I was surfing the net on this rainy morning and came to Instapundit, where he linked to an article about Law School. Evidently, there is some debate in the academic community about how we train attorneys and I think it's high time that such a debate comes to fruition. Some guy named Lippe has proposed what he called Law School 4.0, a proposal that would restructure the way that lawyers are trained.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've beaten lawyers at their own game, back when I was a Probation Officer. I even toyed with the idea of going to law school, but as a young struggling parent, I realized that taking three years of my life would burden my family with financial liabilities that we might not overcome.
While I was thinking about law school, there were three burdens in Louisiana that made going to law school impossible.
1) I live in north-central Louisiana and there are no law schools in the area. The closest law school is in Baton Rouge. I would have to move my family or live away from them during the time when I was in school.
2) At the time, (and this may still be the case), the established law schools required that a first-year student not be employed in the traditional sense. Families require sustenance and a certain amount of cash flow. While the romantic ideal of the poverty stricken student is certainly appealing in some circles, the kids still need to eat and be clothed.
3)Law school is expensive. Not working, while taking on a mountain of debt, would burden the family after law school.
Before you argue that if it was truly my dream, I would have found a way. That's certainly true. However, the current law school scenario virtually requires that a student be supported from the outside while studying for three years. Certainly for the first year.
If it is the desire of the legal community to attract the best and the brightest, then these three objections must be overcome. If the intention of the legal community is to maintain the status quo, then they need to do nothing. However, there is a debate going on.
I can go to night school in any number of professions, including business, education, and the clergy, all the while taking care of my family and parenting obligations. Lots of people study in their spare time and the quality of the education doesn't suffer. If one of the local universities offered a night-time law school that took five years to complete, there might be a lot of people from diverse background that would apply.
And, the question is still being debated.
3 comments:
While they're at it, more Constitutional law and history of western law should be included in the curriculum.
I once had a law school graduate, who was clerking for a federal judge, tell me that there was no such thing as jury nullification. Apparently he had never read of William Penn's trial, Georgia v. Brailsford, or even US v. Maylar or US v. Dougherty.
California and Southern California in particular have a number of 4 year programs to earn a law degree through night classes.
Fat lot of good that does you, though.
Do we really need more lawyers? I once heard a statistic that America has more lawyers than the rest of the world combined. That may be a bit of hyperbole, but it does make me question the wisdom of making it easier to obtain a law degree. Wouldn't we be far better off with more skilled laborers, engineers, etc. than more lawyers?
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