Law School and Management
Or why law schools should actually teach management; late night ramblings from a third year student
Disclaimer: These thoughts relate to my law school experience. I don’t really know what others have experienced at other schools. I’m also going to say that I don’t particularly care and am going to assume that everyone’s experience is just like mine, just thought I’d throw this out there, because I can.
When I arrived at law school, all the way back in 2011, it seemed like everyone was emphasizing skills-based training. I go to a really good school, but it’s not one of the top 10, so I took all this advice pretty seriously because I wanted to build my resume and transcript to be the best that I could be to stand out (hum that to tune of army commercial jingle). Additionally, I was told that all the big firms are too strapped on resources to train young attorneys the way they once did. Rather than semi-apprenticeships, lawyers are expected to come to the game completely ready to play and charge into trial (or settlement negotiations, come on now, less than 2% of cases actually go to trial).
So, with that advice, and my own personal preferences, I took some skills based classes, a clinic, and am now doing an externship. These classes and experiences have definitely been my favorite at law school. They tend to be more engaging, the students involved tend to care a bit more, and the professors often seem to be of a different breed (read: they give a shit).
However, the one thing skills-based classes, clinics, externships, etc. don’t teach you, is how to manage. Sure you learn to manage yourself, your time, a client, and maybe a partner, but there’s no team or staff involved. That is one skill we are left on our own to figure out. My externship professor the other day asked, “So, going into your leadership position, how did you know how to manage?” My response? “uhhhhh….I didn’t?”
Now, at the risk of building this up to the dreaded 19 minute read, let me recount a fairly dumb experience I’ve had at law school. I’m a co-Editor-in-Chief of a journal (shocking, I know, considering my complete disregard for spelling and grammar in these posts, get over it), which has been a roller coaster experience. It is the only managerial experience I have had in school and it is more managerial experience than many of my classmates will get, aside from those who also took on executive journal positions or became teaching assistants. Most people think I’m nuts for taking on so much responsibility my third year (I agree, to some extent).
The main problem with this journal experience is that none of the third year students get academic credit for all the hard work, and second years barely get any. This means that my co-EIC and I are expected to put in roughly 10-15 hours/week on something that will not lighten our class loads in any way. Additionally, it makes wrangling other third year members quite the challenge. There is something to be said about the carrot and stick approach. If I could award academic credit to my board members, I would be damn well sure to withhold it or take it away if necessary. I think it’d be a lot more effective than just sending gillions of emails and saying, “You need to do this, because I said so. Or else.”
One plight of all journal EICs has been to convince the school’s academic committee that we need this credit. Give us a piece, a taste, anything. Why not? Their answer: a bit fat nope. No real reason, just no. Maybe if we could string together some faculty to start a journal oriented class, it might pass, someday, just not any time soon.
But, what if we had a class that wasn’t just journal oriented, but also management oriented? Wouldn’t it serve everyone’s best interests if we could get credit and actually learn something? Right now, or at least last semester, my co-EIC and I barely knew what we were doing. We’d send drafts of emails back and forth, hoping to find the right blend of honesty, reasonableness, and assertiveness. We tried to get people pumped and to warn people when they weren’t doing things that needed to be done by a certain deadline. But in the end, we wasted a lot of time on issues that could have been delegated to others and took far longer to complete tasks than we should have. Who knows how effective we really were? Who knows how effective we really are now? Is speed the only factor worth considering?
My big question: Why don’t law schools teach this incredibly useful skill? Why not host a management class, either open to all students or geared towards journals and other students in leadership positions? Wouldn’t everyone win?
As a semi-aside, in my last legal job over the summer, there were some weird management issues that could have prevented as early on as law school. Clearly the attorneys were competent, and they were extremely overloaded, which may have explained their distance in working with me. However, when I tried to ask for feedback, the response was “sure, not now, but sure.” When I got it, it was often delayed, negative, and somewhat passive aggressive or accusatory (which always felt undeserved). This seems to be the result of bad management training. If no one gives you guidance or feedback, the only alternative is the “try as you go” method, which may work for picking fro yo flavors, but is not ideal when managing a law firm where there are cost, diligence, timing, and ethical concerns at stake.
Also, I have recently clung to my current externship boss as the ideal manager. The line of work he does is probably very different from what I’ll start off doing, and he works very independently, but his style is just the best. Clear communication, direct feedback, frequent (but manageable deadlines), and complete honesty. I feel a bit fangirlish in how much I love his management style. As useful as learning from him is, what would happen if I didn’t have this externship opportunity? Or if I wasn’t fortunate enough to meet with him on a weekly basis? What then?
TL;DR: It’s time we stop focusing only on skills-based learning and get down to actual, practical knowledge. Let’s teach business type classes, such as management, oriented towards young lawyers. Let’s breed a new class of lawyers who isn’t afraid of (productive) confrontation and feedback. Can we do this? Please? There’s no reason a JD candidate should have to shell out additional funds to pay for a joint MBA or night time business classes, and management books can only get us so far w/o hands on experience and guidance. Who’s with me? Anyone? At least Jerry Maguire got one person to go with him, and look how far he got! (Shh, I know it’s just a movie, but it was so much inspiration, wow! Such Tom Cruise!)
