Concentrated Minds and Practical Skills
Samuel Johnson, who was well known for his cynical wit, observed several centuries ago that "if a man knows he is going to be hung in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." That revelation may be happening at the nation's law schools. With enrollment plunging and students suing over their lackluster employment practices, law schools may finally be waking up and concentrating on the idea that they need to offer training on "The Business of Law."®
I've commented here many times that law schools do not give their students practical courses on practice management and client service because such training is too "trade oriented." As a result, their students have little grounding in real world legal skills. But now The National Law Journal has reported* that the ABA's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions, just several months after it rejected the idea, has agreed to reconsider whether law schools should be required to offer 15 credits of real-world training. A group called the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) has pushed the idea, arguing that the law lags behind medicine, dentistry and other professions when it come to practical skills education - demonstrated by the fact that the existing standards mandate that students take just one credit of experiential learning.
The simple fact is that law schools' dearth of training in the practical skills that lawyers most need to keep their practices profitable and problem free - training in effective client service and law practice management techniques - leads to much of the dissatisfaction and problems found in today's law practices. The lawyer who has it understands the operation of the firm as a business, how each attorney determines firm profitability, and the importance of clients and their own businesses. I registered the phrase, "The Business of Law®," because it not only summarized the basics of my law firm consultancy, but also because so many lawyers seemed to lack an understanding of the concept.
Offering more practical skills training may not be the only way that law schools can keep from being "hung" by the growing student dissatisfaction with the training they receive. But concentrating on providing a better foundation for young lawyers to understand what makes a practice successful can only benefit lawyers, clients and the law schools themselves. To do otherwise will only worsen the prevailing dissatisfaction about having a career in the law and the prevailing negativism about the legal profession.
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