Clinic work, internships and the integration of service delivery throughout law school, along with the aquisition of technical and analytical skills in a classroom setting, is where law schools should be going.

At the same time, most law firms are so tightly squeezed these days that there are probably only so many apprentices they can take on. And even more to the point, big law firms hire only a tiny percentage of law grads every year. Seems like the apprentice concept is more complementary between schools and firms than competitive.

I think law law schools should keep law school at 3 years, continue letting students explore specialty areas in 3rd year classes, and actively encourage them to get out and train with judges, firms, public interest organizations, etc. for course credit. Who would lose in that situation?

These apprenticeship programs might irritate top law students entering their first year of practice (particularly since they have loans to service of a size that my generation did not) but these programs would serve young attorneys well, even if they come at the price of a lower first year salary.

Through Lawyer Connection and elsewhere, I’ve met many young refugees from BigLaw who have practiced somewhere between 2 and 5 years before becoming casualties of the recession. Many of them are REVIEWING DOCUMENTS for similar firms rather than, say, opening their own law firms (at least to get through the downturn) because no one has yet taught them anything about how to practice law. They haven’t taken or defended a deposition or argued a motion in court, let alone tried a lawsuit to Judge or jury. If they are transactional lawyers, they’ve never put a deal together from start to finish. When I say, “why don’t you start your own firm with your laid off BigLaw friends” they look at me like I’m NUTS. “We don’t know anything about how to practice law,” they tell me. “No time like the present” I respond.

I remember my first employer telling me that he and his brother (it was a two-man firm) celebrated every time the court clerk accepted their papers and they spent a lot of their first year playing Scrabble. By the time they hired me, they had a flourishing practice and were well-respected in town. By the end of my own first year of practice, I’d briefed and argued an appeal; taken and defended dozens of depositions, settled many small cases that were my own to handle; arbitrated at least one case; second-chaired three jury trials; written many sets of jury instructions; counseled clients; directed the activities of our private investigator and just generally practiced my trade. Those first couple of years remain the bedrock of my legal skills. I’m so glad I resisted the advice of all of my law professors who told me not to join this small Sacramento law firm because I could “trade down” but never “trade up” to BigLaw where they believed I belonged. (I did, by the way, trade up).

We do our young attorneys, particularly the best and the brightest, a terrible disservice when we lure them into high paid jobs where we treat them as bright paralegals for years. The bright side of the recession is that finally, finally, law firms might begin to change with the times.

“But there’s a potentially major problem with this playing field: one of these providers charges its consumers an annual tuition to receive this service, while the other pays its consumers an annual salary.”

I beg to differ on this point. As clients of large firms are stating: they won’t pay for the apprenticeship. If clients won’t pay, law firms can’t offer…at least not with a salary. True. However, I believe students WILL pay for the training as part of their education and it is the law school’s responsibility to provide. Many students wish they had this training/education in law school meaning they thought when the were paying for it it was part of the package. If paying for the training (which, again, should be referred to as education) they recoup that (in theory) once they are marketable and obtain a salary. The challenge is making it work – whereby the law schools can charge a tuition and create real life work that doesn’t create conflict with charging for ‘free labor’.

Quite frankly, when I was working in our clinics, we were providing services to the indigent but we paid for the privilege of doing so by supporting the clinic and its professors with our tuition. We were paying to work on real cases. And this is what gave me confidence to go out on my own. And if law firms did the same with interns, why couldn’t the money presumably earned go back to some kind of fund for the indigent or contribute to the running of the clinics, internship and externship programs which provided the students the opportunity.

First and foremost, the students want to be marketable. The law firms are being forced by their clients to hire ready-to-work associates. Shouldn’t the schools and the ABA w/their rules and regs. figure it out. Because as a student today, I want to be ready to go after my three years and training is part of my education and tuition. It is not the law firms job to train me to be a lawyer. Their only obligation is to train me to be the lawyer that’s right for their firm by the specific training they offer. It’s time the law schools stop getting a free ride when it comes to educating lawyers.

I’ve written more here (more than three years ago.)
http://susancartierliebel.typepad.com/build_a_solo_practice/2006/12/cba_proposal_en.html