Honey, We’ve Shrunk the Law School! L


by BILL HALTOM


ast Fall, President Obama raised a lot of eyebrows of law school professors when in a speech at New York’s Binghamton University, he made the following highly-


provocative comments: Tis is probably controversial to say, but what the heck,


I’m in my second term, so I can say it. I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years. Te President went on to explain that the cost of a legal education was becoming prohibitive with private law school graduates often going into debt by as much as $150,000 and state university law school graduates incurring debts of $50,000 to $100,000. Law school deans across the country no doubt reacted that


President Obama had stopped preaching and gone to meddling. Affordable health care is one thing, but affordable legal education? If you think Republicans are mad about ObamaCare, wait until you hear law professors start talking about ObamalawschoolCare! But with all due respect to the President (and unlike so many


crazy Tennesseans, I do in fact respect the President) I think his idea is, to use a legal phrase, bass-ackwards. We should not be cutting a year out of law school. We should be adding one more year in which law students would do internships, just as medical students do to learn how to be doctors. Can we talk? Let’s be candid. Te State of Tennessee now


has more law schools than ever, turning out more graduates than ever, for a steadily declining market for lawyers. Does this make sense to anyone other than a law school


dean? Worse yet, does anyone outside a law school faculty really


believe that the traditional three-year law school curriculum actually prepares young women and men to become lawyers? Be honest. On the day you graduated from law school, were


you able to try a lawsuit, do a real estate closing, draft a contract, or incorporate a business? I know I couldn’t do any of those things. (Heck, I still can’t do three out of the four!) I knew the rule against perpetuities (or rather I could cite the rule against perpetuities), the rule in Shelley’s case, and the importance of being the holder in due course. But other than allowing me to pass the bar examination, my recitation knowledge of these concepts in no way prepared me for law practice. Tis is not to say that a law school education is irrelevant to a life in the law. Law is all about relationships, what most lawyers do every day is work with other lawyers and judges and clients to resolve issues either before or after they occur. It is in law school that you establish those relationships and begin working with the sort of people you will work with for the rest of your career. But insofar as actual law practice is concerned, on Commencement Day most law school grads are clueless. I learned to be a lawyer in the first years of my practice by watching and working with established lawyers. Tat was my post-law school internship.


A surgeon does not learn to do surgery in medical school. She or he learns it during their residency. It is only after working


18


for a number of years with established surgeons that a young physician can get privileges from a hospital to do surgery. But once you’ve passed the bar exam, you can pretty much


do anything you want to in law whether you are qualified or not. And this is becoming an increasing problem in an era when so many young lawyers have no mentors either because they are simply hanging out their shingle and practicing law on their own or they are associates in firms that use them only to bill hours. And that’s why I think President Obama is wrong with his honey-we’ve-shrunk-the-law school proposal.


I say it’s time to


add one more year for an internship in which fourth-year law students work for judges, law firms, corporate legal departments and legal clinics. Don’t tell me this can’t be done. Te medical profession has done it for generations. And finally, in case you don’t like my idea of adding a fourth


year of law school, here’s another idea that law students will find appealing. If we add one more year of legal education for an internship, we should abolish the bar exam. I think it’s ridiculous that after a young man or woman completes four years of college and three years of law school, we make them take one more test before we allow them to become lawyers, and we flunk about a third of the people who take that test.


I say if you complete four years of law school with your final


year being a practical internship, you will be ready to start law practice, and there will be absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to prove to a bunch of bar examiners that yes, you know the rule against perpetuities, which by the way, like Ned Racine in Body Heat, I’ve forgotten!


Bill Haltom is a shareholder with the firm of Lewis Tomason. He is a past President of the Tennessee and Memphis Bar Associations. Read his blog at www.billhaltom.com.


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