When I read a the United States Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Committees on HIGHER EDUCATION Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access October 2009, I was not impressed. Those drafting the report seemed to simply accept the statements of law school officials that ABA accreditation has no affect on the cost of law school but the change to a more hands-on resource-intensive approach to legal education has affected cost. The law school officials also said that competition among schools for higher rankings reportedly have affected costs. Admitting that they strive for high ranking in this defective and highly criticized magazine's attempt to compare law schools is hard to believe.

After I read the report I drafted this Memorandum which has been forwarded by my Congressman to the above committees.

MEMORANDUM

TO: U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP)
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor
FROM: Ronald W. Fox, Esq. admin@ronaldwfox.com
Career Planning for Lawyers - Lawyer Satisfaction Blog
DATE: November 2, 2009
RE: Issues Related to the Dramatic Increase in the Cost of Law School

The impetus for my writing this was the New GAO Report, "Higher Education Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access" and briefings made to your committees.

The purpose of this Memorandum is to encourage your committees to solicit the views and opinions of others who can present to you a more in-depth analysis of the reasons why the rate of increase of the cost of law school has been so much higher than the rate of inflation and the cost of living over the last two decades.

There has been criticism of legal education in the traditional law schools ever since the day when Christopher Langdell instituted the case method at Harvard law School over 100 years ago but it reached its peak in 1992.

In that year, the MacCrate Report, also known as the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap - Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum was published. The task force, composed of prominent lawyers, judges and law professors, strongly criticized law schools for failing to teach eight of the ten fundamental skills needed to practice law and for not stressing the four fundamental values of the legal profession including the promotion of justice and the importance of taking positions consistent with one's personal values. The report also described as inadequate the traditional method of teaching the two skills it does teach in that it does not allow for the students to perform and be evaluated to ascertain the extent to which the students understand the concept presented .

The same ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (which has been designated as the agency that accredits law schools) recently issued a Bar Report of the Outcome Measures Committee in which it says law schools should shift in assessment from the conceptual knowledge accumulated by students to the assessment of practical competencies (professional skills) and that law schools should incorporate ongoing assessments and other formative techniques to encourage and evaluate a student's development of tasks

Innumerable articles prior to and during this current economic downturn have been written demanding that law schools do more to prepare their students for the practice of law.

Tying together this failure to teach with the increase in the cost of law schools is Rethinking Legal Education in Hard Times: The Recession, Practical Legal Education, and the New Job Market a thoughtful paper by Daniel Thies, a student at Harvard Law School and the law student member of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar submitted for the Council's June 2009 retreat. After describing the law schools' tepid actions in offering skills courses but stubbornly refusing to reduce the emphasis on academic research (see B. Barriers to Reform and C. Rethinking Priorities: The Questionable Value of Legal Scholarship Today, pages 18-22) concludes:

The economic recession presents a unique opportunity for legal education to shift its priorities. Rather than using student money to subsidize academic research from full-time professors, successful schools will need to seek new ways to train students in practical skills. Only then will schools continue to be able to attract qualified students. There are many different ways that a school can achieve this end, and no two schools' solution will look the same. As long as prospective students have sufficient information and schools have the flexibility to try different solutions, however, the law schools with the best programs will begin to rise to the top. Legal educators have spent much of the last century thinking about how to integrate practical training into the law school curriculum. To echo the MacCrate Report, "[i]n sum . . . the time has come to put the pieces together."

Another source of helpful information on how and why law school costs have risen unnecessarily can be found in The Deeply Unsatisfactory Nature of Legal Education Today - A Self Study Report On The Problems Of Legal Education And On The Steps The Massachusetts School of Law Has Taken To Overcome Them published by the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, Founder and Dean. While I am not at all aware of what is needed in a law library, the report looks at the how outdated views of what should be in a law library (perhaps pursuant to ABA accreditation requirements) increase law school costs. The most significant point in the report related to costs is the systematic withdrawal of law school faculty into academic research and scholarship. Not only is it of little educational value to students, it also means that the faculty is unavailable for administrative duties which would be a benefit to students such as career counseling, course advice, admissions, etc. That translates into the need to hire more and more staff to take over duties that faculty have taken in the past.

I have been deeply concerned about the defects in legal education from the day I started as the Public Interest Adviser at Harvard Law School in 1984. I graduated from that school in 1963 and spent the next 20 years practicing law and designing programs aimed at delivering legal services to the public. There is another negative consequence of diverting funds to academic scholarship and failing to prepare students for the practice of law. In a deadly serious satire requesting that I be appointed law school industry czar, I point out how law schools have failed not only their students but also the public as in selective schools 95% of the graduates take positions representing the wealthiest 1% of the society while the 45,000,000 least wealthy of us cannot retain the services of a lawyer for 80% of their legal problems.

Most of the posts in my blog are directed at the defects in legal education and the diversion of law students by law schools to positions in large law firms. The cause of this misplacement are widely known: the failure of the law schools to teach skills or values or the existence of small law firms combined with the huge debt load taken by so many students,

Here is a post I wrote a few months ago, a simple way to reduce law school costs and debt by one-third entitled Envisioning Law Students Eliminating the Wasted Third Year of Law School In it I propose:

There is one significant aspect of legal education that CAN be significantly improved overnight; i.e., the extraordinarily high tuition that law schools charge. The resulting high debt load has, in the past, pressured students to take positions in large law firms that held no appeal to many of them except for the salary. Today even many of those with offers do not expect to have enough income from their positions to live on. What is the solution? Eliminate the third year of law school and roll-back, just like Wal-Mart might do, the expected debt by 33%. Over the years I have often talked to students, faculty and staff. In addition many articles have been written on the subject. Rarely has anyone come up with a justification for law students staying in law school for the third year. With general agreement that the law schools take three years NOT to prepare students for the practice of law, it hardly seems that law students or their careers would be negatively affected if they only devoted two years to NOT being prepared to practice law. Estimates vary about how much time would be required to teach students how to think like a lawyer. One semester may not be sufficient but a more reasonable estimate would be 2-4 semesters.

In addition, there is a reason why universities can refer to their law schools as "cash cows". One of the arguments in favor of establishing a public law school in Massachusetts has been that it would boost the state's revenues. Here is my post on why we don't need a public law school.

Many others write often and well about the defects of legal education including the greed and self-interest of the law schools that are behind their consistent increases in tuition and related costs.

Chuck Newton, a lawyer in Huston, writes often about the failings of law school Here is just one of his posts on his blog The Law School Tuition Bubble. Has Logical Reasoning Abandoned Our Law Schools?

Here is a related article by John DiPippa, Dean William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock A Change - in Legal Education - is Gonna Come (with apologies to Sam Cook) where he refers to the current education forces: i.e, calls for fundamental legal education reform gaining momentum, the ABA moving toward outcome-based accreditation standards and students demanding different approaches and wanting to see value for their tuition dollars. He concludes that the "salad days" for law faculties may be over.

Law schools have in many ways failed their students and the public. One and only one aspect has been the runaway and unrestrained raises in tuition over the last two decades. Much of the increase has been unnecessary. As noted above, I suggest that if you would like to investigate further the topic of why law school costs have risen so dramatically, you review the sources above and contact some of the writers and scholars involved. Should anyone want to discuss any of the issues raised in this Memorandum further with me (or any lawyer career related topic), as noted above, I can be reached at admin@ronaldwfox.com..

A proposal for a new public law school for Massachusetts, one of only 7 states in the country not to have a public law school, has generated an enormous amount of controversy with many saying that there is a need for a school with a reasonable tuition and others saying there is at this time no need for a school that would add more lawyers to an overcrowded field. Prominent among the opponents, shocking as that may not be, are the local law schools. What is shocking is that I find myself agreeing with the stand of the law schools.Over a week ago, I submnitted what follows as a proposed op-ed to the Boston Globe. I welcome your comments.

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE PUBLIC LAW SCHOOL PROPOSAL

What's missing from the discussion about the need for a new public law school for Massachusetts is any consideration of the failure of the existing law schools to serve not only the educational needs of their students but also the legal needs of the public.

In 1980, Lloyd Cutler, Esq. (adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton) remarked that 95% of lawyers' time is devoted to the wealthiest 1% of our society, the 25% most disadvantaged get 5% of their time and the remaining nearly 75% cannot afford and get virtually none of their time."

As Harvard Law School's Public Interest Adviser from 1984-89, I observed that at least 40% of the students hoped to represent individuals in personal plight matters. That school and other "selective" law schools, however, funneled as many as 95% of their graduates to large law firms by failing to prepare them to work in small law firms and by devoting staff time to the insidious on-campus interviewing placement program.

Little has changed. Diverting students from their career dreams has led to shattered self-confidence and rampant dissatisfaction within the legal profession as well as continued lack of access to the justice system for the public. So while we seem to have too many law schools in this state and this country, recent surveys indicate that only 20% of the legal needs of the 45,000,000 least wealthy in this country are met by the legal system.

The possibility that the new school might contribute to the state coffers is not a plus. The law school industry continues to ignore decades of calls that it provide quality legal education at a reasonable cost. For years, universities have been able to consider their law schools "cash cows". Law schools increase tuition to outrageous levels far beyond the rate of inflation with many questioning the value of what students (some borrowing up to $200,000 at a time when starting salaries are plummeting) get in return.

Last Friday's edition of the Harvard Law Record published a copy of an alumnus' response to a request for a contribution suggesting ".. you might concede that the Law School could ease financial strain on students without reducing the quality of the J.D. degree. One way would be to drop the third year or, or postpone it to mid-career."

Law professors teach large classes with little opportunity for students to show their understanding of a concept and be evaluated on that performance. Staff is hired to replace faculty who take less of a role in administrative duties such as career planning and devote time to academic research unrelated to effective student education.

During the current economic downturn, with large firm layoffs and job deferrals, one school's solution is to offer a masters degree, basically a fourth year of law school through which the student can finally learn to practice law. Most law schools, however, are content to promote alternative paths that students are unprepared to pursue, hoping for the return to "normalcy" when they can revive the funnel to the large law firms and thereby shore up their US News ranking.

If law schools fail to reform legal education to prepare their students to practice law at a reasonable cost and to serve the legal needs of the public, the legislature should enact a law reinstituting the former system by which lawyers became members of the bar - "reading the law". California, Vermont, Virginia, New York, Maine. Washington and Wyoming still have variations on this process whereby an applicant may take the bar exam after study under a judge or practicing attorney for an extended period of time. Such a law should also establish an office within the Executive Branch which would provide limited supplementary training to advise and support those pursuing this option.

We do not need another law school. We need to demand that the current ones uphold the fundamental values of the legal profession and devote their efforts to meeting the needs of their students and the public.

_____________________________________________________________
Ronald W. Fox, Esq. directs the Center for Professional Development in the Law and is the author of Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law
______________________________________________________________

AUGUST 9 1989 - HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1963, I worked for a large law firm, served in the US Army JAG and worked in an insurance company. After two years as an associate for a sole practitioner, I founded two small law firms representing individuals and community groups and became one of the first lawyers in the country to offer divorce mediation. Concerned about the issue of the unmet legal needs of the public, I served on the boards of legal services programs, created referral programs for the Massachusetts Bar Association and the National Lawyers Guild, started an association of legal clinics, and served as president of a family mediation association.

In 1983 I returned to Harvard Law School as its public interest adviser. On August 9, 1989, my position was eliminated by a recently appointed dean of that law school. I have reprinted below some material related to the elimination of that position.

Since that time I have provided career advice to lawyers and law students and consulted to law schools, law firms and bar associations. In addition I have advocated for the restructuring and reform of legal education.

From what I have observed over the last 20 years, though there has been much criticism of legal education and calls for reform (including the highly regard 1992 ABA MacCrate Report), the law schools have largely ignored them.

Are you as concerned as I am that during the current economic downturn, the law school industry is desperately trying to maintain the on-campus interviewing "funnel" to BigLaw despite the recent survey of 5000 associates finding that 59% of "top-ten" law school grads plan to leave BigLaw jobs within 2 years while other data indicates that 80% of the legal needs of the least wealthy 45,000,000 of us are unmet?
.
Do you think that there have been and will continue to be positive changes and improvements in the delivery of legal education?

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August 8, 1989

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Cambridge, Massachusetts 01938

OFFICE OF THE DEAN

Mr. Ronald Fox
Harvard Law School
Pound 310

Dear Ron

Many thanks for your recent gift to the Law School Fund. I appreciate your support of the School's annual giving program.

With best wishes

Sincerely,
/s/ Bob
Robert C. Clark
Dean

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August 14, 1989

MEMORANDUM
TO; The File
FROM: Ron Fox
RE: Meeting with Dean Robert Clark

On Wednesday, August 9, 1989, at 11:30 A.M., I met with Dean
Robert Clark. He told me that he had made some decisions about restructuring and that I was not likely to be pleased. June Thompson would no longer be in admissions and would be full time in placement and there was also going to be an appointment of a new director of counseling. He mentioned that he did not know what I did in my job, although he had seen one letter that I had written and he thought it was very good. He had decided that it was not cost effective to have a 8/10 position devoted solely to the 6 to 8 people who were interested in public interest, therefore, my position was being eliminated as well as the position of my assistant (Dana Bullwinkel] who is about to enter graduate school).

I asked him to clarify whether or not that meant that I had been fired. He said that that was putting it too bluntly: my position was being eliminated. He said that he did not know how long I had been working at the law school. I was not being told that I had to leave the next day. When the administrative dean, Simone Reagor, returns from vacation, I would talk to her about the details.

When I asked him whether he had mentioned that there was going to be a new position, new director of counseling, he said that was the case, and that it was a position for which I would not be considered. (It now appears that this new position was created by the half of Mark Byers, the career counselor for the law school, that was assigned to the Placement Office and the other half of his time that was assigned to the Counseling Office under the Dean of Student's Office and Mark has been told that he can apply for this job but that he should be looking elsewhere in the event he does not get it.)

I had prepared a memorandum for him and had attached to it some of the material I had written over the last year and a half on public interest career planning and placement problems and issues at the law school and my suggestions and proposals. I gave it to him and told him that if he wanted to discuss any aspect of the material, I would be prepared to do so.

I left the office about 11:37 A.M.

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14 March 1990

PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CAREER PLANNING CENTER
955 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Ronald W. Fox Tel: (617) 868-6669
Executive Director Fax: (617) 876-0203

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE STUDENTS OF HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

I first want to say that my six years spent directing the public interest career activities at Harvard Law School was the most positive, rewarding and satisfying professional experience I have had since leaving the law school in 1963. I talked, wrote to, and learned from, intelligent, talented, concerned, responsible, committed people - students, staff of the law school, alumni/ae, other lawyers, and career planning professionals at other law schools. I also publicly want to let you all know how much I appreciate your personal visits, kind words and public statements in my support. Your actions made a stressful time more comfortable and gave me the reason, strength, encouragement and confidence to found the Public Interest Law Career Planning Center which will assist law students and lawyers who want to pursue careers in public interest, human services and government.

I came to the law school to direct the public interest career and placement activities after 15 years working in private practice and with many non-profit organizations trying to increase the quality and quantity of legal services delivered to people with low and moderate income. It appeared to me that Harvard Law School believed that it had an obligation to make careers in public interest law a realistic option for its graduates. And, in fact, over the next three years I received approval to establish the IL Public Interest Career Workshop; was given funding to publish the Public Interest Directory; was given the time to assist in the development of "Opportunities in Public Interest Law"; was encouraged to solicit $300,000 from an alumnus, Kenneth Montgomery, `28, for a public interest summer grant program which he generously funded; was given the time to establish a Task Force on Public Interest Law of the National Association for Law Placement; and was afforded the opportunity to give advice and guidance to about 100 individuals in each class and many alumni/ae.

I was impressed by the depth of commitment to public interest within the student body. I talked to students, analyzed class lists and read surveys that confirmed my findings that 40% of each class were interested in pursuing public interest careers. A study of one class revealed that by the time of graduation, 40% of its members had attended public interest workshops and/or devoted substantial time to public interest law either during the summer or in a clinical course. I spent many hours listening to students and providing information to allay their fears and to counter pressures from peers, the law school, family, and society in general to take positions they did not want. In addition, I received frequent calls and visits from anguished alumni/ae wanting to leave jobs in large firms they found boring and/or in conflict with their values. Yet every year, upon graduation, over 90% of the class take positions with large law firms representing commercial institutions and others in the wealthiest 1% of the society that the legal profession serves well. At the same time the rest of the society, 247 million people, are either totally unable to afford legal services if they have a housing, health, employment, discrimination or family problem, or, if they are indigent, only able to have a lawyer at no cost to them for one out of every fourteen of these legal problems. I refer to this factual situation as the "Crisis in Public Interest Law."

Many of you presently at the school as well as those who have recently graduated recognized that much of fault for, and the responsibility for remedying, the lack of diversity of career choices of graduates of the law school lay within the law school itself. You questioned 1) the curriculum's reliance on commercial cases, 2) the high cost of attending the law school accompanied by approval of higher student debt 3) the second-class status of the clinical program, 4) the preference given to large firms in the hiring process by the allocation of a disproportionate amount of staff time and resources to a recruiting process dominated by these firms and held in the fall when few other legal institutions know their future legal hiring needs, and by the failure to examine in depth negative aspects of such firms, especially the many student complaints of discrimination and unfair treatment 5) the failure of the law school to challenge the "prevailing wisdom" generalizations based on flawed assumptions, such as "Work in large firms is intellectually stimulating and prestigious and one receives the best training there," "Grades are very important in obtaining any job," "There are no jobs in public interest and even if there were, most students can not afford to take them because of the amount of their debt," "The work in public interest areas is boring, routine, uncreative and unimportant", "There is no training in public interest jobs" and "It is important that you find a job and become an employee rather than going out and creating your own institution" 6) the failure to provide adequate staff and resources for students and alumni/ae looking for career advice 7) the indifference and lack of availability of most of the faculty for career and job advice.

In early 1988, I requested funds from June Thompson, the Director of Placement, for additional staff and resources needed to create a Career Development Division in the Placement Office. Because of her basic disagreement with me about the existence of a crisis and her belief that there was little need for career advice generally and public interest career counseling specifically, the request was rejected. In April, 1988, I submitted a proposal through the Dean's Office requesting that a Career Development Center outside of the Placement Office be established to offer guidance to students, staff, faculty, alumni and others on public interest and many other less accessible and less familiar careers. I know of no staff or faculty meetings called to review the proposal, to discuss career issues, to debate differences in orientation or to set goals and priorities. No written responses were ever sent about the proposal and in early August. 1988, I heard indirectly that a decision had been reached - nothing would be done.

In April, 1989, after two very unsatisfactory meetings with June Thompson, I again renewed my request to the Dean's Office for the establishment of a Career Development Center. At about the same time I proposed the creation of a Center for the Delivery of Legal Services in the Public Interest which would coordinate research and activities on the "crisis" throughout the law school, including placement, career planning, the counselling center, financial aid, and the alumni/ae office. I inquired about the status of the proposals weekly. No staff or faculty meetings were ever called to review the proposals and I received no written response.

On July 1, Robert Clark became the dean and on August 9, 1989, two days after my return from vacation I was told to make an appointment to see him. At the meeting, after I introduced myself, he informed me that although he did not know what I did, he did know that it was not cost effective to have a four day a week position devoted to public interest when only six to eight people were affected so he was eliminating my position and that of my assistant, Dana Bullwinkel. He said that in our place a full-time staff assistant would be hired who would report to June Thompson and counsel students in all areas of the law, not just public interest.

The school lacks, and seriously needs, a well-supported, well-staffed, well-publicized, career development office and a public interest career center. I regret not having been given the opportunity to establish these offices but I remain optimistic. I believe that the law school will in the near future come to grips with the crisis. I do not think that it will ignore the imbalanced and inappropriate diversion of 90% of its graduates to the representation of 1% of the population. I do not think that it will want to be considered an irrelevant factor in the search for equality of access to the justice system. I am optimistic because so many of you spoke out this fall demanding more support, resources and guidance on the many varied public interest careers. I also want to express to all of you my deepest respect for the responsible actions you have taken in support of those who want to pursue legal services for those who need them the most. Because of your untiring efforts, your organizing, your factual and reasoned responses, your requests and demands, and your persistence, you have made many aware of the concerns of students and issues that had previously gone unrecognized. You have provided encouragement not only to students here but to students at other law schools and untold lawyers and college students considering a career in public interest law.

Your involvement is not only important, it is critical and necessary. Almost all of the significant progress that Harvard Law School has made and most of the programs that have been developed in the last fifteen years in the area of public interest career planning and placement have resulted from student demands. The creation of the public interest committee by the new dean with a broad mandate to review the role of public interest within the law school is a recent example. We are truly in the midst of a crisis which will not be resolved while you are in law school. How you respond to it in law school, however, may determine how you respond to it throughout your entire legal career. Your actions this fall have given many people reason to be optimistic. Continued best wishes in your efforts.

Sincerely,
/s/Ron
Ronald W. Fox

I had the opportunity and the privilege yesterday to make a presentation entitled "Think Small: Learning About and Locating Positions in Small Law Firms" for the New York State Bar Association. About 30 who registered were "live" in the "studio" at the law office of Lauren Wachtler, the chair of the Committee on Lawyers in Transition. An additional 175 registered for the webcast

THE VIDEO OF THIS 110 MINUTE WORKSHOP IS NOW ACCESSIBLE ON-LINE HERE..

BEFORE YOU BEGIN, HOWEVER, READ BELOW!

IF YOU DECIDE TO VIEW IT, I SUGGEST YOU DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. PAUSE THE VIDEO AS IT BEGINS;
2, CLICK THE ATTACHMENT ICON AFTER "HANDOUT #1 SUGGESTED READING ";
3. DO THE READING AND THE EXERCISES; AND THEN.
4, WATCH THE VIDEO

I initially talk about how we got to this point (my 50th year in the legal profession) where the vast majority of the public are unable to obtain the services of a lawyer and the vast majority of lawyers are dissatisfied. (I quote from the recent American Bar Foundation "After the JD" press release indicating that 59% of the associates from what they refer to as the "top ten law schools" intend to leave their present large firm employers within 2 years and that those in firms of greater than 250 lawyers are less satisfied than their counterparts in smaller firms.)

I state my belief that the culprit are the law schools which funnel their students to BigLaw through on-campus interviewing and ignore those unable to be interviewed and, in the process, neglect the legal needs of the public by failing to teach skills, values and career planning and charging outrageous amounts for tuition, far greater than the worth of the services delivered. My experience in the last 25 years leads me to conclude that lawyers who are unhappy because they are unable to find employment or dissatisfied at the law firm the law school "placed" them in, will invariably suffer from a lack of self-confidence, self-respect and self-worth.

The second part of the program begins with making lawyers aware of one of the four fundamental values of the legal profession - the commitment of a lawyer to take a position consistent with his or her professional goals and personal values. I then suggest how to go about finding a position in a small firm pointing out that 66% of all lawyers in private practice are in firms of 5 or less lawyers. I advise that they choose and area of law, find out who does it, make contact with some to promote and market yourself, keep doing something and eventually accept a position likely to provide career satisfaction.

I also suggest that, as they implement this process, they might want to look at themselves as independent contractors and, rather than limiting themselves to jobs as employees, look for opportunities to work part-time for one lawyer, then one or two others until they are full time partners, associates or solos.

The program raised a number of issues. Whether or not you view the webinar, I invite you to comment and share what you think about these or any related topics: the legal needs of the public; the need for major restructuring of legal education; OCI and the funnel; dissatisfaction of lawyers in BigLaw; the lack of self-confidence of lawyers generally; the opportunities in small firms.

I HOPE YOU FIND THIS PROGRAM HELPS YOU IN YOUR SEARCH FOR CAREER SATISFACTION..

Ron Fox .

On Wednesday, September 16, 2009, from noon to 2pm (EDT), I will be doing a live webcast for the New York State Bar Association Committee on Lawyers in Transition entitled Think Small! Learning About and Locating Positions in Small Law Firms

"For many years, if not decades, there has been an intense focus on large law firms as if they represent the entire legal profession. The lack of openings within large law firms makes this a most appropriate time for lawyers and law students to realize that there are nearly unlimited options in small law firms. There are jobs; there are positions; there are openings!"

For more information and to register for this free program go to this NYSBA website..

A week ago today, I submitted the following to the New York Times with a request that it be considered for an op-ed stating, as required, that it had not been previously published. The paper's guidelines state that if you receive no telephone call or e-mail within three business days, you should assume that the paper has decided not to print the submission.With that in mind here is the comment I sent to the paper.

The Light at the End of the Funnel

By Ronald W. Fox

The theme of Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools (August 26, 2009) is the negative impact on law students of the reduced hiring by large law firms.

Twenty five years ago this week I became the Public Interest Adviser at Harvard Law School. Over the next five years, based on conversations with students and placement staff at law schools across the country, I concluded that more than half of all law students hoped to work with individuals or small entities.

Sadly, the law schools, deaf to their students' career aspirations, failed them: did not teach them to practice law; did not teach them that lawyers must be committed to taking positions consistent with their professional and personal values; and did not make them aware of the wide range of options for lawyers.

They did, however, set up a well-staffed extremely efficient on-campus interviewing program limited to large law firms, the only ones who could predict their needs two years in advance. These large firms were eager to hire and were quite successful.

In most selective law schools nearly ninety-five (95) per cent of the graduates of each class flowed through the "funnel" to jobs in those firms representing primarily large corporations.

Since I left that position twenty years ago this month, I have had the privilege of working with lawyers dissatisfied with the path they had traveled. Most hoped that the benefits of a law degree would be autonomy, intellectual stimulation, knowledge of a trade, respect, reasonable income and a life of serving others.

Instead many found themselves unhappy in their jobs but felt trapped. With few skills, little awareness of any options or how to look for unadvertised positions, they could not even begin to search for a new position until they regained their self-confidence and a sense of self-worth.

I strongly believe that much of the well-publicized malaise and dissatisfaction within the legal profession is caused by the neglect of, and the disinterest of the law schools' faculties and staff in, the careers of their students.

While the law schools in the past have been wildly successful in raising the cost of attending law school far beyond the rate of inflation often justifying increases (and the debt required to afford it) by not so subtle promises of high-paying positions in large law firms, this is no longer the case.

What the writer of the article might have suggested is that the prospects are dim, not for the students, but for the law schools, as prospective law students, aware of what some have referred to as the law school financial hoax stop applying to law schools that refuse to prepare them to practice law for a reasonable tuition.

The writer might also have looked into the connection between the law schools' neglect of their students and the unmet legal needs of the public.

Upon hearing of the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, my wife and I took our 10 year old grandson to the JFK Library and read in the family's statement about "his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."

Much like what we are facing on the issue of healthcare, but not as well publicized, are statistics that indicate that eighty (80) percent of the legal needs of the 45,000,000 least wealthy members of the public are not met.

According to the ABA's MacCrate Report, a fundamental value of the legal profession is the commitment of lawyers to: promoting justice, fairness, and morality; helping the profession ensure legal services to those who can't pay; and enhancing the capacity of legal institutions to do justice.

But the lawyers who are law professors and deans of law schools may not be living up to this commitment to justice if they are not preparing students to represent those with middle or low income, not making students aware that two-thirds of all lawyers in private practice are in firms of 5 or less lawyers (including one-half who are solos) and not reducing the cost to attend law school so that debt load does not drive career choice.

They certainly are not eliminating the funnel, the on-campus interview program which "places" students rather than helping them to actively "choose" what interests them.

We are faced with a situation where at least one-half the law students in the country would like to provide services to individuals and have little to no interest in large law firms while millions of the public are in need of their services.

Will law schools take no action except wistfully yearn for a return to the halcyon days when they will again divert law students from representing the public, funnel students to large law firms, and continue without restraint to raise salaries and tuition, all under the banner of "law is now a business"?

Or will they incorporate the fundamental values of the legal profession and act, not based on self-interest and those of large law firms, but for the benefit of law students and the public. If they do, we can be proud of law schools and consider them partners in Senator Kennedy's "tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all."

Ronald W. Fox is the founder and primary consultant of the Center for Professional Development in the Law a/k/a Career Planning for Lawyers .

Additional Biographical Information

Since 1990, Ron has: provided individual guidance to lawyers in transition seeking positions consistent with their personal values and their professional goals; posted on his Lawyer Satisfaction Blog ; consulted to over 25 law schools, including Cornell, Boston College, Notre Dame and Northwestern; presented workshops for the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; created and facilitated the ABA Public Service Division's "Town Meeting" for the six Washington D.C. law schools; and authored Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law published by the ABA Law Student Division;

Ron graduated from Harvard Law School in 1963 and practiced law in a variety of settings for 20 years including two law firms he founded. In 1974 he was one of the first providers of divorce mediation and was active in developing that field until 1990. Working with bar associations, he designed and created numerous lawyer referral and other programs aimed at the delivery of legal services to low and middle income individuals. From 1983-1989 Ron worked at Harvard Law School providing career planning services to law students pursuing careers serving the legal needs of the public and also co-founded the Public Interest Committee of NALP.

Journalists of the legal media could be a force in correcting decades of law school misplacement.

I just read the most recent of the plethora of articles focusing on placement offices and what they are doing for law students during this unique "challenging" "chill" inducing situation where more and more large law firms are withdrawing from on-campus interviewing and not hiring students for summer and permanent positions.

I quickly recognized thirteen issues NOT considered in this article (to a great extent applicable to another such article.)

1, Isn't the use of the word "firm"misleading if it refers to the few firms (only 10%) with > 100 lawyers?

2. Who created the "box' that LS students have to think outside of and why?

3. Were the few firms able to enter the "box" providing positions desired by LS students.

4. Were the few firms able to enter the "box' providing positions through which students could serve legal needs of the public.

5. What are the goals, values & hopes of LS students?

6. What careers do LS students envision upon graduation?

7. What percentage of LS students want positions in regional firms, smaller firms, local firms, or government jobs,"

8. Are there summer paid positions for law students in "popular" cities in firms of < 6 lawyers? .

9. What is the process to go through to find these unadvertised positions?

10. What percentage of LS students want to go solo & not be employees?

11. Has the LS prepared the students to practice solo or in firms of < 6 lawyers?

12. When the economy improves, do LS expect to again funnel students back into the "box"?

13. Why is this concern one for the career staff? Why aren't the LSDeans and faculty being interviewed?

How many other examples can you find where the legal media ignored the fundamental issues and concerns of law students in the areas of career planning and professional development?

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

For law graduates, a public-service detour on road to success

By Rich Barlow, Globe Correspondent  |  April 27, 2009

 

With his degree from Harvard Law School due in June, Juan Valdivieso makes an attractive prospective hire, and last summer, he scooped up a postgraduation job offer from the white-shoe firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in his native Washington, D.C.

But as the recession deepens, budgets tighten - even at top-notch law firms. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius e-mailed Valdivieso last month that it would have to defer his employment for a year, until the fall of 2010. But the company threw him a lifeline: It would pay him a $60,000 stipend if he spent the year after graduation at an unpaid public service job. The 28-year-old is looking for work in an organization that will indulge his interest either in civil rights or consumer protection.

Paying people to offer help to public service groups may be a noble endeavor, but it also reaps a practical payoff.

The stipend system saves a bundle for such firms as Morgan, Lewis, where starting salaries average around $160,000, according to Harvard's assistant dean for career services, Mark Weber. It also allows them to hold onto promising future lawyers until a possible economic turnaround next year.

Meanwhile, students add a year of real-life work.

"Clients are, from what I understand, not so excited about having first-year associates without any actual experience working on their case," said Valdivieso.

Alyssa Minsky, who is graduating next month from Suffolk University Law School, has had her employment deferred with a stipend by Ropes & Gray. A psychology major in college with an interest in healthcare, she is interviewing for jobs in that field.

"I really do think it's a great opportunity," she said. "I hope to do healthcare law at the firm, so I think I'll have real exposure to healthcare issues."

Law firms have postponed hires in previous recessions, but the public-service stipends are unique, say Weber and James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, a career counseling, recruitment, and development group based in Washington, D.C.

Valdivieso said he knows of 20 to 30 fellow Harvard students (the graduating class numbers 575) who have had their employment postponed, and many of them have been offered stipends. Students at law schools around the country are getting the same offer, and while no one tracks precise numbers, the trend "is pretty widespread," said Leipold, with participants including such noted firms as Latham & Watkins, based in California, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, based in New York.

Boston's Ropes & Gray has offered stipends to new hires and current associates who'd like to do a year in public service, according to a statement from the firm. Staff lawyers, whose starting salaries are $160,000, receive $60,000 and health insurance coverage; deferred hires get those benefits plus moving expenses, coverage of bar preparation and exam fees, and eligibility for a $20,000 advance, to be repaid after the public service.

The firm has a list of 35 approved service organizations but is open to lawyers and hired students arranging a year's work with other groups, the statement said. Eighty applicants have applied for placement with groups ranging from legal aid services in New York to a public defender's office in Hawaii.

Greater Boston Legal Services, which represents low-income people in civil cases, has seen its finances crushed by the recession, as have other public-interest groups, so getting some help on law firms' dimes is an attractive proposition, said executive director Robert Sable.

"We're in tatters financially because of this thing," he said. "These folks are showing up at just the time when we're having to reduce staff."

Weber's office, which estimates that 10 percent to 20 percent of Harvard's graduating students will be deferred by firms, sent a memo to the class last month to help them weigh options. A year in public service "can be seen as a tremendous opportunity" that will add luster to a student's resume, the memo counseled.

That's important, Weber said, because he predicts a coming boom for legal services when the economy recovers.

"There's a lot of litigation that hasn't taken place," he said. "There's a lot of regulatory work and a lot of appeals that aren't being done right now. So when that stuff picks up, people are going to be busy."

Getting paid to do good has some downside, however. Valdivieso has $60,000 in student loans to repay, and he had planned on a larger salary next year to help with that.

He's hoping to tap a Harvard program that helps students entering modest-paying jobs repay their loans, but that won't be enough, and he is considering moving in with his parents.

"I went from looking at potentially purchasing [a] new home to covering rent [and] covering health insurance," he said. But he is counting his blessings: He is single with no dependents.

At a time when a student may feel pressure to be the next Clarence Darrow to secure one of the dwindling number of jobs, Weber said graduates may have few options. "It's not like the next firm down the street is [hiring many lawyers]. . . . The issue here is making the best of a difficult situation," he said.

 

RON FOX COMMENT IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

There is another side to this story.

At the "selective" law schools there is a powerful "funnel" established by the law schools and maintained by large law firms (BigLaw) that has led for decades to as high as 95% of graduates taking BigLaw positions.

My experience, discussions with those in the legal community and material I have read leads me to believe that without the combined defects and pressures of legal education, a minority of these grads would want to work for such firms, preferring instead a variety of other options, including representing individuals, consumers, small businesses in small firms or even starting their own solo practice.

Not surprisingly, there have been frequent stories over the last 20 years about the high level of dissatisfaction among lawyers. This misplacement is partially to blame.

Another aspect of this is that for decades the public has had an urgent need for legal services. ABA studies indicate that only 20% of the legal needs of 45,000,000 low income people are met. The funneling of these law students to BigLaw continues to divert them from serving the public, the stated mission of many law schools such as Stanford Law School:

"Despite these advances, Stanford Law School's basic mission has not changed since Nathan Abbott's day: dedication to the highest standards of excellence in legal scholarship and to the training of lawyers equipped diligently, imaginatively, and honorably to serve their clients and the public; to lead our profession; and to help solve the problems of our nation and our world."

What is needed is primarily an overhaul of legal education: a reduction in cost by eliminating the wasted third year, teaching students the fundamental skills and values needed so they are prepared to practice law, making them aware of the options they have in SmallLaw/Solo, giving them genuine career advice and eliminating the funnel of on-campus interviewing.

 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM STAFF AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

This career choice is not a 'detour'

May 2, 2009

WE ARE writing to express dismay at the implication of your headline "For law graduates, a public-service detour on road to success" (Metro, April 27) and the tone of the corresponding article.

Your headline assumes that the only definition of success is working at a large law firm and that public service work is merely a detour. This could not be further from the truth.

We have worked with, and are continuing to work with, many Harvard Law School students and alumni dedicated to careers in public service. These students and graduates define success as satisfying work through which they can make a contribution to society.

Among our relatively recent graduates who opted for public service rather than the private sector are Julie Su, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant for her work freeing enslaved Thai garment workers; the cofounders of City Year, Alan Khazei and Michael Brown; and one young man who chose to serve the urban poor in Chicago upon graduating in 1991 - Barack Obama.

Fortunately, many of the delayed-start associates with whom we've been working understand that they have been presented with a wonderful opportunity to use their law degrees to help society - and, in some cases, been given more responsibility than they would likely have had as first-year associates at large firms.

You do a disservice to idealistic law students and lawyers everywhere by reinforcing the image of public service as somehow second class.

Alexa Shabecoff
Assistant dean for public service
Ellen Cosgrove
Dean of students
Harvard Law School
Cambridge

 

COMMENT BY RON FOX IN RESPONSE TO LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM STAFF AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

How do they say it, "Give me a break".

This letter to the editor from two staff persons at Harvard Law School is misleading.

Does anyone really think that Success at Harvard law School is defined as anything other than taking a job at BigLaw?

Open up the books and look at the jobs taken by HLS graduates over the last 25 years and you are likely to see that at graduation (or after a prestigious clerkship) approximately 95% will have taken jobs at BigLaw.

Think about one of the graduates mentioned, President Barack Obama. Of the many impressive comments made about him, one was that this Harvard law School graduate, the President of the Harvard Law Review did NOT, upon graduation, go to BigLaw but took a position with a small firm that represented individuals in civil rights and other personal matters. If Harvard Law School does not consider serving the public upon graduation as a detour, why was his career path considered so unique?

One of the reasons that Harvard Law School ranks so high in the annual flawed USNews ranking of law schools is its second highest ranking in the criterion for graduate employment. A significant factor of this criterion is the number of those employed at graduation. Since it is almost entirely only BigLaw which can know its needs far in advance, the prize goes to the law schools that send their students the quickest (for the most money?) to the biggest law firms.

(By the way, I recall an analysis I did of the first positions of HLS graduates from the classes of 1984-88. Of the 2500 after 3 years of legal education only FOUR (4) felt prepared to go out on their own and NOT become someone's employee. One of them was Alan Khazei, another graduate featured prominently in the letter.)

Success at Harvard Law School must therefore be defined by the law school (though not by the students) and, I assume, by other selective law schools as going to BigLaw. With that in mind, students at HLS taking positions with public service have good reason to think they are taking a detour.

 

 

QUOTES FROM THE REINVENTION OF WORK by MATTHEW FOX 

 

         Spirit means life, and both life and livelihood are about living in depth, living with meaning, purpose, joy and a sense of contributing to the greater community. A spirituality of work is about bringing life and livelihood back together again. Page 2

 

         All work worthy of being called spiritual and worthy of being called human is in some way prophetic work. It contributes to the growth of justice and compassion in the world; it contributes to social transformation, not for its own sake but for the sake of increasing justice. Page 13

 

         If we are not being served truth and justice as regular fare at work, then no matter how well we are fed materially, we will starve spiritually. Or work must make way for the heart, that is, for truth and justice to play an ever-increasing role in our professional lives. Page 26

 

         How do we prepare young people for the future world of work? ... We should prepare them to be able to distinguish between good work and bad work and encourage them not to accept the latter. That is to say, they should be encouraged to reject meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-wracking work in which a (person) is made the servant of a machine or a system. They should be taught that work is the joy of life and is needed for our development, but that meaningless work is an abomination. Page 30, quoting E. F. Schumacher, Good Work, 118,119

 

         We must become truly critical of the systems that keep so many out of touch with justice and economic fairness. Healthy work lies at the heart of the remedy for this failed promise. Page 45

 

         Wherever there are people, there are needs to be met and thus work to be done. Page 59

 

         Here we come face-to-face with the mystery of vocation, or calling...we find our calling by our natural inclinations, by that which we enjoy doing, are equipped to do, and feel joy in doing.....In our times, we workers are being called to reexamine out work: how we do it; whom it is helping or hurting; what it is we do; and what we might be doing if we were to let go of our present work and follow a deeper calling. Page 103

 

          I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people....Paul when he says that truly the only sin in life is our refusal to do the work we have been called to do. Page 104

 

          All our work worlds, from so-called blue collar to professional, have been tainted by the limits of our civilization's philosophy of work....We can be sure that a paradigm shift will occur whenever the necessities of life are beyond the reach of most citizens. This is happening in our culture today. Health care, education, law, business, economics, politics, and religion are not reaching the people who need them the most. .. We can realize that we are not isolated in our work dreams, that we are not alone in our deepest desires to make our professional life again and be true to their deepest moral and spiritual potentials. The word community, after all, means "to work on a common task together." Page 135

 

          The task needed in every profession, and indeed by every citizen today, is to return wisdom to our work. We do this by returning to the essential meaning of our profession - a meaning that originally had to do with serving others......Is it controversial to suggest that our professions have in great part lost their enchantment? How happy are people at their work? The dean of a law school recently confessed that only 6 percent of his graduates will find a job in law this year. Is the real reason that we do not need more lawyers? Might it be instead that we do not need more of the kind of lawyers practicing the kind of law that we are accustomed to? We do need laws to defend the environment, to defend our children, to defend the poor instead of lobbying for the powerful. Perhaps the crisis lies in the kind of work our society is offering its workers. Page 137

 

          All the professions, no matter how far they may have strayed from their original purpose, were rooted at their origins in the inner life of the community. They began as expressions of the spiritual and corporal works of compassion that the prophets wrote about. We can redeem the professions by returning to the best hopes they hold out for serving others. .. We can be in our professions without being of them, that is, without selling our souls to them. Indeed, that is how we must operate if our work worlds are to help solve the problems of our advanced industrial society.  Page 138

 

           Justice making and other types of healing are forms or compassion because we all live in human societies that yearn for healing from many kinds of injustice.  Page 174

 

           Individuals have values but are often told on coming to work to leave their values at the door. Page 231

 

           The growing desire that workers have to be in control over their own livelihoods, and to be able to create a harmony between their values and their working lives. Page 235

 

           The problem is that our civilization has settled for such a narrow and restrictive definition of work that we are trying to pour human energy into a skinny little funnel that in turn pours into a puny little machine called "industry" or jobs available......those who have jobs are so squeezed in the process of getting them that when they do finally arrive at the workplace they have lost their sense of wonder and amazement and their capacity for grief. Their inner life has been squeezed out of them; their work is too small. They have no energy to create good work and thereby help others join the work world and thus participate in the Great Work. Page 301

 

 

 

The following is from this webpage

 

"Matthew Fox is author of 28 books including Original Blessing, The Reinvention of Work, Creativity, and A New Reformation. He was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. He holds a doctorate (received summa cum laude) in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Seeking to establish a pedagogy that was friendly to learning spirituality, he established an Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality that operated for seven years at Mundelein College in Chicago and twelve years at Holy Names College in Oakland. For ten of those years at Holy Names College, Cardinal Ratzinger, (Ed.Note on 19 April 2005 he became Pope Benedict XVI) as chief Inquisitor and head of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (called the Office of the Holy Inquisition until 1965), tried to shut the program down. Ratzinger silenced Fox for one year in 1988 and forced him to step down as director. Three years later he expelled Fox from the Order and then had the program terminated at Holy Names College.

 

"Rather than disband his amazing and ecumenical faculty, Fox started his own University called University of Creation Spirituality nine years ago in Oakland, California. Fox was President and a member of the Board of Directors for nine years. He is currently lecturing, teaching and writing and is President of the non-profit that he created in 1984, Friends of Creation Spirituality. The principle objections from the Congregation of the Faith to Fox's work were that he is a "feminist theologian;" that he calls God "Mother" (Fox has proven the medieval mystical tradition did exactly that); that he prefers "original blessing" to "original sin;" that he calls God "child"; that he associates too closely with Native Americans and people of the wikka tradition; that he does not condemn homosexuals; that he has replaced the naming of the spiritual journey as Purgation, Illumination and Union with the four paths of Creation Spirituality: The Via Positiva (joy, delight and awe); the Via Negativa (darkness, silence, suffering, letting go and letting be); the Via Creativa (creativity); and the Via Transformativa (justice, compassion, interdependence)."

 

 

The following is a review of The Reinvention of Work by Diane Schirf

 

"In The Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox brings together the work of Eastern and Western mystics, ancient, medieval, and modern, to propose a new paradigm for how we work and what we do. ... Fox explores the concept of work and how it can be healthier physically, emotionally, and intellectually, but primarily socially, environmentally, and spiritually.  Fox believes that the Enlightenment and the industrial age have left us with a machine-centered, anthropocentric world that focuses on outer work and rewards at the cost of inner work and spirituality, and destroys rather than creates. Real wealth results from preserving the health of the planet, not in the artificiality of money or possessions. The result has been a world often at war, where the gaps between affluent and poor continue to spread, where the environmental health of non-industrialised nations is sacrificed for the comforts of the industrialised, and where the work that is available and that most people have serves machines and leaves the worker stressed, addicted to work, ill, angry and even violent, and unfulfilled intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. He also recounts the stories of people who reinvent themselves through work, who are willing to sacrifice position and possessions to find an avocation that matters, like the man who gives up a high-paying position to become a fireman and who is ecstatic about the meaning it brings to his life.  Fox carefully sets up all that is wrong with our modern concept of work and, indeed, life, since so much of who we are, how we feel, and how we live is tied up in what we do for a living, or what we mistakenly call "work." 

"To get billions of conditioned consumers (and their consumers-in-training children) to give up their increasingly complex lifestyles, comforts, and amusements in the interest of a healthier, more just world for all and for better personal mental and physical health requires a utopian change that most people will not embrace. As with the Woolgers in their book, The Goddess Within, Fox tries to find a movement in the mid-1990s that has not materialised yet. Generally, people do not choose to change; they are forced to. Perhaps someday, when the gaps have widened too far, and society and our home can no longer support our appetites (and the corresponding waste), we may be ready to listen to Fox and his adherents, at which point they will need to provide practical answers. What if there is imbalance between what people want to do and what needs to be done? In practical, everyday terms, what does the reinvention of work look like? And do I want to live long enough to experience the disasters that are likely to be required to bring it about?"

 

AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED READING THIS, I SUGGEST THAT YOU READ QUOTES FROM THE REINVENTION OF WORK HERE. 

 

As many of you may know, in July 1992 the ABA's Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap issued what came to be called the "MacCrate Report", a withering critique of traditional law schools. In substance, the task force compiled a list of the 10 fundamental skills and the 4 fundamental values needed to be taught in order to be a trained member of the legal profession. It found that law schools teach only 2 of the skills and not well at that.

 

While it did not make specific findings about the deficiencies in teaching the values, it suggested more emphasis on them including a recommendation that law schools should be concerned to convey to students that the professional value of the need to "promote justice fairness and morality" is an essential ingredient of the legal profession. .

 

At the heart of the report is its "demand" that: law schools affirm that "education in lawyering skills and profesional values is central to the mission of law schools"; they should use effective teaching methods, and they should make students aware of the full range of opportunity for professional development in the rich variety of private practice settings.  

 

The response to the issuance of the report was immediate. Some law school deans opposed the findings of the report. The basic argument of the deans was that the report looked at legal education from the point of view of practitioners. There has been opposition from law school faculty for years of anything that smacks of turning their institutions into "trade schools".

 

However, there was a flurry of activity in support of the report. A task force was formed within the AALS to implement the MacCrate Report. Within the ABA, in February, 1994. a resolution proposed by the Illinois and Iowa state bars asking the ABA House of Delegates to support of some of the recommendations of the report passed. The ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar sent the resolution to the deans of all the ABA approved law schools and was scheduled to report to the House of Delegates at its next annual meeting. The Commission on Legal Education of the State Bar of Wisconsin proposed reforms of legal education based on the recommendations of the MacCrate Report.

 

All of that was in 1994. For the last 15 years, other than when I write an occasional article in praise of it, there seems to be scarce mention of the MacCrate Report.    Now while I am not a believer in conspiracy theories, I do have to mention that about 1994 the ABA decided for the first time to hire an Executive Director and the person chosen for the position was prior to that a dean of a law school who had written and spoken out against the MacCrate Report.

 

Even if you have not read the entire 414(!) page report, you will still be able to recognize how comprehensive the recommendations are, and how the adoption of these, 25 recommendations (which can be found on pages 330-334) would fundamentally change the way in which legal education is delivered.

 

As usual, comments are invited and welcome.

 

 

 

C.  Enhancing Professional Development During the Law School Years

 

1. Law schools and the practicing bar should look upon the development of lawyers as a common enterprise, recognizing that legal educators and practicing lawyers have different capacities and opportunities to impart to future lawyers the skills and values required for the competent and responsible practice of law. (Introduction, Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5.C, Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.B, Chapter 7D, Chapter 8.E and Chapter 9)

 

2.  Standard 301(a) regarding a law school's educational program should be amended to clarify its reference to qualifying "graduates for admission to the bar" by adding: ". . . and 40 prepare them to participate effectively in the legal profession." This would affirm that education in.lawyering skills and professional values is central to the mission of law schools and recognize the current stature of skills and values instruction. (Chapter 7.C and Chapter 7.B)

 

3. It is time for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to revisit generally the treatment of skills and values 4instrüction in the accreditation process in recognition of the skills and values identified in the Statement of Fundamental Lawyering Skills and Professional Values as those with which a lawyer should be familiar before assuming ultimate responsibility for a client. (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5.C, Chapter 7.A and Chapter 7.B)

 

4. In light of developments in skills instruction and the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values, the interaction between core subjects, treated in Standard 302(a)(i), and professional skills, treated In Standard 302(a)(iii), should be revisited and clarified. The interpretation of Standard 302(a)(iii) should expressly recognize that students who expect to enter practice in a relatively unsupervised practice setting have a special need for opportunities to obtain skills instruction. (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.B, Chapter 4.D and Chapter 5.C)

 

5. Each law school faculty should determine how its school can best help its students to begin the process of acquiring the skills and values that are important in the practice of law, keeping in mind not only the resources presently available at the school, but the characteristics of effective skills instruction. (Chapter 7.3, Chapter 4.D and Chapter 5.C)

 

6.  To be effective, the teaching of lawyering skills and professional values should ordinarily have the following characteristics:  development of concepts and theories underlying the skills and values being taught; opportunity for student& to perform lawyering tasks with appropriate feedback and self-evaluation; reflective evaluation of the students' performance by a qualified assessor. (Chapter 7.3 and Chapter 4.D)

 

7.  The Interpretation to Standard 201(a) relating to the self-study process should require law schools to evaluate their programs in the light of Standard 301(a) and (c) and should refer to the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values and the literature analyzing the roles and competencies of lawyers, (Chapter 7.C, Chapter 7.8 and Chapter 4.D)

 

8.  Each law school should undertake a study to determine which of the skills and values described in the Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values are presently being taught in its curriculum and develop a coherent agenda of skills instruction not limited to the skills of "legal analysis and reasoning," "legal research," "writing" and "litigation." (Chapter 7.3, Chapter 7.C and Chapter 4.D)

 

9. Law schools should identify and describe in their course catalogs the skills and values content of their courses and make this information available to students for use in selecting courses. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 6.8 and Chapter 4.D)

 

10, The Task Force's Statement of Skills and Values should be made available to all entering law students to inform them about the skills and values they will be expected to possess as lawyers and to help them seek appropriate educational opportunities in law school, in work experience and in continuing legal education. (Chapter 4.D, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6,8)

 

11. Law students should be advised with respect to course selection to consider what opportunities may or may not be available to them after law school to develop the skills and competencies they will need in practice. (Chapter 2, Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.8)

 

12. Law schools should continue to emphasize the teaching of the skills of "legal analysis and reasoning" and "legal research," as described in the Statement of Skills and Values, through a wide variety of instructional modes, including well-structured clinical programs. (Chapter 7.3 and Chapter 4.D)

 

13. Law schools should be encouraged to develop or expand instruction in such areas as "problem solving," "factual investigation," "communication," "counseling," "negotiation" and "litigation," recognizing that methods have been developed for teaching law students skills previously considered learnable only through post-graduation experience in practice. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7,8 and Chapter 5.C)

 

14.  In view of the widely held perception that new lawyers today are deficient in writing skills, further concerted effort should be made in law schools and in programs of transition education after law school to teach writing at a better level than is now generally done. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.C, Chapter 8.E and Appendix B)

 

15.  Law schools through well-structured clinical programs should help students understand the importance of the skill of "organization and management of legal work," although it will remain for the first employer or mentor to translate that awareness into a functioning reality through providing supervised practice experience. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.D, Chapter 8.E and Chapter SC)

 

 16.  Law schools should play an important role in developing the skill of "recognizing and resolving ethical dilemmas" and in placing these issues in an organized conceptual framework, although the exposure in law school clinical programs or classrooms is necessarily very limited compared to the variety and complexity of the dilemmas presented in practice. (Chapter 7.8, Chapter 7.D, Chapter S.E and Chapter 5.C)

 

17. Law schools should stress in their teaching that examination of the fundamental values of the profession" is as important in preparing for professional practice as acquisition of substantive knowledge. (Chapter 7.A and Chapter 5.C)

 

18. The practicing bar should be assiduous in discharging its responsibilities for inculcating professional values through contact with students in part-time work and summer jobs and as colleagues or mentors in the early years of practice. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Chapter 5.0)

 

19. Law.school deans, professors, administrators and staff should be concerned to. convey to students that the professional value of the need to "promote justice, fairness and morality" is an essential ingredient of the legal profession; the practicing bar should be concerned to impress on students that success in the practice of law is not measured by financial rewards alone, but by a lawyer's commitment to a just, fair and moral society. (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Chapter 5.C)

 

20.  Law schools and the organized bar should work together to make law students aware of the full range of opportunity for professional development in the rich variety of private practice settings, in panels for prepaid and group legal services, in positions in the public, sector, in staff counsel's offices in corporations and other organizations, and in the practice of public interest law in all its dimensions, as well as of the profession's expectation that all lawyers will fulfill their responsibilities to the public and support pro bono legal services for those who cannot afford a lawyer. (Chapter 2, Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.8)

 

21.  Law schools and employers of law students should work together to inject educational value into any work experience during the law school years, developing models for strengthening the educational content of part-time employment and developing workshops offered at the beginning of the summer clerkship season to support the educational aspects of summer employment. (Chapter 7.D)

 

22.  Since the employment marketplace is a crucial forum in which the practicing bar transmits its values to law students, members of the bar who recruit, interview, and hire should convey to students, both by words and by their decisions, the importance they place on a student's having had exposure to a broad range of skills and values instruction, including clinical courses, (Chapter 7.A, Chapter 7.D and Appendix B)

 

 23. The National Association of Law Placement (NALP) should be asked by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to add to NALP's annual employer questionnaire questions designed to elicit information  pertaining to the educational quality of law office summer programs. (Chapter 7.D)

 

24.  Law schools should assign primary responsibility for instruction in professional skills and values to permanent full-time faculty who can devote the time and expertise to teaching and developing new methods of teaching skills to law students. In addition, law schools should continue to make appropriate use of skilled and experienced practicing lawyers and judges in professional skills and values instruction with guidance, structure, supervision and evaluation of these adjunct faculty by full-time teachers. (Chapter 7.8)

 

25.  There should be faculty involvement in the design, supervision and evaluation of every program of extern experience, and accreditation standards should emphasize the critical importance of faculty responsibility for overseeing extern programs. (Chapter 7.B and Chapter 8)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since in so much I have written I have taken quotes from the ABA's MacCrate Report and one issued by the Mass School of Law, both in 1992, I decided to publish (in three parts) a handout I distributed at a panel I moderated for the National Lawyers Guild in 1993 which is primarily quotes from both.

 

Aspects of the Traditional Law School Experience Which Inhibit or Divert Law Students From Careers Serving the Legal Needs of the Public.

 

4. THE FACULTY. AND THE DEANS HAVE LIMITED OR NO EXPERIENCE IN THE PRACTICE OF LAW, LACK THE KNOWLEDGE OR INTEREST TO PROVIDE COURSE AND CAREER ADVICE TO STUDENTS AND ARE GENERALLY UNAVAILABLE

 

Although law schools exist to train persons to practice law, ,.. It has thus been correctly said that in no profession has there been a greater gulf between the academic and practicing sides. This gulf has increased because law professors have largely been individuals with little or no experience in practice and disdain for it; they have thus lacked the knowledge and experience needed to impart practical skills and still less have they desired to .do so. MSL p. 41

 

There may also be a lack of interest on the part of some faculty in either learning new teaching methods or in the nature of the skills material. MacCrate p. 240

 

(Law review articles are) ... mainly produced by persons who "are in greater part .,. competent enough teachers without anything original to write, doomed to scholarly mediocrity by academic imperative ...urged to jump through hoops help up by the local promotion and tenure  committee...fueled by faculty self~studies, administrative mission statements, and fiats laid down  by the Association of American Law Schools ..Analysis, research, and writing are overblown, while classroom competence, community services, and non-law review scholarship are under-credited The system is askew. The academy has a problem." MSL p. 193 citing Kenneth Larson, 103 Harvard Law Review 928

 

Many "elite" law faculties in the United States now have significant contingents of "impractical" scholars, who are "disdainful of the practice of law." The "impractical" scholar ,... produces abstract scholarship  that has little relevance to concrete issues, or addresses concrete issues in a wholly theoretical manner. As a consequence, it is my impression that judges, administrators, legislators, and practitioners have little use for much for the scholarship that is now produced by members of the academy. Edwards p. 35

 

5. THE LAW SCHOOL FAILS TO TEACH OR STRESS THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION - "A LAWYER SHOULD PROMOTE JUSTICE, FAIRNESS AND MORALITY IN ONE'S DAILY PRACTlCE" NOR DOES IT MAKE STUDENTS AWARE OF THE REALITY OF THE MALDISTRIBTJTION OF LEGAL SERVICES IN SOCIETY.

 

Law students need concrete ethical training. They need to know why pro bono work is important.  They need to understand their duties as "officers of the court."...as law firms have become  increasingly materialistic - as pro bono work has been displaced by profit-maximization, and the "officers of the court" by the "hired guns" - we can no longer count on the law firms to be "law schools." Edwards, p. 38

 

Julin, (former ABA Section of Legal Education Council Chair) believes that law schools must  change drastically if they are to be socially responsible. "(Our suggestions) represent a recognition that law is still a profession, that lawyers must be educated to service  public needs competently yet at an affordable cost, and that legal educators have a most fundamental public responsibility to create the appropriate education programs to achieve the delineated societal roles for  law trained individuals. MSL p. 150

 

(T)he Statement of Skills and Values identifies, as a fundamental professional value, the need to "promote justice, fairness and morality." Law school deans, professors, administrators and staff must not only promote these values by words but must so conduct themselves as to convey to   students that these values are essential ingredients of our profession. Too often, the Socratic method of teaching emphasizes qualities that have little to do with justice, fairness and morality in daily practice. Students too easily gain the impression that wit .... and dazzling performance are more important that the personal moral values that lawyers must possess and that the  profession must espouse. The promotion of these values requires no resources and no institutional changes. It does require commitment. MacCrate p. 236

 

6. THE LAW SCHOOL IS INDIFFERENT TO STUDENTS' POST-GRADUATION PLANS; IT PROVIDES LITTLE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND FAILS TO MAKE STUDENTS AWARE OF, OR PREPARE THEM TO PRACTICE IN, THE MANY SETTINGS OPEN TO THEM.

 

Career education should be taught as an integral part of the educational process .... Teaching law students about the variety of legal careers and employment prospects in these careers is integral to the academic program of the law school. Munneke p. 82

 

(T)here are many career skills that are commonly not developed during the education  process..(L)earning how to make career decisions and look for a job involves an entire set of skills that the formal educational process frequently does not address. Munneke p. 22

 

As a member of a learned profession, a lawyer should be committed to the value of "Selecting and Maintaining Employment That will allow the Lawyer to Develop as a Professional and to pursue his or her professional and personal goals." In order to find employment that is consistent with his or her professional goals and personal values, a lawyer must be familiar with the range of traditional and non-traditional employment opportunities for lawyers, MacCrate p. 220

 

Greater knowledge of what lawyers do in the various sectors of practice can be useful to legal educators in better preparing students for the realities of practice.... The great diversity in practice settings and in what lawyers do challenges law schools to identify the skills and values which are common to lawyering in all its settings, to provide a rational and effective beginning for their students' professional development, and to mpart to their students the legal knowledge which each will need to have upon entering practice. MacCrate p. 35

 

                                                  BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

The Deeply Unsatisfactory Nature of Legal Education Today - A Self Study Report on the Problems of Legal Education and on the Steps The Massachusetts School of Law Has Taken to Overcome Them, Massachusetts School of Law, 1992 (MSL)

 

Munneke, Gary; The Legal Career Guide: From Law Student to Lawyer, American Bar Association Career Series, 1992 (Munneke)

 

Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum - Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap. The American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, 1992, "The MacCrate Report" (MacCrate)

 

Edwards, Harry T; The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and The Legal Profession. 91 Michigan Law Review 8478, Oct 1992 (Edwards)

 

I recently read about the gathering of law students from a number of law schools that are difficult to get into who have joined together to form Building a Better Legal Profession, (BBLP) which, according to its mission state, is "a national grassroots movement that seeks market-based workplace reforms in large private law firms".

I do not know whether this messsage was ever received by BBLP since as of this moment I have not received a response

I welcome your comments.

Ron

  

Hi

As a regular contributor to twitter, a blogger and one who has followed and commented on the activities of the BBLP, I suppose that qualifies me as one doing a story on BBLP.

During my five years (1984-89) as the public interest advisor at Harvard Law School and thereafter, I have observed the close working relationship between the selective law schools and BigLaw. I know how the law schools' deficiencies and defects work to, as I refer to it, "funnel" their students to BigLaw.  If you would like to read a few things I have written on this subject, you can go to Overcoming Law Schools Defects (original title in 1996 "Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places: Choosing the Best Law School") and any of the posts on my blog such as Request of Ronald W. Fox to be Appointed Law School Industry Czar.

During my 5 years at Harvard I watched as a majority of each class indicated an interest in serving individuals, the public, non-profits, small businesses and/or being an entrepreneur but 95% ended up in BigLaw and, based on my experience advising lawyers and keeping up with news and surveys, the level of dissatisfaction among lawyers has been higher than most other occupations for decades. The economic downturn will certainly have an effect on the class of 2009 but I wonder how different the figures of those starting their careers in BigLaw were for the class of 2007.

One topic that I don't think gets enough attention is the unmet legal needs of the public. That was my focus early on in the 70's. Every area that I looked at there were not enough lawyers so I began to create and implement lawyer referral projects, divorce mediation, an association of law clinics and other legal delivery systems. My original interest in becoming the public interest advisor at Harvard Law School in 1983 was to increase the access of the underserved to lawyers who entered law school hoping to represent them. In 1981 Lloyd Cutler said that 95% of lawyers time is devoted to the 1% wealthiest of our society, 5% of our time goes to represent the poorest and the rest of society gets virtually none of our time. I recently read statistics indicating that there is still an extraordinarily high percentage of the public unable to secure the services of a lawyer for the majority of the serious legal issues they have (something like only 20% of the legal needs of the poorest 45,000,000 in this country are met).

Have you read the MacCrate Report? How about Larry Velvel's "The Deeply Unsatisfactory Nature of Legal Education Today"? and what about Ron Fox's Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law?

There is a such a great need for a better legal profession!

There may be a wide range of other committees of your organization looking at other aspects of reform of the legal profession so I apologize for being unaware of the breadth of the organization's mission, goals and activities but I have only read the story about BBPL's effort to change BigLaw.

So, I would like to know:

Does BBLP have as its primary focus changing BigLaw? BigLaw is such a small percentage of the legal profession.

Does BBLP you plan to search for, provide support for and encourage law students to seek positions with high quality superlawyers in Small/Law?

Does BBLP support the elimination of on-campus interviewing so that the law schools could begin to provide genuine career planning services?

Does BBLP support demanding that the law schools reduce the cost of attending law school by eliminating the useless third year?

Does BBLP support demanding that the law schools teach the fundamental skills and fundamental values to their students so that when they graduate, they have the confidence, as one of my students once put it, "to BE good, rather than feeling the need to go someplace they think is good".

Does BBLP support demanding that the law schools breathe life into this fundamental value of the legal profession - the commitment of our profession to promote justice and serve the public and work to insure that its students have a realistic opportunity to do so upon graduation?

Would BBLP's goals be met if 95% of the graduates of the "selective" law schools became associates at kindler, gentler BigLaw providing legal services to 1% of society?

I invite you to contact me if you would like to discuss any of this further.

Ron Fox

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Barack Obama

In May ,2005, Lloyd Cutler died at the age of 87. He served as White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton. In 1962 he cofounded Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, one of DC's leading law firms which merged in 2004 with Boston's Hale and Dorr. John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff during the Clinton administration said, "Lloyd was a giant in the legal community. In a town split by partisanship, he had enormous credibility and respect on both sides of the aisle. He founded and acted as Cochairman of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

In 1980, he said

"The rich who pay our (lawyer) fees are less than 1% of our fellow citizens, but they get at least 95% of our time. The disadvantaged we serve for nothing are perhaps 20-25% of the population and get at most 5% of our time. The remaining 75% cannot afford to consult us and get virtually none of our time."

The MacCrate Report (the chair of the committee was Robert MacCrate, former President of the American Bar Assocation, 1987-88) stated that one of the four fundamental values of the legal profession required to be taught by law schools is

"Striving to Promote Justice, Fairness and Morality. ... As a member of a profession that bears special responsibilities for the quality of justice, a lawyer should be committed to the values of:
2.1 Promoting Justice, Fairness and Morality in One's Own Daily Practice;
2.2 Contributing to the Profession's Fulfillment of its Responsibility to ensure that adequate legal services are provided to those who cannot afford to pay for them;
2.3 Contributing to the profession's fulfillment of its responsibility to enhance the capacity of law and legal institutions to do justice."

Is that still true today, improved or worse? If not substantially improved, I would argue that allowing, or, especially during this economic downturn, still attempting to funnel close to 95% of the graduates of any law school to take positions in large law firms (especially when most of them had no desire to embark on their careers in such places) is not only a violation of this fundamental value of the legal profession but is also unjust, unfair and immoral.

(Ask any law school who questions this assumption about the hopes and dreams of its students to show you the results of the surveys they took of their law students prior to registering, early in their first year and at frequent intervals after that. I assume that very few will have anything to show you.

What is it about our society that allows such a perversion to continue year after year? Is this another issue of reform that should be placed on the agenda of President Barack Obama?

 

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20500
January 1, 2011

 

Dear President Obama,

We all knew it was coming!

 

On December 3, 2008, an article appeared in CNNMoney.com "Verdict is in: Legal job market tightens" The article said "Employment opportunities for legal professionals have traditionally been plentiful - and lucrative. But as the economy has dried up, so too have those jobs.... (This) is a job market that is contracting for the first time in recent history....(R)ecent graduates not only face experienced competition for limited jobs but also hefty student loan bills. 'Recent grads are going to have a hard time'".

The lead story of the December 10, 2008, Boston Globe "Harvard Curtails Tenure Searches" began, "Harvard University officials said yesterday that they will postpone nearly all searches for tenure-track professors in the school's largest academic body, a sobering indication of how the economic crisis has hit the world's wealthiest university."

 

What followed was: a sharp decrease in the number of applications for admission to law schools in the fall of 2009; dissolution and failures of hundreds of large law firms; an increase in the number of bankruptcies filed by law school graduates of the classes of 2006, 2007 and 2008. By October, 2010, deans of most of the ABA accredited law schools in the country, accompanied by thousands of their most prominent alumni/ae descended upon the nation's capitol to plead for a $3 billion bailout to save their industry. In their impassioned testimony they urged Congress to act, pointing out how the failure of the law school industry could have widespread negative repercussions throughout the country:

   Large law firms who represented the biggest corporations in the world would have to lay off thousands if the law schools were unable to "funnel" unwilling law students to their firms;
   Large corporations would suffer: i.e., a large corporation producing Hummers unable to retain lawyers to plead the case against higher fuel efficiency standards; coal companies unable to obtain permits for strip-mining; tobacco companies unable to prevent the distribution of material warning about the dangers of smoking; oil companies unable to lobby to "drill, drill, drill";
   Law schools, with their graduates unable to repay the extraordinary amount of the loans that they have incurred, would have to reduce salaries of professors and lay off thousands of staff; and
   Even the universities to which the law schools are a department would suffer as the law schools, affectionately referred to as "cash cows", no longer infuse the colleges with needed subsidies. Some universities would, in order to survive, have to extend the winter recess from October 12 to April 14 in order to continue to pay professors their full salaries.

Congress also heard from others, however, who emphasized how out-of-touch the management of the law school industry is and how they industry has failed for decades to produce a product needed or desired by the American public. One witness read this 1980 quote from Lloyd Cutler (legal adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton: "The rich who pay our (lawyer) fees are less than 1% of our fellow citizens, but they get at least 95% of our time. The disadvantaged we serve for nothing are perhaps 20-25% of the population and get at most 5% of our time. The remaining 75% cannot afford to consult us and get virtually none of our time." And provided statistics from the National Association of Law Placement which indicated that at most of the "select" law schools (that doesn't mean they are good, just that they are hard to get into) until recently, upwards of 95% of their graduates took jobs with large law firms.

Others from non-select law schools testified that their vision was to emulate the select law schools and find all their graduates jobs in large firms so that they could make a lot of money and pay back the loans taken to attend law school and donate lots of money to pay the high salaries of the professors who devote most of their time to making appearances on TV and writing arcane papers.

A member of a consumer group reported that responses from law schools indicated that not one of the law schools had surveyed its students as they registered at their school or at any time during the first year to find out who they wanted to represent (individuals, small businesses, public interest organizations, large corporations) and how many want to start their own firms rather than being an employee at a large law firm.

Another witness was a member of the highly regarded committee that released the MacCrate Report (the chair of the committee was Robert MacCrate, former President of the American Bar Association 1987-88). The MacCrate report found that there were ten fundamental skills needed by a lawyer to competently practice law and the law schools only taught two (and did that poorly.) It also compiled a list of four fundamental values of the legal profession required to be taught by law schools. One of them is: "Striving to Promote Justice, Fairness and Morality. ... As a member of a profession that bears special responsibilities for the quality of justice, a lawyer should be committed to the values of: 2.1 Promoting Justice, Fairness and Morality in One's Own Daily Practice; 2.2 Contributing to the Profession's Fulfillment of its Responsibility to ensure that adequate legal services are provided to those who cannot afford to pay for them; 2.3 Contributing to the profession's fulfillment of its responsibility to enhance the capacity of law and legal institutions to do justice."

As the ABA began to take serious action to implement the recommendations of the MacCrate Report, a law school dean who was a leader in the opposition became a leader of the ABA and the MacCrate Report was relegated to what is commonly referred to as the "dustbin of history".

A second year student recalled reading the annual rating of law schools in the US News & World Report to decide which was the best law school. Only recently did she realize that the criteria used by the magazine were useless in that not one evaluated law schools based on the extent to which they provided the skills and values needed to practice law competently.

 

Recent graduates testified about: not being taught the value of promoting justice in any course except that "silly" professional responsibility course that the law school was required to have but everyone knew was irrelevant;" not being taught how to practice law; the on-campus interview program and the negative effect it had on them and their classmates; not knowing what their options are for practicing law or anything about the demographics of the legal profession, thinking that everyone practiced in large law firms, not knowing that 66% of the profession practices in firms of 5 lawyers and that over 50% are sole practitioners; never having been exposed to career planning (what are your interests, your vision, your goals, your options, your preference, how to promote and market yourself); how their experience in law school had destroyed their self-confidence, their self-esteem and their sense of self-worth;
with tears in their eyes, how they hated the boring meaningless work they were doing in the large law firm; being over their heads in debt; being so dissatisfied with their career path but having no idea of what to do except apply along with thousands of others to the few advertised jobs; and wistfully recalling they had gone to law school so that they could continue to assist women and children as they had done while in college.

Videos compiled by over one hundred consumer organizations were shown. In each one of them individuals from all walks of life testified about how they were unable to find a lawyer to represent them in a wide variety of cases including sickness caused by pollution, evictions from homes being foreclosed, insurance claims for hurricane damage, discrimination against gays, discrimination in employment of women, injuries to veterans, abused children, claims for injury from toys, denial of insurance, inadequate public education, access to public buildings for the disabled and abuse of the elderly.

I appreciated the opportunity I had to testify before the committee first quoting my warning from an article I posted on FindLaw about fifteen years ago entitled "Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places: Choosing the Best Law School":

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