“The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors”
A reflective article from yesterday’s New York Times on the debate in the United States about what law schools (by which the NYT means full undergraduate degree courses, rather than conversion courses on the College of Law model) are for.
In essence: Are law schools for producing academic lawyers, or should they focus on developing their students’ ability to advise clients and close transactions? And that debate is placed in the context of what clients are demanding and their new-found reluctance to pay for the training of junior lawyers:
“What they [law students] 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. But the downturn in the economy, and long-running efforts to rethink legal fees, have prompted more and more of those clients to send a simple message to law firms: Teach new hires on your own dime.
“The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors,” says Jeffrey W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, a Houston company that makes oil drilling equipment. “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.”
Last year, a survey by American Lawyer found that 47 percent of law firms had a client say, in effect, “We don’t want to see the names of first- or second-year associates on our bills.” Other clients are demanding that law firms charge flat fees.”
See also: The economics of U.S. law schools.
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