Lawyer Satisfaction Blog

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..

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 .

It is critically important at this time when there has been a decline in recruiting by the large law firms who have dominated campus interviewing to deemphasize employer outreach.

A school unable to attract sufficient employer responses adds to the students' frustration. Their self-esteem is diminished since they are not being considered by the firms courted by the school, apparently the ones who have the school's stamp of approval. Some career planners believe they are not using their talents and time to their own best advantage and that of their students. One said that 85% of her resources are devoted to employer outreach from which only 15% of her students found positions.

The goal of employer outreach by career staff is the scheduling of on-campus interviewers to supply students with the knowledge of where the jobs are.  Where there are a substantial number of firms recruiting on campus, many accept jobs they are not suited for because their decision making process is flawed. They are unaware of the breadth of their options and the importance of balancing priorities such as work satisfaction and high income.

Law school support for the emphasis on placement may come from the desire for positive recognition in the USNews's annual "Placement Success Rank" category. This rewards the schools that bring in the most firms and have the most graduates taking the highest paying positions the quickest.

What is the value of this professional degree? It varies. According to the USNews, "To the student, the value of a professional degree often is determined by its worth on the job market." For some it is just that, a way to earn a decent income. For others, the value is a sense of self-worth and satisfaction from having many options, autonomy and significant responsibility, or the opportunity to do "something that matters" to them. Others believe it provides the opportunity to contribute to the common good, to help those who without their assistance might never have a lawyer or to play a small part in bringing about social justice and equal access to the legal system.

The focus on employer outreach obscures the fact that most openings are publicized at the time employers have an immediate opening, not months in advance. As a consequence many organizations students might want to work for will not make their openings known early in the school year, in September, or even December and, more likely, not until after graduation. Furthermore, the way in which they will be publicized will probably be by word-of-mouth since estimates are that less than 5% of all jobs are advertised in writing.

Employer outreach fails to reflect the breadth of legal demographics at some schools and at other simply fails to attract sufficient employers. It needs to be deemphasized and replaced by career planning based on outreach within the law school community. The primary focus would be on educating students about their options, career planning methods and how to search for openings using self-directed employer outreach.

Rather than telling students "There are few jobs and we will try to place you", law schools should move in the direction that will support them most appropriately and "There are so many options and opportunities and we will teach you how to search for the one that will be the most satisfying for you, the one most consistent with your professional goals and your personal values."

  

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.

  

7. THE LAW SCHOOL'S PREOCCUPATION WITH THE US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT'S ANNUAL RANKING CRITERIA RESULTS IN ITS ALLOCATING TOO MUCH FINANCIAL AND STAFF SUPPORT TO PLACEMENT AND. ON-CAMPUS INTERVIEWING WHICH PRIMARILY SERVES LARGE LAW FIRMS AND IS NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF ITS STUDENTS.

 

The purely analytical education students have received at the theory based schools has prepared them for scores of years to practice in the major law firms of American Indeed "the elite law schools grew alongside the burgeoning corporate law firms" it is "the metropolitan prestige firms where associates are recruited from the prestige schools and the top graduates of other superior quality schools." The firms and schools each feed off the prestige of the other, and to this day schools hunger for the prestige of having their graduates hired by the major firms. MSL p. 157

 

(O)ne frequently heard plaint is that law schools in preparing students for practice give greater attention to the needs of those lawyers entering practices in which they will serve the business community than to the needs of' those entering practices in which they will provide legal services to individual clients. The transition from law school into individual practice or relatively   unsupervised positions in small offices, both public and private, presents special problems which the law schools and the organized bar must address. MacCrate p. 47

 

(E)stimates of the percentage of lawyers who practice solo or in small firms of five or less have generally been in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 percent. There also, of course, have been many lawyers working in government services and within corporations. As Talbot D'Alemberte (former ABA President) has said, "So we have designed this enterprise to train people to think like law professors or to go to large law firms that say they will train the law graduates. That's not what they do. Our students go to government offices, to small law firms - many become sole practitioners.MSL p. 157

 

8. THE UNWARRANTED HIGH COST TO ATTEND LAW SCHOOL CREATES ENORMOUS DEBT AND GREAT PRESSURE TO TAKE HIGH SALARY POSITIONS WHICH PREDICTABLY RESULT IN CAREER DISSATISFACTION

 

Law schools ...have "participated fully.., in the runaway increase in costs.... (From) 1956 ... the median budget increased by 4,700 percent ..to 1990...although the consumer price index  increased only 500 percent.. and though law school enrollment would not seem to have increased more than 400 percent... Dean White, the ABA's Consultant, attributes the staggering increases to such factors as .... the transfer of numerous tasks from law faculty to administrators whose positions were created to relieve the faculty of responsibility. MSL p. 243

 

Another reason for the sustained growth in costs ...is that faculty members..., do not do work that contributes to meeting the needs and goals of their institutions, but instead concentrate exclusively on personal career advancement, often for the purpose of trying to garner more lucrative offers from other schools. Focussing solely on self, faculty members do not participate in their schools administrative work and teach as little as possible, all of which increases academia's costs by making it necessary to hire more administrators and teachers.... MSL p. 240

 

Law schools ...can no longer financially support their traditional research libraries. Law schools spent 189.2 percent more on their libraries in the 1987-88 academic year than a decade earlier ... more than double the rate of general inflation for the period...And since the money, to pay for such increases had to come from somewhere, tuitions in that decade also rose at a rate far exceeding inflation. They are still rising. MSL p. 397

 

Clinical costs in fact rose more slowly during that period (1977 to 1991) than did any other   segment of the law school budget. MacCrate p. 249

 

  

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)

 

 

 

When the U.S. News & World Report issued its ranking of law schools in March, 1990, I drafted a letter criticizing one major defect in its analysis; i.e., failing to include as a criterion the extent to which the law school ensures that its graduates fulfill the legal profession's obligation to serve the legal needs of the public. I never sent the letter but, as I reread it, I was not surprised as I realized that most of it was still relevant and current. I decided to post it with edits such as raising the starting salary at BigLaw from $70,000. I reconsidered because I thought that you might want to be aware of how much change is needed in the education provided by law schools and how little progress has been made in the last 20 years. 

 

To what extent does your rating chart perpetuate or create the crisis in public interest law? To what extent will schools try to conform to your criteria? To what extent will students in colleges choose law schools based on the criteria which you use? To what extent will law schools continue to encourage the kind of results that will be defined as success?

 

If the criteria of the best law school is the one carrying out its responsibility to the public to ensure that its graduates fulfill the obligation to serve the legal needs of the public, the order may have to be reversed. We can't be saying that society won.

 

Studies, statements and articles all indicate that anywhere from ninety to ninety-seven percent of the public cannot afford legal services for their housing, health, employment,   education or family legal problems. We are left at the present time with a situation best described by Lloyd Cutler, in 1980, and still  appropriate, when 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."

 

A recent ABA study found that legal services and all pro bono programs provide representation to the disadvantaged in only one of every fourteen of their problems.   THE NET RESULT IS THAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM SERVES WELL ONLY THE EQUIVALENT OF ABOUT SIX MILLION PEOPLE AND LEAVES OUT OF THE JUSTICE SYSTEM ABOUT 244,000,000. As Derek Bok noted in 1982, "The blunt inexcusable fact is that this nation, which prides itself on efficiency and justice, has developed a legal system that is the most expensive in the world, yet cannot manage to protect the rights of most of its citizens."

 

There is a vast need for lawyers in this society to represent the millions unable to afford to seek economic or social justice. I usually equate the word "success' as a triumph or a victory. If that is your intention, are you implying that the schools with the highest rating have the most victories? If so, it is important to know who won and perhaps find out who lost.

 

In the explanation of "Placement" in your March 19, 1990, edition you state, "To the student, the value of a professional degree often is determined by its worth on the job market." Some describe this as the ability to be able to go someplace that is good. Others think of a professional school as a place to go to become good. For many that  I met in the years that I directed  public interest career planning at Harvard Law School,     the value  of the degree is the skills and knowledge they obtained enabling them to find work with significant responsibility and the opportunity to do something to better   society, to solve some of its terrible problems, to help people truly needing legal services who without them would not have access to the legal system, to obtain a feeling of self-worth, to find satisfaction, to be part of the movement for social and economic justice,  while at the same time having a significant amount of control and autonomy in making   decisions about matters that are important to their lives.

 

Are there many law students who feel this way - who would like to use their legal education to help individuals in the personal plight problems they face in their daily lives,  in health, housing, education, employment, family and children, environment and discrimination? In a 1988 Harvard Law School survey students were asked why they came to law school.  The responses mentioned most frequently (40%) were intellectual stimulation and the pursuit of public service careers. My independent research indicated that 40% of each class wanted to pursue public interest careers and 40% did in fact attend public interest workshops and/or devote substantial time to these areas either during the  summer or in a clinical course.   What they want from the law school is interested, experienced, involved and concerned faculty, staff, alumni/ae who will support them in their desire to pursue careers serving the legal needs of the public generally and specifically, provide them with individual career and job guidance.

 

During the 80's a small number of employers - large law firms - wooed and "won" the services of almost 90% of those law students graduating from the most selective law schools. After a first year in which students are consumed with learning to think like a lawyer, they often find a position for the first summer and immediately upon the return to law school are faced with the on-campus interviewing process in which a number of very large law firms, representing a tiny percentage of those in our society, spend millions of dollars and inundate law schools with interviewers overwhelming and often, in fact, becoming the Placement system at most of these schools. The appearance on the campus of this small number of employers, not at all representative of the wide range of legal employers, often convinced students that they represented the world of law practice.

 

Because these firms monopolized the visible system and offered large sums of money, professional brochures and Broadway tickets, students, without the life experience needed to make a sophisticated analysis of their real financial needs or how to balance issues of income with career goals and life satisfaction, were often convinced that because they were in debt for `lots of money' they needed to earn lots of money.  Many students twisted, distorted and give up their beliefs, values and ideals to fit the perceived needs of these employers. Students who did not believe all that was being presented to them were not being provided with sufficient information about other options. 

 

Public Interest and small firms were left out of the hiring process. Those who found out were astounded to learn that only 15% of those who practiced law were in law firms with 10 or more lawyers and that more than half of all practicing lawyers are sole practitioners. Most students were pressured by forces all around them, faculty, staff, other students, family and friends to take jobs with these employers. The higher the salary the greater the victory.

 

A week before graduation, Lillian came in to see me and said "Ron, would you do me a    favor. If you see me with my parents at the graduation reception, would you please sit down and explain to them that it is acceptable for a Harvard Law School student to graduate and not have a job? Lillian knew that she wanted to work on Capitol Hill and that the only way to get a position there was to immediately respond to the notices. To do so, you had to be living in DC which she did after graduation and did find a position in October. The last I knew she was involved on the national level with issues of significant concern to women. Having not found her position until four months after graduation, she would be an example of a placement "failure".

 

After being courted by these firms in the fall of their second year, the decision is made on December 15. They then take the job in the summer and, in the boom times, ninety percent would return with offers of permanent employment. There is then the opportunity to interview in the fall of the third year. About half of the students accepted the offer from the summer employer and another half took offers from another firm they interviewed. For most students, their involvement with law school ends as they begin their second year.

 

In a recent recommendation for someone who also realized that the kind of position he wanted would not be available until after he graduated, I wrote "It is hard to imagine the stress involved in facing your peers every day - almost all of whom are "winners" - they struggled to get into the "best" law school and have not "won the prize" - $70,000 to start at the biggest firm in . . (select a city).  Many question your abilities and value when you don't have (or it is that you can't get?) a job."

 

Every year only about 5% of the graduates took public interest positions similar to the situation during the past decade at most highly selective law schools - over 90% of each  graduating class taking positions, either immediately or after a judicial clerkship, with large law firms representing commercial institutions - 1% of the population.

 

Is this a successful law school in the placement area? That depends on what the role of the law school is. If its goal is to survive financially, then channeling students to large  firms based on earned income potential and wealthy and contributing alumni/ae is a sign of success. If the goal is to provide equal access to the justice system, it has lost. If the goal is to provide a legal training and education for the students to enable them to find satisfaction in their careers, it has lost.

 

I would argue that the best school may be the school that is the most concerned and has the most substantial interest in what students do with their legal education - the one that provides students with the best preparation to take positions from which they will derive satisfaction - the one that recognizes the incredible dissatisfaction of its alumni/ae and the depth of the anguish of so many who feel that their careers and their lives are devoted to trivial pursuits. I would argue that the best law school is the one that takes most seriously its responsibility to provide lawyers to the society in such a way that there is equal access to the justice system - the one that says that the present situation in which almost all of this society cannot afford legal services is an abomination and a tragedy - the one that says that the responsibility for this lies primarily in the hands of the law schools and that they need to do all within their power to ensure that careers in human services, public interest and government are a realistic possibility for all those students who seek them.

 

The role of the law schools and the legal profession in this crisis is to state that there primary obligation is to the students and society - to let students and alumni/ae know that there are innumerable reasonable alternative options and to stop consciously or unconsciously acting as though their primary obligation is to serve the needs of the large law firms.

 

There needs to be strong support for and encouragement for students early in the first year to use the counseling and other services in the Career Services office. A student can not know about his or her options in the world of the practice of law without guidance. Many students are not interested in working for large businesses in large cities and it is not in the society's best interests that they all do so. Very little in the way of career planning is done in the fall when it is needed.   Time can only be devoted to serving the true needs of the large firms and what "appeared" to be the desires of the students. Very  few, of course, had thought when they came to law school with a vision of sitting in a library for two years focused on Count 24 of the complaint in real estate deal gone sour. The staff had very little time and very little resources and very little support from the law school faculty and deans. What they do is to sacrifice the opportunity to provide meaningful career planning services.

 

There should be an examination of a student's  interests, skills, values and options before the search for a summer job begins - the  opportunity to discover organizations, the ones most appropriate for them, in -small towns, in small law firms, in many small public interest and government agencies. In the fall of the second year students would begin the process by evaluating the previous summer's experience. All on-campus interviewing would be moved to a time later in the academic year. No one law school which wants to improve its ranking in your survey would do so because the students at other schools would get the jobs being offered by those employers leading to a lower "score"  although  it would give government, public interest and other small law firms the opportunity to interview since the present system excludes those not aware of their hiring needs one year in advance. Without change the recruiting system will continue to be operated by and for the benefit of the large law firms.

 

The law school must also take responsibility for the fact that many generalizations about    law  practice remain  unchallenged  and that very little support is given to the study of the realities of the practice of law,   Commonly heard statements include "Work in large firms is intellectually stimulating and important and one receives the best training there",   "Grades are very important in obtaining a 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 employee rather than going out and creating your own institution", Every one of these statements contains flaws. Each deserves to be talked about and treated with the respect given to cases in the classroom.

 

At least one study and the perception of students at many law schools is that the faculty role in this area can best be described as mostly indifference and lack of concern or interest in what students do after law school. I cannot recall one time in my six years that   a member of the faculty contacted me for any public interest career information. Not until the faculty make the lack of diversity in law graduates' career choices and the lack of access of the public to the legal system priorities is there likely to be a substantive change within the law schools.

 

Law schools have an obligation to do all within its power to help make careers in public service a reality for those wanting them. The law school has a stake in the career decisions and the career paths of its students, graduates and alumni/ae to the students, the legal profession and to society. If a substantial number of its graduates are dissatisfied about their careers and if a substantial proportion of the legal profession is failing to provide services to nearly ninety five per cent of the population, if no one goes to work helping those with low and moderate income with the legal problems they face in their daily lives, such as health, housing, education and family law, the law school is failing in a major aspect of its mission and is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the search for equal access to the justice system and the search for social and economic justice.

 

If the criteria of the best law school is the one that is providing the training and education for its graduates sufficient to allow them to find professional fulfillment, there may be no successes. It is difficult to fully relate the depths of the crisis. Every day for the last six  years I heard from 1) frustrated students facing pressure from peers, the law school, financial institutions, family and society in general who wanted to use their legal education to help those in desperate need of legal services (who did not do so on graduation), 2) anguished alumni/ae practicing law in a corporate law firm wanting to leave, doing work that was, at best, boring and unsatisfying, and at worst, offensive and contrary to their deepest beliefs, not understanding how they ended up in this position wanting to know how they could make a transition into a public interest, human services or government position, or 3) an overworked and underpaid lawyer with a public interest law organization providing legal services to a  terribly underrepresented group of  people in an area of basic human necessities like housing or health asking if there were  any students available to work for two months in the summer to alleviate some of the strain.

 

A substantial number of practicing lawyers are totally dissatisfied with their work, their profession and their lives. A recent ABA survey found that 66% of all practicing lawyers would change jobs if they had a reasonable alternative option. I recently spoke at a program sponsored by the Massachusetts Law School Consortium and the Massachusetts Bar Association on "Changing Directions: Career Options for Lawyers".    A staff person for the MBA stated that she had never had so many telephone inquiries about a panel. Many were turned away  because the program  was sold  out a week  efore the program and over 150  showed up to find out how to search for "alternative positions for lawyers both within the legal profession and in other fields,"

 

The law school also has an obligation to respond to the voices of its dissatisfied and disillusioned alumni/ae and to provide more resources such as the formation of a public interest  alumni/ae committee which  could create a public interest career advisors network. With such assistance many would be made aware of public interest options and some would take them and find satisfaction in the law rather then leaving it,

 

At the present time, the current slump in the economy has led to fewer large firm employers visiting schools and fewer positions. This should not be seen as a crisis.       The crisis occurred in the 80's in the days of placement success as described in the article.

The present situation is an opportune time to respond to the crisis and many law schools  are doing so. Many have created "Career Services Offices" to replace the "Placement Office" - offices where the emphasis is on the students, their hopes, their visions and their dreams of how they want to use their legal education. Law schools are creating joint task forces including not just the career services staff but deans, faculty, other staff, students and alumni/ae to talk and create and implement programs to support the students pursuing public interest opportunities. Programs that make students aware of over 100 exciting and rewarding options they have - public interest law centers, legal services,   district attorneys, small law firms that represent individuals in "personal plight" matters, public interest advocacy groups where there are no lawyers and the knowledge that one   does not have to become an employee - that one can establish a practice or a non-profit organization. Programs that provide them with information about all these options,   programs that inform them about how to choose and search for opportunities appropriate  for them rather than relying on being "placed" in ones that are not, clinical opportunities to practice law while they are in law school,  and sufficient staff to ensure that they can have meaningful individual guidance. Programs that teach and educate students that it is not enough to be able to go someplace that is good. Law school should be seen as a place where you receive an education in order to become good.

 

 

For many years I have taken excerpts and quotes from the powerful devastating criticism of legal education called The MacCrate Report.

 

The official name for it is Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum, Report of The Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap, American Bar Associatioin, Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, July, 1992.

 

While the report is 414 pages long, one way to summarize it is by saying that the task force stated that there are ten fundamental skills that a lawyer needs to practice law and that the law schools teach two of them poorly. There are four fundamental values of the legal profession and while the report does not analyze the performance of the law schools, there is evidence that the law schools do not teach them well either.

 

Today, I scanned in the section entitled "The Need for Informed Choice" and am posting it here. 

 

If you are considering attending law school or if you are planning to start law school in the fall, you must read this.

 

If you are in law school, if you are faculty and staff at a law school, if you graduated from a law school and if you care about the future of the legal profession, it is important that you read this.

 

Realize that this was written in 1992 long before the current economic downturn.

 

Your comments are invited and welcome.

 

Ron  

 

  

B. The Need for Informed Choice

 

There are three critical stages of decision-making en route to becoming a lawyer: 1) Perhaps the most significant, whether to enter the legal profession at all; 2) which law school to choose; and 3) what career path to enter after law school. Each occasion should be a time for careful reflection and self-assessment based upon sufficient information to make an informed choice. Far too often these decisions are made without sufficient information or thought. Many common factors affect each of these decisions. The three stages of decision-making are parts of an ongoing process of self-development.

 

Many factors influence each individual's decision. When exploring the possibility of becoming a lawyer, choosing a law school, and finding a practice niche, individuals pursue and rely on a variety of information. They may seek advice from friends, relatives, guidance counselors, professors, lawyers, the popular press, career guidebooks, magazine articles, law school bulletins, and other sources. The consequences flowing from their decisions are important to their career satisfaction, to the legal profession, and to society. Timely and accurate information about the legal profession and the function of law schools as the gateway to the profession helps prepare prospective applicants for a future in law and may help prevent some from becoming locked into a career from which they draw no real satisfaction, for which they are poorly suited, and in which they perform marginally. Such individuals need access to comprehensive and objective information.

 

The 1990 Report on the State of the Legal Profession, issued by the ABA Young Lawyers Division, presents evidence suggesting that many may have entered the profession with inadequate information regarding a life in the law. While interest in law is at a peak, the survey found that lawyer dissatisfaction had risen.6  It was noted that, since 1984, "across the board, regardless of job setting, there has been a dramatic 20% reduction in the number of lawyers indi-

 

5. See BYERS, SAMUELSON & WILLIAMSON, LAWYERS IN TRANSITION-PLANNING A  LIFE IN THE LAW 1988).

6. Career dissatisfaction may not be a new phenomenon. The 1986 Vogt study, supra note 3, at 10, found that many lawyers who had received their degrees several years prior to the study were no longer practicing law. It may be inferred that career dissatisfaction was a factor in some cases. see also, Kaye, Free of the Law, HARVARD MAGAZINE (Jan. . Feb. 1992), at 60.

 

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cating that they are very satisfied, accompanied by an increase in dissatisfaction." The report also shed light on how expectations had changed between entering law school and graduation.

 

Career dissatisfaction is not exclusive to law; much is heard about unhappiness in medicine, accounting, teaching, and other professions. Many law school applicants are seeking career changes from other professions because their initial professional pursuits have not met their expectations. It seems clear that better information about career characteristics is needed at the beginning.

 

Prospective law students generally are not knowledgeable about the profession: what certain jobs entail; what different paths for entry into the profession may be; how students should prepare for their careers; and how law schools may differ in the preparation they offer. Law students tend to be passive consumers of legal education; they simply assume that the law school experience adequately prepares them for practice. To the extent that this is not accurate, efforts should be made to inform students how to identify the skills they will need to be competent attorneys, and how to enable themselves to take an active role in their education by seeking appropriate training for those skills.

 

Law school administrators know the strengths and weaknesses of their own institutions and should be candid in discussing them with applicants. Catalogs and application materials should provide the kinds of information that will enable candidates to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. It has become routine, for example, to talk about skills training and clinical opportunities, but there may be no mention of enrollment restrictions nor of the chances of being accepted into these courses. Information may also be incomplete with regard to writing  opportunities, seminars, and courses that are likely to be of particular interest to certain groups of students. Schools could be the source of considerable information about such concerns, about the pressures of law school and practice, about the kinds of work their graduates do, and about the financial and personal implications of different legal careers.

 

A review of catalogs and entries in the Official Guide to U.S. Law Schools, published by the Law School Admission Council in cooperation with the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools, provides evidence that schools are not doing a good job distinguishing themselves from one another. Many appear to be all things to all people. This is unfortunate,  ecause it prevents law school applicants from making intelligent and informed choices as to which law schools would be good matches for them.

 

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The provision of high-quality information at an early stage would be a significant step in this  direction.

 

The perceived lack of adequate information coming from law schools themselves has resulted in a plethora of materials purporting to fill the vacuum. These include articles, books, and a variety of law school ratings which have attracted considerable attention. Many legal educators have commented on the defects in these materials, especially the ratings, but little has been done to  address the underlying problem. It is now time to do so.

 

With regard to the selection of a law school, the following kinds of information would be helpful to a prospective student:

   a   Admissions data

   b.  Tuition, costs, and financial aid data

   c.  Enrollment and graduation data

   d.  Composition of faculty and administration

   e.  Curricular offerings and class sizes

   f.  Library resources

   g.  Physical plant

   h.  Housing availability

   i.  Financial resources available to support educational program

j.        Placement and bar passage data7

 

This list is not exhaustive; there is much more information that one could seek in selecting a law school. A good deal of that data is submitted annually to the ABA Consultant on Legal Education's office by every law school approved by the American Bar Association. It is considered confidential and is not released. The Task Force recommends that, to the extent that such information is  relevant, accurate, and useful in decision-making, the current policy of absolute confidentiality should be reconsidered.

 

Other steps could include:

   * Distributing to all LSAT registrants a statement indicating that there are differences between law schools, describing broadly what those differences are, explaining that schools' reputations do differ, and providing relevant information from the front of the Official Guide to U.S. Law Schools.

·         Sending to each LSAT registrant a letter from the ABA and/or AALS and/or LSAC outlining the kinds of ques

 

7. This list is taken from a February 1992 draft interpretation of a proposed ABA

Standard for Approval of Law Schools, which would require the release by a law

school of "basic consumer information."

 

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tions an applicant should ask admissions personnel in order to obtain the kinds of information upon which to base a decision.

 

Expanding the ABA's Annual Review of Legal Education  and the Official Guide's key facts, providing some of the information listed above. These materials might be mailed to LSAT registrants.

 

With regard to career path information, there are various helpful sources of information on the legal profession which identify key factors that should be considered by prospective law students when making the decision to become a lawyer.8 Such books profile attorney lifestyles in different practice settings and generally describe law school and the nature of legal education, but the  subject matter today is so immense that any one of these books can serve only as a starting point in one's exploration of law as a career. There is clear need for a more comprehensive way in which to address today's diverse and changing legal profession and the practice of law in its myriad settings. This suggests that the ABA give consideration to producing a regularly updated volume of  materials on careers in the law. Such information, augmented by current data available from law school placement professionals, could be extreLmely helpful to those considering law as a career.

 

Most prelaw counseling takes place only after in dividuals have already decided to become lawyers and are seeking information to assist them in selecting the law schools to which to apply. The need  for advice at an earlier time in the decision-making process is apparent.

 

The organized bar's programs in primary and secondary school of law-related education provide useful instruction at an early stage of choosing one's career direction; but greater attention should be given by the bar to providing guidance during the undergraduate years on the factors to be considered in selecting law as a career.

 

We suggest that during undergraduate years the following considerations should be brought to the attention of prospective law students:

              * prelegal education is crucial to the development of future

 

8. See, for example, Susan J. Bell, Full Disclosure: Do You Really Want to Be A awyer?, ABA Young Lawyers Division (1989); V. Countryman, T. Finman, & T.J. Schneyer, The Lawyer in Modern Society, 2nd Ed. (1976); T. Ehrlich & 0. Hazard, Going to Law School? Readings on a Legal Career (1975); Eve Spangler, Lawyers for Hire, Salaried Professionals at Work (1986). Cf. F. UTLEY & GA. MUNNEKE, FROM LAW STUDENT TO LAWYER (1984), from the ABA Career Series, which is published as A Career Planning Manual" for students while in law school.

 

 

 

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lawyers, As early as 1953, the AALS issued a Statement on Prelegal Education, calling attention to the quality of undergraduate instruction that AALS believed fundamental to the later attainment of legal competence, and to the fact that quality of prelaw education was important to the development of basic skills and insights needed in the study and practice of law. The Statement pointed to the importance of:

         * comprehension;

         * oral and written expression;

         * critical understanding of the human institutions and values with which the law deals;

         * creative power in thinking.

 

The AALS Statement's emphasis on communication, oral and written, is underlined by the recent ABF survey on legal education and the profession, "Assessing the New Generation of Lawyers,"       Appendix B. The two most important skills as defined by beginning practitioners are oral and written communication, but most of these practitioners do not believe that they learned these skills primarily in law school. Jt is important for them to come to law school as prepared as possible in these skills. Prospective law students should be encouraged to review the AALS Statement when planning their undergraduate studies.

 

In addition, we point out that the ABA Special Committee for a Study of Legal Education identified in 1980 some specific areas of the undergraduate curriculum which can be helpful to would-be       lawyers. It is also important that undergraduates know that selection of a law school can significantly impact one's career options. For example, attendance at a "national" school may enhance one's chances of entering large firm practice, but may discourage entering practice in other settings.

 

Course selection in law school may be important to certain law firm interviewers, but generally does not open or foreclose later opportunities. Students may make curriculum choices with an eye   toward honing particular skills, producing the best possible gradepoint average, passing a bar examination, coming into contact with the best teachers, or pleasing potential future employers. These different goals are likely to require somewhat different approaches to curriculum planning.

 

Finally, the Task Force recommends that its Statement of Fundamental Lawycring Skills and Professional Values be made available to prospective and entering law students to inform them  about the skills and values they will be expected to possess as lawyers.  This will help them to seek appropriate educational opportunities both in law school and beyond to develop these skills and values.

                         

Here's excerpts from a message I sent last December responding to a CNNMoney.com article about the difficulty law school graduates are having finding a job.

Hi Jessica Dickler,

As you read what I have written, consider that for decades the percentage of those who are dissatisfied with their careers in the law has been extremely high - higher than that of most occupations.

SOME ISSUES RAISED BY THE STORY

There are SO many other stories contained within your article about the tightening of the legal job market; for example:

"Employment opportunities for legal professionals have traditionally been plentiful - and lucrative." To what extent did these legal professionals want this employment? What did these positions offer other than being "lucrative"?

"And last year was the sector's strongest showing in 20 years, with 92% of graduates finding jobs in their field, according to the National Association for Law Placement. But that's beginning to change." What does it mean that 92% found jobs "in their field"? Are there majors in law school? Do law schools prepare their graduates to practice in a field? What do law school surveys show about what law students want to do when they graduate?

"Which means the 150,031 students who were in enrolled in law school last year face a job market that is contracting for the first time in recent history." Most lawyers practice in firms of 5 or less lawyers. Do we know that that market is contracting or is it primarily in the large law firms?

"That means recent graduates not only face experienced competition for limited jobs." There may be limited "jobs". What are the law schools doing about that? Did their graduates want "jobs"? Don't they want to be on their own? Will law schools begin to train lawyers to practice law so they can represent clients upon graduation?

"but also hefty student loan bills. Recent grads are going to have a hard time," What are law schools going to do about these hefty student loans? What are the law schools doing to reduce the cost of law school? Why is the cost increasing? What are the additional services being provided that justify the increases? Why don't they simply eliminate the wasted third year and reduce the cost by one-third?

"Every day I send out resumes, both electronically and through the mail, and every day I receive responses that the law firms are not currently hiring, ..Roughly 300 resumes have landed me one job interview." Where did he learn that the way to find a position is by sending out mass mailings?

" 'I do think the jobs are out there, you just have to look harder for them. You have to dig,' she said." Is that what is known as career planning? "Dig"? Is that the same thing as reviewing your history, your goals and your values, looking at your options, narrowing down to the one that will give you the most satisfaction, finding out who practices in that area, marketing and promoting yourself to that network and accepting a position whether that is a"job" or a position as an independent contractor or sole practitioner?

HOW LAW SCHOOLS FAIL THEIR STUDENTS

After practicing law for 20 years representing individuals and developing programs to deliver legal services to low and middle income people, in 1984 I became the public interest advisor at Harvard Law School. While there and while working with career staff at law schools around the country, I came to the conclusion that traditional law schools provided a service to large law firms and the law schools while ignoring the needs of its students and the public. From surveys I learned that few law students entered law school hoping to be associates at large law firms but year after year law schools "funneled" their graduates to these law firms. The law schools accomplished this by:

Failing to teach law students the skills they needed to practice law (the MacCrate report says that lawyers need 10 skills and law schools teach only 2 and don't teach them that well);

Failing to teach them the values of the legal profession; i.e., the obligation to promote justice and the obligation to take positions consistent with their personal values and professional goals;

Failing to teach them the wide range of options they had in the practice of law; i.e., not letting them know that over 66% of all practicing lawyers were in firms of 5 or less lawyers;

Selling the job placement system to large law firms through the highly negative on-campus interview program while at the same time;

Failing to teach them career planning: the process whereby students look at their goals and their values, explore their options, make a decision and then look for appropriate positions where they are likely to find career satisfaction; and

Charging exorbitant amounts for tuition for minimal services (recognizing that they do not teach their students what they need to practice law) and continuing to increase tuition (while most agree that the cost of law school could immediately be reduced by one-third by getting rid of the useless third year of law school.)

So we have an "educational" system that starts with at least half of its students interested in representing individuals or representing small businesses or hoping to be entrepreneurs. Through a three year program, it fails to teach its students what they need to know, puts them heavily in debt, pressures them to take positions in large law firms that for many are boring, meaningless and incredibly time-consuming. The law firms are happy because they get laborers. The law schools are happy because the loans get paid. The graduates are unhappy and the middle and low income members of the public get no one to help them with their personal plight issues.

Have you ever looked at the annual ranking of law schools by the US News and World Report? If you do, it will take no time to realize that there is NO category - NO column ranking a law school based on which one best prepares its students to practice law!!!!

Since I left Harvard Law School in 1990, I have been an adviser to thousands of law students and unhappy and dissatisfied graduates. The one characteristic most of them share is a lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem. Their "expertise" is narrow and they know of no options. They feel trapped.

I invite you to contact me if you would like to discuss any professional development issue relating to lawyers.

Thank you for your attention to these issues.

Ron Fox

Ronald W. Fox, Esquire
Career Planning for Lawyers
(781) 639-2322

Jordan Furlong has posted an article in his blog entitled "The Crossed Purposes of Legal Education" about the law schools responsibility for the gap between what prospective law students imagine about the profession and the reality they find when they enter the legal workforce.

He refers to an article in Forbes describing "the great college hoax" drawing a comparison between professional schools and subprime mortgage hawkers inclluding misguided easy-money policies, half-truths exaggerating the value of its product adding "A few law schools deliberately obfuscate the rewards of a legal career, but too many more finesse or downplay the reality of the debt versus the earning power of a law degree." 

 

He goes on to add

 

"This is an embarrassment, said the panellists at an AALS Committee on Research Program, the podcast of which is available at Tax Law Prof. The strongest words came from New York Law School Dean Richard Matasar: "We should be ashamed of ourselves.  We own our students' outcomes. We took them. We took their money. We live on their money .... And if they don't have a good outcome in life, we're exploiting them. It's our responsibility to own the outcomes of our institutions." Southwestern Law Dean Bryant Garth added: "This group [the AALS] has stonewalled completely and killed any kind of real consumer information for 20 or 30 years, and that's what made U.S. News own this particular enterprise."

I then posted this Comment

 

Hi Jordan

 

As you said,"Law schools are involved in one industry - the granting of legal degrees."

 

But here's what Stanford Law School's mission is::

 

"Despite these differences, 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 the world."

 

I think that the Law School Industry should prepare students to practice law and to serve the public.

 

It is for that reason that I have started my campaign to be appointed the Czar of the Law School Industry.... 

 

I do have an opening for campaign manager if anyone is interested.

 

Ron

 

PS I agree with Jared and have proposed for years that we work to pass legislation authorizing apprenticeship in all states that don't allow it at present (I think that seven states do.)

I thought about it and then went back and posted this additional comment:

 

I forgot to add that, based on my not having heard one member of one faculty in the last twenty-five years being able to give me a reasonable justification of why law students  should spend a third year at his or her law school, as part of my Law School Industry Czar campaign, I will soon issue a proposed Ukase (the edict of a Czar) that will eliminate the third year of law school, immediately reducing the cost to attend by one-third.