Tag Archives: Stanford Law School

PRACTICAL SKILLS

Posted on by
5

A few days after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the loss of another 2,600 legal jobs in June, the Wall Street Journal ran “Law Schools Get Practical.” Some schools are changing curriculum to develop skills that real lawyers need; that makes sense. But some hope that more big law positions for graduates will result; that is magical thinking.

Reconsidering legal education is important. The first year teaches students to think like lawyers; the second year covers important substantive areas. To deal with the universally maligned third year, Stanford is considering a clinical course requirement involving 40-hour plus weeks of actual case work, while Washington and Lee University of Law School replaced lectures and seminars with “case-based simulations run by practicing lawyers.”

Meanwhile, Harvard has updated its curriculum significantly in recent years. Indiana University Maurer School of Law teaches “project management” and “emotional intelligence.” NYU offers courses in “negotiation” and “client counseling.” Some innovations are more valuable than others, but no one should think that improved job prospects will result.

The article quoted a recruiter at McKenna, Long & Aldridge LLP who said that clients weren’t willing to pay for new lawyer training. Likewise, Xerox’s general counsel described his company’s policy of not paying for first-year associates. The implication is that if new graduates received more practical training in school, clients would pay for them and hiring would increase. Not a chance.

First, new associates in large firms don’t need the practical skills that most law schools are promoting. If there were courses on “maximizing billable hours,” “withstanding unreasonable partner demands,” or “surviving a culture of attrition where fewer than ten percent of new associates will become equity partners,” that would be one thing. But document review, due diligence undertakings, and other mundane tasks that consume most big law associates’ early years don’t require much special training. Some don’t even require a law degree. Xerox — and many other companies sharing its dim view of first-year associate value — won’t start paying for young attorneys just because they have taken the new courses.

Second, average equity partner profits for the Am Law 100 have moved steadily upward over the last decade — to over $1.3 million in 2010. If those firms are already “suffering” from client resistance to paying for new associates, partners nevertheless seem to be thriving financially.

Finally, when asked whether current law school innovations will help students land jobs, Timothy Lloyd, chair of Hogan Lovells recruiting committee, told the Journal:

“It could enhance the reputation of the law school…as places that will produce lawyers who have practical skills. As to the particular student when I’m interviewing them? It doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Bingo. As a big law interviewer myself, I looked for intelligence, personality, and potential. Specific courses didn’t matter. Assessing candidates was and is subjective but, to adapt Justice Stewart’s pornography test, I usually knew a good one when I saw one.

Schools should expand clinical programs, but not because such student credentials matter to large firm recruiters. They don’t. However, those who don’t get big law jobs really need practical lawyering skills. Do it for them — the vast majority of today’s 50,000 annual graduates.

Schools should modernize curriculum, but not to become business school knockoffs for big law. That’s a mistake.

Even more urgently, schools should educate prospective attorneys more fully about the big law path — from the challenge of getting a job to the unforgiving billable hours culture to the elusive brass ring of equity partnership. (See, e.g., The Partnership)

That would be real reform, but at most place it won’t happen. Yale’s cautionary memo about the real meaning of 2,000 billable hours a year and Stanford’s “Alternatives to Big Law” series that compliments its outstanding student loan forgiveness program are hopeful beginnings. But such candor runs counter to the enticing big firm starting salaries that pervade law school websites aimed at the next generation of would-be lawyers. After all, their student loans pay the bills.

THE U OF C’s BIG LEAP FORWARD

Posted on by
8

My thanks to the standing room-only crowd that turned out to hear about my new legal thriller, The Partnership, at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. That delightful town is, of course, the home of a great university that includes a law school worthy of Thomas Jefferson’s pride.

While I was there, it occurred to me that when law schools get it wrong, they deserve the scorn that comes with a public spotlight. When they get it right, they should bask in its warm glow. The University of Chicago Law School recently got it right. Really right.

It’s ironic.  The home of the Chicago School — where free market self-interest reigns and the economic analysis of the law has been an article of faith for a long time — has adopted a loan repayment program that sends students this powerful message:

There’s more to life after law school than pursuing big law’s elusive financial brass rings. If you take the large firm path, do so because it’s what you want, not because you have no other financial options.

This must shock deans who have pandered to the large law firm constituencies that hire some graduates for the best-paying starting associate jobs. Former Northwestern Dean David Van Zandt made himself the most visible and ardent proponent of that approach. The U of C’s new program doesn’t ignore big law as a potential employer of its graduates. In fact, it led all other schools in the NLJ 250‘s most recent list of big firms’ “go-to schools.” But it now tells the country’s top students that even if they don’t want big law, the U of C still still wants them — so much that it will pay their way.

It’s unique. For example, Harvard has a respectable Low-Income Protection Program. In 2008, it went a step farther and announced a plan forgiving third-year tuition in return for five years of post-graduate public service, but overwhelming student demand made it a casualty of the financial crisis. In its place, Harvard now provides limited funds to encourage public interest work on a case-by-case basis. Other schools, including Northwestern, have loan forgiveness programs, too, but none appears to be as good as the University of Chicago’s new one.

A single line from its website description says it all:

“This means that a graduate who engages in qualifying work for 10 years, earns less than the salary cap, and maintains enrollment in the federal Income-Based Repayment Program, will receive a FREE University of Chicago Law School education!”

“Qualifying work” is public interest broadly defined as “the full-time practice of law, or in a position normally requiring a law degree, in a non-profit organization or government office, other than legal academia.” It includes judicial clerkships.

The “salary cap” is $80,000 and doesn’t include spousal income. That combination seems to beat Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. (Caveat: The differences across school programs can be significant and prospective students should consider their own circumstances, run the numbers, and determine which one produces the best individual result.)

The program is a reasoned response to practical realities. First, big law cannot accommodate all top law school graduates, even if deans try to put them there and all want to go.

Second, the burden of law school debt shapes career decisions that lead too many lawyers to dissatisfying careers and unhappy lives, especially in large firms.

Third, the upcoming generation of prospective attorneys wants options other than large firms. To be sure, many lawyers find that such places are a good fit for their personalities and ambitions. But in recent years, such individuals have become a shrinking minority of the people heading in that direction. The profession should encourage attorneys who will become unhappy in such institutions to avoid them in the first place. Imagine a big law world populated exclusively with lawyers who wanted to be there.

Finally, the program is a reminder that the law is a great calling. Law schools aren’t big law assembly lines, grinding out graduates for firms where nobility too often yields to a business school mentality that prizes misguided metrics — billings, billable hours, leverage ratios, and average partner profits — above all else. The best law schools are uniquely positioned to level a playing field that now tilts students toward large firms.

Whatever else they accomplish, the U of C’s actions bring important attention to student alternatives that sometimes get lost in the myopic focus on big law. Now that’s leadership.