Editorial
Front Page - Friday, June 11, 2010
Under Analysis
First thing we do, let’s kill 28.7 percent of the lawyers
Spencer Farris
Kevin, the associate from William and Mary, returned this week from his pro bono stint in Haiti. He looks none the worse for the wear, perhaps even a bit tanned. While he regales us with stories of writing wills for Haitian sewer workers displaced by natural disaster, it is obvious that he learned a bit of humility on his trip. Not to mention a connection he made with a certain company needing lawyers after a large crude oil spill.
I might have preferred Haiti to where I was last week, trying a case in rural Missouri. Actually, mid Missouri is beautiful in the spring, and surely has some benefits to offer that Haiti does not- cable television in my hotel room, for example.
Haiti doesn’t have a glut of lawyers. Like everyone else in a down economy, new law school graduates in this country are not getting job offers to go along with their diplomas and huge student loan debt. 90 percent of summer legal interns historically received job offers. In the last two years, the number was below 70 percent. More students are leaving law school unemployed than at any time in recent memory.
Newly minted lawyers don’t have to stay unemployed for long, however. When lawfirms and corporations aren’t hiring, a new lawyer still with a bar certificate is still authorized to practice law. The indirect result of the down economy is that more brand-new lawyers are “hanging out their shingle” with own law firms. Authorized and qualified, however, are not always the same thing.
I didn’t open my own firm until I had practiced for well over a decade. I was fortunate to have worked for some great trial lawyers before that. I learned how to behave in the courtroom (although I don’t always) and how to take care of my client’s needs outside of it. Maybe I was dumber than today’s graduate, but I had no business representing clients by myself straight out of law school. Very little of how to practice law is taught in law school and the fact that most new lawyers don’t have any business does not help the problem.
During one of the breaks at trial last week, the judge commented that it was a pleasure to have two experienced trial lawyers in his courtroom. (I would have preferred if he had said two good lawyers but I am pretty sure he was an honest man and didn’t want to hurt my opponent’s feelings. Pretty sure.) He went on to say that many lawyers these days don’t want to try lawsuits and are uncomfortable in the courtroom.
He felt a big part of the problem was a lack of lawyer experience. He even suggested a mentoring arrangement where young lawyers would be required to shadow an older lawyer before being admitted to the bar. The experienced lawyer would get continuing legal education credit, the young lawyer would get “clinical” experience, and the bar and clients would be better served.
There was a time when just this sort of arrangement was mandatory. Before multistate bar examinations, lawyers “read the law” and interned with practicing lawyers to learn their craft. With the adoption of more objective bar examinations, reading the law became obsolete. Law schools replaced law firms as the proving ground for legal minds.
In my mind, this switch from training by lawyers to law schools has lead to a failure of the free market ideal. Market forces no longer control the number of lawyers entering the practice. Back in the day when prospective lawyers had to read the law at a firm, they could only do so if the market for young lawyers allowed. No law firm would take on and train more lawyers than it could use once they were admitted to the bar. The job market limited the amount of new law students, and new lawyers were welcomed by the job market once they passed the bar. Clients were served by lawyers who both knew the law and had been exposed to the practice- not newly minted graduates who started their own firm by desperation rather than choice.
Rather than limiting enrollment, law schools continue to expand numbers. Law schools are the goose that lays golden eggs for a university. After all, a law school is much cheaper to run than a medical or even engineering school. Medical school dissects its cadavers, law school lets them teach constitutional law. In any event, many universities use the law school as a way to print money. More students mean more tuition, with little additional cost to the school. Enrollment expands to fill school coffers without any thought to the disservice this does to the very profession they serve.
If law schools routinely decreased enrollment to reflect market need, graduates would see a more welcoming job market where supply did not outrun demand. More importantly, clients would be better served by lawyers who were properly trained post law school. Lawyers would be able to take jobs with proper mentoring, do pro bono work or continue their education with other clinical type positions.
I am sure law schools would argue that it is not their responsibility to act as a gatekeeper for the profession. Why should they deny someone the dream of legal education simply because it would benefit the legal profession and society at large? That is a lot to expect from a goose.
No law school has come knocking at my door asking for my opinion on this matter of course. How law schools are run is another in a long list of things I don’t understand. I do know that my alma mater asks me for money almost monthly. I continue to file their requests in the same sort of basket I’m sure they filed mine in back when I was a student.
©2010 under analysis llc. under analysis is a nationally syndicated column of the Levison Group. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. His opinions on law school are as relevant now as when he attended law school. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this newspaper or directly to the Levison Group via email at comments@levisongroup.com. v
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