1 thing law school isn’t meant to teach you

Marquette gets singled out because one of its ivory-tower ensconced professors descended into the muck, mire, and filth of the internets and deigned to comment on the musings of a practitioner. How generous of the noble professor.

I am certain that the majority of all law professors would agree with the Marquette prof. The dean of the 4th tier law school I graduated from agrees, and it’s a shame, because the school churns out people who actually practice law. The majority of them are solos and many are in criminal defense. There is a wealth of practical knowledge in the alumni population that the faculty seem happy to shun. I will hazard a guess and say that my school, and Marquette, are not alone.

In fact, I am certain that they are wrong. I’ve lost track of which comment on which blog mentioned this, but the difference between, say, someone with a masters in engineering and someone with a J.D. is that you are prohibited from lawyering without state licensure. No such limitation exists for many other graduate programs. The legal education “profession” (though I know they’d rather be termed an “academy”) needs to take a page from medical schools, where students get steeped in fancy book-learning, and even do some research, before spending years in internship and residency actually learning their profession.

I learned a lot from the unpaid internships I had: working for two appellate judges and the county public defender. I also got a paid gig for the federal public defender. I was a ruthless networker in law school. When CLEs would let students attend for free, I would, and I would chat up the sage and war-worn attorneys at lunch. Those hours were well-spent and provided a good base for me to build upon when I graduated and began a solo practice.

I also did moot court and law review and made great grades in classes that were heavily tested on the bar. I did pass the bar on my first go, and I’m grateful for that — though who is to say that credit for that belongs to my coursework and not the good folks at BarBri and PMBR? That said, I think that time was, as the locals down south say, about as useful as shining a turd.

I now make it my business to bring a little bit of my particular brand of sunshine back to the law school and warn those coming along behind me that their legal education is largely intellectual masturbation. You may be surprised to find that I am not always welcomed with open arms at my alma mater.

And, for what it’s worth, this is all why Susan Carter Liebel is going to do really well with Solo Practice University. She’s exploiting the tremendous unmet need the law schools are too busy to address, what with all their time spent “appreciating the depth of legal discourse” and the like.

Marquette gets singled out because one of its ivory-tower ensconced professors descended into the muck, mire, and filth of the internets and deigned to comment on the musings of a practitioner. How generous of the noble professor.

I am certain that the majority of all law professors would agree with the Marquette prof. The dean of the 4th tier law school I graduated from agrees, and it’s a shame, because the school churns out people who actually practice law. The majority of them are solos and many are in criminal defense. There is a wealth of practical knowledge in the alumni population that the faculty seem happy to shun. I will hazard a guess and say that my school, and Marquette, are not alone.

In fact, I am certain that they are wrong. David Kindley commented on the original post at http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2008/12/15/things-law-school-doesnt-teach/#comments about the difference between, say, someone with a masters in engineering and someone with a J.D. is that you are prohibited from lawyering without state licensure. No such limitation exists for many other graduate programs. The legal education “profession” (though I know they’d rather be termed an “academy”) needs to take a page from medical schools, where students get steeped in fancy book-learning, and even do some research, before spending years in internship and residency actually learning their profession.

I learned a lot from the unpaid internships I had: working for two appellate judges and the county public defender. I also got a paid gig for the federal public defender. I was a ruthless networker in law school. When CLEs would let students attend for free, I would, and I would chat up the sage and war-worn attorneys at lunch. Those hours were well-spent and provided a good base for me to build upon when I graduated and began a solo practice.

I also did moot court and law review and made great grades in classes that were heavily tested on the bar. I did pass the bar on my first go, and I’m grateful for that — though who is to say that credit for that belongs to my coursework and not the good folks at BarBri and PMBR? That said, I think that time was, as the locals down south say, about as useful as shining a turd.

I now make it my business to bring a little bit of my particular brand of sunshine back to the law school and warn those coming along behind me that their legal education is largely intellectual masturbation. You may be surprised to find that I am not always welcomed with open arms at my alma mater.

And, for what it’s worth, this is all why Susan Carter Liebel is going to do really well with Solo Practice University. She’s exploiting the tremendous unmet need the law schools are too busy to address, what with all their time spent “appreciating the depth of legal discourse” and the like.