Legal education in the United States
Encyclopedia
Legal education in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 generally refers to the education of lawyers before entry into practice
Practice of law
In its most general sense, the practice of law involves giving legal advice to clients, drafting legal documents for clients, and representing clients in legal negotiations and court proceedings such as lawsuits, and is applied to the professional services of a lawyer or attorney at law, barrister,...

. (Other types of legal education, such as that of paralegal
Paralegal
Paralegal is used in most jurisdictions to describe a paraprofessional who assists qualified lawyers in their legal work. This is true in the United States and many other countries. However, in Ontario, Canada, paralegals are licensed by the Law Society of Upper Canada, giving paralegals an...

s, of Limited Practice Officers (in Washington), and of the citizenry in general, and of the education of lawyers after admission to the bar (Continuing Legal Education
Continuing Legal Education
Continuing legal education is professional education of lawyers that takes place after their initial admission to the bar. In many states in the United States, CLE participation is required of attorneys to maintain their license to practice law...

) are not covered in this article.)

The first law schools in Europe

The foundations of the first universities in Europe were the glossators of the 11th century, which were schools of law. The first European university, that of Bologna
University of Bologna
The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 12th century who were students of the glossator
Glossator
The scholars of the 11th and 12th century legal schools in Italy, France and Germany are identified as glossators in a specific sense. They studied Roman Law based on the Digestae, the Codex of Justinian, the Authenticae The scholars of the 11th and 12th century legal schools in Italy, France and...

 school in that city. It is from this history that it is said that the first academic title of doctor applied to scholars of law. The University of Bologna served as the model for other law schools of the medieval age. While it was common for students of law to visit and study at schools in other countries, such was not the case with England because of the English rejection of Roman Law and although Oxford did teach canonical law, its importance was always superior to civil law in that institution.

Legal education in the mother land of common law (the United Kingdom)

In England in 1292 when Edward I first requested that lawyers be trained students merely sat in the courts and observed, but over time the students would hire professionals to lecture them in their residences, which led to the institution of the Inns of Court
Inns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All such barristers must belong to one such association. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional...

 system. The original method of education at the Inns of Court was a mix of moot court
Moot court
A moot court is an extracurricular activity at many law schools in which participants take part in simulated court proceedings, usually to include drafting briefs and participating in oral argument. The term derives from Anglo Saxon times, when a moot was a gathering of prominent men in a...

-like practice and lecture, as well as court proceedings observation. By the 17th century, the Inns obtained a status as a kind of university akin to Oxford and Cambridge, though very specialized in purpose. With the frequent absence of parties to suits during the [Crusades], the importance of the lawyer role grew tremendously, and the demand for lawyers grew. The apprenticeship program for solicitors thus emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades Oxford and Cambridge did not see common law as worthy of study, and included coursework in law only in the context of canon and civil law and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only, therefore they did not train lawyers. Professional training in England was unlike that of continental Europe, where it was viewed as an academic discipline, and stressed practical training.

The training of solicitors by apprenticeship was formally established by an act of parliament in 1729. William Blackstone
William Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone KC SL was an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England. Born into a middle class family in London, Blackstone was educated at Charterhouse School before matriculating at Pembroke...

 became the first lecturer of law at Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature. Blackstone insisted that the study of law should be university based, where concentration on foundational principles can be had, instead of concentration on detail and procedure had through apprenticeship and the Inns of Court.

The Inns of Court
Inns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All such barristers must belong to one such association. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional...

 continued but became less effective and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination, therefore in 1846 the Parliament examined the education and training of prospective barristers and found the system to be inferior to the legal education provided in Europe and the United States. Therefore, formal schools of law were called for, but not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions.

Legal education in the North American colonies and the United States

Initially there was much resistance to lawyers in colonial North America because of the role they played in hierarchical England, but slowly the colonial governments started using the services of professionals trained in the Inns of Court, and by the end of the Revolution there was a functional bar in each state. As institutions for training developed in the colonies, because of the distrust of a profession only open to the elite in England, the institutions which developed in what would become the United States would be much different than those in England.

Initially in the United States the legal professionals were trained and imported from England A formal apprenticeship or clerkship program was established first in New York in 1730—at that time a seven-year clerkship was required, and in 1756 a four-year college degree was required in addition to five years of clerking and an examination. Later the requirements were reduced to require only two years of college education. But a system like the Inns did not develop, and a college education was not required in England until the 19th century, so this system was unique.

The clerkship program required much individual study and the mentoring lawyer was expected to carefully select materials for study and guide the clerk in his study of the law and ensure that it was being absorbed. The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a “commonplace book,” which he would endeavor to memorize. Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may be different greatly from his peers. It was said by one famous attorney in the U.S., William Livingston, in 1745 in a New York newspaper that the clerkship program was severely flawed, and that most mentors “have no manner of concern for their clerk’s future welfare… [T]is a monstrous absurdity to suppose, that the law is to be learnt by a perpetual copying of precedents.” There were some few mentors that were dedicated to the service, and because of their rarity, they became so sought after that the first law schools evolved from the offices of some of these attorneys who took on many clerks and began to spend more time training than practicing law.

It was seen over the years that the apprenticeship program was not capable of producing lawyers capable of serving their clients. The apprenticeship programs often employed the trainee with menial tasks, and while they were well trained in the day to day operations of a law office, they were generally unprepared practitioners or legal reasoners. The establishment of formal faculties of law in U.S. universities did not occur until the latter part of the 18th century . The first law degree granted by a U.S. university was a Bachelor of Law in 1793 by the William and Mary College, which was abbreviated L.B.; Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 was the first university to use the LL.B. abbreviation in the United States.

The first university law programs in the United States, such as that of the University of Maryland established in 1812, included much theoretical and philosophical study, including works such as the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

, Seneca
Seneca
-People:*Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Seneca the Younger aka Seneca , son of Seneca the Elder, Roman philosopher and playwright, tutor and advisor of Nero*Seneca the Elder , Roman orator and writer...

, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

, Montesquieu and Grotius. It has been said that the early university law schools of the early 19th century seemed to be preparing students for careers as statesmen rather than as lawyers. At the LL.B. programs in the early 1900s at Stanford University and Yale continued to include “cultural study,” which consisted of courses in languages, mathematics and economics.

In the 1850s there were many proprietary schools which originated from a practitioner taking on multiple apprentices and establishing a school and which provided a practical legal education, as opposed to the one offered in the universities which offered an education in the theory, history and philosophy of law. The universities assumed that the acquisition of skills would happen in practice, while the proprietary schools concentrated on the practical skills during education.

In part to compete with the small professional law schools, there began a great change in U.S. university legal education. For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete “practitioners’ course” which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting. U.S. Supreme Court justice Joseph Story started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard when, as a lecturer there in the early 19th century, he advocated a more “scientific study” of the law.
Therefore at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary. Nonetheless there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and Langdell. In the words of Dorsey Ellis, “Langdell viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those ‘principles or doctrines’ of which ‘law, considered as a science, consists.’” Nonetheless, into the year 1900 most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college.

Therefore, the modern legal education system in the U.S. is a combination of teaching law as a science and a practical skill, implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the U.S. and in the J.D. program of study. Whereas in the 18th and 19th century, few U.S. lawyers trained in an apprenticeship “achieved a level of competence necessary to adequately serve their clients,” today as a result of the development of the U.S. legal education system, “law graduates perceive themselves to be prepared upon graduation” for the practice of law.

AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference

About half of the faculty hires by law schools in the United States result from interviews conducted at the annual AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Academic degrees

Legal education is typically received through a law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...

 program. The professional degree granted by U.S. law schools is the Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 (J.D.). Prospective lawyers who have been awarded the J.D. (or other appropriate credential), must fulfill additional, state-specific requirements
Admission to the bar in the United States
In the United States, admission to the bar is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. Each U.S. state and similar jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules for bar admission , which can lead to different admission...

 in order to gain admission to the bar in the United States
Admission to the bar in the United States
In the United States, admission to the bar is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. Each U.S. state and similar jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules for bar admission , which can lead to different admission...

.

The Juris Doctor (J.D.), like the Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...

 (M.D.), is a professional doctorate. The American Bar Association issued a Council Statement that the JD is equivalent to the PhD for educational employment purposes. The Doctor of Juridical Science
Doctor of Juridical Science
Doctor of Juridical Science, Doctor of the Science of Law, Scientiae Juridicae Doctor , abbreviated J.S.D. or S.J.D., is a research doctorate in law and equivalent to the PhD It is offered primarily in the United States, where it originated, and in Canada...

 (S.J.D.) ("Scientiae Juridicae Doctor" in Latin), and Doctor of Comparative Law (D.C.L.), are research and academic-based doctorate level degrees. In the U.S., the Legum Doctor is only awarded as an honorary degree.

Academic degrees for non-lawyers are available at the baccalaureate and master's level. A common baccalaureate level degree is a Bachelor of Science in Legal Studies (B.S.). Academic master's degrees in legal studies are available, such as the Master of Studies (M.S.), and the Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.).

Foreign lawyers seeking to practice in the U.S., who do not have a Juris Doctor (J.D.), often seek to obtain a Juris Master (J.M.), Master of Laws
Master of Laws
The Master of Laws is an advanced academic degree, pursued by those holding a professional law degree, and is commonly abbreviated LL.M. from its Latin name, Legum Magister. The University of Oxford names its taught masters of laws B.C.L...

 (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.), or a Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.).

Admission to the bar

Please see Admission to the bar in the United States
Admission to the bar in the United States
In the United States, admission to the bar is the granting of permission by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. Each U.S. state and similar jurisdiction has its own court system and sets its own rules for bar admission , which can lead to different admission...

. Depending upon their state, attorneys must also satisfy Continuing Legal Education
Continuing Legal Education
Continuing legal education is professional education of lawyers that takes place after their initial admission to the bar. In many states in the United States, CLE participation is required of attorneys to maintain their license to practice law...

 (CLE) credit requirements.

Lawyer credentials, prestige, and career path

American lawyers are often very credential-oriented. Apart from the minimum requirements of a J.D. and admission to the state bar, there are certain credentials recognized within the profession to distinguish lawyers from one another; those credentials are almost always mentioned in lawyer profiles and biographies, which are used to communicate to both fellow attorneys and prospective clients. Chief among them are such honors as being a member of their law school's law review
Law review
A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, normally published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association...

, moot court
Moot court
A moot court is an extracurricular activity at many law schools in which participants take part in simulated court proceedings, usually to include drafting briefs and participating in oral argument. The term derives from Anglo Saxon times, when a moot was a gathering of prominent men in a...

, or mock trial
Mock trial
A Mock Trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consisting of volunteers as role players to test theories or...

 programs. Judicial clerkships after graduation or law clerk
Law clerk
A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...

 positions at prestigious law firm
Law firm
A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...

s while in school are also distinguishing marks.

This credential-based system is sown in law school, where high grades are frequently rewarded with law review membership and much sought after summer clerkships (called "summer associateships" in some areas) with large private law firms. These programs are designed to give a firm's summer associates an idea of what the everyday practice of law is like at that particular firm by allowing them to work with the firm's partners and associates on real projects involving real clients. In larger cities, such as New York or Chicago, summer associates at large firms can make as much as $3,000 per week.

For obvious reasons, competition to receive a summer offer from a firm is intense, and credentials (a student's GPA and class rank, law review or moot court membership, publications, etc.) play a decisive role in determining who is selected. Most offers are received after a three-step interview process. First, during the early fall of their 2L (second year), students at each law school first submit their resumes to a central paper file or online database (such as CRIS
Cris
This could refer to:*The Körös River in Hungary * Criş, Mureş, a village in Daneş Commune, Mureş County, Romania...

or eattorney), from which interviewers selected candidates they wish to interview, based almost entirely on their 1L GPA and class rank
Class rank
Class rank is a measure of how a student's performance compares to other students in his or her class. It is commonly also expressed as a percentile. For instance, a student may have a GPA better than 750 of his or her classmates in a graduating class of 800...

. Second, selected students are notified, usually via email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

, and then schedule a screening interview, either at the law school or at a local hotel; this interview is usually conducted by one or more attorneys from that firm and is part of most schools' On Campus Interview ("OCI") program, in which firms send recruiters to schools across the country. Finally, students selected from the screening interviews are invited for a final "callback" interview, commonly held at the firm's offices. If the selected student attends school in a place far from the city in which the firm is located, it is not unusual for the firm to fly the student in and pay for accommodations while he is in town. After the callback, a selected candidate will receive a phone call (usually within 48 hours) informing him that he has been extended an offer. After the summer, early into their 3L (third) years, the vast majority of summer associates receive formal offers to join the firm after graduating school and sitting for the bar exam. Thus, the career path of many law students (at least initially) may be determined long before they ever begin to practice.

Law school rankings

The US News and World Report publishes the most well-known annual ranking of American programs, where Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 has held the #1 spot every year since the inception of the ranking reports. A number of alternative rankings exist, such as the Leiter Reports Law School Rankings. These rankings divide law schools into "tiers" based on the overall quality of each program. A number of factors and statistics are compiled to produce these rankings each year, including academic reputation, the quality of the faculty (usually measured by the quality of its publications), the quality of the student body (usually measured by average LSAT score and undergraduate GPA), the number of volumes in the library, the earnings potential of graduates, bar passage rates, and job placement rates. Most of these measurements are acquired by voluntary self-reporting from each law program; others are compiled through a formal process of polling judges, legal professionals, recent graduates, law professors, and school administrators. The issuance of press releases that dismiss the rankings has become a yearly ritual for many law programs, but all but a handful cooperate in gathering and reporting statistics to the various ranking publications.

Upper echelon

Though the specific rankings change from year to year, the overall composition of the top schools has remained fairly constant. Most legal professionals (judges, practitioners, or professors) rank the University of Chicago
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...

, Columbia
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

, Harvard
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, NYU, Stanford
Stanford Law School
Stanford Law School is a graduate school at Stanford University located in the area known as the Silicon Valley, near Palo Alto, California in the United States. The Law School was established in 1893 when former President Benjamin Harrison joined the faculty as the first professor of law...

, and Yale
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 in the top echelon of American law schools, with Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...

 being considered the most prestigious and the most selective school to gain admission. In recent years, many people have used the concept of the T14 (the top 14) to define the top tier of law schools. These schools have consistently ranked in the top 14 in the annual US News ranking of law schools. The T14 is composed of the schools listed above and also Berkeley (Boalt Hall), Cornell
Cornell Law School
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...

, Duke
Duke University School of Law
The Duke University School of Law is the law school and a constituent academic unit of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States. One of Duke's 10 schools and colleges, the School of Law began as the Trinity College School of Law in 1868. In 1924, following the renaming of Trinity...

, Georgetown
Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, located in Washington, D.C.. Established in 1870, the Law Center offers J.D., LL.M., and S.J.D. degrees in law...

, Michigan
University of Michigan Law School
The University of Michigan Law School is the law school of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Founded in 1859, the school has an enrollment of about 1,200 students, most of whom are seeking Juris Doctor or Master of Laws degrees, although the school also offers a Doctor of Juridical...

, Northwestern
Northwestern University School of Law
The Northwestern University School of Law is a private American law school in Chicago, Illinois. The law school was founded in 1859 as the Union College of Law of the Old University of Chicago. The first law school established in Chicago, it became jointly controlled by Northwestern University in...

, University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania Law School
The University of Pennsylvania Law School, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. A member of the Ivy League, it is among the oldest and most selective law schools in the nation. It is currently ranked 7th overall by U.S. News & World Report,...

, University of Texas
University of Texas School of Law
The University of Texas School of Law, also known as UT Law, is an ABA-certified American law school located on the University of Texas at Austin campus. The law school has been in operation since the founding of the University in 1883. It was one of only two schools at the University when it was...

 and Virginia
University of Virginia School of Law
The University of Virginia School of Law was founded in Charlottesville in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as one of the original subjects taught at his "academical village," the University of Virginia. The law school maintains an enrollment of approximately 1,100 students in its initial degree program...

. The most prestigious and sought-after law jobs in the country—U.S. Supreme Court Clerks, Legal faculty, Bristow Fellows, Office of Legal Counsel Lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorneys in cities like New York and Chicago—are usually awarded to students and graduates in one of these programs. Recruiters from elite law firms visit top-tier law schools each fall to recruit new associates for the following summer. In contrast, small and mid-market law firms — which make up the bulk of law firms in the U.S. — cannot predict their labor needs that far in advance, and therefore most new law school graduates who do not graduate from top tier law schools have to aggressively seek out jobs at law firms during their third year or even after graduation.

Lower tiers

The majority of law school students do not end up at an elite university, but many can, and often do, find well-paying jobs in prestigious private firms or selective government positions. However, because there are so many law schools—at last count, 200 accredited law schools that offer the J.D.—and so many newly minted lawyers (about 40,000 each year), it is impossible for every graduating student to find an elite job. Students from schools outside of the "lower tiers" might not fare as well, and may struggle to pursue an active career as a legal practitioner.

Regional tiers

Most law schools outside the top tier are more regional in scope and often have very strong regional connections to these post-graduation opportunities. For example, a student graduating from a lower-tier law school may find opportunities in that school’s “home market”: the legal market containing many of that school’s alumni, where most of the school’s networking and career development energies are focused. In contrast, an upper-tier law school may be limited in terms of employment opportunities to the broad geographic region that the law school feeds.

State authorized schools

Many schools are authorized or accredited by a state and some have been in continuous operation for over 95 years. Most are located in the states of Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Puerto Rico. Some state authorized law schools are maintained to offer a non-ABA option eliminating costly ABA requirements seen as unnecessary by many of these states.

Unaccredited schools

Many schools are not accredited by a state or the American Bar Association. Most are located in California. While graduates of these schools may apply for admission to the California State Bar, they may not necessarily be allowed to apply for bar examination in other states.

Credentials obtainable while in law school

Within each U.S. law school, students may receive additional credentials. These include:
  • Law review/Law journal
    Law review
    A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, normally published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association...

     membership or editorial position (based either on grades or write-on competition or both). This is important for at least three reasons. First, because it is determined by either grades or writing ability, membership is an indicator of strong academic performance. This leads to the second reason, which is that potential employers sometimes use law review membership in their hiring criteria. Third, work on law review exposes a student to legal scholarship and editing, and often allows the student to publish a significant piece of legal scholarship on his or her own. Most law schools have a "flagship" journal usually called "School name Law Review" (for example, the Harvard Law Review
    Harvard Law Review
    The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the Review is the most cited law review and has the second-highest impact factor in the category "law" after the...

    ) that publishes articles on all areas of law, and one or more other specialty law journals that publish articles concerning only a particular area of the law (for example, the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology).
  • Moot court
    Moot court
    A moot court is an extracurricular activity at many law schools in which participants take part in simulated court proceedings, usually to include drafting briefs and participating in oral argument. The term derives from Anglo Saxon times, when a moot was a gathering of prominent men in a...

     membership or award (based on oral and written argument). Success in moot court can distinguish one as an outstanding oral advocate or appellate brief writer and provides a degree of practical legal training that is often absent from law review membership. Membership in moot court and related activities, such as Dispute Resolution, may appeal especially to employers hiring for specialized litigation positions.
  • Mock trial/trial advocacy
    Mock trial
    A Mock Trial is an act or imitation trial. It is similar to a moot court, but mock trials simulate lower-court trials, while moot court simulates appellate court hearings. Attorneys preparing for a real trial might use a mock trial consisting of volunteers as role players to test theories or...

     membership or award, based on oral advocacy in mock trial competitions. Mock trial honors often have special appeal to litigation-oriented offices, such as a district attorney
    District attorney
    In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...

    's office, attorney general
    Attorney General
    In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...

    's office, public defender
    Public defender
    The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...

    's office, or private firms that specializes in trial litigation. Mock trial is especially useful at assisting students with public speaking
    Public speaking
    Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners...

    , allowing them to master the rules of evidence
    Rules of evidence
    Rules of evidence govern whether, when, how, and for what purpose, proof of a legal case may be placed before a trier of fact for consideration....

    , and gain experience in writing opening statement
    Opening statement
    An opening statement is generally the first occasion that the trier of fact has to hear from a lawyer in a trial, aside possibly from questioning during voir dire. The opening statement is generally constructed to serve as a "road map" for the fact-finder...

    s, direct examination
    Direct examination
    The Direct Examination or Examination-in-Chief is one stage in the process of adducing evidence from witnesses in a court of law. Direct examination is the questioning of a witness by the party who called him or her, in a trial...

    , cross examinations, and closing statements
    Closing argument
    A closing argument, summation, or summing up is the concluding statement of each party's counsel reiterating the important arguments for the trier of fact, often the jury, in a court case. A closing argument occurs after the presentation of evidence...

    .
  • Order of the Coif
    Order of the Coif
    The Order of the Coif is an honor society for United States law school graduates. A student at an American law school who earns a Juris Doctor degree and graduates in the top 10 percent of his or her class is eligible for membership if the student's law school has a chapter of the...

     membership (based on grade point average). This is often coupled with Latin honors (summa and magna cum laude, though often not cum laude). However, a slight majority of law schools in the U.S. do not have Order of the Coif chapters.

Court clerkship

On the basis of these credentials, as well as favorable faculty recommendations and other connections, some students become law clerk
Law clerk
A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...

s with judges after graduation, signing on for one or two-year clerkships. Clerkships may be with state or federal judges. Although there is a generally-recognized hierarchy with regard to clerkships (federal clerkships are considered more prestigious than state court clerkships, and appellate court clerkships are considered more prestigious than trial court clerkships), this hierarchy is a facile generalization.

The benefit to the lawyer from clerkships is experience working for a judge. Often, clerks engage in significant legal research and writing for the judge, writing memos to assist a judge in coming to a legal conclusion in some cases, and writing drafts of opinions based on the judge's decisions. Appellate court clerkships, although generally more prestigious, do not necessarily give one a great deal of practical experience in the day-to-day life of a lawyer in private practice. The average litigator might get much more out of a clerkship at the trial court level, where he or she will be learning about motions practices, dealing with lawyers, and generally learning how a trial court works on the inside. What a lawyer might lose in prestige he or she might gain in experience.

By and large, though, clerkships provide other valuable assets to a new lawyer. Judges often become mentors to their clerks, providing the attorney with an experienced individual to whom he or she can go for advice. Fellow clerks can also become lifelong friends and/or professional connections. Those contemplating academia do well to obtain an appellate court clerkship at the federal level, since those clerkships provide a great opportunity to think at a very high level about the law.

Hierarchies aside, clerkships are great experiences for the new lawyers, and law schools encourage graduates to engage in a clerkship to broaden their professional experiences.

United States Supreme Court clerkship

Some law school graduates are able to clerk for one of the Justices on the Supreme Court. Each Justice takes 4 clerks per year. Almost without exception, these clerks are graduates of elite law schools (with Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago being the most highly represented schools) who have already clerked for at least one year with highly selective federal circuit court judges (such as Judges Alex Kozinski
Alex Kozinski
Alex Kozinski is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, an essayist, and a judicial commentator.-Biography:...

, Harvie Wilkinson
James Harvie Wilkinson III
James Harvie Wilkinson III is a federal judge serving on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. His name has been raised at several junctures in the past as a possible nominee to the United States Supreme Court.-Early life and career:...

, David Tatel, Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...

). It is perhaps the most highly selective and prestigious position a recently-graduated lawyer can have, and Supreme Court clerks are often highly sought after by law firms, the government, and law schools. The vast majority of Supreme Court clerks either become academics at elite law schools, enter private practice as appellate attorneys, or take highly selective government positions.

Criticism

Law school normally consists of only a classroom setting, unlike other training in other professions. (For example, medical school
Medical education in the United States
Medical education in the United States includes educational activities involved in the education and training of medical doctors in the United States, from entry-level training through to continuing education of qualified specialists....

 in the United States is traditionally two years of class environment and two years of "rotations", or an apprenticeship-type hands-on experience.) Although some countries, e.g. Germany and France, require apprenticeship with a practicing attorney, this is not required in any United States jurisdiction. Because of this, many law students graduate with a grasp of the legal doctrines necessary to pass the bar exam, but with no actual hands-on experience or knowledge of the day-to-day practice of law. The American Bar Association called for American law schools to move towards a practice-based approach in the MacCrate Report.

Many law schools have started to supplement classroom education with practical experience. Externship
Externship
Externships are experiential learning opportunities, similar to internships, offered by educational institutions to give students short practical experiences in their field of study. In medicine it may refer to a visiting physician who is not part of the regular staff...

 programs allow students to receive academic credit for unpaid work with a judge, government agency, or community legal services office. Several law schools also have law clinic programs in which students counsel actual clients under the supervision of a professor. City University of New York School of Law
City University of New York School of Law
CUNY School of Law is a law school in New York City, founded in 1983.In 1981, CUNY hired Charles Halpern to be its founding Dean. This law school was established as a public interest law school. The curriculum integrates clinical teaching methods with traditional areas of legal study.In Spring of...

 and Florida Coastal School of Law
Florida Coastal School of Law
Florida Coastal School of Law is a private law school in Jacksonville, Florida. Established in 1996, the school is owned by the for-profit educational investment fund InfiLaw....

 are some of the few law schools that require student participation in law clinic courses. Similarly, Northeastern University School of Law
Northeastern University School of Law
Northeastern University School of Law is a law school in Boston, Massachusetts. From the time of its founding in 1898, the law school's mission has focused on addressing the needs of students and of society....

 utilizes cooperative education
Cooperative education
Cooperative education is a structured method of combining classroom-based education with practical work experience. A cooperative education experience, commonly known as a "co-op", provides academic credit for structured job experience...

 to give its students law office work experience prior to graduation from law school. Washington and Lee University School of Law
Washington and Lee University School of Law
The Washington and Lee University School of Law is a private American Bar Association-accredited law school located in Lexington in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. Facilities are currently on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Sydney Lewis Hall...

 has recently completely re-vamped their curriculum to require students to take practicum courses, externships, and clinics in their final year of law school in order to provide practical experience in preparation for practice.

Other issues

Many sources also indicate the high level of stress, a "culture of hours" and ethical issues common in the legal profession leads to a lower level of job satisfaction relative to many other careers. See, for example, "Money and Ethics: The Young Lawyer's Conundrum", by Patrick J. Schiltz, January 2000 Washington State Bar News

See also

  • Correspondence law school
  • Continuing Legal Education
    Continuing Legal Education
    Continuing legal education is professional education of lawyers that takes place after their initial admission to the bar. In many states in the United States, CLE participation is required of attorneys to maintain their license to practice law...

  • Law School Rankings
    Law School Rankings
    Law school rankings are a specific subset of college and university rankings dealing specifically with law schools. Like college and university rankings, law school rankings can be based on empirical data, subjectively-perceived qualitative data , or some combination of these.Such rankings are...


Further reading

  • Robert Granfield: Making elite lawyers : visions of law at Harvard and beyond - New York, NY [etc.] : Routledge, 1992
  • Duncan Kennedy
    Duncan Kennedy
    Duncan Kennedy is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School and a founder of critical legal studies as movement and school of thought. Kennedy has been a member of the ACLU since 1967. According to his own testimony, he has never forgotten to pay his dues.-Education and...

    : Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy, New Edition, New York Univ Press, 2004, ISBN 0814747787
  • "One Law: The Role of Legal Education in the Opening of the Legal Profession Since 1776" Paul D. Carrington, Duke Law School, article in Florida Law Review, Volume 44, Number 4, September, 1992

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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