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ghostrider
Joined: 27 Jun 2011
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 Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 3:47 pm Post subject: What They Don�t Teach Law Students: Lawyering |
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The answer � draft a certificate of merger and file it with the secretary of state � is part of a crash course in legal training. But the three people taking notes are not students. They are associates at a law firm called Drinker Biddle & Reath, hired to handle corporate transactions. And they have each spent three years and as much as $150,000 for a legal degree.
What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. Professors are rewarded for chin-stroking scholarship, like law review articles with titles like �A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern Legal Theory.�
So, for decades, clients have essentially underwritten the training of new lawyers, paying as much as $300 an hour for the time of associates learning on the job....
Law schools know all about the tough conditions that await graduates, and many have added or expanded programs that provide practical training through legal clinics. But almost all the cachet in legal academia goes to professors who produce law review articles, which gobbles up huge amounts of time and tuition money. The essential how-tos of daily practice are a subject that many in the faculty know nothing about � by design. One 2010 study of hiring at top-tier law schools since 2000 found that the median amount of practical experience was one year, and that nearly half of faculty members had never practiced law for a single day. If medical schools took the same approach, they�d be filled with professors who had never set foot in a hospital....
�Law school has a kind of intellectual inferiority complex, and it�s built into the idea of law school itself,� says W. Bradley Wendel of the Cornell University Law School, a professor who has written about landing a law school teaching job. �People who teach at law school are part of a profession and part of a university. So we�re always worried that other parts of the academy are going to look down on us and say: �You�re just a trade school, like those schools that advertise on late-night TV. You don�t write dissertations. You don�t write articles that nobody reads.� And the response of law school professors is to say: �That�s not true. We do all of that. We�re scholars, just like you.� �
This trade-school anxiety can be traced back to the mid-19th century, when legal training was mostly technical and often taught in rented rooms that were unattached to institutions of higher education. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/after-law-school-associates-learn-to-be-lawyers.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all |
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RangerMcGreggor
Joined: 12 Jan 2011
Location: Somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| I know plenty of lawyers who told me that outside of the first year, most classes in lawschool aren't that useful. It's the internships that really mattered the most. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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Amen.
Sometimes I get upset at the NYTimes and then they go and publish something like this. Amen. Frakking A'. Totally agree. I'd like my $100k back please.
A lot of law school is just about passing the bar exam. But they could teach that in two years and then do all clinics and internships the last year (allowing students to pass the bar in between 2nd and 3rd year).
I had a few courses that were worthwhile. Drafting (how to actually write a contract). Basic Legal Skills (should be two years long, like they do at Gonzaga). There were half-assed attempts at teaching networking, but law schools dont know how to do it.
Basically its ponzi scheme. I think law schools are going in the direction of providing more practical skills. But they need to be far more aggressive, and it needs to be required; and that impinges into the territory of the traditional sweet classroom deal the baby boomer law professor enjoys. |
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cdninkorea
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2011 1:11 am Post subject: |
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| There are tons of blogs written by law school grads, unemployed lawyers, burned out lawyers, etc. on the Internet (Google them if you want to read some, but they'll make you depressed). I almost went to law school after undergrad, and I'm really glad I didn't. |
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