Law school woes
betterslac:
There is something oddly familiar here:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/law-schools%E2%80%99-failure-to-prepare-students%E2%80%A6it%E2%80%99s-complicated/42163?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
1) Complaints about training for jobs
2) Discussion of the lack of critical thinking and reasoning skills (and no, students should already have them by the time they hit law school)
3)Recognition that standardized testing does not lead to the kinds of comprehensive learning that we want students to engage in, from k-12 to post-secondary to graduate levels.
If the lawyers think there is a problem, might there be a greater push back against the NCLB and rote learning nonsense trends?
tenured_feminist:
Preparing for the LSAT does nothing to help students acquire the skills needed to succeed in law school. Succeeding in law school does very little to help students acquire the skills needed to pass the bar exam. Preparing for the bar exam and passing it does very little to help the examinees prepare to practice law. None of this is new information. What's new is that the tacit bargain whereby students exchange large sums of money for an educational credential and access to a placement service providing a solid shot at a highly lucrative job afterward has collapsed due to the huge contraction in the availability of highly lucrative jobs.
Not that I am cynical or anything.
If you've got a kid in your class who asks you for a recommendation for law school, please, for the love of all that's holy and profane, force feed the kid this and give the kid a pop quiz on it before you agree to write.
sciencegrad:
Quote from: tenured_feminist on December 14, 2011, 07:33:15 AM
If you've got a kid in your class who asks you for a recommendation for law school, please, for the love of all that's holy and profane, force feed the kid this and give the kid a pop quiz on it before you agree to write.
I've been planning on going to law school after grad school for quite some time and, to be honest, reading that blog post made me more excited to go. Now that I know just how much BS goes on in law school, it sounds like it would be a blast to go through the program pretending to take it seriously while knowing all along that it's a bunch of pseudo-intellectual BS being spewed by everyone.
ideagirl:
I took the liberty of numbering your assertions...
Quote from: tenured_feminist on December 14, 2011, 07:33:15 AM
1. Preparing for the LSAT does nothing to help students acquire the skills needed to succeed in law school.
2. Succeeding in law school does very little to help students acquire the skills needed to pass the bar exam.
3. Preparing for the bar exam and passing it does very little to help the examinees prepare to practice law.
1. True. But then again, it's not supposed to help you acquire skills. It's supposed to "diagnose" how good your mind is at doing the things that will be necessary in order to succeed at legal analysis. In other words, it tests if the raw material for legal analysis is there.
2. Untrue. The bar is like an entire year's worth of law school exams stuffed into two days (or three, in California), plus a lengthy section of multiple choice (very rarely used in law school) designed to see if you actually know what the law is. Students who scrape by in law school rarely pass the bar. Students who did quite well in law school usually pass the bar.
3. True-ish, in that there are many skills you need to practice that the bar does not and likely cannot test (e.g., strong speaking and listening skills; a flair for theater, if you plan to be a courtroom lawyer; etc.). But also false-ish, in that much of what you learn in preparing for the bar is useful later. If really gives you a very solid "lay of the land" in the areas of law that it tests, and that's a necessary foundation for later legal analysis.
That being said, I think law school would be a lot more useful if there were more clinical classes (students actually acting as legal advisers to members of the public, under the supervision, of course, of actual lawyers). It's far too theoretical and the law is not a theoretical profession. Every decision made has a concrete impact on someone.
Quote from: tenured_feminist on December 14, 2011, 07:33:15 AM
If you've got a kid in your class who asks you for a recommendation for law school, please, for the love of all that's holy and profane, force feed the kid this and give the kid a pop quiz on it before you agree to write.
That link won't work because it has the word $hit in the URL. But that article, while entertaining, is beside the point. What the students need to be reading are all the recent exposes on just how slender their chances of getting their dream job are, and on how deceitful towards students and prospective students many of the lower-ranked law schools are. The NY Times had something on that recently. It's all over the place.
ideagirl:
Quote from: sciencegrad on December 15, 2011, 10:54:33 PM
I've been planning on going to law school after grad school for quite some time and, to be honest, reading that blog post made me more excited to go. Now that I know just how much BS goes on in law school, it sounds like it would be a blast to go through the program pretending to take it seriously while knowing all along that it's a bunch of pseudo-intellectual BS being spewed by everyone.
If you want to spend $100k just to enjoy a long, grueling joke, be my guest. I hope you still think it's as funny 15 years down the line when 1/3 of your take-home pay is going towards your student loans (which are not dischargeable in bankruptcy).
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