Fortunately in Canada, we don’t need to take exams in different jurisdictions. Once you’re called in one jurisdiction, inter-provincial mobility arrangements mean you can appear across the country.
I’ve appeared in provincial courts in three different provinces, plus Federal Court, without needing to do additional bar courses.
I know far too little about both law and education to have a real opinion on how lawyers should be taught.
All I can do is use medicine as a contrast. The first half is basic clinical sciences (the knowledge basis to start thinking like a health professional?). Multiple subjects such as anatomy or physiology form a basis for later topics. The second half is clinical - you go into hospitals, get an idea of what us needed, and rotate (often for pretty short times) through almost all the specialties to get at least a basic idea of what everyone does - even though, like law, it varies enormously and is slightly incomplete. You get a few electives. Residency means more rotations, more focused on relevant subjects and for much longer periods.
So why, during law school, you couldn’t spend one week with most of the many subtypes of specialty, to learn the basics and get an idea of where one wants to go - I could not say. Maybe because it is less time. Maybe you are expected to know? Medicine used to have a common year of residency that was kiboshed. Doing things again I would have done things very differently because si la jeunesse savait et le vieux pourrait or whatever.
Where would that happen? There’s no equivalent to a public hospital attached to a university, with a large number of different specialities all accumlated in one place. There are law firms and many other places like corporate counsel or public counsel. Is the law school going to pay private firms (which are businesses, not public entities like hospitals) to take students for a week? And will corporations (also largely private and profit driven) do so? And just for a week, you wouldn’t really learn much; you wouldn’t learn the cycle of litigation, or do much solicitor work. A student would most likely be seen as a research drone for a week (which even then isn’t much time to do much research).
That’s why the legal system relies more on summer jobs at law firms or other legal agencies to give students experience and exposure, and then in Canada, a year of articles after graduation.
And the vast majority of law students can’t predict what kind of practice they will actually end up in after finishing law school and passing the bar. Whoever hires you is going to have to train you anyway and it’s better to have a solid education in basics and theory rather than to be trained to practice in a field you might never get a job in. It would be a waste of time and resources and enormously expensive to provide.
Exactly. Who wants to spend 3 years learning how to be a defence lawyer and then get into court, all idealistic and stuff, and discover they don’t really like criminal law? [or substitute in some other area of practice]
The whole point of modern law school was to get away from the “trade school” approach, because the modern practice of law is way more complicated than it was in the 19th century, when you could get by reading law with a senior lawyer.
I mean, law schools do have clinics that allow students to practice under supervising attorneys after their first year. At least the rules allow that in Michigan, anyway. Not that it helps the people who want to go Big Law so much, but… you know what? Big Law can look after its own well enough I think.
Well, yeah, I was in a clinic. It’s not nothing, but It gives you the merest hint of what it’s like to practice. But I know very few people who ended up practising in the field that their clinics covered. I certainly didn’t use anything I picked up in my clinic.
The question is, did clinic do more for your development than, say, that elective course Economic Analysis of Law (which was written to be watered down enough on both economics and the law to allow would-be lawyers and economists alike to get the benefit, such as it was)?
ETA: Or maybe more to the point, is there any reason state bars couldn’t just shift to a 2-year apprenticeship system after one year of law school? Somewhat like the old days reading for the bar exam under a practicing attorney, perhaps.
Or, again, just ditch the bar and expect law schools to produce graduates already qualified to practice to the level of a passed bar examinee?
The medical method also has serious drawbacks. Some specialists learn to dislike their specialty after having invested up to five years in a residency. Retraining is not always an option. Generalist train for less but can do more providing it is up to a specialty standard, which is not always possible or realistic.
I know a few doctors who did five year residencies, PhDs and two year fellowships in a prestigious specialty. Then were not hired where desired because the nature of the specialty had completely changed over the decade; resulting in lower volumes of more difficult work, so they did not want to take on more people since it would dilute incomes.
I know lots of specialists who struggled to get hired because of mismatches between supply and demand.
So there are things to be said for general approaches,
The public hospitals comparison has some, but limited, merit. A lot of observation occurs in private offices which are also private businesses. The hospital specialists are businessman too, and the education is done by mainly by more senior residents with ample questioning and observation. The idea is not to foist students onto research to get them out of the way, but to let them observe what is going on and satisfy specific learning objectives, perhaps be given readings and a basic test for that type of work.
It does require extraordinary effort. It is hard to organize. It requires busy people to want to and to devote some time to education as a tradition of the profession, even though it is often cumbersome. These traditions are different in medicine and law. And the benefits should outweigh the costs. This might not be the case. But is the current system the best possible? Is no one trying alternative models? Medical curricula change every few years. Is there “client-centred” law?
No, my clinic did not do more for my development than the regular law classes I took. Indeed, considering the course of my career, I could have done entirely without the clinic and I wouldn’t have missed it.
There seems to be some kind of assumption that practical (occupational, vocational) teaching on the part of law schools would be better for students or for the profession or for clients. I’m not sure that that’s the case.
As Northern Piper pointed out above, “lawyer” is a very general term that encompasses an enormous range of occupations.
Spending one week with a practice would be essentially useless for 90 percent of legal jobs. You wouldn’t learn anything; you wouldn’t get a true idea of the scope of the actual job. You wouldn’t even be able to follow one basic task or assignment from start to finish.
Unless you’re in municipal court defending or prosecuting people at arraignments (initial court appearances) related to petty criminal arrests. Yeah, you could get a sense of that job in a week. But that represents a tiny fraction of the profession.
Contrary experience here. I participated in a criminal law clinic, where we represented real clients and argued real motions in court, and even did a misdemeanor federal trial. It definitely helped me hit the ground running when I started my first real job as a public defender. It would have been invaluable experience for any career involving litigation.
A lot of schools are, in fact, moving toward externship or co-op models. Or, at least, some are; I haven’t done any homework on that. It’s a selling point for mid-tier schools who are looking to make a practical pitch to the people who aren’t expecting federal clerkships and biglaw jobs.
On the question of why school doesn’t prepare you for the bar, I think I probably would have been fine on my state’s bar after law school. I just didn’t think the risk was worth it, so I took a prep course. I imagine that the top (whatever) percent of law school students have retained enough of the knowledge, and have the skills, to get a passing grade. But you’ve got a few months between graduation and the bar, and law school has produced in you such intense competitive anxiety, and the bar is seen as such a big stressful, uh, bar to clear before you can get started with your career, so people just pay the money, cram it all in, and that way they know they’re ready.
So, for me, at least, on day one of law school I would have gotten like 3 points on the bar exam. The day after my last law school exam, I am pretty confident I would have done just fine on the bar, by racking up points in the areas I knew well and getting basically nothing right in the areas I didn’t take classes in. Once I had taken a bar prep course that gave me the meat and bones of those other areas, the bar was trivial, which I wanted it to be.
Sure, that’s great for you. But there seems to be an assumption on the part of some posters that this should be a universal experience. It’s not.
I can see where you get that impression, and it’s true I am generally of such a mind, but more broadly (and perhaps closer to the original topic) I would lay it out as a couple of arguments, dealing with some follow-one to the OP, pleaded in the alternative.
The OP presents a question: how well would the average person do on the bar?
The consensus among y’all actual attorneys seems to be that the answer would be “Not very well.” Fair enough. I don’t dispute that. But it leads to a whole host of follow-on questions:
I think the thrust is, the dual and in-tandem nature of law school and the bar exam raises serious questions about the need for one or the other at least. Not only do other professions do it differently, even the legal profession has done it differently in the past. The value of clinics vs. traditional law school courses only really comes up if you are satisfied that law school, and especially three years of law school, should remain an essential part of the path to becoming a lawyer.
FWIW, I am not so satisfied, and to the extent I might grant for the sake of argument that law school is essential, I see more value in clinical courses closely related to one’s desired area of study than I do in the two years of electives most of my classmates are taking. But that’s just me. IANAL.
ETA: And also I should note that to the extent my positions are informed by my experiences, my experiences are certainly atypical of the average law student. I came to law school already with a masters and 14 years of work experience, so the elective courses that might be argued to broaden critical thinking skills and overall breadth of knowledge for someone coming out of their undergrad course of study with not much work experience are uncommonly tedious to me. I already have a masters-worth of elective courses. I don’t need to see economic analysis applied generally (to the law, for instance) when I’ve already taken courses in operations research, systems engineering, risk analysis, and accounting as the post-grad level.
I think the lawyers in this thread have answered “no” to this question.
@procrustus’s position causes me to question whether your conclusion here is wholly justified.
Who besides you has answered “no” to the question of whether a more practice-focused education might be beneficial? I also found my summer internships and two other clinical experiences valuable. I got a term-limited job out of one clinic, and although my next job was in a specialized field completely unrelated to any of my experiences or classes, I still drew on what I’d learned about how to actually analyze and argue a case.
I think this is part of it.
Another part is knowing about the structure of the legal system and how laws, rules, constitutions, case law, etc. interact – not just what controls, but also where to find answers to questions. One of the most common mistakes first year law students make is going directly to case law for answers that they should be going to statute books for.
I think a non-JD could maybe pass the multistage, if they prepared, which is a pretty big commitment in itself. I have doubts about them passing essay and practical portions.
I also think someone who studied enough to pass the exam but didn’t go to law school or apprentice (some states still allow this) before taking it would be a terrible lawyer, and would likely quickly commit malpractice.
I disagree that law school doesn’t teach much “black letter law.” It’s chock full of it. My bar review class was just that – review. With the exception of tax law and trust and estates, I had taken classes that taught me about the law in every area that was on the bar exam. The classes are deeper than bar review – you learn how it all fits together, how it works, how courts decide cases, how court decisions work and whether they matter in particular circumstances.
Taking a bar review class only could, maybe, allow one to pass. But it would be much harder to adequately prepare for a non-JD.
Clinics may be more useful than law school classes if you know what you want to do (and where you want to do) and – most importantly – you’re right about what you think you should do.
My classmates who became state prosecutors or public defenders who did clinical experience in the local prosecutor/defenders offices probably got a lot out of it. My classmates who went on to do M&A or tax work probably didn’t. And many of those people didn’t know what they would end up doing when they were in law school.
It’s the same issue with a law school that makes you “bar-ready”. After law school, I became a BigLaw associate doing discovery and doc review federal litigation in federal courts. I now work on non-criminal enforcement for the federal government. I took the Virginia bar; I’m duly admitted to the Virginia Supreme Court, but I haven’t seen the inside of a state courtroom (or really considered an issue of Virginia law) since I attended the admission ceremony.
My career would not have been benefited by a law school that prepared me to take the Virginia bar exam. But I’m not sure the bar exam is useless.