Vol. 74, No. 7, July 2001

Preparing for Practice Page 3: Street Smarts

Nuts and Bolts

Law schools everywhere hear demands that they provide more practical training for students. As one example, the U.W.'s Assessment 2000 survey found that 40 percent of responding employers and recent graduates suggested making the curriculum "more practical." Some observers would advocate more hands-on courses and clinicals in law school. But such programs are more expensive to run than regular classes, law school administrators point out. Fordham's Dean Feerick notes that clinicals, for example, require a ratio of eight or nine students to one full-time faculty member.

Also surfacing in discussions of practical education is disagreement about what's "practical" enough. For instance, is it the law school's job to teach students about the business and economic aspects of law practice, or is that part of on-the-job training? Evidence of that debate crops up in the quotes from the 1950s noted earlier, and it's still an issue today. From a national perspective, practitioners and academics are at an impasse. "The academics argue they're not trade schools and that the practicing bar should teach this," Yu says. "The practicing bar says it's far more efficient for students to get that grounding in law school because it can be taught in a mass education way, rather than each firm doing it."

Beyond business savvy, young lawyers need "more nuts and bolts," says Milwaukee attorney Tristan Pettit, immediate past-president of the State Bar Young Lawyers Division and a 1995 Marquette graduate. "I'm talking about such things as how you serve somebody who's dodging service," he says, "or how you collect a retainer from a client - basic stuff that, ideally, young lawyers should learn from their law firms. But unfortunately, many firms aren't taking the time to teach that. So I think law schools have to do it."

But time is also short in law schools, which already have much to teach in only three years. Cagle, for instance, tries to cover many of those nuts-and-bolts topics in his general practice skills course. But there's a limit to what he can cover, and not all students need to learn the same details. He believes students are better served by learning broader skills. "I think if you teach people how to communicate with others and how to solve problems," he contends, "then they will figure out how to collect from a client or deal with other problems when they arise."

Agreement on how to handle practical legal training isn't likely to emerge anytime soon. Entering into this discussion is the subject of mentoring, or lack of it. On-the-job guidance for new lawyers has fallen victim to the time and economic pressures of modern practice. In his first job out of law school, Pettit not only received no mentoring, "I couldn't even talk to a partner," he says. "He was never available. When you have that one big question and you can't get in to talk to the partner, then everything you learned in law school doesn't matter at that point. You're stuck, and then you mess up." Frustration built to the point that Pettit almost dropped out of law altogether. Fortunately, his father, also a lawyer, was able to reassure him that not all practice settings were like his son's first one.

Not all new attorneys face as severe a sink-or-swim environment as Pettit did. But he's certainly not alone among young lawyers who have considered leaving law, or actually did leave, because of poor or nonexistent on-the-job training and guidance. Meanwhile, all this comes back to haunt law schools, as legal employers demand that law graduates be ready to practice, and new attorneys feel left in the lurch.

Preparing for Practice Page 5: Realistic Expectations