Over at PrawfsBlawg, a blog dealing with that wonderful insular world of law schools, an interesting post asking what to do about 3rd year law students (or 3Ls as some of the really cool law schools prefer). The problem is that first and second year students bring interest and enthusiasm to school. Third year students use law school as a place to hang between job interviews. What to do.
My 2 cents. Use third year as a time to teach kids how to BE a lawyer.
My first “assignment” when I went to work as a lawyer was to “do a motion.” Now, I knew what a motion was in the conceptual sense. But I was clueless as to the nuts and bolts. As I sat there trying to put pen to paper, I had an epiphany. Three years of law school and I knew nothing about how to be a lawyer.
I had, as do all law students, my moot court argument to fall back on, but not too many budding lawyers have the opportunity to argue before the Supreme Court on their first day on the job. In retrospect (and having judged moot court competitions for decades), they bear so little resemblance to reality as to make them downright goofy. More significantly, the “judges”, whether real lawyers or law students on the moot court boards who have deigned themselves experts in such matters, are more likely to have never seen the inside of any courtroom, whether appellate or trial.
Granted, the harsh reality of the practice of law might conflict mightily with the beautiful theory taught in the first two years. But that tough lesson will come regardless. There is a day that law students turn into lawyers, and then must confront the demons of the law. We can’t protect them forever.
One example of practical instruction that I found quite instructive is the Cardozo Law School Intensive Trial Advocacy Program (ITAP). For two weeks in January, third year students are turned over to real lawyers by Professors Barry Scheck and Ellen Yaroshefsky. The group of instructors they’ve assembled is comprised of men and women and judges (who are neutral by definition) who can talk about it because they do it.
This is an immersion program in trials. They come in as kids and leave as trial lawyers. Well, not quite, but a whole lot more like a trial lawyer then they would have been without the program. It’s amazing to watch the improvement as the two weeks goes along, as law students begin to understand what it means to try a case, to be up there in the spotlight with critical eyes waiting to rip your head off. While we try very hard to be kind and positive, the students realize that it’s a very tough job to do well and that their delusions of brilliance in law school does little to help them when they stand up for cross.
But this is just one program, and only two weeks, and not real. Close to real, but nobody goes to jail or loses their life savings if they mess up. Sometimes, it’s hard to get the students, and even the judges, to stay in character. They aren’t ready for the transition.
What about learning how to draft a motion? How about learning where the arraignment parts are as opposed to the trial parts? They may know the purpose of bail, but can they argue a bail application? There are a million nuts and bolts pieces to being a lawyer, and they leave law school without ever having been told.
The third year of law school should be about being a lawyer. They should already know how to think like a lawyer, to write and research and to have some substantive knowledge of the law. Let’s take them out of the warm, comforting hands of academia and put them into the hard, calloused hands of working lawyers, before we turn them loose on the world.
My 2 cents. Use third year as a time to teach kids how to BE a lawyer.
My first “assignment” when I went to work as a lawyer was to “do a motion.” Now, I knew what a motion was in the conceptual sense. But I was clueless as to the nuts and bolts. As I sat there trying to put pen to paper, I had an epiphany. Three years of law school and I knew nothing about how to be a lawyer.
I had, as do all law students, my moot court argument to fall back on, but not too many budding lawyers have the opportunity to argue before the Supreme Court on their first day on the job. In retrospect (and having judged moot court competitions for decades), they bear so little resemblance to reality as to make them downright goofy. More significantly, the “judges”, whether real lawyers or law students on the moot court boards who have deigned themselves experts in such matters, are more likely to have never seen the inside of any courtroom, whether appellate or trial.
Granted, the harsh reality of the practice of law might conflict mightily with the beautiful theory taught in the first two years. But that tough lesson will come regardless. There is a day that law students turn into lawyers, and then must confront the demons of the law. We can’t protect them forever.
One example of practical instruction that I found quite instructive is the Cardozo Law School Intensive Trial Advocacy Program (ITAP). For two weeks in January, third year students are turned over to real lawyers by Professors Barry Scheck and Ellen Yaroshefsky. The group of instructors they’ve assembled is comprised of men and women and judges (who are neutral by definition) who can talk about it because they do it.
This is an immersion program in trials. They come in as kids and leave as trial lawyers. Well, not quite, but a whole lot more like a trial lawyer then they would have been without the program. It’s amazing to watch the improvement as the two weeks goes along, as law students begin to understand what it means to try a case, to be up there in the spotlight with critical eyes waiting to rip your head off. While we try very hard to be kind and positive, the students realize that it’s a very tough job to do well and that their delusions of brilliance in law school does little to help them when they stand up for cross.
But this is just one program, and only two weeks, and not real. Close to real, but nobody goes to jail or loses their life savings if they mess up. Sometimes, it’s hard to get the students, and even the judges, to stay in character. They aren’t ready for the transition.
What about learning how to draft a motion? How about learning where the arraignment parts are as opposed to the trial parts? They may know the purpose of bail, but can they argue a bail application? There are a million nuts and bolts pieces to being a lawyer, and they leave law school without ever having been told.
The third year of law school should be about being a lawyer. They should already know how to think like a lawyer, to write and research and to have some substantive knowledge of the law. Let’s take them out of the warm, comforting hands of academia and put them into the hard, calloused hands of working lawyers, before we turn them loose on the world.
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Great post! I haven’t been to law school myself, but I have heard many a lawyer complain that the newly-graduated attorney they just hired is completely unprepared for the realities of practice.
But don’t stop there! No doubt your readership consists of current or prospective law students who frequent the criminal defense blawgosphere in order to get a sense of “what it’s really like out there.” I hope you will follow-up this post with some advice on what law students can do DURING LAW SCHOOL so that they don’t come out so unfamiliar with “how to be a lawyer.” The Cardozo ITAP is a start – keep going!
Thanks, OS. I’ll give this some more thought, but other than get their butt out of the classroom and into a law office to work for a living during law school, I’m not sure there really is much more they can do. Before a law student is ready to appreciate what a lawyer does, she has to know the basics. That’s what the first 2 years of law school are all about, learning to think.
I’ve been practicing law for more than a dozen years, and still you might as well be speaking Finnish, as far as I’m concerned, when you say “How about learning where the arraignment parts are as opposed to the trial parts?”
Flemmish? That’s New York criminal lawyer lingo. We call our courtrooms “parts” and have separate “parts” according to the status of a case, with some exceptions. It gets more (needlessly) complicated when you move from county to county, and the names change according to whatever is fashionable in court administration at any given moment. It’s not that there’s any real magic to figuring it out (a rose by another name sorta thing), but if somebody tells the kid to get his butt down to Part AR2, he ought to have some clue what they’re talking about.
Do different judges handle the different parts? Are judges assigned to particular parts? Are there judges who, for their entire judicial careers, handle only arraignments? Is their suicide rate unusually high?
Yes, Yes, No, Moot. There are criminal court (lower court) arraignment parts that are on a rotating basis (nobody wants these jobs, so they change every few days and every criminal court judge has to do his or her time). Supreme Court arraignment parts (post-indictment) where judges often stay for many years. Most judges change parts every few years, but some stay in the same room their entire careers.
Another post that I agree with wholeheartedly (Frankly, I’m starting to get a little frightened…) The bottom line is that law schools need to change. They need to recognize that they do not exist to “grow” law professors, but to grow practioners instead.
Almost every law school has some type of clinical class (where students work on real cases under the supervision of a practicing attorney) and some even REQUIRE it for graduation. Others have such programs available, but simply offer them as electives. I just don’t understand why requiring them is not the norm. Think of how much better new lawyers would be if all of them had ALREADY worked on real cases with real consequences (with the safety net of a supervising experienced attorney).
Why such students (new lawyers) might actually know where the courthouse is, where arraignments are conducted, what an arraignment is, and they might even know how to gin up a motion or two…
What a wonderful world it would be…
You’re scaring me too, Steve. It’s like we’re becoming one in some great cosmic force…nah.
Clinics are good, but I would like to see the entire third year dedicated to transitioning student, not just a single clinic. Some additional substantive law is fine, the truth is that learning the substantive law to the limited extent you do in law school, once you have the basic skills, just isn’t that difficult. It’s the deeper understanding of practice, both nuts and bolts as well as a real appreciation of areas of law, that distinguishes the student from the lawyer.
Mandatory legal clinics. That’s where I honed my talent.
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