What About Paris? ™

reduce law school to 18 months---be serious

in the mid 1700's Thomas Jefferson course of study at the College lasted for two years, and he then went on to read law for the next five years under George Wythe

Jefferson had more talent and a lot less law to learn

if one were interested in serious reform look at all the waste in faculty writing. Article after article written for no one (go on SSRN where the number of downloads are given). How long as it been since a tenured faculty member wrote a meaningful review of one state's tort law, for example. 50 years

If your practice is like mine, you still have your general texts and hornbooks from 30/40 years ago.

You pull them out, find the law, and then search of the state specific rule because there is no "Prosser" for New Mexico or Calamari and Perillo on contracts. What a waste of time. In Texas at least they have OConners.

I have only ever known of one truly great law teacher. Many years ago a good friend took fir year torts under Robert Leflar at the University of Arkansas. Leflar used the standard text and the Socratic method, but at the end of every class he handed out all the Arkansas specific cases, pleadings, jury instructions, discovery forms, rule of evidence on experts, etc.

As a result, when a student finished the class, in their notebooks, they had all the structure they need to do either plaintiff or defense personal injury work. If you had more than one defendant, it was covered. How to plead contributory fault and assumption of the risk was covered.

This takes a lot of work on the part of the faculty and there is the rub. Tenure means they get to do what they want, not what they should do.

Yes, sir. Courts, too. And how about a "customer service" revolt generally?

"Book smart kids" with law degrees are very expensive and, frankly, almost completely worthless these days. My cats and dogs at the San Diego house have more courage, character and resourcefulness than what we are seeing in the market. A good paralegal shames them in problem-solving and attitude. Harvard. Hastings. Oxford. Night School. Nearly all are severely limited (if not crippled)--and they don't even suspect it in themselves. It's an "inside" thing.

Whatever it is, it greatly threatens clients and customers.

That's a 4th but much-discussed issue: the emerging pattern--a strong one--of bright kids who cannot work, handle adversity or learn to like complexity.

(a) I'm begining to think this is a bigger issue and not a law firm 'only' issue. The entire court system is set up for the convenience of those working in the court rather than the user.

(b) Yes, but there is a lot of money flowing into the current system and no incentive for those who it currently favours, i.e. professors and Deans who think the law degree is a cash cow, to change anything. If there was a competitor whose focus was making customer focused lawyers rather than book smart kids who are convinced they are actually worth £100,000 a year that was preferred graduate supplier to a number of firms things might change.

But as it stands I don't see any venerable institution breaking away from the pack.

Duncan--

You are right. And fair enough.

But you've read this site. You need a mix of things. And you need at least 2 things:

(a) More efficient law firm models with MUCH more focus on customers--not on insular-thinking lawyers, their happiness and their convenience, and

(b) A less hopelessly Wanked-Out Law School model (i.e., in U.S., reduce law school to 18 months followed by apprenticeship).

There is a ring of "this is someone else's problem to fix!"

If firms are not happy with the law grads comming out of law schools then why not simply set up some sort of vocational law college and hire from there thus fixing the problem of highly book smart kids suddenly finding themselves swimming with sharks and solving the firm's problem of having to resuce highly booksmart people from being eaten by sharks.

I'm not sure if you are not contradicting your own advice by not attempting to fix the problem at source.

(admittedly I have glossed over a lot of steps and made this fix sound a lot more simple than I anticipate it is but BPP in the UK was set up for pretty much the same reason)

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