At Simple Justice, we’ve been discussing how to turn law students into lawyers, a job that law schools have unfortunately neglected. But what is the raging topic of debate amongst law professors? According to Concurring Opinions, it is whether law students should show up for school at all.
Compulsory attendance is derided as “paternalism”. Law Prof Dave Hoffman contends that “[i]t is much harder to see how missing class, unlike using a laptop or being unprepared, produces negative externalities for the remaining students.” It is much harder for me to see why he needs to use words like “negative externalities,” but I digress.
Is it just me, or does this debate strike others as absurd? These students are going to law school. Show up! Are we asking too much? If you don’t want to go to law school, then don’t. If they can’t be bothered to show up for law school, then send them off to med school or some other place that better suits their needs. But why is this even a discussion?
The argument is that these students are purportedly adults and should be allowed to make their own choices. Wrong. They are students, whether they are adults or not, and attendance at school is one of the things that students do. It is part of the game. Assuming that some students will be capable of making it through law school despite non-attendance, what’s the lesson here? Skating by is what makes Johnny a good lawyer? Try that with a judge and see how well she takes to your missing a court appearance. Tell that to the defendant who sits in jail another month because his lawyer had something better to do and appear and represent him.
While the debate recognizes that class participation and discussion are critical components of law school, the argument then veers off by noting that students who don’t want to be there are unprepared and bring nothing to the discussion. Yet again, there’s a disconnect with the primary point of law school. If the student is unprepared and brings nothing to the discussion, then we should label him a former law student. If law schools are holding on to those students who can’t be bothered to come to class for the tuition, I bet they could find some other kid who would be more than happy to take his seat.
ABA Regulation 304-d requires law schools to make attendance mandatory. Dave Hoffman believes that “[m]ost law professors probably would like to follow HLS’ model, not only to avoid charges of hypocrisy, but because they have grown less enchanted by a paternalistic pedagogy the more they’ve taught. But, being risk-averse rule-followers, they hold their noses and enforce strict attendance policies.” Nice how even law professors devolve to name calling when someone disagrees with them. So much for intellectual freedom, eh boys?
Accordingly, Dave proposes, “RESOLVED, THEREFORE, that Regulation 304-d be eliminated.”
I humbly offer a counter-resolution: RESOLVED, THEREFORE, that law professors teach their damned students, each and every one of them, and stop using the words “paternalistic pedagogy” or “negative externalities” except when they’re trying impress the opposite sex at cocktail parties. They should also consider wearing low pants if they really want to get lucky.
Compulsory attendance is derided as “paternalism”. Law Prof Dave Hoffman contends that “[i]t is much harder to see how missing class, unlike using a laptop or being unprepared, produces negative externalities for the remaining students.” It is much harder for me to see why he needs to use words like “negative externalities,” but I digress.
Is it just me, or does this debate strike others as absurd? These students are going to law school. Show up! Are we asking too much? If you don’t want to go to law school, then don’t. If they can’t be bothered to show up for law school, then send them off to med school or some other place that better suits their needs. But why is this even a discussion?
The argument is that these students are purportedly adults and should be allowed to make their own choices. Wrong. They are students, whether they are adults or not, and attendance at school is one of the things that students do. It is part of the game. Assuming that some students will be capable of making it through law school despite non-attendance, what’s the lesson here? Skating by is what makes Johnny a good lawyer? Try that with a judge and see how well she takes to your missing a court appearance. Tell that to the defendant who sits in jail another month because his lawyer had something better to do and appear and represent him.
While the debate recognizes that class participation and discussion are critical components of law school, the argument then veers off by noting that students who don’t want to be there are unprepared and bring nothing to the discussion. Yet again, there’s a disconnect with the primary point of law school. If the student is unprepared and brings nothing to the discussion, then we should label him a former law student. If law schools are holding on to those students who can’t be bothered to come to class for the tuition, I bet they could find some other kid who would be more than happy to take his seat.
ABA Regulation 304-d requires law schools to make attendance mandatory. Dave Hoffman believes that “[m]ost law professors probably would like to follow HLS’ model, not only to avoid charges of hypocrisy, but because they have grown less enchanted by a paternalistic pedagogy the more they’ve taught. But, being risk-averse rule-followers, they hold their noses and enforce strict attendance policies.” Nice how even law professors devolve to name calling when someone disagrees with them. So much for intellectual freedom, eh boys?
Accordingly, Dave proposes, “RESOLVED, THEREFORE, that Regulation 304-d be eliminated.”
I humbly offer a counter-resolution: RESOLVED, THEREFORE, that law professors teach their damned students, each and every one of them, and stop using the words “paternalistic pedagogy” or “negative externalities” except when they’re trying impress the opposite sex at cocktail parties. They should also consider wearing low pants if they really want to get lucky.
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There was a time when Law Schools did not exist. Someone hoping to be a lawyer took the Bar exam and if he passed, was admitted to the bar. Law School, like most professional schools that lead to some kind of board exam for licensing were invented to cut down on the competition, not to raise the quality of the practitioners, a more difficult exam could have done that.
It’s not a new phenomenon, read Mark Twain about training to be a riverboat pilot.
The most preposterous example is the ever increasing requirements to become a real estate salesman. Any high school graduate can learn everything they need to know to do that job in a week. They did for generations, today’s brokers are no more competent than those of 100 years ago. It’s all about the competition.
Time for a little simple anti-trust action. Close the law schools.
I don’t know if attendance should be mandatory or not. I do know that I got very little out of class attendance during my first year of law school. Legal education needs to change. Ending mandatory attendance would make law school more bearable, but it wouldn’t make it any better, necessarily.
I am a second-year student at the University of Baltimore School of Law. UB has a reputation for being more “practice-oriented” than most schools. It produces few judges, professors, or think tankers. However, it produces the bulk of Baltimore’s trial attorneys. (As such, it is ranked in the 4th tier by U.S. News and World Reports.) Yet even at this supposedly practical law school, I found that the bulk of classroom activity in the first year was useless.
Most professors of 1L-type courses–Contracts, Torts, Civ Pro, Property, Con Law, Crim Law–seem to be teaching students how to be professors or judges, not practicing attorneys. They don’t focus on how to attack a problem as an advocate. Granted, legal reasoning can be complex and foreign, and the class experience can help teach students how to navigate complex rules, statutes, and opinions. But most of us won’t sit on the bench, nor will we stand before a section of 1Ls, nor will we do much appellate work. Most of us will be practitioners. But since most professors of 1L courses aren’t practitioners and haven’t been for decades, if ever, they seem either disinterested in or in capable of providing practical instruction.
So, if class is largely a waste of our time, why should we be required to attend? I guarantee that if I had not attended a single class last year, and instead spent that class time studying the assigned material on my own, my grades would have been better, simply because of the extra time I could have devoted to my studied, and my level of legal knowledge would be no worse for the wear.
I’m fortunate enough to have had some contacts in the legal community prior to entering law school, and was able to secure a paid, full-time clerkship this past summer at an insurance defense firm. I am working part time for them during the semester, and will continue that clerkship for the rest of my time in law school. I think I learned more about the law and how to handle a civil case this summer than I learned in school all of last year.
There are exceptions. At my school, many upper-level courses are taught by local practitioners. I’m presently taking courses in Worker’s Compensation and Medical Malpractice. Both are taught by local practitioners. Their goal is for us to be able to handle a med mal or comp case when we finish school. My criminal law & constitutional criminal procedure professor is similarly practical. Shouldn’t that be the goal of every professor?
It isn’t, sadly. And because of that, law school is very frustrating. Ending mandatory attendance would not improve legal education in and of itself. But it would end some misery.
I love the blog!
Sorry for the lengthy diatribe.
No reason to be sorry, Zeb. When it’s all in there, you’ve got to let it out.
One of the recurring themes, both here and at Concurring Opinions, was from law students who argued that their classes/professors stunk, rendering class attendance a waste of time. The problem isn’t attendance, but professors.
On the other side, not every professor is going to engage or inspire every student. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know their stuff and be capable of making students think. The first year of law school is meant to teach kids to think, as well as teach them the basics. Hence the socratic method. Putting them under pressure, treating them like pond scum is all part of the game, since that’s how lawyers function.
One point that you raise is quite true. Professors who forget the difference between lawyers and law professors tend to be impractical in their approach. It’s not that they don’t have a lot to teach you, but that they look down on the practical in favor of the academic. Law professors, like judges, would do better with a breadth of experience before shaping young minds. Nobody should be in the ivory tower or bench so long that they have forgotten how the world in the trenches functions, or what it’s like to hold other people’s lives in your hands. That’s what being a lawyer is ultimately all about, and it must never be forgotten.
I’m not sure I want to go back to the days when physicians used leeches for everything that couldn’t be hacked off with a dull saw. Back when, prospective lawyers clerked to prepare to be a lawyer, much like doctors today go through an internship and residency. It was a sound approach, and its abandonment has left a very real void in the preparation to represent real people.
Professionals back then were also generalists, whereas today so many are specialists. While specialties allow lawyers to have a much better ability to function in an ever-increasingly complex system, it also inhiibits a broader, more holistic, view of what lawyers do and how it fits into the overall scheme of things.
While I wouldn’t advocate closing law schools, I would urge law schools and professors to remember that this is professional training, not an academic exercise, and get their feet firmly planted in the real world where lawyers deal with real people and real problems. From the Co Op post, it seems clear to me that they are getting increasingly distant from their purpose, and are making themselves increasingly irrelevant to the training of lawyers.
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