Compliance class is a gateway to legal work for new law grads, teacher says
As both law students and law schools struggle to develop a game plan for a new reality in which legal work and what corporate clients are willing to pay for it has become something of a scarce commodity, an adjunct law professor at the University of Houston Law Center says he has found one key to the puzzle.
His corporate compliance class actually prepares those who take it to find work in the field by providing them with job skills, writes teacher Ryan McConnell, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Morgan Lewis & Bockius, in a Corporate Counsel article.
Initially offered as a test class, the compliance course will now be a regular part of the law school’s curriculum.
“One bright spot in the legal job market has been compliance,” McConnell writes, explaining that the class gives students the skills to clients develop a program for complying with statutory law and administrative regulations in any area of the law.
“Corporate compliance has become big business for law, accounting, and consulting firms as these outside advisors scramble to help in-house counsel build compliance programs for their companies,” McConnell says.
