Is Law School Necessary?

Published August 6, 2013

The standard for competence is generally considered to be passing a test. If this is true and if you can pass the State Bar exam, why should you be required to spend three years in law school? Law school classes, as we’ve written here many times, are not aimed at giving lawyers the skills to manage their practices and provide good client service. The system of 200-plus law schools merely puts new book-trained lawyers into the marketplace; clients are the ones who determine whether those lawyers will be successful, based on the client service they provide.

It has become increasingly clear that this reality that is catching up to law schools. According to The New York Times, law school admissions for the upcoming 2013 academic year are headed for a 30-year low (down 20 percent from last year and 38 percent from 2010), a decline driven by student worries about rising tuition, equally soaring debt load and the prospect of unemployment after graduation.[1] A follow-up story in that same newspaper said that some are calling for radical changes to the legal education system, including cutting the curriculum, requiring far more on-the-ground training and licensing technicians who are not full lawyers. But this same story points out the real reason for the problem: “the vested interests of tenured professors tied to an antiquated system.”[2]

The dynamic between law schools and bar associations to maintain the profession’s status quo suggests that tweaking tuition or curriculum is likely all the change that can be expected from the law school side in the near term. But the free market will likely determine how much change the law school system will undergo – because fewer law students will no longer tolerate the cost. A law school education is so expensive that fewer and fewer people can go to law school because it takes five to ten years to pay off the student debt accumulated while going to school. And in today’s economy, with so many licensed lawyers unable to find work, these debts may stay on the books for a very long time with devastating psychological impact.

We may ultimately reach the point that those who want to become lawyers will rebel at the cost of law firm and undertake legal education as a personal responsibility, not a function of having a certificate that proclaims one to be a J.D. If they can then pass a state’s bar exam, who is to say they should not enter practice? After all, such a path was the one followed by a very good lawyer … by the name of Lincoln.

[1] Law School Applications Fall as Costs Rise and Jobs Are Cut
[2] A Call for Drastic Changes in Educating New Lawyers

Categorized in: Coaching, Ethics

Audience type: Administrators, Associates, Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners