Full disclosure. I am a lawyer. One of my two sons and one daughter-in-law are lawyers. Some of my closest relatives and best friends are lawyers. But even with these personal connections, I’m not sure how many lawyers this great nation requires.
In the past few years, several new law schools have opened, or are preparing to do so: Charleston School of Law, UC Irvine, Drexel, SUNY-Binghamton, and Wilkes University, to mention only a few. Establishing a new school at any university is a pricey and time-consuming enterprise. Facilities are needed, professors and students sought. One can only assume that the decisions to do so on these campuses were carefully calculated, neither arbitrary nor capricious acts. Each school must have prepared a business plan, calculated student demand against costs, looked closely at matriculant aspirations, faculty requirements and societal needs. The presidents and boards of trustees must have asked, “Why should this be done? Are we the one to do it? Can we afford to do it, or not to do it?”
In 2006, there were over 1.1 million licensed lawyers in the U.S. In the past 40 years, we have gone from having approximately one lawyer for every 625 people in the country to now having about one lawyer for every 300 people. Are we twice as litigious as before? Are the cases twice as difficult to handle? In 2047 will every 150 people have their own attorney?
During the 2006-2007 academic year, nearly 150,000 students enrolled in ABA accredited law schools and, at commencement, roughly 44,000 received law degrees. Many students come to law school in order to become lawyers. Obvious, you say. Yes, but many other students go to law school not to become lawyers, but do so simply because they believe the education and credential of the law degree — the J.D. — will help their professional mobility. It is the perceived skills of the lawyer: critical thinking, crafting argument, mediating dispute, and understanding the application of the rule of law, to name a few, as well as the regard for the profession (jokes about lawyers aside), which attract students to the field.
Legal training is seen by some as a generalist pursuit, an academically helpful diploma for use in a variety of nonlegal endeavors. Students also believe that human-resource professionals, the people who do job placement and hiring, attribute to lawyers certain knowledge and skills not present in people otherwise prepared. Likewise, one must recognize the media attention to the salaries paid to lawyers in major market firms — amounts that far outstrip compensation in many others areas of employment. Along with perceived skills and respect one must now add money.
Let’s divide up the law school class, and put to one side all those students who actually want to practice law. Their career goals and their academic training appear to be in symmetry. But what about the other students, those who wish to obtain the credential but do not plan to actively work in the field? Surely there must be a better way to satisfy these students and the demands of the job market. We should be able to develop a curriculum that is more time sensitive and less expensive than the three years currently needed to earn a law degree and is also more academically flexible than the course of study required by most law schools.
Perhaps law schools should offer alternative pathways, giving both the traditional J.D., degree as well as something new, possibly an M.A. or a professional diploma. Let’s call it an A.B.B. (All But the Bar) which would be a one-year course of study that is stand-alone, will not allow the student to practice law, represent clients, or appear in a courtroom. And, there will be no need to sit for the bar exam! This alternative will give the student training in thinking like a lawyer, history, public policy, and the rigors of some of the traditional courses without the need to master the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
