New Survey: Law Students Slack Off More in the Third Year
posted by Daniel Solove
It is surprising that they needed to conduct a survey to find out this shocking news, but I guess now it’s official: students slack off more in their third year of law school. According to a Inside Higher Ed article, the data for the study is as follows:
| Activity | First-Year Students | Second-Year Students | Third-Year Students |
| Came to class with readings and assignments completed | 93% | 84% | 74% |
| Worked on paper requiring integration of multiple sources | 80% | 66% | 71% |
| Prepared two or more drafts of paper before turning it in | 69% | 56% | 55% |
| Worked harder than necessary to meet professor’s expectations | 61% | 49% | 46% |
| Had serious talk with students with different political, religious or
social views |
70% | 68% | 65% |
| Had serious talk with students of different race and ethnicity | 61% | 59% | 58% |
| Contributed to class discussions | 46% | 48% | 51% |
| Worked with faculty members on non-class activities (committees, student
life, etc.) |
64% | 49% | 47% |
| Participated in clinical or pro bono project | 91% | 69% | 46% |
Insider Higher Ed states that the “survey suggests a serious third-year slump afflicts them as they are about to finish their law degrees.” Although the survey’s results definitely show some slacking off in the third year, I quarrel with characterizing it as a “serious” slacking off. If anything, the slacking off isn’t as pronounced as I had expected. Indeed, the study reveals that only a small percentage of students — typically around 10% to 15% are doing the slacking. And I’m puzzled by what the survey indicates as the most significant decline: 91% participated in clinical or pro bono work in their first year and only 46% did so in their third year. That doesn’t make sense since the first year at most law schools is filled with required courses, and students don’t get a chance to try out a clinic until their second or third years of law school.
The study is available here.
Despite the slacking off, I still believe that the third year of law school is a valuable experience. In the fall of 2005, I debated with Laura Appleman whether the third year of law school should be scrapped on Legal Affairs Debate Club. I still stand by my position. Condensing law school to two years would have a very negative impact on the law school experience. I wrote:
A streamlined system will discourage students from engaging in different law school activities if not make doing so nearly impossible. Moreover, the third year is one of the first times that students can catch their breath in their law school experience. It is a time where they can reflect more, where they can have the time to think about their careers and interests, where they can try out different things.
However, Laura and I agreed that legal education did need some significant reform. I wrote:
The missing components—which I agree should occur throughout a student’s law school education—are (1) an increased focus and attention to how students might practically pursue and implement some of the normative ideas of law reform that they are taught in law school; (2) more mentoring of law students by professors; and (3) the development of courses (or the taking of time within existing courses) to discuss how students might craft their legal careers.
The study has other findings, a bit less obvious than the 3L slacking. From the Inside Higher Ed’s summary:
* Students who reported having more experience with diversity in law school also reported greater overall satisfaction with their law school experience.
* About one in six students reported never receiving prompt oral or written feedback from faculty members.
* Nine out of ten students incur debt in law school, and of those students, the average debt projected upon graduation is $77,000.
January 3, 2006 at 9:35 am
Posted in: Law School
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Responses (11)
sparky - January 3, 2006 at 11:09 am
It would seem that this survey would tend to validate the notion that the third year is superflous. The items I understand you to advocate as reasons for the third year–participation in the other goings-on at the school–fall to below 50%. My hunch is that number is inflated. In non-elite law schools the vast majority of students are obsessed with getting a job and passing the bar. I understand your aspirational ideas for the legal academy, but I think it’s a disservice to the students to force a third year on them in the hope that some of these other goals will take. Most law school students are there because they have to be there to take the bar. Heaping more time and money deficits on them only undercuts the legal academy’s goals for a diverse profession.
John Jenkins - January 3, 2006 at 11:40 am
As a second semester 3L myself, I think one of the things sparky overlooks is why people aren’t doing clinical in their third year: because they are working part time at a firm. Many people already know where they will be working after graduation, and some of them work there during the year.
That said, I don’t think you can take this seriously because the methodology has to be questionable. Almost noone does pro bono work their first year, and as DJS noted, the first year is filled with required courses, so there are no opportunities for clinical work. Unless there’s some explanation of the questions asked in the article (which I can’t read, not being a subscriber), I’d say this is just page filler.
(60 hours isn’t enough time to learn much about the law, so I don’t think the third year is superfluous, unless you want to systematically strip out every interesting course and replace it with Wills & Trusts or Admin Law (jurisprudence, out; civil liberties, out, etc.).)
DML - January 3, 2006 at 12:58 pm
the third year should be cut out entirely, or turned into a full-time clinical year (a la med school). “interesting” courses, “catching your breath”, participating in activities, and mapping your career are, though theoreticaly valuable, quite useless when it’s time to pass the bar and start working (or looking for work). a third year clinical program may help students learn more about real-world practice, and thus become more marketable once graduated.
SaxMan - January 3, 2006 at 2:21 pm
As a mentally checked-out 3L, I would like to elaborate on DML’s post. Law school is about learning a method of thinking. Even the slowest students should have that system down by the end of the second year. Lawyers would not use the case-study method to learn a new area of law. Since they already know how to “think like a lawyer,” they would go straight for a treatise or other secondary source. The same should be true for 3L’s. A traditional case-study class does not teach enough material to be practically valuable, and it does not teach a method of thinking because 3L’s already know it.
I think that the third year should exist as a combination of bar preparation and clinical experience. It is ridiculous that law schools do not even pretend to prepare students for the bar exam or for actual practice. Why not use the much-reviled third year to correct these flaws in the system?
jimbino - January 3, 2006 at 2:30 pm
The stats are no doubt skewed by the fact that, by third year, lots of law students will have decided that they have no interest in practicing law, now that they have to cut their hair, remove the rings and tattoos and put on airs and three-piece suits just to interview for a 2600 billing-hour/year law firm.
I myself spent most of my 3rd year in 1982 writing software for big money and have continued the same, for bigger money ever since, averaging some 28 weeks vacation per year without looking back. In those days, law school was almost free (at UT Austin) and they gave me an Affirmative Action scholarship, so how could I refuse? Once accepted, I really didn’t have to study hard to get the JD degree. And anyone who can do science and math really has no business in the law, particularly when considering that you would be spending the rest of your professional career dealing exclusively with types like judges and legislators who are proven flunkies in hard science. (In my class of 140, there were only 3 hard scientists!)
I’ve noticed that many members of my cohort–those who took the bar and have actually continued to practice law–are a sorry lot, generally divorced, depressed, doped-up and denouncing law as a career for anyone, like their own children, that they actually care about!
DML - January 3, 2006 at 5:09 pm
jimbino-
i think the stats reflect 3L’s realizing that they don’t want to be in school, not that they don’t want to be lawyers. those guys left during the first or second years (unless they were using affirmative action scholarship money to finanace their lucrative software business). and, b/t/w, there is nothing “hard” about math or science. law is more difficult (and more interesting) because it involves human beings and nuanced reasoning, rather than robots, numbers and right answers. but maybe you’re right and i’m the exception: a happily married, tattooed, government attorney who would recommend the law as a profession to anybody who had a genuine interest in it (as opposed to an interest in big bucks and 6-month vacations).
jimbino - January 3, 2006 at 5:33 pm
DML–
The “hard” in “Hard Science” does not really refer to the fact that math and science are opaque to lawyers, but rather that they are not wishy-washy “science” like psychology, sociology and anthropology, for example, in which experimental proof is elusive.
While it clearly does deal with human beings, law has no corner on “nuanced reasoning” as much as it does on posturing, up-dressing, ass-licking, political-correctness, and having the presentable spouse.
As a scientist, I take great solace in the fact that I can practice my art on the most remote planet, while the lawyer can’t even practice in the nearest state, let alone in a foreign country! Imagine rising to the top of your profession, as did Einstein in 1905, after proclaiming that you repudiate the religion, schools and patriotism that sickens your country!
John Jenkins - January 3, 2006 at 6:33 pm
One of those wonderfully inapplicable legal skills is subject-verb agreement.
I’ve noticed that many members of my cohort–those who took the bar and have actually continued to practice law–are a sorry lot, generally divorced, depressed, doped-up and denouncing law as a career for anyone, like their own children, that they actually care about!
As others have said, the plural of anecdote is not data. Law is not a low-pressure endeavor. So what? There are some low-pressure law jobs (we call them professorships and judgeships). There are people who can’t handle the pressure of working at a law firm and some who can. Denigrating the entirety of lawyers because you didn’t want to do it seems pointless at best.
Of course, I have short hair, no tattoos or piercings and enjoy what I do, so perhaps I am not the sort of person to whom your critique is directed. However, given your remarks, perhaps you should bag criticizing other people for pretension.
Law is not more or less difficult than math or science. In fact, I would argue that good legal analysis is as rigorous as any mathematical proof or scientific experiment (and having worked with some scientists, they can be hopelessly obtuse about the legal consequences of their actions). There are separate bodies of knowledge and there is no point in denigrating any of them
jimbino - January 3, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Well, it may or may not be true that law is as intellectually demanding as science, but why is it that almost all members of congress and of the courts are incompetent in the hard sciences? Because the hard sciences don’t matter?
If those bodies were composed mostly of women, I could understand it, since there have only been a few women of distinction in the entire history of science and math. What we have in the judiciary and legislature are a bunch of clueless men.
How can we deal with issues like global warming, energy resources, stem-cell research and intellectual property if we continue to follow the lead of the inconoscenti?
DML - January 4, 2006 at 5:18 pm
jimbino- not to belabor the tangential, but i know what the ‘hard’ in ‘hard science’ refers to. my parents are a professor of biology and a former pharmaceutical company r & d executive, respectively (can you guess which one is a woman?). i was making a ‘joke.’ anyhow, your attitude toward law & the humanities (and women) is disappointingly typical of some scientists and engineers. there is nothing ‘wishy-washy’ about the humanities if research is performed using well-crafted hypotheses and widely accepted statistical methods.
sparky - January 5, 2006 at 10:58 am
thought i’d come back and see if anyone jumped on my comments. i think the 3L posters are more accurate than i was. the real problem with the third year is that it doesn’t teach law students how to be lawyers, and i think it should do that. after all law school is a “professional” school not a graduate school in the sciences or the humanities. would anyone want to see a doctor or a dentist who had no training? probably not, yet that’s perfectly fine in the legal world.
as to this hard/soft sciences issue: first, much of this argument seems to assume that our brains are identical and that we don’t have different mental strengths and weaknesses. that assumption is as silly as assuming that you are stupid if you don’t go to graduate school (or college for that matter). as a result these comparisons inevitably turn into career justification excercises. as a former lawyer and law teacher, i will say that lawyers and law students rountinely make the mistake of assuming that their skill set somehow marks them as smarter. it doesn’t. in my opinion, the problem is common in the legal world: if you are in it, you assume that everyone else wants to be in it. i encourage lawyers and law students to avoid confusing the need or desire for a lawyer with a desire to be a lawyer.
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