Mostly Dead Comments on Irrational Exuberance: the Shortcomings of Legal Education.

This one goes out to all the law students or think you wanna be law students.

It has been a long time since last we met. Long time, no posts. I wasn't completely dead. I was just in trial. So like Westley, a/k/a, the Dread Pirate Roberts in thePrincess Bride (a/k/a the greatest movie ever made) I was only mostly dead.

You can doubtless imagine my surprise when I awoke from my mostly dead state on Sunday morning and saw an article on the shortcomings of legal education on the front page of my New York Times. The article detailed how new lawyers graduate from law school not knowing the first thing about how to lawyer. Their firms then have to teach them that pesky lawyering part that the law schools left out.

The article quotes a client:

“The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors,” says Jeffrey W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, a Houston company that makes oil drilling equipment. “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.”

Firms try to fill in the skills that the law school left out, but in this environment, clients don't want to pay for that.

Is there anything to be done? Does it have to be this way? After the break, a comment from a crusty old Baylor lawyer about why it ain't necessarily so.

So, young man (or woman). You think you want to be a lawyer. How did you make that decision and how are you going to decide to proceed?

Did you have some Atticus Finch moment? Have you watched every episode of Law and Order? Is this a fire in your belly? Is this just a way to make a living? Have you shown any indication that you would be any good at this?

Well assuming you have a good reason to pursue a legal education, I encourage you to read the New York Times article by David Segal. He describes the type of problems in legal education that you will encounter if you go about letting someone else chart your path in the conventional way.

• With your stellar (or not-so-stellar) undergraduate grades in hand, you will prepare for the LSAT and get the highest score possible. 
• You will apply to all the "best" law schools and try to get into the "best" school possible.
• (Note well the "quote" marks because those will come back to bite you later)
• Government financed lenders will line up to lend you $150,000 in debt to finance that education.
• (Think of those as law school junk bonds that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy)
• You will attend the "best" school on your non-dischargeable junk bond financing, confident that you will dominate moot court and law review.
• You confidently anticipate graduating summa cum laude and becoming the Young Don (or Donna) of a large firm.
• All of your classmates share that same confidence.
• Most of you are wrong.
• All of you will graduate knowing more about legal theory or "The Rule in Shelly's Case" than how to incorporate a small business or handle a divorce or write a brief.
• Those few, those happy few, who land the plumb job will get sufficient training from their firms to safely permit them to be alone in a room with a client and the client's problems.
• But the "ninety-nine percent" will have non-dischargeable junk bonds and lack many of the experiences or marketable skills necessary to pay those back.

What the article describes is is the irrational way to pursue a legal education--borrowing money from a very persistent loan shark to purchase a lottery ticket in hopes of paying it back. Irrational exuberance.

The article is accurate so far as it goes. But it does not go nearly far enough. It gave me the impression that this is a racket from which no lemming can escape. It focuses too much on gloom and doom and acts as if law students are pawns in a game where they have no control. 

But there is a different path.

If you want to be a lawyer, and a good one, nobody is forcing you into that kind of bargain. You can take responsibility for your own outcomes and professional development. If you do, your path will be roughly similar to my own path.

• Entry to the profession is still regulated by states. Start by deciding where you want to live and work, then learn about the schools in that state.
• Some schools reward teaching rather than publishing law review articles on legal theory and social science.Baylor, where I come from, is one of them. I'm sure it is not the only one, even if it is not one of the "best" schools.
• At schools like Baylor, unlike the "best" schools, they teach you to do stuff--how to pass the bar, how to handle a lawsuit, how to take a deposition, how to try a case.
• At schools like Baylor, unlike the "best" schools, you can get paid to go to school. I started on a half scholarship and by the end I was paying nothing.
• But no matter which school you go to, don't let school stand in the way of your education.
• You control whether you actually learn what you need to learn.
• Work in a legal clinic.
• Work part time as a grunt in a small law office.
• Work for free.
• WORK.
• And when you get into a firm, big small or indifferent, you control your training and development.
• Learn at every opportunity from lawyers who know how to do stuff, whether or not you are inside a class room.

I did these things and got the best (no quotes) education I could have gotten. I "knew things" upon graduation that you can't buy with non-dischargeable junk bonds at the "best" schools. And I didn't have $150,000 in junk bonds to pay off.

Sure, I might not have been hired by an AmLaw 200 Firm. I might have been stuck handling people's problems or practicing outside New York.

Like Abraham Lincoln or Leon Jaworski.

Just a thought.

But if you're thinking about going to law school, now is as good of a time as any to start thinking for yourself.