What Does It Mean To Be “Practice Ready”

Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream for a reason

I n the 1960s, when I was a pre-teen, my mother and I had a ritual that we followed almost every Saturday during the summer. She was an elementary school teacher, so Saturday mornings were reserved for grocery shopping during the school year. When summer rolled around, she stuck with the pattern.

We lived in the northwest Chicago suburbs and my mother had grown up in Evanston, a northern suburb adjacent to Chicago. She new the Chicago area well. That meant grocery shopping was not simply going to the local Jewel or Dominicks supermarket. Grocery shopping was an adventure.

We would climb into her bright red Mustang convertible with a black interior and black canvas top (down if it was a warm, sunny day). We started by going to a German neighborhood to buy our meats from a butcher shop. Next, we went to a nearby bakery to buy our German rye bread. Depending on what was happening that weekend, we might also buy some Linzer Auge.

We would go to a another store, this one in Glenview, a northern Chicago suburb, to buy our chicken from Harrison’s Poultry. The store was the retail operation of the family’s poultry farm, so we knew where our birds came from and the quality was excellent. On Saturdays, the chicken breasts we bought were from birds slaughtered that morning.

From there, we went to an enormous (for the day) store that sold only fruits and vegetables. It was the size of a supermarket and in the summer months, much of what it carried was grown by local farmers.

At that point, we would head back to our neighborhood. We had another stop at a local bakery, where we would buy fresh loaves of white bread (before the health craze) and perhaps a box of bakery butter cookies with fondant icing. After that, we would go to Jewel and Dominicks. Why both? Well, we could get name brand boxed goods at both stores, but we went to Dominicks because their eggs and milk were “better” (from local farmers). Around Christmas, they also sold cinnamon ice cream (a favorite of mine).

After all of these stops, we completed our ritual by going to Baskin-Robbins. Today, the chain has 7,000 stores in 50 countries, so most of you have probably encountered the brand. In the 1960s, it was a small but growing chain and a favorite stop for ice cream. Their slogan was “31 flavors” which meant you could have a different flavor each day of the month. I skipped the variety and had two scoops of mint chocolate chip, one scoop of orange sherbet, chocolate sauce, chopped peanuts, and whipped cream on top. Every time.

In the sixties, it was not unusual to go grocery shopping with moms on Saturday morning. The supermarkets would be packed. I enjoyed our ritual and of course the treat at the end (my mother had a sweet-tooth so it was never hard to get her to stop for ice cream). The predictability was comforting.

Predictable Legal Education

For a century, law schools have followed a ritual when it came to educating the next cohort of lawyers. The predictability of law school education has been comforting to educators, students, and law firms (the primary consumer of graduating law students). They all could take comfort in knowing that, while they might rank schools differently, a student from a top ranked school was exposed to essentially the same curriculum and content as a student from a mid-tier school or bottom-tier school.

In some ways, the sameness across institutions was helpful to the bar. A lawyer who graduated from a Massachusetts law school could talk to a lawyer who graduated from a California law school and share a common language. This was not just familiarity with legalese, it was knowing that both had learned quantum meruit during their first year contracts course and what the Latin phrase meant (and yes, I know this phrase is no longer taught).

Over the years, the number of laws on the books increased, law firms shifted to specialists instead of generalists, and the need for lawyers to have familiarity with areas beyond core legal theory increased. Every law student having the same legal education became less viable as an education model. Law schools responded, but the core of legal education (e.g., the basic 1L curriculum) has remained stable and predictable. Today, as some schools focus on preparing students to pass the bar exam, the courses students will take as a 2L and 3L have become predictable.

Variety Is The Spice Of Life

With all the changes in the legal industry, does this vanilla model of legal education still makes sense? Does it result in practice ready lawyers. Should parts of it should be retained (for many reasons, including because they do provide a lingua franca for lawyers) or is the system outdated holding dear to remnants of the past? Is it time to move to 31 flavors of legal education?

I have not addressed what the phrase “practice ready” even means. At best, we can say it means different things to different people. A lawyer joining a 2,000 lawyer firm as a first year associate will be asked to do different things than a lawyer joining a two-person law firm as a first-year associate. Litigators do different things than corporate lawyers. Legal aid lawyers focus on different areas than prosecutors. Why should “practice ready” mean one thing? Regardless, the importance of practice ready graduates comes through the most recent placement statistics for graduating law students (2016). Almost 40% go into solo and small practices, meaning those that can hit the ground running have a big advantage.

We can add to this crazy quilt by looking at the differences a graduating lawyer would face in, say, New York City and Michigan. The markets for legal services are very different. NYC has a concentration of large businesses and large law firms. Graduates of New York law schools will face stiff competition (many schools with many students competing for jobs). The firms and companies must deal with eDiscovery, so many students may end up with at least temporary jobs in that field. In Michigan, however, the concentration of large companies is much less, and there are very few large firms. eDiscovery is not a big thing in Michigan and relatively few students accept jobs in eDiscovery. However, there are many more jobs in solo, small, and medium firms. The skills required in the two markets vary and what it means to be practice ready varies by market.

We need to get comfortable in the legal industry with the concept of variety. While I was a patient in the hospital earlier this year, I had a variety of medical professionals who participated in my care. There were, of course, nurses and personal care assistants (PCAs). You know what nurses do. PCAs help with a variety of tasks. They do everything from give you sponge baths, to helping you get from the bed to the bathroom (no small feat when you are attached by wires and tubes to monitors and IVs), to taking you on walks (again, the tether thing), to getting you water and changing the linens on your bed.

Doctors are busy people — I’m guessing because I could go days without seeing a doctor. Today, we have another specialty called “physician assistants” or PAs (not physician’s assistants). A PA is licensed to diagnose and treat patients, order and interpret laboratory tests, prescribe medicines, and a whole lot more. A few PAs would come by every day to check on my condition and adjust medications, if necessary. PAs worked out of the same specialty areas as doctors, so I might see a hematology oncology PA and a gastroenterology PA and pulmonology PA in the same day.

The doctors, PAs, nurses, and PCAs work as a team within and across disciplines (at least at the hospital where I was). A medical professional from one area would consult with the appropriate professional from another area before making a decision. When my hemoglobin level was low, the doctors reached a consensus on what HGB level and consistency across several tests they wanted to see before sending me home.

Of course, I am ignoring the many other specialists who played a role in my care. They included phlebotomists, radiologists and technicians, physical therapists, and laboratory technicians. My hospital stays involved relatively uncomplicated (yet still very serious) conditions, and still there were large numbers of medical specialists involved in my care. The key was each specialist was trained to the level of care they could provide.

From Healthcare To Legal Ed

Most legal matters do not require the number of individuals my care involved. And yet, many legal matters would benefit from individuals with more training and expertise in particular areas of legal services. This brings us back to the current legal education model.

Rather than simply “lawyer” and “legal assistant/paralegal” it seems that our education system could come up with more nuanced training. Richard Susskind, in Tomorrow’s Lawyers, suggested the future would bring many types of specialists to the legal profession. These specialists would handle new tasks and take some tasks away from lawyers. But what about legal education itself? Should that undergo change to reflect this variety of legal specialists?

The following example is not meant as the definitive answer. It is intended to spark discussion around what other models might work. It is one version of how legal education could evolve. As you read through, think how you could make it work, or whether it has fundamental flaws. If so, what would you do? Also, try to think about variety. Do we need 200 law schools churning out law students all trained to the same level?

1. The Juris Doctor degree becomes a true doctorate. We have the SJD (also abbreviated JSD, which stand for Doctor of Juridical Science, Doctor of the Science of Law, Scientiae Juridicae Doctor or Juridicae Scientiae Doctor, depending on the school). This is the “doctorate upon doctorate” in law. This degree is comparable to what a PhD requires. Upon getting whatever certification is appropriate after receiving the degree (another discussion), the SJD would entitle the holder to provide the full range of legal services to clients. This degree would replace the JD degree in allowing recipients to practice law in its full extent, but far fewer persons would need the degree. Read on.
2. Add a Lawyer Assistant degree as a new degree, between legal assistant/paralegal and SJD. This degree would entitle the person to provide a range of legal services to clients, but not the entire range an SJD would provide. Similar to the PA degree in the medical profession, the education requirements would be less than a current JD. For example, an Lawyer Assistant degree could require only one or two years of post-undergraduate education. This degree would replace the JD degree as the primary degree for those wanting to provide some legal services. This intermediate degree would reduce the cost of legal education. For the student who wants to provide estate planning, landlord-tenant, or other limited services, getting the full SJD would be a waste of time and money. We could have 31 flavors of LAs.
3. Establish clearer standards for a legal assistant/paralegal degree and clearer standards for what someone with this degree may do autonomously. There was a time when there was a big push to raise all paralegals and legal assistants to degreed status. Today, many programs are four-year degrees. Why not go the next step and both require the degree and provide licensing for those who get it? Those with the license would be entitled to provide a defined range of services, much like registered nurses can provide a range of healthcare services. Registered paralegals could go the next step and get certified in a speciality area, again like certified registered nurses.

Using this approach, the overall cost of legal education could go down, allowing graduates with the LA and paralegal degrees to provide more affordable services to individuals. But, if someone did want to provide the full range of legal services, they could go on to get the SJD degree. Remember that in the United States right now it takes seven years to get a degree while in the United Kingdom (putting aside articling, which is on the job training rather than formal education) it takes four years of education.

Many argue the distinction between (in my example) an SJD and an LA would be arguing in court. I don’t agree with that approach. An LA could be the best person to argue in landlord-tenant court. But a client going to the U.S. Supreme Court probably would want an SJD. Again, we need a nuanced view over a bright line test.

Standing Still Is Not A Solution

I am sure there are many criticisms of the above approach, and even if it were adopted there are many gaps in my proposal that would need to be plugged. As I said, the point of the proposal was to cause discussion: how can we move from the vanilla, expensive, and overkill approach we use today to a varied, less costly, and education-matched-to-need approach in the future? Reducing all law school education to two years seems like an approach that attempts with one broad swipe to address problems more nuanced. Staying at three years favors tradition over nuance.

There is, of course, one other reason looming on the horizon for matching education level to market need. Current proposals to change the federal student loan program as it applies to graduate students could have significant impact on legal services for individuals. The changes would prevent many students from entering public service legal roles. Those jobs would be reserved for the wealthy.

Legal education, like MBA programs, were cash generating vehicles for their institutions. Students in the programs would pay the costs of their education (typically with loans) and rely on handsome salaries after graduation to pay off their debt. Today, only a few students can hope to land jobs allowing them to follow this path. Through some creative re-engineering of law school education, some reforms to licensing, and with some attention to what the market really needs, the legal industry could turn lemons into lemonade.

Law firms are going through tough transformation times. Although law schools have felt some of the pain, the full brunt of changes to the legal industry has not landed on the schools. But it will. Tweaking curricula and adding a few more clinical programs will not do the trick. We need some innovation in legal education that will reflect the reality of the future. Let’s see what those talented law school administrators and faculty have to offer.

Ken is an author on innovation, leadership, and on the future of people, processes, and technology in the legal industry. He also is an adjunct professor and Research Fellow at Michigan State University’s College of Law. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, and follow him on Facebook.