then by all means let’s get them the info they need. they ought to hear from profs, deans, lawyers, and judges. my sense is that the bursting bubble is still just arriving at the law schools, and that this sort of project — both giving students info and letting students have far greater say over curriculum — will be inevitable (if not long overdue).

Of course, we won’t know if there is a gap between demand and supply, and won’t know how to think about that gap, if we don’t systematically ask the students to plan their ideal next few semesters carte blanche, without regard to the current line-up of courses and typical waitlists.

Some possibilities . . . . (1) Students select their probable courses over the next 3 semesters and the school administration meets the projected need. If the students’ choices don’t match what the profs would prefer to teach, students prevail. (2) Students’ elected representatives, armed with polling data, meet with the faculty curriculum committee and hammer out an agreed-upon curriculum for the next several semesters. (3) A committee of practicing alums, sitting judges, profs, and students look at student demand data, assess industry trends, and choose a curriculum. (4) Faculty members choose what they want to teach, subject to some arm-twisting by the assistant Deans so that 1L and basic courses are covered, and if the profs’ choices don’t match student demand, profs prevail.

My concern is the high cost of law school. Previously, the thinking was that if it took a while to find a job, there was always doc review/ temp work available to pay the bills (and the caution that you shouldn’t do it for too long). Now, however, temp work is in no way assured. I think the first year out of law school is particularly tough right now if you’re not employed by the bar exam. The new attorneys are getting hit with loan repayment, bar dues (which don’t care that you’re barely employed or unemployed), and networking/ job hunting costs. Yes, these costs are standard, but are aggravating when trying to pay rent by working in the highly unpredictable temp market where wages are still dropping and you might go weeks before finding a project.

AJ,
Contract attorneys have tried to unionize. The result is that they get blacklisted. Especially at a time like this when the temp market is being flooded by new attorneys and laid off ones, projects are few, and the average hourly wage is dropping, I can’t see anyone in the temp market wanting to take the risk.

I’ve read that blog before, and the guy’s ABA article. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for a white-collar worker – even if the work sucks. I’ve done manual labor, and would choose the drudgery of document review over digging ditches. Your life might feel pointless as a worker drone; that beats the agony and fat fingers of a life of manual labor.

Still, employment and salary stats are exaggerated. Full disclosure should be the norm.

PJ isn’t a live issue in real life.

Sure, it comes up – as many legal issues do. But not nearly enough to warrant the attention paid to it. In law school, time is scarce. Pay more attention to the issues that matter. My Civ Pro professor wants to turn PJ into a 4-to-6week Con Law Lite course. Silliness.

It is not the classes so much as what is taught. There is a nearly 30-comment post discussing, e.g., the time spent on non-practice Civ Pro subjects like Erie and personal jurisdiction. Everyone concedes that those issues are non-issues in real life. How many weeks, however, are wasted discussing those non-issues?

Contracts is a valuable class. Except — I never read a contract during an entire year of Contracts. In Criminal Law, I never read an indictment or information. In Criminal Procedure, I never saw a suppression motion. Law is taught as free-floating abstractions.

There should also be 1 year of upper-division Legal Research & Writing. These 2L LR&W classes should be devoted to legal skills like drafting a complaint; writing responsive motions; preserving issues for appeal; writing an appellate brief. Moot Court is simply an exercise in writing about the sexy con law issue of the day. Not especially valuable.

With even some minor tweaks, a law grad will have actually seen legal documents; have some clue what is going on; and will be less likely to annoy people with stupid questions like, “What’s a motion for summary judgment?”

I’m surprised that apparently none of those affected has thought to unionize temp lawyers. I think that might be a worthy project. Here in Japan, even homeless temporary factory laborers have unionized (with some help from left-leaning university grads).

A friend of mine who’s a senior bankruptcy partner at a moderately big firm (70′s-vintage law school grad) told me recently that Law and Economics didn’t have any relevance to his practice, other than the predilections of a judge here and there. But considering that many managing partners and litigation partners were taught in the 1980s and 1990s, the exploitation of temp attorneys might be the real intellectual fruit of the L&E movement. (Again, see some of the comments to the post linked above, with their compliant acceptance of economic rationality and globalziation as justification.) Perhaps the ethos many law students have learned during the last couple of decades has been weighted too much toward economics and not enough toward justice.

Your comment was a little unclear whether you think we ought to be teaching new grads how to develop their own legal practice, or (the more traditional claim) that we should teach more professional skills? If the latter, which substantive classes do you think you took that were disposable?