I have written previously on the Worthlessness of American Legal Education. That ruffled a few feathers among legal academics who didn’t like being called a “circle jerk.” In response to that critique, legal academics decided to disband the circle jerk and actually focus on practical training of lawyers in both business, law, and ethics.
HAAAA…. had you going, didn’t I?
No, the legal academy didn’t give a shit about my piece (well, I did get some crybaby emails from do nothing blowhards, but nobody did anything but bitch).
And now… Bob Ambrogi brings us a report that shows:
Sixty-five percent of law students (and 90 percent of lawyers) say law school does not teach them the practical business skills they need to practice law in today’s economy. More than a third say they do not feel adequately prepared by law school to succeed in the marketplace. Given the changes in the market, a fifth of all law students now say they regret going to law school in the first place. (source)
Wow! Lexis Nexis did an actual scientific study that produced data to back up my assertion that American legal education is a ball of shit! And in response, NOW the legal academy is ready to change…
BAAAAA…. Got you again.
No, instead they are ruminating on whether law professors should have PhD degrees… you know, to make legal education even more useless. I’m not saying that PhDs are useless. The best law professor I ever had didn’t even have a JD, he only had a PhD. But, he was something special.
Greenfield had this to say:
For practicing lawyers who think that lawyers fresh out of school lack the skills needed to practice law now, the future may be far more dim. A lawprof with a PhD is likely to be far more entrenched in the theoretical than the practical, and far more likely to have had no experience in the actual practice of lawyering. If you think lawprofs today fall short of the qualifications to teach students to be lawyers, imagine what a future of teachers without any practical experience at all will mean. Oh, the weather outside is frightful.
One shining hope seems like a possibility however. As law schools continue to compete for students, perhaps this will present an opening for those schools that aren’t likely to be the top draw for the brainiest PhDs to counterprogram themselves as the practical law schools, “the law school where you actually learn how to be a lawyer.” We can dream, can’t we? (source)
Yes, Scott, we can dream. But, for as long as the legal academy is run by people who wash out of practice after 16 months, the ABA keeps accrediting every head injury clinic that calls itself a law school, and the government keeps backing loans so that the morons who attend them can sit at the roulette wheel, the market isn’t likely to correct the mess any time soon.
