Do we all really have to be lawyers?

I recently received an interesting question from one of my 2L colleagues: "Do I really want or need to practice law?" Naturally, the first thing that came out of my mouth, "Why on earth would you have spent so much time going through the essential motions only to end up doing something else?" But, upon further reflection, I realize that I may have been slightly narrow-minded. Maybe law students, particularly those who come into law school just because it is the "next best thing to do," need a greater amount of guidance from career counseling offices to navigate the ever-changing and dramatically complex job landscape. Let me explain.

First, there are other "career options" that are quite obvious--eg, public service, non-legal advocacy work, etc. It is obviously not uncommon for politicians to be lawyers, for example (our president is one). But there are many non-obvious career paths for someone who has gone through the intellectual quest that is law school, and in my mind, career services offices ought to expand their knowledge of these areas in order to help students. For instance, one might consider business or entrepreneurship. I did a fairly quick google search for what appears to be dozens of available positions in this field, many of which do not require any special degree other than "some graduate level work." Why aren't students looking at these jobs?

I understand the position of others (including some who write for this blog) who opine that law schools should attempt to narrow the field of applicants, and tailor curriculum in a manner sufficient to more adequately prepare students for legal practice. All other things equal, I would agree. But legal education is a business (a big business) that is expanding and not going away any time soon. It is driven by rankings, and powered by the federal government's continual willingness to foot the bill for thousands of students who have about as much a chance of paying it back within three decades as Gigli does of becoming a cult classic.

So why not change the approach? A J.D. should be a general degree like an MBA, and schools should try to incorporate a wider cross-disclipinary focus into the basic curriculum. Good idea? Mabye, maybe not? Let's hear your thoughts.

A Response from UT Law and a Clarification

A few days ago, we posted a story about the relative shortage of practical legal education opportunities at many U.S. law schools, as well as the according need for change. In that article, I cited an op-ed in the Daily Texan written by three University of Texas Law students on how UT Law does not currently offer a mandatory brief writing course for first years. A few other outlets--including the Legal Writing Prof Blog--picked up the story. Well, UT Law has chosen to respond to the articles. Specifically, Wayne Schiess, director of the Legal Writing program at UT Law, said in a statement to the Legal Writing Prof Blog:

It is true that the University of Texas School of Law has a first-year legal-writing curriculum without brief writing. When the law school administration removed credits from the required course five years ago, brief writing was lost. Needless to say, the legal-writing faculty thought it was a mistake. So we’ve been teaching a brief-writing elective that only some 1Ls can get into. We're optimistic that brief writing will return to the required first-year curriculum. Indeed, a proposal to do that comes before the faculty this week.

We applaud the changes the school is making. However, I want to emphasize that the article was not meant to single UT Law out. It is obviously a fine institution that provides its students with fantastic opportunities (so, Hook 'em Horns!). And thus, despite the intimations of numerous posters on message boards around the internet, I do not have a problem with UT Law as an academic institution; I do have a problem, however, with the law school system as a whole. If one takes a full glance at the article I wrote, as well as the February 2009 article it cited, one will see that many of us on this blog believe that we need substantial reform in the current law school model because it is simply failing students.

2009/2010/2011 BigLaw Class Years: The Gilded Ones?

Look around your law school campus and you will see the carnage left behind by the financial crisis. Classes of 2009/2010/2011 are left jobless and debt ridden. Among the detritus scattered around campus, however, there are the lucky few who have successfully secured gainful employment at some of the nation’s premier firms. It is my belief that these “survivors” of sorts are poised to have the most market (and hence financial) leverage in the medium- and long-term. There are two phenomena that support my assertion: 1) the seemingly unmovable law firm profit model; and 2) demographic destiny.

First, to quote Mark Twain, the reports of the BigLaw model’s death are greatly exaggerated. While some firms have moved away from traditional lock-step compensation systems and have outsourced the more mundane portions of their work, the fundamental premise of their business depends on starting large classes of associates at the bottom of the pyramid and slowly winnowing them out either via voluntary or forced attrition before they reach the top layers. Many of the survivors of this process who end up at the top of this pyramid are compensated with a consecrated slice of the partnership pie. So how does this ancient and seemingly indestructible profit model help the lucky few who landed summer associate positions? Simple. Supply and demand.

These lucky few will ultimately succumb to the same pressures experienced by any other BigLaw class year. Some will leave for government, some for mid-size/small law, and some will just leave the law period. This inevitable thinning of the 2009/2010/2011 class years will create an abnormally small layer in the BigLaw pyramid relative to the size of the firms’ respective partnerships. Ultimately, when the economy turns around (yes, one day it will be better; even the Great Depression came to an end after all), BigLaw will have more work than mid-level associates to do it. The result of this excess work and limited supply of experienced attorneys means that there could very well be a financial war between firms for mid-level attorneys. BigLaw firms will be unable to fill these voids in their ranks with attorneys from small/mid-sized law firms and the government because they will simply not have the requisite experience to do the work.

Second, viewing the future with more of a long-term lens, old partners, particularly baby boomers, have to retire at some point. Whether by “age-out” clauses in partnership agreements or simply by partners deciding that they have hit the end of the line, there is a large generation of law firm partners who will be heading for greener pastures in the next decade or so. The generations immediately behind them, particularly Generation X and the Millennials, are quite a bit smaller than their baby boomer predecessors. Come time for partnership promotions, there might very well be a shortfall in available talent to take up the reins of the firm; particularly, a shortfall in talent around the time the 2009/2010/2011 classes are up for partner. Those who make through the eight to ten years of hoops stand (I think) a much improved chance for partner compared to their boomer and Generation X peers.

So what’s the conclusion? Those in the Classes of 2009/2010/2011 who are/were able to obtain a BigLaw position may have some serious market power behind them in the medium- and long-term. So long as these individuals can wade through the next two to three years of economic waters, they stand an excellent chance to develop a skill set that will be in high demand during the medium term (i.e., during their mid-level years) due to limited supply. Further, any members of these Classes who manage to survive eight to ten years in their firms also stand an excellent chance of making partner due to demographic pressures on the boomers.

Obviously this is all just speculation. Should the overall size of BigLaw shrink my predictions will not hold. However, given the ever increasing levels of regulation coming out of Washington, I believe that there may just be an enormous opportunity for these lucky few.

Informational Asymmetries, the Emperor's New Clothes and More Cries For Value

Early in 2009, we noted that the recession has exposed numerous deficiencies in the current legal education system. Accordingly, we argued for a systematic change in curriculum and focus. It appears that law students elsewhere are yearning for the same at their institutions. From The Daily Texan:

[C]riticisms [of the University of Texas Law School] are well-founded. In a survey of accredited law schools, Texas was the only school without a mandatory brief-writing course. In fact, only about half of first-year students surveyed reported being able to get into a brief-writing course. As a result, they will not be trained how to present arguments to a court — one of the most basic legal skills.

Instead of rectifying the problem by meeting national practical skills standards, UT Law instead chooses to steer law students away from taking practical courses by offering grossly grade-inflated first-year electives on such totally impractical topics as Race and Gender in the Constitution.

The first-year curve in all courses is set at 3.3; the average in these “electives” is a 3.8. A student in Race and Gender in the Constitution commented, “The class is a complete joke and a waste of time, but the professor gives almost everyone A’s.” Since law students’ employment is determined by their first-year GPA, creating such an exception to the curve is unfair to other students and misleading to employers relying on the veracity of student transcripts. . . .

So law students can game the system and come out Order of the Coif, while not knowing a single thing about the basic exceptions to the hearsay rule? I can vouch for the fact that this is an absolutely accurate characterization of the system as it is constituted both at my institution, and as the authors noted, at others.

But more pertinently, law school seems (oddly enough) to present a sort of transparent information asymmetry cogently illustrated by the student in this article: in many respects, law schools fail to meet the demands and expectations students have upon entering and that employers have when hiring. Yet, it seems like we all know a little bit of what we are getting at the outset; the sales pitch is just all too compelling. In this sense, law school is more like an experience good that shouldn't demand any sort of warranty. But the problems are still exceedingly pervasive. As the authors noted with respect to their institution:

[There is a] deeper problem at UT Law that has drawn criticism from all corners of the legal industry: Lax institutional standards have marginalized the law school’s role in society of preparing its students to be competent, ethical lawyers.

I hate to say it, but this problem is not confined to UT Law. We need major reforms soon, because permitting students to become engulfed in massive amounts of debt with little to no guidance on how to be competent lawyers will (inevitably, I think) continue to dilute the profession's quality, and worse yet, harm students' lives. Law students ought to be more vocal in their cries for change like the authors in the noted article.

Posner on the Legal Profession

No longer a gentlemanly cartel? The legal profession is morphing, says Judge Posner at The University of Chicago Law School's commencement speech last June. I realize that this might be old news, but I just ran across it recently, and thought it would interest our readers.

Cheers!

Entering the Academy -- An Update

As a follow-up to Robin's article on entering academia, we received some helpful insight from Dr. Brian Leiter, the John P. Wilson Professor of Law and Chair of the Law Teaching: Placement of Graduates Committee at the University of Chicago Law School. Dr. Leiter pointed us in the direction of a helpful guide he prepared for prospective academics at this website. The guide is extremely informative, and we strongly recommend taking a look at it if you are at all interested in becoming a law professor.

Cheers!

2,000 Legal Jobs Lost

From Law.com:

According to a monthly jobs report released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation lost 263,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate reached 9.8 percent, the highest in 26 years.

The legal sector wasn't spared. When the data is seasonally adjusted, the sector shed another 2,000 jobs. When not seasonally adjusted, the legal industry lost 13,600 jobs, likely a result of the conclusion of most summer associate programs and the return of students to their law schools.

Click here for the article.

OCI (Unsurprisingly) Bleak at Top Schools . . . Like Harvard

According to Law.com:

Think you've got it tough? You could be a student at Harvard Law School, where big firm recruitment is down 20 percent, the Harvard Crimson reports. . . . HLS administrators and experts hinted to the Crimson that the school might push back the start of its fall recruiting season. And starting this spring, HLS will host
a second recruitment period for "firms whose outlooks have changed" in anticipation of an economic recovery.

A second recruitment period at Harvard? Man, these are weird times.

Open Thread: Researching for Dummies

Okay, I admit it. I didn't go to any of the "here's how you save money when researching on the client's dime" sessions last Spring. I simply didn't have the time. And, if not for the free Westlaw/Lexis access the representatives periodically dole out to working law students, I'd probably be regretting that decision a lot.

Put simply, researching on the online databases is expensive. As a law student with free access, I've often lost sight of this and not worked to develop efficient research habits. While I'm trying my very best now (and hopefully succeeding!), I think we can all use a thread to discuss helpful research habits.

I'll start by sharing a few of my own:

1) Google first! Obviously, Google's not the ideal repository for in-depth legal research, but you can find an awful lot of good information on Google that saves you the time you need to gain a threshold understanding of an issue (i.e. figure out what it is you're researching).

2) Library second! Last summer, a partner called me into his office and gave me a lengthy research assignment that didn't seem Westlaw/Lexis-friendly. I asked him how he'd suggest I get started, and he advised me to consult the headnotes in the case reporters. At that point, I'd never actually seen one which seems crazy in retrospect. I think the accessibility of internet documents makes us averse to non-online avenues of tracking down information, but it's helpful to make full use of these resources. For one, they're free (assuming they're in the library already). More importantly, they often lead to an array of other research ideas.

3) Think first, research later! Try to figure out what you want to find before you actually sign on to find it. Whether you're using a transactional or hourly service, it can only help to have a plan so you can cut down on time thinking while "on the clock" or "in searches."

4) Relax. A friend of mine recently got a fifty-state survey assignment (those who've done these know how time-intensive they can be). When my friend explained to the assigning partner that the "research would be costly" the partner told him to "not worry about it and just get the job done." This is good advice. Ultimately, it's good to save money where possible but clients understand that good research--like anything us law students/lawyers can provide--comes at a cost. And, within bounds of reasonableness, they'll be willing (maybe even happy) to pay.

With that, I turn the floor over to our (hopefully still present) faithful.