Part III. Teaching New Skills to New Lawyers

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If today’s technology-infused world demands new skills of lawyers, who should be teaching them? The American Bar Association’s 1992 study, Legal Education and Professional Development (commonly called the “MacCrate Report”), described the transition between law school and the profession as a “continuum.” In other words, the ABA proposed that schools and employers share the responsibility of ensuring that new lawyers have the skills they need to succeed in modern practice.

A discussion of teaching new legal skills begins with a survey of the mechanisms that exist for learning any skills, whether technology-related or not. Thus, this section examines lawyers’ opportunities to develop general practice expertise to gain insight into how attorneys can acquire the new domains of knowledge promised by emerging technology. It will also explore how technology can help realize some of the unaddressed goals put forth by prior reformers.

Contents

Teaching new skills: Implications

A preliminary survey of training opportunities that support law students’ transition to professional practice suggests that the “gap” that motivated the MacCrate Report[1] is actually growing, not shrinking. Although technology-related skills are the main focus of our research, these skills are part of an overall body of knowledge about practice that seems to elude capture in a reliable educational format. As it turns out, technology can also play a role in bridging the gap.

Law schools are not ensuring that all new lawyers possess necessary practice skills

Beyond thinking like a lawyer, “learning professional knowledge and skill ‘in role’ is a distinct pedagogical genre.”

New lawyers who do not learn practice skills in school risk having no formal support at all, if on-the-job training is as inconsistent as our data suggest. Yet the Carnegie Foundation’s 2006 research reinforces the 1992 MacCrate Report findings: schools do not provide adequate skills instruction. Socratic dialogue is crucial to developing the foundations of legal thinking (the Carnegie study describes the Socratic dialogue as law schools’ “signature pedagogy” worthy of emulation in other educational settings[2]) but one pedagogical method cannot provide everything new lawyers should know. One law school dean interviewed for our study points out that this reliance on one teaching method can trigger boredom and disengagement; once students have learned to think like lawyers, “learning doctrines of different areas is not hard.”[3]

All schools have some interest in providing students with practice skills, even though different schools tend to propel their students onto different career paths.[4] Regional and local schools place a substantial proportion of their students in mid- and small-sized local firms – the ones that the Pace study found reluctant to train new lawyers – and have particularly strong reasons to pay attention to this need. But even “top-tier” schools whose graduates often start out in large firms[5] have an interest in ensuring some grounding in practice and practice-management skills for at least two reasons: professional development programs remain variable in quality, and many have not yet grasped the new skills described in Part III of this study.

The development of skills demands its own pedagogy, distinct from the Socratic method relied upon to convey the basics of “thinking like a lawyer.” As the Carnegie study observes, “learning professional knowledge and skill ‘in role’ is a distinct pedagogical genre and needs the same care and attention” as traditional techniques.[2] Law schools today employ two main methods of developing students’ skills: clinical practice and simulation. Our preliminary data suggests that schools are not optimizing their use of technology to accomplish the goals of either.

Law school clinicals may not be providing authentic technology environments

The law school clinical environment seems ideal for future attorneys to develop a full set of practice skills through authentic practice, that is, representation of real clients. Among the skills that students could be learning during that experience are the ones identified in Part II of this study.

However, not all clinical programs have robust technology infrastructures, meaning that students may not in fact be experiencing fully authentic practice. The fact that LexisNexis offers Time Matters to law schools at no charge does not mean that the clinical program pays nothing in terms of setup and maintenance of the software. At one top-tier school with several clinical programs, for example, only the largest clinical projects actively use Time Matters; the others apparently lack the resources necessary to customize the product to their needs. As the product manager of Time Matters acknowledges, “The biggest challenge we experience with getting any of our software properly installed, implemented, and used as intended is having the resource available to properly scope, then drive, the project.”

Some law students may need technology management skills

Attorneys entering smaller practices may need more extensive and specific training than their big-firm counterparts. If our conclusions at §II.B.4, above, are correct, lawyers in these practices will need more practice and technology management. Even attorneys who start out in big firms will still need these skills if they move into smaller settings, especially since big-firm practice would be unlikely to expose them to opportunities to develop those skills through experience.

Few new lawyers have access to high-quality training supporting the transition to practice

Data from this study suggest that access to training programs that support the transition from law school to practice is spotty. Among New Skills Survey respondents, only a third claim to have received formal training at their first place of employment. Some evidence also hints that those programs which do exist are generally of questionable value; New Skills Survey respondents offered a fairly extensive list of topics that they wished they had learned before the close of their first year of practice but did not.[6]

Our survey data are insufficiently robust to compare across different practice settings, but trends described by experts point to market failure around transitional training in several segments of the legal services industry. Mid- and small-sized firms are largely looking to other practice segments to train their attorneys, but not all lawyers begin their careers in settings that offer such training.[7] Inevitably, some attorneys fall through the cracks of a system where responsibility for training is passed like a hot potato rather than treated as a shared responsibility.

Our findings are reinforced by findings of The American Lawyer’s 2006 Midlevel Associates Survey (covering attorneys with 3-5 years of experience). That survey found that associates are often under too much time pressure to attend training events when those events cannot be billed. They also lament the loss of personal mentoring; only one-third of the respondents to that survey reported having a mentor, with many complaining that establishing personal relationships at huge firms is daunting.[8]

Without the equivalent of a hospital residency or a structured (and accountable) apprenticeship for the legal profession, in-practice skills development will likely remain fragmented and unequal. If clients increasingly refuse to underwrite associate training, professional development may become even scarcer for associates at smaller firms lacking the capital to absorb its cost. Indeed, some study interviewees speculate that large firms’ recent investment in in-house training capacity may even undermine their financial support of broader CLE efforts that also benefit small and solo-practice lawyers.[9]

Teaching new skills: Findings

Lawyers desire skills training early in their careers

Among New Skills Survey respondents, attorneys who identify missed learning opportunities focus on skills and business-related issues. Of the 104 valid free-text responses to the question, “What one topic or skill did you wish you had learned before or during your first year of practice but did not?” close to half (42%) identified a legal practice skill such as “how to draft a motion,” the business of law (e.g. “client development”) and general skills (“time management”) tied for second at about 18% each. Technology-related issues (“document review software”) came in a distant fourth at 9%. Only 6 individuals named substantive legal topics (“a course on the UCC”).

No clear consensus exists on who should teach desired knowledge or skills

Among New Skills Survey respondents who named something they wished to have learned before the end of their first year of practice, no clear preference emerged as to who should have taught that knowledge or skill. Less than half identified formal training, whether from school, employer, or CLE provider. Another 27% preferred informal learning from mentors or colleagues, and the remainder believed that experience was the best teacher.

With respect to the ability of law schools to offer skills-oriented education, several interviewees expressed skepticism that law school professors, who may lack significant practice experience, could teach such skills competently or keep up with the state of the art.

Law schools largely isolate skills-oriented learning to specialty programs

Both the MacCrate Report of 1992 and the Carnegie Foundation study of 2007 identify law schools’ reluctance to teach practice. We did not attempt to reassess ground already covered thoroughly by these other efforts; however, the data we gathered for the present study seem consonant with these general observations.

General skills in the law school curriculum

Law schools underemphasize skills-oriented education, according to Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers. In “pay[ing] relatively little attention to direct training in professional practice,” the Carnegie researchers find, law schools “prolong and reinforce the habits of thinking like a student rather than an apprentice practitioner.”[2]

Within certain domains, law schools do teach skills. Negotiations and trial skills, for example, are largely taught through practice. Indeed, the moot court – a chance to exercise basic research, writing, and argumentation skills – remains a seminal experience for most law students. Other pockets of practice-oriented educational efforts exist; last year, for example, a conference on teaching interviewing, counseling, and other client-relationship skills attracted over 80 legal instructors.

Law schools and opportunities for learning technology-related skills

Traditional law school classes rarely promote teamwork, much less technologically-mediated teamwork. The dominant pedagogical technique in law schools – Socratic dialogue between professor and student – emphasizes and rewards individual work and thinking. The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), covering 24,000 students at 64 schools, found that 88% of law students do not frequently work together with other students on projects during class. Collaborative experiences, the study continues, “prepare students for what they must be able to do effectively – practice law.”[3]

Law students do have opportunities to develop authentic practice skills through clinical programs, specialized classes, externships, and summer job placements. Each of these venues presents possibilities to convey technology-related skills in appropriate ways.

Clinical programs may lack the resources to offer a full practice environment with the same technological infrastructure as comparable law offices. For example, LexisNexis reports that some 200 law schools – that is, almost all of them – have taken advantage of free installations of its Time Matters case management software system. Yet a spot survey of smaller clinical offices shows that not all of them are using that system to capacity, or even at all, because of inadequate staffing and support.

Simulations provide highly-structured opportunities for students to develop skills through focused practice and coaching. Unlike clinical practice – or professional practice, for that matter – simulations let instructors isolate specific aspects of legal work and concentrate on learning in those areas. Negotiations and trial advocacy are two areas where simulation has been the primary pedagogy employed. Client interviewing and counseling are emerging subjects of rigorous study to make possible future simulation-based teaching.[2]

However, existing methods of running simulations are difficult and expensive. Most of the common forms of simulation – mock trials and negotiations – are conducted in person, with a low student: faculty ratio and therefore low scalability. Instructors often need to set up the simulation themselves, recruit a supporting team (for example, judges for a trial), and evaluate either through direct observation or student self-reporting. As one law school dean identified, law school economics do not allow him to “put the kind of resources that will produce 8:1 or 9:1 or 10:1 teaching situations, which are what you really need if you’re going to effectively teach [these] skills” using hands-on techniques.

Additionally, simulations lack a supporting infrastructure for creation and distribution. Whereas publishers advertise, disseminate and ensure the quality of casebooks, simulations lack a similar infrastructure. The area of negotiations is a significant exception: Harvard’s Program on Negotiations, for example, operates a clearinghouse that sells simulation materials, including teaching guides.

In-practice training opportunities are becoming scarce, except in large firms

Only 36% of New Skills Survey respondents report receiving “boot camp” training in their first year of practice, that is, “formal training on fundamental skills and knowledge [they] need to start practicing in [their] particular field.” The bulk of these individuals who did participate in such training report receiving them directly from their employer rather than an outside source.

Value of "Boot Camp"

Recipients of formal transitional training are lukewarm about their benefits. Half felt the training was “Somewhat useful,” with another 29% giving a “Neutral” evaluation.[10] One senior attorney at a major firm expressed skepticism of in-house professional development programs, remarking, “A small law firm that used the resources of West Legal Ed Center or PLI would be just as well-off as a firm that did this in-house.” However, in gathering feedback about training quality, the New Skills Survey did not differentiate between different training providers.

Sophisticated clients are refusing to pay for associate training, according to several interview subjects.[11] Historically, law practices have relied on apprenticeships that often include having associates attend client meetings. Clients’ increased vigilance, perhaps due to in-house counsels’ oversight and growing sophistication, has led to firms either cutting back training opportunities or shouldering the cost of apprenticeship-type training directly.

Large law firms are formalizing training and professional development functions to achieve quality control, strategic advantage, and cost savings; they are also responding to diminishing opportunities to engage in ad hoc training and mentoring. A recent study reports that US law firms currently spend about $1 billion per year on training and professional development, with large firms spending the most – about $3,000 per lawyer annually.[11] As a director of one such program observed, “One of the reasons large firms invested so much money in training programs is they were no longer able to provide the apprentice-style training, both because the leverage and the workload increased.” These programs seem to be moving away from simple knowledge transfer on substantive topics and towards more elaborate, structured, multi-year programs to provide professional development, mentoring, and evaluation opportunities.[12] The best of these programs are also adopting more sophisticated pedagogical approaches such as simulation and other active learning techniques.[11]

Small- and mid-sized firms avoid hiring new graduates to avoid training costs, according to a recent study commissioned by Pace University School of Law. Only 9% of firms of 51-100 attorneys, and 7% of firms under 50 attorneys, fill their recruitment needs primarily by hiring law school graduates. The top reason for filling positions with experienced attorneys was “Eliminate the need for training” (45%), trailed by the tautological “We need experienced attorneys” (21%). As one respondent commented, “Training is expensive for a small firm.”[13]

Teaching new skills: Recommendations

Both the ABA MacCrate Report and the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers provide a powerful foundation for action. The present study will not reiterate their recommendations, but rather suggest specific means of realizing their aims within our research scope, technology. The following section examines both how to convey technology-related skills as well as how new technology can help teach legal skills, whether technological or not, more effectively.

Law schools should leverage technology more effectively to accomplish the goal of skills transmission

Almost universally, the people we contacted for this study agreed that law schools should not “teach technology.” That opinion need not be in tension with the real need, identified in Part II, for lawyers to develop new skills, nor even the possibility that new lawyers lack the basic technology skills they need to excel in practice. “Teaching technology,” in isolation from other objectives, will not be as effective as teaching students to accomplish substantive goals related to their daily work while also providing the technology appropriate to meeting those goals.

“The win-win-win situation,” states one partner in a major firm, “is thinking about technology… not as an end in and of itself, [but] to train students in law.” Likewise, the Carnegie study warns against the “additive” approach to new skills – that is, simply tacking them on as additional and isolated courses – arguing instead for an “integrative” approach – linking skills to cognitive and ethical/social dimensions of legal education. Thus, rather than abstractly teaching law students to use wikis, for example, a professor can instead ask students to work in teams to assemble knowledge about an area of law and provide a wiki for them to accomplish that task.

Support authentic learning environments with up-to-date technology infrastructure for clinics

“The win-win-win situation is thinking about technology not as an end in and of itself, [but] to train new students in law.”

In areas where they do focus on skills, law schools should ensure that students have a full and authentic experience, including full technological support. Clinical programs should have up-to-date technology infrastructures. Clinical practice provides the ideal setting for students to experience how, for example, case management systems help track cases and case outcomes; or how a repository of forms and documents convey institutional memory across generations of lawyers – particularly given the rapid turnover of clinical students. Such settings may even spur students to develop new technologies to solve pressing problems of lawyers or clients.[14] Yet this potential cannot be realized if programs lack the resources to establish and support this technological environment.

  • Developing techno-social skills: Clinical programs can focus on opportunities for students to work in teams and be conscious of how they organize themselves through email, case management systems, collaborative document editing, etc. The short-term, limited-commitment nature of most clinical experiences can make clinical teamwork a challenge for instructors to implement; at the same time, using technology to overcome those challenges would mimic the reality of working on asynchronous, sometimes globe-spanning teams.
  • Meta-lawyering: Where possible, clinical programs should involve students in the implementation and customization of technology systems that require sophisticated practice. For example, setting up a system to evaluate case outcomes gives participants a chance to analyze and formally describe what constitutes good or bad results, applying rigorous analysis to everyday practice.

Enrich existing activities with appropriate technology learning opportunities

Provide technology platforms for student organizations where possible. Student-run activities, whether law journals or interest groups, provide leadership opportunities for students and also another venue for learning to use technology to accomplish tasks. Even at the mundane level of financial management, giving the student treasurer of an organization a good small business accounting package would be invaluable if that student goes on to run her own small or solo practice. Providing formal or even informal groups with low-cost project management and communication tools may also promote the development of techno-social skills through one of the few instances where teamwork happens in a setting that otherwise favors individualism.

Include emerging skills in professional development efforts

The MacCrate Report describes the training of new lawyers as, ideally, a “continuum” shared between schools and practice, but as a practical matter, schools’ slow pace of change obligates law firms and professional development organizations to fill in gaps.

In considering the skills we have identified – knowledge-generating, techno-social, and meta-lawyering – these organizations should, like law schools, avoid the “additive” approach to curricula. Merely teaching a course on using spreadsheets, for example, is significantly less valuable (and thus less educational, by definition) than showing attorneys how to use spreadsheets to gain an advantage in negotiation.

Likewise, teaching attorneys to “use email” is, for most new attorneys, probably silly, but teaching them how to compose email in a professional manner, or to manage information flow through their inboxes, would be a tremendous benefit. However, as noted in §II.B.(2) above, best practices for accomplishing these goals may not exist or be commonly known. Thus, a need for some research into the practice is also necessary, as will be addressed in Recommendation (4), below.

Utilize technology to create more effective simulations

Simulations are an important component of sophisticated educational programs, whether in law school, professional development, or CLE. Computer-based simulations can lower the cost of capturing and conveying skills in a dependable, high-quality manner. The interviewing and counseling simulations recently developed at Brigham Young University Law School, for example, make use of custom-developed video-recording and annotation software to capture law student performances for distributed evaluation by trained alumni. (The actual interviews are conducted face-to-face and not mediated by computer).

Simulations or games are already widely used by the military, medical schools, and business schools because of the following capabilities:

  • Facilitating: The computer serves as a conduit through which participants communicate with each other, whether through actual text or by some other action, and either exclusively or supplementing face-to-face communication.
  • Sequencing: The computer scaffolds a set of interactions and choices, whether among human players or between the players and the computer itself.
  • Modeling: The computer animates the world itself within which the players make choices, relieving instructors of the burden of calculating outcomes to students actions.
  • Data-gathering: By capturing actions, transactions, and communications, the computer system also generates a “transcript” that students and instructors can later review for evaluation purposes.

Thus, in the case of the BYU video-recorded interviewing and counseling simulations, technology makes it possible to capture performances (data-gathering) and distribute them to alumni for evaluation (facilitation).

These four capabilities of computer-based simulations listed above enables learning experiences to be captured in a replicable, stable and reliable medium. In so doing, software-based simulations offer the following benefits to supplement a formal legal education program:

  • Reliability. Real practice – whether in a clinical or law office setting – cannot guarantee a student or lawyer any specific experience in any particular order. Simulations can ensure that every student encounters the desired set of challenges and opportunities.
  • Rigor. Because most computer simulations require explicit programming of the experience and outcomes, it is harder for designers to shirk the need to understand actual practice. Adherence to an explicit learning framework and insuring opportunities to deploy specific skills distinguishes simulation-based learning from ad hoc mentoring.
  • Scalability. Clinical and mentoring programs are personnel-intensive. While instructors still need to be involved in most simulations, the automation of a significant portion of the teaching enables them to focus on more nuanced instruction rather than managing logistics.

Establish centers for research and innovation

Some understanding of best practices and desired outcomes must precede any credible educational or training program. Unfortunately, our research did not uncover a ready source of wisdom or knowledge about the critical skills we have identified, indicating the need for some basic research in that area (see Recommendation (5), below).

The need for an “American Institute for the Practice of Law” that can produce such knowledge, as recommended by the MacCrate Report,[1] remains unfulfilled today. Yet the absence of such an institution should not obstruct serious research efforts by professors. The Carnegie study recounts the history of how the negotiations came to achieve credibility in the academy “when new legal theory was developed by entrepreneurial professors.”[2] Today, Harvard Law School is home to one of the world’s leading institutions studying the science and art of negotiations. There may well be a nascent movement underway elevate the skill of interviewing and counseling simulations because of the work of other pioneering faculty.[15] Legal education awaits similar entrepreneurs to establish a center to study technologically-mediated skills in law practice and/or technological means of conveying those skills.

Law schools, with their tremendous capacity for research, neutral position among competing private actors, and extensive contacts with both the industry and with peers at other professional schools, are a natural setting for research efforts.[16] Well-funded CLE providers that operate among a large base of customers may also be a viable center for similar research.[17] With the interconnectedness that the Internet offers, particularly “Web 2.0” tools for collaboration, loose affiliations of like-minded researchers and educators are increasingly viable.[18]

Any research center should not only study best practices, but also develop innovative solutions to chronic problems facing legal practice. Perhaps no good solution exists to the problem of email overload, or perhaps the right technologies or techniques have yet to be invented. Chicago-Kent Law School’s Access To Justice project, for example, recently developed new technologies to help unrepresented litigants gain access to court, providing students with a unique chance to problem-solve not just as lawyers, but as consultants to the legal system. New York Law School’s Certificate of Mastery in Law Practice Technology likewise intends to give students a chance to develop innovative solutions to lawyers’ and clients’ problems. Such efforts not only advance the legal profession but also help bring justice to vastly underserved low- and middle-income Americans through smart use of cutting-edge technology.

Centers for practice research and innovation recognize that practicing attorneys are not mere mechanics, and that intellectually interesting problems exist not just among academics but also among practitioners. It is in such centers that the best skills of both lawyers and academics can be put to use in understanding and mastering the challenges that face the legal profession today.

Further research

We suggest a research agenda that focuses on confirming and pursuing opportunities for action by answering the following questions:

  • How do attorneys who begin their legal careers in settings other than large law firms make the transition to practice?
    • Given the findings that most small- and mid-size firms disfavor hiring straight from law schools because of the cost of training, how do the new attorneys who in fact start in such settings learn to practice?
    • How do government and nonprofit legal offices, comparatively unburdened by market forces, provide adequate transitional training to new attorneys?
    • To what extent do third-party CLE programs meet the need for transitional training and support? What are barriers that stand in the way of utilizing these resources?
  • In practice settings that underutilize technology, how do newer attorneys fit in? This question should be examined with respect to both tech-savvy and technophobic new attorneys.
    • Are more savvy attorneys teaching their superiors to use technology more effectively, or rather being forced to use existing, inefficient systems (as in the case of the associate pressured to dictate his memos)?
    • Are attorneys who are less comfortable with technology receiving the support they need to integrate necessary tools into their practice?
  • Do law school clinical programs have a robust technology infrastructure? This question should be answered at the individual clinical office level, not general schoolwide basis. It should also consider the various types of systems appropriate to that office’s work, e.g. case management, document management, expert systems, etc.
    • In offices that do not have robust technology infrastructures, why not? Is there no perceived need for it, inadequate support to sustain it, or some other factor?
    • If the actual costs of maintaining technology for clinical programs is too high, is there a way to lower those costs by, for example, pooling support resources across clinical programs or schools?
  • What are best practices related to the skills identified in this study? Our preliminary research shows that managers and educational professionals do not have a ready or explicit answer to this question, but this does not mean that awareness of best practices do not exist – rather, some work may help excavate implicit or intuitive understanding, or arbitrage standards from other professions. See also Recommendation (4), above.
    • Do we know enough about a practice to develop interventions to help novices develop the appropriate skill or attitude?
    • Is it sufficiently robust to serve as a basis for evaluating performance?

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 While the MacCrate Report rhetorically refutes the idea of a “gap,” the commission’s findings and recommendations in fact confirmed the disconnect between academy and practice. The Carnegie study demonstrated that the gap still remains today in 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Sullivan, et.al., Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, Jossey-Bass (2007)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Law School Survey of Student Engagement, Engaging Legal Education: Moving Beyond the Status Quo. The study finds that 31% of third year students spend less than 11 hours per week reading and preparing for class (at 9). (An old saw about legal education likewise concludes: “First year they scare you to death; second year they work you to death; third year they bore you to death.”)
  4. ↑ Mary Daly, The Structure of Legal Education and the Legal Profession, Multidisciplinary Practice, Competition, and Globalization, 52 J. Legal Educ. 180 (2002) (wondering whether, presently, “the graduates of national law schools will have any meaningful contact with those from the regional and local law schools”).
  5. ↑ The American Lawyer Media 2006 “NLJ 250” survey finds that 12 law schools place over half of their graduates in the largest 250 firms, with Columbia Law School placing the largest percentage of its students (70%, or 313 of 450 J.D.s) in these firms
  6. ↑ Note, however, that the survey did not ask whether the support was adequate to their first-year needs. This omission should be corrected in future research in this area.
  7. ↑ Among After the JD 5th-year study subjects, only 20% of the attorneys practice in firms of 251+ lawyers and 8% in firms of 101-250 lawyers. Another 31% practice in government and other settings, which have different financial incentives than private practices. Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Richard Sander, Joyce Sterling, Gita Wilder, After the JD: First Results of a National Study of Legal Careers (NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and American Bar Foundation) (2004).
  8. ↑ Elizabeth Goldberg, [www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1154077531591 Midlevel Blues], The American Lawyer, 1 August 2006.
  9. ↑ CLE providers themselves do not seem to share this pessimism. Indeed, the ABA model standards for continuing legal education suggest that no more than half of an attorney’s mandated CLE credits may come from an employer, which ensures that in jurisdictions that follow these guidelines, “insourcing” of CLE can never do away with external providers – unless law firms enter consortia with each other, swapping attorneys among their internally-run programs.
  10. ↑ Note that the total number of respondents at this level are too small to be statistically significant (N=52).
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Hildebrandt Institute, Changing Approaches to Lawyer Training: the Latest Battleground in the Growing War for Talent (March 2006)
  12. ↑ Clifford Chance, for example, has a seven-year program comprising two full days of training per year, personalized development plans, and career benchmarking. Topics generally range within the soft skills: business, communication, client development, and presentation. At the other end of the economic spectrum, the Center for Legal Aid Education recently began to provide an analogous program for poverty lawyers around the United States.
  13. ↑ CommunitasOnline, Pace School of Law: Law Firm Hiring Practices Survey at 24 (2006) (unpublished presentation) (on file with author). Of course, such firms could fulfill their recruitment partially by hiring directly from law schools. The survey did not ask what proportion of each firm’s hiring needs were met by hiring directly from school versus through lateral channels.
  14. ↑ For example, New York Law School offers a Certificate of Mastery in Law Practice Technology in which students may develop new practice tools, some with potential commercial viability. Chicago-Kent’s Access to Justice Project had professors and students from the disciplines of law and design work together with the Illinois court system to simplify access by self-represented litigants. See Staudt, Ronald, Technology for justice customers: bridging the digital divide facing self-represented litigants, 5 U. of Md. L.J. of Race, Religion, Gender & Class 71 (2005)
  15. ↑ As described earlier, professors at BYU have drawn from over eight years of observing practicing attorneys interview and counsel clients to create a “deliberate practice” framework using methods first developed for sports performance. See also Sullivan, et.al. at 116-119 (describing the development of a parallel framework by faculty at UCLA).
  16. ↑ In 2004 Harvard Law School established the Program on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry to conduct empirical research on issues facing the legal industry to better inform training of new lawyers and leaders. Stanford Law School has recently focused several fellowships on empirical research to back the development of cross-disciplinary simulation.
  17. ↑ ALI-ABA, for example, studies “bridge-the-gap” transition training for newly-admitted lawyers. Generally, any good CLE program requires thoughtful exploration and research of the topic to be taught; however, the vast majority of CLE courses focus on substantive topics, not skills. Practicing Law Institute, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the Center for Legal Aid Education are all notable exceptions to this generalization.
  18. ↑ For example, Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is planning to cultivate a national network of legal instructors by offering them the ability to create and share e-casebooks. Several legal blogs discuss legal pedagogy, most notably Law School Innovation.
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