by Matt Andersen, 1L Contributor
On January
17, 2013, some of New York’s highest-ranking legal officials met at NYU Law
School to discuss the unthinkable.
Leaders of the New York bar, judges, and law school faculty members were
discussing a rule change, which would allow law students to sit for the New
York bar exam after their second year, and, thus, forgo their final year of law
school. This doesn’t mean that law schools would stop offering a third year; it
would simply give students the option to skip their third year, which would
save them from paying the high cost of tuition and plunge them into the work
force a year ahead of their peers.
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| Former Indiana Supreme Court chief justice, Randall T. Shepard, is leading a legal education reform committee. © Rex C. Curry/NY Times |
It is no secret that the legal
profession is in the midst of serious change.
Jobs are few and far between, tuition is rising across the board, the
number of applications received this year is expected to be the lowest in 30
years, and the media is putting constant pressure on law schools to reform
the way they administer a legal education.
However, this is not merely about the financial aspect of the
legal education. Experienced
legal minds have attested that you can obtain the appropriate amount of legal
education in your first two years of law school, and gaining practical
experience in the work force would outweigh the necessity of furthering
education into the third year. These
factors, among other things, are the reason that New York legal officials met
to discuss this prospective, and opportunistic, rule change.
Many law schools are already
indirectly addressing this through courses that offer practical training,
encouraging externships, offering clinical practices where students can work
one-on-one with actual clients. Moreover,
there a few schools that are currently offering accelerated program, which
allows students to complete receive their Juris Doctor after just two years.
However, not everyone agrees. In response to the original New York Times
op-ed, law student Bill
Watson stated: ‘‘in any law school, the first year is devoted entirely to
broad survey courses. The second and third, by contrast, combine more of the
same with opportunities for practical experience and interdisciplinary study.
Compressing these years into one would require the retention of the survey
courses (needed to pass the bar) and the reduction or elimination of the rest.
A result would be all breadth and no depth.”
In another response to the article, Francis
Fisher disagrees with Mr. Watson. “Law
firms today regularly hire after a summer internship following the second year.
But the students must return to school, forgoing perhaps $100,000 in earnings
and increasing debt by $50,000.”
Ultimately, whether you think it is
of financial or practical necessity, solid arguments exist on both sides of
this debate. The question is, will law
schools be willing to adapt to the rapidly changing legal market, or will they
flounder and possibly end up closing their doors? It is up to the schools to determine their
ultimate future, but we, as the students they are serving, can certainly help
influence the way law schools make their future decisions.
Matt is a 1L at Duquesne University School of Law and a JURIS_Blog contributor.
