Experimentation Comes to Law Land! (One Can Only Hope)

I suppose when we’re quoted in The Wall Street Journal it’s worth writing about.
So it was with a combination of pleasure and surprise that I opened this morning’s browser tabs to find this piece talking about law schools beginning to introduce more “practical” elements into their curricula, with an associated article (quoted below) talking about those changes:

Indiana University Maurer School of Law started teaching project management this year and also offers a course on so-called emotional intelligence. The class has no textbook and instead uses personality assessments and peer reviews to develop students’ interpersonal skills.

New York Law School hired 15 new faculty members over the past two years, many directly from the ranks of working lawyers, to teach skills in negotiation, counseling and fact investigation. The school says it normally hires one or two new faculty a year, and usually those focused on legal research.

And Washington and Lee University School of Law completely rebuilt its third-year curriculum in 2009, swapping out lectures and Socratic-style seminars for case-based simulations run by practicing lawyers.

A few elite players also are making adjustments. Harvard Law School last year launched a problem-solving class for first-year students, and Stanford Law School is considering making a full-time clinical course–which entails several 40-hour plus weeks of actual case work–a graduation requirement.

“Law firms are saying, ‘You’re sending us people who are not in a position to do anything useful for clients.’ This is a first effort to try and fix that,” says Larry Kramer, the law dean at Stanford.

The article also notes the obligatory, that this comes among a “prolonged downturn” in employment prospects for law students. Here’s the “nine months out” employment rate chart for the past decade:

But is it going to work? That is to say, is it going to help law students find jobs?

Tim Lovells, the chair of recruiting at HoganLovells (disclosure: I know Tim and consider him a friend) says, “It could enhance the reputation of the law school…as places that will produce new lawyers who have practical skills [but] as to the particular student when I’m interviewing them? It doesn’t make much of a difference.”

With respect, Tim, I think that’s exactly where it will make a difference: In the interview.

If these programs work as envisioned, they will produce students with more contextual awareness of what providing sound counsel is actually all about–as opposed to (just) sheer analytic ability.
The difference, that is, between what the client would be within the four corners of legality to do and what the client really ought to think about doing.

The best news is that schools and firms are trying new things.
It’s only by trying something new that we as a profession and an industry have any prayer of improving the way we actually do things. Some experiments may fail, but others will work.

The ability of lawyers to moan and groan about the irrationality of the status quo, only to exert their not-inconsiderable skills at sitting on their hands when even the mildest of alternatives is suggested, amazes me anew almost every day.

This time, I have to believe, the irrationality and expense of the current system are simply too great to ignore. Clients aren’t ignoring it.
And my quote, you’re wondering?

Others say schools that have overhauled programs need to do a better job of promoting the changes to employers in order to see an impact. Until then, law school prestige will remain a big factor, says Bruce MacEwen, a law firm consultant and [writer] who tracks the legal industry.

“Firms are very obsessed with prestige,” he says. “That’s just a fact of life.”