defender offices who have employed or contracted with one of these.
Some would qualify for lawyers at public expense, but now they will get hacks without real legal qualifications.
DeleteThen again, they already do if their "lawyers" come from über-toilets…
Guess we have to modify Miranda warnings then, lol.
Delete"You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, we'll find someone who isn't an attorney to dress up like one and stand next to you. Do you understand these rights as I have just read them to you? Because if not, good luck. The goofball we'll appoint to defend you might not even have a GED."
Master's of Legal Studies. Playing Perry Mason since 2025.
DeleteThat proposal in Arizona is insane.
ReplyDeleteThe link for the news story about USD School of Law is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry7IzIZBKsU
One of the law professors at USD told me once that he turned down a position at Harvard because he thought he could better serve the Native American population of S.D. by working at USD SOL. The Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is the one of the poorest places in America, where as many as 40% of the residents do not have electricity. That professor is full of baloney. USD School of Law is a scam school that is only concerned about its own survival.
The University of South Dakota is a major scam school. Not a single law school between Minneapolis and Seattle should survive. And maybe I should say Chicago and the Pacific.
DeleteHe's probably talking about retired Prof. Frank Pommersheim who is a very sincere man in regards to helping Native Americans and in general.
DeleteI know in limited circumstances a CPA can represent clients in tax court and I'd rather have an Ivy League educated non-attorney CPA representant me with years of experience than someone who graduated from a toilet law school with an LLM in taxation.
ReplyDeleteYou're talking about an IRS Enrolled Agent (EA). You don't actually need to be a CPA to become one of those, though it helps. And to actually go into tax court as an EA, there's an additional exam you have to pass called the USTCP. (Regular EAs can't go above the administrative level).
DeleteAnd yes, absolutely they're better than some crappy LLM. A USTCP-credentialed EA is the highest qualification any tax practitioner can reach. There's actually less than 300 of them in the entire country though, so its not like that option is readily available.
A couple of things: there's an actual shortage of CPAs nationwide, so if that's something you are interested in doing, go for it.
DeleteThat said, in order to call yourself a CPA, you need to pass a four part test. That's entirely possible, obviously, but would entail a level of dedication. If you're attending a trash law school, it's likely that such dedication is absent. And some states, in addition to the exam, require 150 college credit hours and one year of accounting practice under the supervision of a licensed CPA(CA&NY).
I graduated law school in 2009. I was a straight-thru student, but I didn't look at law school as a continuation of college. I knew it would be hard, but after graduation I had a bad case of "academy brain," where I was so institutionalized in my thinking that I had a serious challenge in adjusting to the real world. Ultimately I went into construction - the law market was toast anyways - and on into manufacturing.
ReplyDeleteI'm on paid parental leave right now, I have health insurance, enough income to survive, a 401k, and paid-time off. Even so, I sometimes wonder about what it would be like if I'd "made it work somehow."