Should Law Schools Be More Like Medical Schools

Should law schools be more like medical schools as teaching institutions?  No, I am not suggesting pulling a week’s worth of all-nighters and hooking up with every hot body in every nook and cranny of the hospital (Grey’s Anatomy style) and justifying it because of fatigue, the absence of other forms of recreation and basic bodily instincts that medical students seem to view a little differently than the general population.

No, get those images out of your head!  Substitute images of the Socratic Method of law school education that we all love to hate and compare that to the on-the-job training (OJT) methods of medical schools.  I heard it expressed especially well by a professor I know at Washington & Lee Law, who teaches in the new curriculum there, which is focused on turning out practice-ready law graduates.  Professor James Moliterno made the following comment at a conference on the future of law school education last year at American University’s Washington College of Law , and I discussed it with him again later when I spoke at W&L Law:

“Medical schools prepare future doctors, and law schools prepare future law professors.” 

Think about it.

I have thought about it, a lot, and I think that Professor Moliterno is right on, as is Professor Bill Henderson at Indiana University Mauer School of Law.  I have written about him in prior blogs and in my books, and I admire his efforts to bring attention to adding more practicum to the law school curriculum.

Now, another law scholar, Douglas Sylvestor, Dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State, has tackled the problem, as reported in the National Law Journal and Above the Law.  Apparently Professor Sylvestor visited the Mayo Clinic recently and was struck by the differences in teaching styles between law and medicine.  National Law Journal describes it this way:

“The medical residency system gives fledgling doctors real-world experience under close supervision, so why doesn’t anything similar exist for new lawyers beyond the sink-or-swim associate system?”  National Law Journal as reported in Above the Law.

In response to this observation, Dean Sylvester initiated what may be the first large-scale, nonprofit training law firm affiliated with a law school.  The Arizona State University Law (ASU Law) program is still in its nascent stages, but I am inspired by the concept.

As one would expect, Above the Law (ATL) is skeptical because of the practice by some law schools of hiding unemployed law graduates in a program like this to keep the law school placement statistics looking good.  Also, as you would expect, ATL advocates for total transparency in this—and all things, of course.  These are important issues, but they beg the question of whether such programs are important to legal education and beneficial to the profession.  To its credit, however, ATL also identifies a second benefit from this program:  providing low-cost legal services to people who need them.

Although the program plans are still in the works, it is projected that experienced attorneys would be hired to supervise as many as 15 to 30 “resident lawyers,” recent ASU Law grads  (AHA………now you get the ATL skepticism…….right?), who would gain experience in various practice areas over a two-year time period.  The rate for service would be low, and any profits would be used toward scholarships.

This new program is very exciting, as the only “not-for-profit law firm” sponsored by a law school to have come on the scene so far.  However, it is not the only effective OJT training effort among law schools.  Other efforts, like the diverse and wide-range clinical programs that I have reported about in the past at law schools like Georgetown University Law Center, come to mind.  These are very bona fide attempts at teaching practicum, but they are not full-time programs, and they compete with students’ other curriculum requirements.  As a result, these programs hardly can be as effective in preparing students for practice as the one being planned at ASU Law.

I hope that we see more of these innovative efforts sooner rather than later in law schools.  The biggest complaint that I hear from law firm partners is that recent law graduates have no practical practice skills.  (Well, also that they are younger, cuter, faster on the baseball field, etc, to be fair about it…… but I digress.)  Here is a way of significantly improving practice skills, and these same partners should be leaning on their law school alma maters to follow the lead.

Do you think that law schools need more OTJ training in the curriculum?  Would you like to participate in such a program—-in lieu of the big bucks of private practice for a few years?  Let me hear from you.

As always, I will keep you posted on future developments!