Should we trust our modern legal education to an ancient Greek?
Socrates has a deserved place among the top thinkers in human history. In fact, if one were to put together a list the top 10 thinkers of Western Civilization, he would undoubtedly make the cut. But is this 2,500-year-old Greek destroying the lives of modern law students?
In law school, of course, our primary contact with Socrates is through the Socratic method. The idea behind the method is to draw the answer out of the person who seeks to learn the answer. This is done through logic — connecting up the information that is already in the student’s head (say, for example, from reading a slew of cases in a text book) and following it like a bread crumb trail to the answer.
The problem — at least for modern law students — is how enticing the Socratic method and the theoretical underpinnings of the law are. So much so, that it has been easy for law professors, accreditors and the elite of the profession to fall in love with this element of legal education. This love affair has come, quite unfortunately, at the expense of the practical.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not dissing the benefits of a classical education. In fact, I have four years of Latin training and a minor in Western Civilization under my belt. But with the legal market being what it is, perhaps law schools should be thinking more about simple business survival skills. Many new law grads, with debt loads at or approaching six figures, are forced into practicing on their own in a flooded legal-services market without so much as knowing where the local courthouses are.
What put this in my head was a post on JDs Rising — Minnesota Lawyer’s new blog for new lawyers – on some of the poster’s perceived inadequacies in his own legal education experience. The post was written by Daniel Koewler, a 2007 University of Minnesota Law School grad.
“I work in a small firm, and … I spend as much time marketing as I do appearing in court, or preparing legal briefs, which makes me wonder why I received no education on something that occupies half of my time as a lawyer,” he writes.
Koewler goes on to indict law schools for their complicity in the struggles of many young lawyers:
“In a legal community where top-performing law students cannot find any type of legal employment, where many new members of the bar have no choice but to start their own solo practices without even knowing where to begin, and where too many lawyers are fighting for too few clients, it appears that our legal education system has struck upon a great way to strangle the legal community.”
It’s an excellent post, and you should read the whole thing. I know if I talked with the local law schools (or other ones nationally), I’d get an answer that they have added this or that clinical program, or this or that practice-building skills programs. However, such programs at most schools still strike me largely as added ons in a three-year otherwise largely theoretical classical legal education.
Perhaps our current legal employment crisis and the problems of new grads make this an excellent time to reconsider legal education from the bottom up, Are we trying to produce classically trained thinkers — or are we trying to produce folks who can scratch out a living in a highly competitive legal marketplace. Such global change cannot come from individual law schools — which will find their ranking drop or accreditation pulled if they stray too far off the reservation. This would have to be a global change, likely starting with the American Bar Association accreditation process.
It’s likely to be a long journey, fraught with many difficult decisions about the essence of a legal education. But it seems like a good time to start.
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Then should medical schools also teach classes on resume drafting, job interviewing, and interpersonal communication? I would prefer to know my surgeon didn’t waste her time in med. school learning how to get a job but instead focused her efforts on how to put me under the knife successfully.
Also, which courses would you recommend law schools cut in order to fit in “business survival” or “law firm marketing” course work? I don’t know anyone who would want to extend the 3 year length just to prepare for getting and maintaining a job – especially, when the alternative is actually going out there and doing it (or at least trying) and learning from one’s own mistakes and successes.
For Mr. Koewler, I would recommend that he should have studied business, marketing, and a variety of other disciplines in undergrad and in his free time leading up to law school, so he would be better prepared for managing his small firm and increasing his client base once he got out. (Alternatively, he should make the time to do it now – as I, and many attorneys I know, do.)
That said, the fact that some attorneys decide to study philosophy (or some other topic not readily applicable to running a small business) in undergrad (as I did), while at the same time other attorneys choose to apply themselves to more pragmatic disciplines such as business, marketing, and computer science (as my brother did), is not a sufficient reason to change a 2,500 year old, successful way of thinking. Would I do things differently if I were given the chance to do my undergraduate studies over again? Certainly some things I would. But should law schools be trying to take up the slack for students who made decisions they regret now that they are in the “real world?” After all, are law schools trying to create employment robots or are they trying to create the greatest intellectuals the world has ever known?
I don’t think many individuals get out of medical school with no idea how to practice medicine (particularly after their residencies). On the other hand, most people get out of law school without a good idea how to practice law.
I don’t think that Mr. Koewler was complaining that he had not been taught how to find jobs (if they existed in sufficient numbers) through resume writing, networking, etc. — he was complaining that he had not been taught how to do the job during professional school. Would we accept a situation where doctors who had only learned through hypotheticals were in the situation where they had to open their own practices and start operating — I doubt it.
I was only facetiously picking on Socrates, who, in fact, had no idea that his method was going to be employed in legal education at all — let alone in an as of yet unknown land that would eventually become the United States of America.
In point of fact, Socrates could probably have benefitted from a more “practical” legal education. As far as I know, he only served as a lawyer once, representing himself against a charge that his teachings had corrupted the youth of Athens. He received the death penalty.
I agree with the idea that law school is very theoretical. That said, I attended law school out of state, and I know that most practical knowledge I would have wished to have gained in law school–and I’m thinking more about how the local court systems work and where to find specific information on local laws–would not have been directly applicable to my practice in Minnesota.
I think your analogy to the medical residency program is fitting. A legal “residency” in Minnesota would have been very useful, but as an industrious lawyer, I’ve worked on setting up those opportunities for myself. And really, the continuing education program in this state shares a wealth of practical knowledge and has complimented my theoretical education quite well.
Good points Shawn.
I’m not advocating for the teaching of more local law and procedures so much as more time spent on the developing practical survival skills for a lawyer. An appranticeship model would be far superior to an overconcentration on the theoretical — although I do like the theoretical training. Right now a legal education is more akin to a humanities PhD program than an entry-into-a-profession program. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for schools whom we pay $100K+ in tuition to to not rely on their grads gaining those professional (and business) skills on the job. Unless the grad winds up in an established firm, he/she is going to struggle mightily to make those debt payments while learning what they really need to know through trial and error.
I don’t blame the schools, but a system that discourages innovation by punishing schools that stray too far from the pack with loss of accreditation and/ or low “rankings.” I think all four local schools have done what they can to address the deficiencies I describe within these restrictions — I just think something more radical is needed. I would like to see a system where from the outset you could open up a shop and be fine without needing adical amounts of additional training.
That said, there are plenty of ways for grads to learn practical and business skills after they graduate. Minnesota CLE, state and local bars are just a few. There are Internet resources (Lawyerist provides great tips, for example). Networking is important. Tossing a question out to peers or, better yet, a mentor is an excellent way to to get the real info you need.
Starting out lawyers in Minnesota are very lucky in one sense — the helpfulness of their fellow lawyers. Most of the bar wants you to suceed and will happily answer your questions or give you tips. The most important thing you can do as a starting out lawyer here is to reach out to and participate in the greater legal community.
But I suspect you already knew that. The above thoughts are more for the folks who don’t think to do what it sounds like you are already doing.