Reduce Credit Requirements

Reduce Credit Requirements

David Van Zandt^[각주:1]

Updated July 25, 2011, 11:40 AM

The cost of a legal education is driven by two significant factors. The first is demand for the education and the certification it makes possible. The second involves the requirements the American Bar Association imposes on law schools.

Practicing law in the United States almost always requires a juris doctor issued by a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, which allows one to sit for the bar examination in all states. A law license remains valuable because revenue from legal service will continue to grow as national and global economies become more complex and businesses are subjected to greater regulation. [Read More]

Jennifer555

Progressive in Republican Land

I disagree with Mr. Van Zandt's comment re: 80 credit hours. When I graduated from Georgetown in the mid 1970's, the average student took 32 credit hours per year, i.e. 96 credit hours. The classes were very difficult. All I did was study, and nothing else, for 3 years. I never saw any of the museums in Washington, and only had time to watch the Supreme Court once. I was very focused on taking real world, money making courses, not esoteric garbage the likes of which I see in some law school catalogs today. My diligence paid off, in the sense that I was well prepared for the work my post law school employers threw at me. If anything, I have a list of other difficult courses I didn't have time to take, and regret not having studied. Despite the rigor of my law school classes, I would have been useless to my employers, when I was young, without our state-law specialized treatises on the subjects in which I worked.

During my career, I spent about 20 years as a "training partner" for young lawyers. It was a tough job, because those kids knew very little of any use when then came out of law school, even though our law firms carefully scrutinized what classes they had taken in law school. My joke is that I've raised 2 children and 6 law clerks. At least half of those law clerks have made me very, very proud, the youngest one eventually becoming president of the bankruptcy bar association in the huge city where he practices. Now that one of my own children is preparing to attend law school, Mom-the-lawyer is no nonsense. My adult child will take all of the important courses, and skip the fluff. He will NOT simply take 80 hours of courses, instead of the 96 I expect of him. In fact, my list of courses he needs to take and master runs longer than 96 course hours. What Mr. Van Zandt misses in his commentary is that in most states, when a young lawyer passes the bar, they are expected to NOT be a danger to clients, in terms of only having a head full of mush and a sheepskin. State Bars expect young lawyers are expected to "know their stuff" in case the "kids" end up immediately representing clients, which is more and more frequently the case as America has built more and more law schools in the last 40 years, and as jobs where young lawyers can be supervised and trained become fewer. The Multistate Bar Exam is woefully inadequate as a test of whether young lawyers know the law of the state where they will be licensed. Similarly, the essay portion of the Bar Exam covers simplistic topics. So woe be unto a poor, innocent client who hires a young lawyer in a state with few if any useful practice treatises, let alone a law student who is lacking 16 hours of courses in topics which could make a life and death difference for a client, whether in terms of incarceration or financial disaster. As a former "training partner", if I had my druthers, law school would be 4 years of 16 credit semesters, with the last year entirely focused on the substantive and procedural law of the state where the student wanted to be licensed. That sounds like the Canadian Bars' procedure they call "articling" which appears to still be favored in Canada. Perhaps Mr. Van Zandt would like to do a research project on the percentage of Canadian lawyers under 10 years of practice who have malpractice claims against them, as compared to the number of malpractice claims against American lawyers under 10 years of practice.

July 22, 2011 at 9:48 p.m.

Gerry L. Spence

Jackson, Wyoming

Lawyers are the physicians of human rights. From that standpoint law schools do not train men and women to aid people in achieving justice. Students leave law school utterly unprepared to represent anyone in any sort of trial. In short, as representatives of the people they are nearly useless. They can neither speak or write the English language correctly or effectively. Their ability to empathize with their client has been driven from them by three years of study using archaic teaching methods taught by professors who, themselves, in most cases, are incompetents in any courtroom.

Moreover, the cost of trials has become so extraordinary that only the rich or those with massive injuries (who can give a percent of their injuries for their lawyer's fee,) can obtain a lawyer. The system is pathetically broken. Every honest lawyer and every observant judge knows it.

We must train trial lawyers who become human beings again after having had their humanness methodically extracted from them in law school by the zombies of the profession, their brain-locked law professors. These poor kids come staggering out of law school lost, unfamiliar with who they are, and who are unable to communicate and relate effectively to juries. We do not need to reduce the hours of legal training. We need to change the course of study so far as trial lawyers are concerned so that they emerge from law schools as caring persons who are competent to speak to juries. The goal of law schools must change. They must become determined to create a legal profession that is first charged with obtaining justice for ordinary people, not creating litigators for banks and insurance companies and the corporate mass to defeat the rights of ordinary citizens.

Gerry Spence

Chairman of the Board

Trial Lawyers' College

July 23, 2011 at 12:02 a.m.

DavidPLeibowitz

Chicago

The American Law School is hardly the only way lawyers are trained worldwide. In Continental Europe, where lawyers are trained under the Civil Law system, lawyers go to school to study law directly after high school. Their law and "undergraduate" studies are combined into one program. Then they must complete an apprenticeship in practice with a law office before they can take the bar. Whether this is better or worse is not the issue. However, it is different and seems to work in these societies. In Canada, lawyers must also "articulate" or take an apprenticeship before they can become fully licensed. For a long time, lawyers studied or "read the law" at law offices without going to school. Whether this would be effective today or not is debatable. Few lawyers really have the time to truly mentor an aspiring lawyer clerking in their office.

Law schools can do a lot better to teach practical lawyering skills such as really listening to clients, problem solving, negotiation, electronic evidence, trial advocacy. The old-school Socratic method is not all that helpful. The "third year" should best be put to teaching some of these real world lawyering skills. A lot more emphasis should be placed in internships and hands on work of lawyering in partnership with practicing attorneys.

July 22, 2011 at 9:50 p.m.

rossbacher9

Los Angeles, CA

Reducing standards is not an adequate response to academic institutions gouging their students, which is the real problem. It has been well known for years that the most efficient way for unscrupulous "universities' to become profitable is to start law schools with undercredentialed faculties with teaching loads that prevent both scholarship and adequate attention being available to students and too many students charged ridiculous tuitions admitted solely on the students' willingness to pay rather than their aptitude for the law. Of course, it is easier to advocate reducing standards than confronting the academic establishment on its hucksterism.

July 23, 2011 at 5:11 a.m

Alex

New York, NY

Dear NY Times,

It is with exasperated bewilderment that I write you ask how a prestigious, intelligent and historic publication such as yours could structure such a debate by inviting only law professors?! Where are the opinions of practicing attorneys and judges? Where are the opinions of law school graduates who are not practicing? Where are the opinions of purchasers of legal services?

Because of its poor structure, your debate misses the key issues - namely the fact that (a) law schools publish fraudulent and misleading career placement statistics to induce college graduates into applying, (b) that law professors are there because they could not or did not want to practice law, but still wanted to earn the six figure salaries of a lawyer, making them terrible teachers and (c) the aforementioned parasitism is made possible only because student loans are federally guaranteed and available to anyone with a pulse.

Really NY Times. Get your ship in order.

July 23, 2011 at 1:23 a.m.

Judy Olingy

Middleton, WI

Not one commentator gave a rationale for the three year program, or explained that it come into being at a time when an undergraduate degree was not required for admittance into law school. I taught at a well respected state law school for over 20 years. I sadly concluded that it primarily exists for the sake of the faculty, many of whom want to be “left alone to do their own work.” Consequently, there was too little attention paid to assisting students to become novice lawyers upon graduation for the benefit of the practicing bar, future clients and the taxpayers. Traditional law professors have a good gig: high salaries, flexible schedules, limited student engagement and summers off. There is little incentive for change from within. And, by the time most students catch on to how they are being neglected, despite the exorbitant cost they bear, they are in their third year and have checked out. I have concluded that the only real chance for change must come from outside pressures exerted by the Bar, and in the case of state law schools, the legislature and taxpayers. There must be demand for a shift in focus from the present “artist colony” mentality, that can disdain the practice of law, to a school that truly serves the students (the vast majority wants to practice) and their future clients. That, itself, will go a long way to improve the quality of the justice system.

July 23, 2011 at 2:58 a.m.

Doug Terry

Maryland, USA

This is a subject of considerable importance to me personally, because I had planned to go to law school without the intention of being a practicing attorney. When I did an undergrad research paper on legal education, the thought of law school vanished almost overnight. In the years since, I have seen more than ample evidence that legal education, as done in the US, cripples the mind for creative and analytical thinking and represents not an opening to the world, but a sharp closing. In fact, I once saw a quote by a well known attorney comparing it to brain washing.

In my own dealing with attorneys, I have found that many regard the degree as complete justification to do little work for the client and to collect big fees. If legal education is so good, so competitive and so worthy, why, oh, why, are there so many sub par lawyers out there? Is it because they mastered the dance (turning in required papers) without learning the source of the music? Is it because legal education, in sum, has very little to do with actually practicing law and is more concerned with weeding out future competition for lawyers already in the field?

While I am aware that this might be too broad a statement, my general view is that we are taking some of the sharpest minds in our nation and ruining them by putting on the straightjackets of precedent. We need bright thinkers who are capable of seeing beyond rules and regulations. For those who slog their way through the top schools, the only choice for 80% or more seems to be to make the big bucks serving corporate and other powerful interests.

The law is not some mysterious, magical thing that can only be understood or mastered by a few brilliant minds. Most of what lawyers do, day to day, has very little to do with actual law. Open up the process. One year of specific legal training combined with a master's degree in "something", like philosophy or sociology. Anything.

http://terryreport.com

July 23, 2011 at 1:23 a.m.

The Detroiter

Detroit, Michigan

Law school generally is a reprehensible scam. I learned no practical skills whatsoever in law school. Most, but not all, law schools serve as a "cash cow" for the universities many of them are attached to. What does it take, in terms of physical plant, to run a law school? What, some chairs, lights, a few tables, maybe? Not exactly what I would call technically demanding. Yet, they charge these unfortunate children as if they were delivering something truly remarkable.

Feh.

What a joke. And, the role of the law "professor" is the biggest scam of all. Who else on Earth gets paid a six-figure salary to teach about six hours a week and discuss two-hundred-year-old cases? The job of law professor is the cushiest in the world and delivers the least value via the silly and outdated, and much overrated "Socratic Method." Your typical "law professor" in this country excels in law school as a student, clerks for some federal judge a couple of years, then returns to academia. Most, typically, couldn't and wouldn't effectively represent someone for a traffic ticket.

Law school is the ultimate scam. Anyone who can study for and pass the bar on their own should be admitted to practice. Period.

July 23, 2011 at 7:51 a.m.

Victor Marroquin

Lima, Peru

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Van Zandt and mostly agree with Jeniffer555.

People should study more, not less, before being allowed to practice law. Medical doctors spend 10 to 12 years learning before they can really be allowed to do the equivalent of taking charge of a person's life, or the lives of many people in a corporation or other entity, who can be affected by inappropriate advice.

The best lawyers are made by hard study and work, without shortcuts. The old adage that "practice makes perfect" remains true to this day. And both the brain and the soul learn from experience.

If the issue is that law students should have more "practical skills" when they graduate, then the solution is not to shorten their studies and make them graduate earlier but allow them to acquire some of those practical skills while they study in law school.

As an example, in my country (Peru) law school takes about 6 to 7 years. One or two years are spent in the equivalent of college and the remaining 4 to 5 years in legal education. Students have a "practice requirement" during the last two years. They must find employment as apprentices in law firms, banks, corporations, government agencies, courts, etc., where they do the job "summer associates" do in the United States. This requirement allows them to graduate with a minimum of "practical skills" that employers appreciate and society benefits from.

Although I am Peruvian, I spent three years in the US earning a J.D. at the University of Miami and one year earning a LL.M. at Harvard. I have never regretted spending this time in law school. On the contrary, I believe that the lessons I received and what I learned from studying hard and interacting with professors, students and staff in two vibrant American law school communities have contributed greatly to the success of my career.

In short, the law is a noble profession. We are officers of the Court. People trust their most prized possessions and many times their lives and personal relationships to us. We should not be allowed to advise them unless we are fully prepared for it. Decreasing educational requirements simply is not helpful in helping us become better lawyers.

July 23, 2011 at 5:12 a.m.

Lawyer in Miami

Miami Beach

As a lawyer practicing for over 25 years, in my experience, the issue is not that lawyers are required to spend too much time in the classroom. Rather, law school should be longer, perhaps 4 or 5 years. The law is serious business. Lawyers are put in charge of people's treasure and their liberty. Many students leave law school ill-prepared to practice law. The practice of law in real life should not be confused with the practice of law as depicted in movies such as My Cousin Vinny, or TV shows such as Franklin & Bash, where all it takes to be a lawyer is a little pluck and luck. An additional year of apprenticeship under the guidance of a trained, certified mentor should also be required before anyone should be allowed to get a license to practice law. Unfortunately, it seems that things are going in the opposite direction.

July 23, 2011 at 5:11 a.m.

1. David Van Zandt is the president of the New School. He served as the dean of Northwestern University School of Law from 1995 to 2010. [본문으로]