Law School Innovation

Alienation of the Big-Firm Associate

In this economic climate, I know that most people are happy to have a job.  That said, the big-firm associates I am hearing from may be glad to be employed, but for the most part they appear to be profoundly unhappy.  While this is not true for all, certainly, it is true for enough of those I come in contact with that I suspect it may be a majority.

If I were to search for a single word to describe their feelings, it would be "alienated."  In short, they feel marginalized by the partners they work for, disengaged emotionally from the work itself, and wholly lacking in passion for what seems to be at best an amoral vocation.  Their work consumes their lives, and that work is not fulfilling.  The economic problems have divorced these talented people even more from the partners, who seem wary of developing any kind of attachment to these workers who may or may not be around next year, and true mentoring relationships seem rare.

My question is this:  Do I have a duty to pass along this observation to the students who come to me seeking job counseling?  I have my own thoughts on the issue, but wonder what others do in a similar situation.

-- Mark Osler

Orientation Time

While there is a lot of cross-school dialogue about classes and methodology, I haven't seen much relating to how we all handle orientation.  Based on what I have heard from colleagues at other schools and my own experience, orientation sessions fall into a few basic types:

1)  How things work-- the basic directions on where things are and how the school functions.

2)  Beginning legal instruction-- a short course in legal research or how to read and brief a case.

3)  Inspiration-- motivational sessions often relating to the identity of the school or profession.

Is anyone doing anything special or innovative with orientation?  Undergraduate schools have radically remade their sessions in recent years, with some introducing camp-type sessions in the weeks before school begins.  I haven't heard of similar innovation within legal education, but I hope I am wrong...

-- Mark Osler

Are there any must-reads (beyond Heller) for my Second Amendment Seminar?

Regular readers of my home blog know I am interested in the intersection of the Second Amendment and the criminal justice system in the wake of Heller.  My interest is finding expression this coming fall semester — which starts tomorrow(!) at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law — through the teaching of a Second Amendment Seminar.

Though I am going to have students help shape the direction and content of the seminar, I want to make sure I cover modern Second Amendment essentials.  But, as I assembled a reading list, I started thinking that the only essential read in the modern corpus is just the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. 

Of course, there are lots of cases and lots and lots and lots of commentary — both pre-Heller and post-Heller — discussing the Second Amendment.  I plan to cover key post-Heller issues like incorporation and standards-of-review in the seminar, and I will have students read cases and commentaries on these and other topics.  But I am not sure if anything qualifies as a true must-read for discussing and debating the modern Second Amendment other than Heller itself.

Perhaps readers have a different view, and I would be grateful for any input on the topic in the comments.

Cross-posted at SL&P (by DAB)

Is the bad economy going to change the relatiohsip between schools and firms?

This new article available via law.com, which is headlined "Fordham Law School Bans Reed Smith After Firm Pulls Out of On-Campus Interviews," has me wondering whether the rough economy is changing for the worse the relationship between law school and law firms.  This passage also lead me to wonder if legal employers might be interested in changing the long-standing norm of looking for legal talent among students just starting their 2L year:

Reed Smith will have a summer program next year but it will be smaller than in the past so the firm had to make some adjustments to its recruiting. [Michael B. Pollack, global head of strategy at Reed Smith] said Reed Smith would still be interviewing Fordham students but at its offices and not on campus. "It's unfortunate that it didn't fit within Fordham's schedule and calendar, but we're trying to manage this thing as best we can," Pollack said.

He said he thought the firm was up-front with the schools about its decision to pull back from some recruiting. Many firms are doing a number of different things as every sector of the legal industry has to re-examine the way it does business. "Does interviewing in August make sense when you're trying to project [what your needs will be] two years from now?" Pollack asked. "I suspect not."

Law schools and law firms need to have a serious dialogue on the issue, he said. While not everyone is fully aligned yet, he said he hopes these issues can be worked out so a similar situation doesn't happen again.

How do tough times and tuition increases impact law school innovation?

This recent article from the National Law Journal, which headlined "At public law schools, tuition jumps sharply: Students may pay as much as 20% more at some state institutions," has me wondering about the relationship between lean times and law school innovation.  First, here is a excerpt from the start of the article:

Double-digit tuition increases loom for students at some of the country's top public law schools. School administrators say that the unusually large tuition hikes for the coming academic year are largely spurred by cuts in public funding — with endowment losses, initiatives to improve their schools and pressure to keep up with competing institutions also playing a part.

Even with the higher tuition costs next year, public schools will remain generally cheaper than their private counterparts. But the shrinking public/private tuition gap has led administrators and professors to worry about whether public institutions are fulfilling their mission of remaining affordable....

The recession is having a "much more pervasive effect" on law school budgets than did past recessions, said Susan Westerberg Prager, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). Specifically, it's hitting hardest at law schools dependent on state appropriations or revenue from endowments.

Administrators planning substantial tuition increases note that they are putting some of that additional revenue toward financial aid. Even so, the tuition increases are bound to heighten the financial burdens of public law school students, who already graduate with an average of $71,436 in law school debt, according to the latest available statistics from the American Bar Association.

There is, of course, the old cliche that necessity is the mother of invention.  Thus, one might expect and hope that law schools needing to make less money go farther would develop cost-effective new programming for its students.  And yet, I have an inkling that tough times might lead deans and faculties to be more conservative in their ways based on the (justified?) fear that prospective law students are now more likely to demand more traditional forms of instruction for their law school dollar.

Posted by DAB