From Georgetown Law: Rethinking Legal Education and Training

Part of our coverage of “Law Firm Evolution:  Brave New World or Business As Usual?”, a conference held March 21-23, 2010 by the Georgetown Center for the Study of the Legal Profession.  For all our posts on the conference click here.

Reported by:  Gregory P Bufithis, Esq.    Founder,  ThePosseList.com and ProjectCounsel.com

Panel presentations were made by Thomas D. Morgan (Oppenheim Professor of Antitrust and Trade Regulation Law, George Washington University Law School) and  Jordan Furlong (Partner, Edge International; Blogger, Law21; Senior Consultant,  Stem Legal).

The moderator was James E. Moliterno (Vincent Bradford Professor of Law, Washington & Lee Law School) and the panelists were José M. de Areilza (Dean of IE Law School, Madrid) and Heather Bock (Chief Professional Development Officer, Howrey LLP; Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center).

Law schools can do a much better job of training lawyers and change is long overdue. Legal education has changed remarkably little in over a century. The approach that Harvard Law School devised in the nineteenth century, emphasizing professors teaching from casebooks in relatively large classes, has virtues.  The method has taught countless generations of lawyers how to analyze issues and develop legal arguments. It is also very cost-effective to have one teacher in front of a large number of students. Some law schools generate significant profits for their universities.

But the reality is that few law students graduate from law school ready to practice law. Studies show that the majority of law students never meet a client or have any practical experience.

For Jordan Furlong the key was the renewal of the legal apprenticeship system, a long tradition seen best as the Canadian articling experience.  The apprenticeship system dates back to 1292 and peaked early in the 18th century.  It survives in Canada, UK, Germany and other European countries.

But it has emerged just in the past few years and coincide with (not caused by) and can be seen insuch law firms as Strasburger LLP, Ford & Harrison, Drinker Biddle, Howrey LLP, and Frost Brown Todd LLC.  Each program is slightly different but these new apprenticeships share common characteristics such as 

*  focused, systematic skills training

*  Direct involvement of senior lawyers

*  Reduced billable hour targets

*  Reduced starting salary

According to Jordan apprenticeship in the law can work, if it’s done right.  The five firms he profiled are off to a very promising start.  For Jordan’s full presentation click here.

We chatted more with Jordan after the panel and here is that interview.

 

For Thomas Morgan, “the law is a derivative profession.  Much as lawyers hate to hear it, we are not in control of our future. We do work that clients need done”.  Thomas addressed the likely changes in the skills that persons with legal training are likely to find essential to their professional activities.   Said Thomas “the days are likely ending when lawyers can count on a body of work that only they are authorized to perform. Particularly those lawyers who serve organizational clients are likely to find themselves competing for attention against a wide range of foreign lawyers and non-lawyer consultants”.   It was a thought echoed by all the panelists:  fewer issues are likely to be seen as distinctly “legal” in character, and corporations are likely to use a relatively small group of inside counsel to provide much of their needed legal expertise. 

A future practitioner’s value to clients, in short, will likely be calculated on two dimensions – what she knows about a particular body of law and what she knows about a clients’ industry or substantive concerns. A lawyer who tries back injury cases will need to know almost as much about anatomy as about tort law and trial practice. A securities lawyer will need to know as much about the economics of financial instruments, as about SEC regulation of them. 

This development is not unprecedented. Patent lawyers long have been required to be trained in a scientific or technical discipline, for example, so that they can prepare patent applications and evaluate and negotiate patent disputes. They are not expected to be inventors, but they would be less helpful to their scientist and inventor clients without the ability to speak and understand the technical language that both the clients and the patent examiners understand. Corporate mergers are another example of matters driven by issues of accounting and finance at least as much as by substantive corporate and antitrust law. Lawyers will continue to be called upon to be problem solvers. 

Thomas also discussed the “gap” between law school and practice, and cited the 1992 MacCrate Task Force report (click here)  which concluded that while law schools had traditionally seen their role as to develop a student’s analytic skills and leave other skills to be learned in practice, the law schools should do more practical training before a student graduated. 

One thing that Thomas wants to see is law schools and universities again introduce legal training into the undergraduate program as they once did and as most European countries still do. Many undergraduates could profit from being able to think like a lawyer even if they never go on to get a professional degree. For those students who want a career in law, universities should consider a move to a three-four pattern of study, with the fourth year in law school consisting of non-law courses. 

Under this plan, a student would take his or her first three years of college as they now do. Then, the student would take the first year of law school, and as was once the common pattern, receive a bachelor’s degree based on the total credits earned. 

Law schools, in turn, will increasingly have to recognize that continuing legal education will comprise more of their program than it traditionally has. 

Thomas addressed many other issues on the appropriate direction for today’s law schools.  His paper is a great source and you can read it full by clicking here

We had a chance to interview Tom about how education of law students will be different in the 21st century and our interview follows here:

 

Throughout the panel “value” and “competencies” were mentioned and the Howrey program was continually cited as having the best start on this apprenticeship concept.  Howrey created a competency model from the ground up.  In a law firm, explained Heather, a competency model defines various behaviors and skills — and the developmental levels of those behaviors and skills — that are necessary as each attorney progresses on the path to partnership.   It is imperative to have highly skilled attorneys ready to take on all that added client work — and believes the competency efforts have had a direct link to the firm’s business objectives.  And, in addition to extremely positive feedback from the managing partner, exit interviews with departing attorneys typically did not cite training, career development, or related programs as reasons for leaving — which wasn’t the case in the past. 

The main challenge Howrey faced: thoroughly assess the required competency skills for the firm’s associates, to ensure that they are well-trained and able to deal with a variety of client situations. At the same time, ensure they demonstrate or develop strong team and leadership skills. 

For its competency model, Howrey created 16 competencies (within four major “clusters”) that it uses it to track career development of new associates. Because of the approach, expectations among associates now are consistent across the firm, as every associate experiences the same learning process. Bock says the competency model also helps drive the firm’s talent management programs, from hiring to attorney evaluations. 

Creating the “Howrey U” learning platform meant creating an overall competency definition and leveled approach to the competencies. This, in turn, was used to create a firm-wide definition of what those competencies meant and also provide a roadmap on what it looks like at a novice versus expert level. Howrey has created courses and training to help each associate build these four specific competencies: building the case for the client, advocating for the client, working with others and positioning self and firm for success. 

Learning continues with courses covering topic such as writing fundamentals, deposition training, trial skills, and even business development and managing client relationships. 

For her full Powerpoint click here.

 

For Jose Areilza, he could not agree more with Thomas Morgan’s need to see law schools and universities introduce legal training into the undergraduate program as they do in most European countries, as well as the “internalization” of prgrams.  Technological innovation, increased communication, and common markets have facilitated interactions among citizens of different nations as well as among countries. International trade, international investment and monetary flows increase rapidly, business people in growing numbers travel abroad. Even ordinary people live temporarily or permanently outside their native countries. Integration of markets and cross border movement of people and corporations affect the work of lawyers and legal profession. They need to work in a world where different legal systems increasingly affect each other. This is internationalization or globalization.

But, said Jose, U.S. law schools should not just introduce courses with international dimensions, but should in fact internationalize the entire curriculum because internationalization had infused all aspects of life.  For instance see John Flood’s “ Legal Education, Globalization, and the New Imperialism” (click here).  John was a panelist on “Capitalizing Law Firms” (click here).

The recognition and identification of cultural distinctions between different legal systems is critical.   As a result of globalization the increased attention paid to the ideas outside the legal system where the lawyer or legal profession practices leads to openness to different legal traditions and therefore to universal movements of harmonization. Further, there are many similarities between the systems of U.S. law, continental law and civil law stemming from the fact that in the evolution of legal traditions there were interactions between these legal systems.

Teaching concepts and notions of different legal systems to law students enable them to distinguish similarities as well as differences of foreign legal systems and allow them to compare foreign legal traditions to their domestic legal system. The comparison between the different legal systems helps law students understand the rationale behind laws of different legal traditions.   

And for Jose the IE Law program takes these concepts in a two prong approach:  a clinical approach and a focus on the practice of law in a business context.   All their programs start from the recognition that merely “knowing the law”  is not enough for success in the practice of law.  His teaching methodology reflects this concept in its “active learning” focus, through individual and group work in solving hypothetical case problems based on the actual experiences of our faculty, many of whom are practitioners as well as professors. 

After the panel we had an opportuinity to discuss with Jose the IE Law clinical approach to training law students, and the multi-disciplinary approach to training. Our interview follows here:

We also had the opportunity to interview Marisa Mendez, a colleague of Jose’s at IE Law, about the focus of IE Law School on training global lawyers and its focus on a multi-disciplinarian approach to training and education:

But the reality is that few law students graduate from law school ready to practice law. Studies show that the majority of law students never meet a client or have any practical experience.

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