The Apprentice

donald-trump2The National Law Journal recently reported that the law firm of Howrey & Simon has adopted an innovative training program for new associates.  Newly hired lawyers will serve a two year “apprenticeship” prior to being fully integrated into the law firm.  This program will reduce the number and the compensation of the law school graduates hired by the firm, and it is part of Howrey’s overall program to eliminate “lockstep” salary increases for its associates.

Lawyers in Howrey’s apprenticeship program will be paid significantly less than the going rate for first year associates at other large law firms.  During their first year, the new associates will take firm sponsored classes on legal writing and gain practical experience by working on pro bono matters.  During their second year, the associates in the program will spend several months “embedded” at client sites where their work will be charged at a reduced billing rate.  The law firm’s managing partner compared the apprenticeship program to the training programs typically employed in the medical and accounting professions.

 The Howrey program provides an opportunity to reconsider the entire continuum of legal education: a process that begins with undergraduate instruction, continues through law school, and is perpetuated by continuing legal education requirements.  From time to time, each stage in the continuum comes under scrutiny, as Rick Esenberg’s post on Reengineering Law School illustrates.  In my opinion, the continuum should be viewed holistically when we evaluate whether we are succeeding at training competent and ethical members of the legal profession.  Law schools, law firms and the state bar all need to cooperate in order to ensure that there are no gaps in the preparation that new lawyers receive as they start their careers.  As a member of the Wisconsin Legal Education Commission in 1996, I argued in favor of a program of mandatory skills-based CLE instruction for recent bar admittees.  Many of our students are undoubtedly pleased that the State Bar chose not to implement this particular Commission recommendation.

 Given my predisposition in favor of practical training, I should be supportive of the Howrey apprenticeship model.  Instead, I find myself troubled.  In particular, I am wary of the idea of embedding future corporate lawyers within a client’s legal department for any significant period of time.

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Reengineering Law School?

There has been some back and forth on the legal blogs over a post by Paul Lippe on the AmLawBlog criticizing the current model of legal education. In short, Lippe believes that law school is too theoretical, disconnected from practice, too long and too expensive. He complains that faculty are isolated from, and uninterested in, the legal profession and that law school graduates are less prepared for practice than, say, medical school graduates. He argues that faculty scholarship is largely without impact in the “real world.”

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Diploma-Privilege Case Continues

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has handed down an opinion in Wiesmueller v. Kosobucki, No. 08-2527, a class action challenging—under the federal Constitution’s “dormant commerce clause”—the diploma privilege.  The diploma privilege, of course, is the Wisconsin Supreme Court rule that permits law graduates of Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin to be admitted to the practice of law in Wisconsin (without, for example, having to take a bar exam).  The Seventh Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of the case, not because it concluded that the diploma privilege is unconstitutional but because the plaintiffs should have an opportunity to submit evidence on the matter.  The court stated that “Marquette and Madison are law schools of national stature, and we can hardly infer without any evidence that they concentrate on educating their students in the law of the state that these law schools happen to be located in . . . .”  Slip op. at 11.  So it remanded (stressing that “[w]e intimate no view on the ultimate outcome”).  Id. at 15.

The court said much else of note.  This includes that the diploma privilege “has only indirect effects on interstate commerce and regulates evenhandedly” and that “the regulation must be at least minimally reasonable.”  Id. at 8 (internal quotation marks omitted).  On the latter point, the court noted as follows: “We emphasize ‘minimally.’  The judiciary lacks the time and the knowledge to be able to strike a fine balance between the burden that a particular state regulation lays on interstate commerce and the benefit of that regulation to the state’s legitimate interests.”  Id.  (I cannot resist adding that the court allowed that “[t]he two law schools in Wisconsin are very fine law schools, doubtless among the nation’s best . . . .“  Id. at 13-14.)  The problem, according to the court, is that “we find ourselves in an evidentiary vacuum created by the early termination of the case by the grant of a motion to dismiss.”  Id. at 8-9.

While Marquette is not a party to this case (the defendants are the members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and its Board of Bar Examiners), I expect that on remand (and any subsequent appeal) the diploma privilege will pass constitutional muster.  This is the beginning of my seventh year as dean and thirteenth as a member of the faculty at Marquette; throughout this time Marquette Law School has sought to ensure—because of the diploma privilege—that our students are especially introduced to the law and legal profession of Wisconsin.  Certainly I expect that it is not the case (to quote a “supposition” posed by the Seventh Circuit) “that Wisconsin law is no greater part of the curriculum of the Marquette and Madison law schools than it is of the law schools of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Virginia, the University of Texas, Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Northern Illinois.”  Id. at 9.  Indeed, I know it not to be the case at Marquette, and I expect that a similar thing is true at the University of Wisconsin.  To be sure, it will take a while to demonstrate all this through the litigation system, but Marquette will provide the Attorney General’s office any support that it requires in marshaling evidence.

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