Law Schools
Lippe: What’s Wrong With Legal Ed & How to Fix It
Posted Jun 22, 2009, 12:24 pm CST
By Molly McDonough
In its current state, legal education is growing increasingly distant from the profession and is more like a scholarly pursuit.
So says Legal OnRamp founder Paul Lippe in his most recent column published in the Am Law Daily blog.
From Lippe's perspective, there are a number of things wrong with legal education, specifically that law school is expensive and saddles grads with debt, thus restricting career options. Plus, grads don't enter the marketplace with client-marketable skills.
Observes Lippe, "While law students who get the higher paying law firm jobs achieve good salaries much faster than medical students, their time to professional independence is longer. This is not because law is more complex or riskier than medicine, but because legal training is inferior."
So what can and should change to create a "law school 4.0" model?
Lippe suggests the following:
• Accelerate the curriculum and include: 1 year of case method (only); 1 year of clinical training; 1 year of externship.
• Add more practice-oriented teaching.
• Be smarter about using technology to connect students to practitioners and clients.
• Move back from constituent-centered management to mission-centered management of the school.
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