More on Practice and Preaching, Part I

In my earlier post on the long running debate about the proper emphasis of legal education, I wanted to suggest that there is more of a symbiotic relationship between practice and preaching.
Focusing on one part of the issue, Bruce Boyden wonders what relevant experiences an eight year practitioner might have not yet hand. Bruce says that stayed at Big Law to the cusp of partnership and then decided to leave (probably adding to his long term happiness and that of his family). He says he was doing a lot of the things that partners do and writes: 

One observation was that the transition from associate to partner in a large law firm is a transition from a larger proportion of hands-on legal practice (writing and filing briefs, doing research, advising clients on the content of the law, marshaling evidence, even appearances in court) to a larger proportion of business management: managing resources (associates, staff, and other partners) and managing clients–keeping current clients happy and bringing in new clients

These “partner” duties, he suggests, are not, in some sense, the practice of law and may be better informed by an MBA program than a J.D. He asks what law professors who leave the practice short of this stage are missing. It’s a great question and is answered, I think, not so much in terms of what someone has “missed” but by a consideration of what others may have “gained.”

Continue ReadingMore on Practice and Preaching, Part I

Best of the Blogs: Clerkship Edition

This week, two posts on federal judicial clerkships particularly caught my eye.  First, at Concurring Opinions, David Hoffman reported on the “quickly unraveling clerkship market.”  Under the “Federal Judges Law Clerk Hiring Plan,” law schools are not supposed to send supporting materials for student clerkship applicants, and judges are not supposed to interview student applicants, before September of the students’ third year.  This is intended to stop a race to the bottom among the judges, who might otherwise move their hiring processes ever earlier in order to snag the most promising clerkship candidates.  (When I was a law student in the mid-1990’s, the norm was hiring midway through the 2L year.  This seemed truly absurd at my law school because the first semester was ungraded, and third-semester grades were not yet available when clerks were hired; judges were thus selecting clerks based on only a single semester of grades.)

According to Hoffman, the “dam is about to burst,” as more and more judges and law schools are violating or circumventing the Plan.  I was particularly intrigued by his observation that judges are circumventing the Plan by hiring practicing lawyers instead of law students.  This is certainly nothing new — I had several classmates who moved from practice to clerkship and back again over our first few years out of school — but I wonder if it has become more common in response to restrictions on hiring law students.

I also wonder if judges tend to get better clerks when they hire practitioners.  

Continue ReadingBest of the Blogs: Clerkship Edition

What I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School, Part III

The top five things I wish I would have known when I started law school:

1)      Professors don’t bite.  When I first started law school, I thought that if I approached a faculty member outside of class (or even in class but voluntarily), my head might explode.  I eventually realized that I was missing out on a valuable opportunity to develop professional relationships with my professors that I could benefit from both during my academic career at law school as well as my professional career after law school.

2)      Not every lawyer has to be a litigator. 

Continue ReadingWhat I Wish I Had Known When I Started Law School, Part III