Finally, the law school scam is sinking. There will be about 56,000 applicants this year for the 45,000 One-L seats at the 201 ABA-approved law schools. That is down 17% over last year, and down from 100,000 in 2004. Another couple of years of significant declines and we will see some of these institutions merge, layoff faculty, even close.
Yet, swimming strongly against the tide, Washington and Lee School of Law (W&L) has actually seen an increase in applicants, an achievement matched by only three other law schools. [1] Now, to open on a note of generosity, W&L is known to have some appealing qualities: it is moderately forthcoming in offering partial scholarships, it is located in a very pretty area of the Virginia countryside, it kept a tight lid on class size until very recently, and it has a whole bunch of charming little traditions. [2]
But, undoubtedly, the main reason that W&L is so popular among law school applicants at a time when almost every other school is experiencing an applicant crunch is W&L's ballyhooed third year "practicum" program. At W&L, law students spend two years studying doctrine instead of three. The third year mostly revolves around semester long role-playing games, or as W&L law Prof. James Moliterno puts it, "elaborate simulation courses that we call practicums."[3] When the W&L third year program was announced in 2008, it elicited yelps from interdisciplinary professors, those elevated souls who are offended that law school might have something to do with, you know, training kids to practice law. [4]
I hate to take the same side as the interdisciplinary folks in the debate, but I strongly suspect their skepticism is justified, [5] and I say so despite being a proponent of an apprenticeship/ clinical model of legal education. It appears to me that the W&L program involves dabbling, not training, since the first two years of law school at W&L are just same old, same old. But worse, the vaunted third year, overwhelmingly, involves simulations rather than clinics.
Here is a ten minute-long W&L promotional video explaining the third year practicums, and I encourage readers to watch and decide if they think W&L is on the right track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU6WKo27I-0&list=PL768DD72C937464C0&index=10
My view is this: Law is a learn-by-doing profession. In Canada, for instance, legal education includes a mandatory year of articling. A fledgling lawyer gets a knack for representing real clients by doing just that, by representing real clients, as opposed to figments of a law professor's imagination. And real training takes place in an environment where a young lawyer can constantly observe, interact, and preferably work with more experienced attorneys. I do not believe that a law student can learn to be a lawyer by going to school and playing a role playing game with other, equally clueless law students. This is especially so when the professor who thought up the role playing scenario has limited practice experience and is constantly hovering over the students in order to instruct them on the "theory" of each lawyerly act. I want to specifically except trial advocacy, i.e. mock trials, where it is possible to create a reasonable facsimile of the real thing for training purposes.
And needless to say the more, uh, exotic "practicum" experiences are unlikely to provide a law student with marketable practice skills or dazzle a potential employer. Here I speak of W&L's Global Sovereigns Dispute Practicum and its International Human Rights Practicum. But even the more seemingly grounded practicums are described in fluent academese, and so trigger my skepticism. Take, for instance, Law 301P, the "Higher Education Practicum," which is described in W&L's online catalogue in these terms: "The course will employ context based and integrative learning techniques as the educational format. Students will work in teams to represent students, faculty members, university trustees, university administrators, alumni student organizations, public interest groups, and other parties in a variety of hypothetical problems and exercises requiring strategic thinking, critical analysis of legal principles, and understanding of the cultural, political, and social traditions of American colleges and universities."[6] Somehow, I doubt that this practicum is a feeder into jobs as University general counsel, however thoroughly the graduates have mastered "the cultural, political, and social traditions of American colleges and universities."
I hate to take the same side as the interdisciplinary folks in the debate, but I strongly suspect their skepticism is justified, [5] and I say so despite being a proponent of an apprenticeship/ clinical model of legal education. It appears to me that the W&L program involves dabbling, not training, since the first two years of law school at W&L are just same old, same old. But worse, the vaunted third year, overwhelmingly, involves simulations rather than clinics.
Here is a ten minute-long W&L promotional video explaining the third year practicums, and I encourage readers to watch and decide if they think W&L is on the right track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU6WKo27I-0&list=PL768DD72C937464C0&index=10
My view is this: Law is a learn-by-doing profession. In Canada, for instance, legal education includes a mandatory year of articling. A fledgling lawyer gets a knack for representing real clients by doing just that, by representing real clients, as opposed to figments of a law professor's imagination. And real training takes place in an environment where a young lawyer can constantly observe, interact, and preferably work with more experienced attorneys. I do not believe that a law student can learn to be a lawyer by going to school and playing a role playing game with other, equally clueless law students. This is especially so when the professor who thought up the role playing scenario has limited practice experience and is constantly hovering over the students in order to instruct them on the "theory" of each lawyerly act. I want to specifically except trial advocacy, i.e. mock trials, where it is possible to create a reasonable facsimile of the real thing for training purposes.
And needless to say the more, uh, exotic "practicum" experiences are unlikely to provide a law student with marketable practice skills or dazzle a potential employer. Here I speak of W&L's Global Sovereigns Dispute Practicum and its International Human Rights Practicum. But even the more seemingly grounded practicums are described in fluent academese, and so trigger my skepticism. Take, for instance, Law 301P, the "Higher Education Practicum," which is described in W&L's online catalogue in these terms: "The course will employ context based and integrative learning techniques as the educational format. Students will work in teams to represent students, faculty members, university trustees, university administrators, alumni student organizations, public interest groups, and other parties in a variety of hypothetical problems and exercises requiring strategic thinking, critical analysis of legal principles, and understanding of the cultural, political, and social traditions of American colleges and universities."[6] Somehow, I doubt that this practicum is a feeder into jobs as University general counsel, however thoroughly the graduates have mastered "the cultural, political, and social traditions of American colleges and universities."
But it is not just I who am saying that W&L's third year practicum is a failure. The legal job market is saying that too. Have a look at W&L's placement outcomes, and compare it to the overall national average. Here is the percentage of W&L law graduates who obtained a full-time, bar-required job within nine months of graduation vs. the national average. [7],[8]
2011: Washington & Lee: 55% National Average: 54.9%
2012: Washington & Lee: 49.2% National Average: 56.2%
And consider that W&L, as a US News Top 30 school, should score well above the average, not at or below. Also, consider that law schools, on average, experienced a miniscule improvement in their abysmal placement records in 2012 over 2011. W&L, by contrast, experienced a significant decline.
Tellingly, as well, not a single W&L law grad in either 2011 or 2012 tried to go solo. Not that that is ever a wise idea, but if recent W&L grads truly felt confident in the real world practice skills they derived from their third year of law school, you would think a few would give it a try, especially since half of them could not get a full-time law job.
Again, I hate to say this about a well-meaning attempt at radical curricular change-- but, to quote a famous legal philosopher: "Nonsense on Stilts."
________________________________________
notes and additional links.
notes and additional links.
[1] http://blogs.findlaw.com/greedy_associates/2013/02/in-a-law-school-recession-how-washington-and-lee-is-thriving.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/morning_roundup/2013/01/law-school-applications-continue-to.html?page=all
[2] But generosity aside, I recommend Third Tier Reality's recent profile of W&L (as well as its profiles of other law schools).
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXw-ik_hcnk
(at 1:15 to 1:18)
[4] See the lengthy and interesting discussion threads following the linked article and blog posts, dated January 31, 2013, January 29, 2013, and March, 2008. Each thread elicited numerous faculty comments, pro and con.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law_school_grapples_with_student_surplus_after_switch_to_3l_practical_skill/http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legalwhiteboard/2013/01/biggest-legal-education-story-of-2013.html
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2008/03/washington-lees/comments/page/1/#comments
[5] "Pushkin" shows up in the thread on the ABA journal article, linked at note 4 above, at Jan 31, 2013 1:22 PM, to assert that the W&L third year program is hype. For once, this ubermensch may have a point.
[6] Here is a link to all the W&L practicums. Scroll down to the "practicums" section, and then click on the link to each course to read the course description.
http://catalog.wlu.edu/content.php?catoid=8&navoid=505
(scroll down)
[7] http://blurblawg.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f871a9c8833017ee9d677b2970d-pi;
http://www.lstscorereports.com/?school=wl
[8] Again, in fairness to the place, though its overall full-time law job placement stats are dismal, it does comparatively well in the percentage of grads it places in federal clerkships, ranking 32nd in that regard in 2012 and 16th in 2011.
http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=other&show=jobs
Using federal clerkships as a proxy for job prospects for the very top of the class, one might conclude that W&L is a school that may worth attending for a semester if some of your costs have been discounted, but you should definitely drop out at the end of that first semester if you don't end up in the top 20% of your class.
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