by RICH CASSIDY on NOVEMBER 4, 2011
Sorry for the long gap since my last post. The real life of my own practice of law was about as busy last month as it’s ever been, and I just could not get back to this series of posts.
So, for those you who were reading along, here is the Cliff Notes recap. My thesis is this: law schools do a great job of providing most students with some of the very important analytical tools they need to practice law. Those tools are necessary — but not sufficient — to turn law students into practicing lawyers, equipped to competently represent clients. For some graduates, law firms take up the slack. But good law firm positions, or even government jobs, for young lawyers are in shorter and shorter supply. And for lawyers who can find such jobs, clients increasingly resist paying to train young lawyers. The law schools know how to provide the kind of teaching and training required to produce competent practitioners. But for most students, they just don’t do the job.
Even if you follow my argument, you may be wondering, what’s all this got to do with the subject we started on: access to justice? I submit, a very great deal.
As mentioned in my September 8 post, Delivery of Legal Services: An Unfinished Agenda, there is a huge underserved market for legal service among those with low and moderate incomes. With a few niche exceptions, like personal injury practice, existing law firms don’t do a very good job of serving this market. To some extent, they don’t because they don’t need to. They already have clients who supply the income they need. The profit margins that come with serving this market are too thin for most established law firms.
But many law students who are graduating now who just can’t find jobs. If law schools took seriously the job of teaching law students to practice law, they could teach them how to serve this huge market.
No, such graduates would not earn the huge starting salaries paid by our largest and most prestigious law firms.
But, even in good times, those firms employ a relatively small slice of graduating lawyers. Few lawyers will earn the fabulous salaries and bonuses the largest firms pay.
But something is far better than nothing. And if law schools taught lawyers how to practice law it would be far more practical for new law school graduates to set up their own shops and provide personal legal services to under-served middle and even low-income Americans.
The law schools could help themselves by helping their graduates learn to provide real access to justice for most Americans.
Next time, is change in the wind? I hope so and I’ll tell you what I see.
Rich