Well, you live and you learn.
Three weeks ago, I took the stance in an opinion column that the national decline in law school applications held a direct correlation with the institution as a whole.
As Katherine Soniat, director of Communications and External Relations at LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center, pointed out, that assumption is neither fair nor accurate.
Technically, the knock on the decline in applications is more than fair, as the numbers are statistically falling, but the fact remains: There is a silver lining.
An article in the New York Times last week tackled the subject head-on, proving that contrary to popular belief (or my own column), law schools across the nation aren’t as worried as they may seem.
Pulling pages from the booming, entrepreneurial start-up sector and combining them with a medical-school type of hands-on training system, the American institution of law may have stumbled upon something to challenge today’s ever-evolving economy.
That’s right, one of our nation’s most traditional systems has decided to dip its toes into the waters of change.
“It’s a perfect storm,” said Stacy Caplow, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, to the Times. “The longstanding concerns over access to justice for most Americans and a lack of skills among law graduates are now combined with the problems faced by all law schools. It’s creating conditions for change.”
While the “perfect storm” is a bit of a stretch in my opinion, this is nonetheless a step in the right direction.
At LSU, the Paul M. Hebert Law Center has made its own waves by creating a conducive environment to the arising sectors around the globe that are in need of more lawyers.
And it shows, as the school is ranked at a respectable number 76 in the nation, according to the U.S. News Best Law Schools rankings for 2014.
“We have created a vibrant live client law clinic and externship program that provides dozens of our students each year with real-world experience,” Soniat wrote in her letter to the editor. “We have created a new Energy Law Center to provide our students with broad training (and to prepare them for good jobs) in the critical energy sector.”
The key words in this excerpt are, “real-world experience.”
The main question I have is, why hasn’t “real world experience” been utilized until now?
Though I applaud the law school community for looking to implement resources for students to capitalize on, as the market for lawyers is dwindling, this is something that should have been delved into before now.
And for all I know, it potentially has been.
But I think that it is evident that this idea has taken off as the numbers in applications have dropped and one would assume that for such a highly esteemed profession, pilot programs such as Lawyers for America, would have been around before 2013.
I still do believe that the profession of law is to be held in a high regard as a perennial power among many professions.
But in terms of a perfect storm, someone should have been checking the Doppler radar in terms of the technological savvy of our generation that would only bring about change.
Because this is the 21st century and while hindsight is twenty-twenty, this crisis could have been averted as the technological world grew and provided our population with an array of options, essentially cutting the middleman out of everything possible.
But like I said, you live and you learn.
