Althouse: "Faced with rising student debt and declining applications to law schools, a task force of the American Bar Association is calling for sweeping changes in legal education..."

September 20, 2013

"Faced with rising student debt and declining applications to law schools, a task force of the American Bar Association is calling for sweeping changes in legal education..."

"... including training people without law degrees to provide limited legal services and opening the bar to those who have not completed four years of college and three years of law school."

15 comments:

philosoph said...: NO. There is too much reliance on the "legal process" in contemporary America. The ABA is trying to circumvent the market's pushing out the terrible and wasteful excess production of lawyers by doing what?

Their answer is making it easier to have entry to the "legal profession" so there can be even more "legal activity" trying to bring down the system. These people are practitioners of the Cloward-Piven Doctrine. It is just one reason why I long ago gave up my ABA membership.; 9/20/13, 11:39 PM
prairie wind said...: How about the Abraham Lincoln way? There was no bar exam back then. No ABA, either. Was law worse off?; 9/21/13, 7:38 AM
prairie wind said...: How about the Abraham Lincoln way? There was no bar exam back then. No ABA, either. Was law worse off?; 9/21/13, 7:38 AM
FleetUSA said...: Will these cheaper clerks get jobs which make them into good lawyers or will the firms be more feudal in nature with a major rainmaker/lawyer and just rotating among cheap clerks?; 9/21/13, 7:46 AM
Illuminati said...: If there are many people finishing law school who can't find jobs, it seems that the fall in applications to law school would be the free market solution which is already at work. Rather than filling their classes with less qualified applicants, law schools which have too a many unemployed alumni and too few applicants should probably be closed.

Since there are already too many lawyers, it is hard to imagine how additional paralegals(or whatever they are called) will help the problem. Instead, why aren't these viewed as entry level jobs for unemployed lawyers?

When you compare the years of training for lawyers 3 years vs medicine 9 years(4 years plus 5 years for a specialty)law school is already very short. Cutting law school down to two years makes it appear that you really don't have to know much to be a lawyer. Could we do even better and shorten law school down to 6 months?; 9/21/13, 7:56 AM
cubanbob said...: Obama times indeed! First the rollout of witch doctors for medicine and now jailhouse lawyers for law. I wonder what brilliant idea will be proposed next?; 9/21/13, 8:43 AM
The Godfather said...: If I were a college senior considering a legal career, I'd think again. I think I'd go work for the government.; 9/21/13, 10:17 AM
SteveR said...: Gee it seems like lowering the cost of the traditional education might work. But that obviously not a consideration. Collusion in academia and the free flow of money via student debt. What could go wrong? 'burst!'; 9/21/13, 11:39 AM
veni vidi vici said...: Greedy ABA with ever-increasing appetite for association membership fees.

And the solution, as is the new American Way, is to lower standards of practice. These ABA idiots (or not) are close enough to retirement not to care whether they destroy the "profession". I'd be curious how many of the decisionmakers here are invested in companies developing computer-aided/AI legal services products.; 9/21/13, 11:56 AM
Carol said...: See, it's just a business, part of the education industrial complex. Everyone just wants to keep their good times rolling.

The word in all the state bars is that there is a "need" for "access to legal services" among the poor..but just spend some time tending to their (often) self-created problems and you'll run like hell from your practice.; 9/21/13, 12:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Do people trust their barber to perform an appendectomy?; 9/21/13, 1:11 PM
Michael K said...: "There was no bar exam back then. No ABA, either. Was law worse off?"

You can take the Bar in California without a law school degree. A guy who taught a law review class for years, had his secretary who had been sitting in the review course for a few years take and pass the Bar. How good a lawyer was she ? Ask Erin Brockovitch.; 9/21/13, 2:24 PM
n.n said...: Let them eat debt. Much like Obamacare, it is designed to preserve the status quo.

Michael K:

She was a good investigator and activist. Is she a good lawyer?; 9/21/13, 4:41 PM
RigelDog said...: How can a "reporter" write this type of article and not ask about the stupendous disconnect between the stated problems and these proposed reforms? There are too many lawyers; law schools are graduating at LEAST twice as many aspiring attorneys as there are legal positions available. So the "solution" is, let's make law school shorter, less expensive, and expand the number of people doing legal work??; 9/21/13, 5:26 PM
Douglas B. Levene said...: Maybe the US should have barefoot lawyers, like the barefoot doctors that China had in the Mao era. You know, untrained, almost useless, but reliably parroting the Party line.; 9/22/13, 5:56 PM