Legal education in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.
Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.

Legal education in the United States generally refers to the education of lawyers, and that is the focus of this article. Other types of legal education, such as that of paralegals, of Limited Practice Officers (in Washington), and of the citizenry in general, is not presently incorporated in this article.

[edit] Academic degrees

Legal education is typically received through a law school program. The professional degree granted by U.S. law schools is the Juris Doctor or Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.). Some American lawyers receive their education, not through a law school, but by reading the law, an arduous form of apprenticeship or study with an expert. Prospective lawyers who have been awarded the J.D. (or other appropriate credential), must fulfill additional, state-specific requirements in order to gain admission to the bar in the United States.

The Juris Doctor (J.D.), like the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), is a professional doctorate. The Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.S.D.), Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.), and Doctor of Comparative Law (D.C.L.), are research and academic-based doctorate level degrees, comparable to Ph.D. degrees in other fields or doctoral degrees in law in Europe (such as the Dr.iur. degree in Germany). In the U.S., the Legum Doctor (LL.D.) 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 (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.), or a Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.).

[edit] Admission to the bar

Please see Admission to the bar in the United States. Attorneys must also satisfy Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit requirements

[edit] Lawyer credentials, prestige, and career path

American lawyers are 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 having "graded on" to their school's law review (usually the top 5-10% of the "1L"--first year--class after spring finals), "argued on" to an interschool moot court team, secured a highly competitive federal judicial clerkship after graduation, or clerked (called "summering" in the northeast) at a prestigious law firm for a summer.

This credential obsession is sown in law school, where the top of the class is frequently rewarded with law review membership and much sought after summer clerkships (called "summer associateships" in the northeast) 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. However, such programs have been criticized for failing to expose "summers" to the more tedious work and longer hours of an average attorney at the firm, preferring instead to focus on free upscale lunches and frequent alcohol-infused social events, along with other treats such as tickets to professional sporting events, gym membership, or corporate discounts at upscale shops. 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 or eattorney), from which interviewers selected candidates they wish to interview, based almost entirely on their 1L GPA and class rank. Second, selected students are notified, usually via email, 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' OCI ("On Campus Interview") 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. During a callback, the candidate meets with 5-10 attorneys of all levels and in all departments of the firm. He might also meet with the managing partner of that office; this is a great honor and is occasionally an indication that the candidate will receive an offer. 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) is often determined long before they ever begin to practice. Understandably, many young associates at large firms experience a letdown after first experiencing the tedium, stress, and often grueling hours that accompany being an actual attorney.

[edit] Law school rankings

Law schools are informally divided into "tiers" based on the overall quality of each program. The US News and World Report publishes the most well-known and probably the most influential annual ranking of American programs, but a number of alternative rankings exist, such as the Leiter Reports Law School Rankings. A number of factors and statistics are compiled to produce the 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 few fail to tout their ranking when it improves, and all but a handful cooperate in gathering and reporting statistics to the various ranking publications.

[edit] 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, Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, and Yale in the top echelon of American law schools. 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), Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, and Virginia. 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. The elite firms are informally known to include the most prestigious firms in major legal markets such as New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. Prominent examples include Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Debevoise & Plimpton, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Williams & Connolly, Kirkland & Ellis, and O'Melveny & Meyers.

[edit] 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, 193 accredited law schools — 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Unaccredited Schools

Many schools are not accredited by a state or the American Bar Association. Most are located in California. Many jurisdictions do not allow graduates of unaccredited law schools to sit for the bar examination.

[edit] Credentials obtainable while in law school

Within each U.S. law school, key credentials include:

Law review/Law journal 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 called "School name Law Review" (for example, the Harvard Law Review) 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 and Technology).
Moot court membership or award (based on oral and written argument). Success in moot court can distinguish one as an outstanding oral advocate 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 Trial Advocacy and Dispute Resolution, may appeal especially to employers hiring for litigation positions, such as a district attorney's office.
Order of the Coif membership (based on grade point average). This is often coupled with Latin honors (summa and magna cum laude, though often not cum laude). However, not all law schools in the U.S. have Order of the Coif chapters.

[edit] Court clerkship

On the basis of these credentials, as well as favorable faculty recommendations and other connections, some students become law clerks with judges after graduation, signing on for one or two or 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 young lawyer. Judges often become mentors to young clerks, providing the young 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.

[edit] 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. Often, 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, Harvey Wilkinson, David Tatel, Richard Posner). 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.

[edit] Career Path

[edit] Entry-Level Salary

The salary of a lawyer varies depending on the legal market, whether the lawyer has had a clerkship or worked in government, and whether the lawyer works at a large firm.

As of 2006, the typical pre-bonus salary of an entry-level associate in a large, prestigious firm in a big city is well over $100,000, with the specific salary dependent on the firm and location. Many firms make their hiring salaries known through the NALP Directory.^[1] Big firms raised the pre-bonus starting salaries early in 2007, and the current median starting salary at megafirms in New York City is $160,000; in Chicago, California, and D.C. it is $145,000; and in Atlanta, which has a considerably lower cost of living than any of the aforementioned markets, it is $130,000.

With a federal court clerkship, entry level attorneys can expect two things: first, to receive a signing bonus of about $25,000 at a prestigious law firm; and second, to enter a prestigious law firm as a second-year associate (or third, if the attorney has clerked for two year).

Attorneys who clerk at the Supreme Court can expect bonuses of close to $200,000 if they enter an elite firm, on top of their salary.

Aside from the elite firms, however, salaries vary. Some estimates suggest the average salary for a newly-minted attorney in a smaller legal market, in private practice, not working at an elite firm, might make around $38,500. Public interest attorneys and public defenders make much less.

On the other hand, newly-minted patent attorneys will often make six-figure salaries, regardless of any other credentials or the size of the firm they join. The market for patent attorneys is unique for several reasons:

In order to be registered as a patent attorney, one must pass the registration examination administered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). To be eligible to sit for this examination, one must have a background in the natural sciences or engineering—a background not commonly found among U.S. law students.
The relatively small number of law students who can qualify to sit for the USPTO exam severely limits the number of new patent attorneys, a constraint not found in the legal market as a whole.
In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court in Sperry v. Florida^[2] prohibited states from restricting the practice of patent law. For example, Florida requires that all attorneys who wish to practice in the state pass its bar examination. However, a registered patent attorney may set up or join a practice in Florida without taking the Florida bar, as long as the attorney's practice is limited to patent law. This means that unlike the general legal market, which is effectively divided into numerous sub-markets by state-level regulation of the bar, the market for patent attorneys is truly national.

Starting one's own law firm right out of law school is possible, but risky and requires start-up money. The new lawyer is not only learning a new trade but also starting a business.

[edit] The large firm environment

To earn their high salaries, new lawyers at megafirms are expected to work hard. There is, however, a common misperception that associates average 80 or more hours per week. In fact, the average workweek at most megafirms is between 50 and 70 hours.^[3]^[4] Most new associates stay at these megafirms only a few years. There are simply too many associates for all of them to become partners, and many leave when they realize that they will not or do not want to make partner. Morale at a number of these megafirms is often reported to be very low, but this varies among individuals and firms. Some practices maintain high levels of satisfaction despite the long hours and limited prospects. Further, many young attorneys do not see their first few years at a law firm as the beginning of a lifetime career, but as a way to start out, and reassess before the partnership decision is made. The high salaries offered by large firms are often compelling to a freshman attorney who has just graduated with a mountain of college debt that can be in excess of $100,000. After their megafirm tenure, attorneys may start a new private practice, move to a smaller legal market, teach, go into government, or leave the law. A legal education offers many options.

[edit] Career paths available with solid credentials

With Order of the Coif and honors, law review, moot court, and a federal appellate clerkship on a resumé (or at least three of the four), an ambitious attorney has many options. He or she may strive to make partner at a large law firm, or become a law professor at a top-tier law school and try to get tenure. Alternatively, the lawyer may go to work for the Justice Department and try to obtain an appointment as a United States Attorney. Once a lawyer has reached any (or all) of those objectives, he or she may turn to developing connections with a political party and may hope for a presidential nomination to a federal judgeship or a senior position in an administration.

Examples abound of attorneys who have followed such a career path. Some judges, for example, include Richard Posner, John G. Roberts, Michael Lutting, Samuel Alito, Edward Becker, and Alex Kozinski.

Less well publicized is the rate of attrition along this path. Each year, the number of new lawyers with top credentials entering the work force far exceeds the number of openings at the top created by retirements plus the expansion of the profession. Typically, major law firms hire more new associates each year than they have active partners; as this process repeats each year, the mathematics of advancement bear examination.

Even less well publicized is the fact that the vast majority of law school students do not make law review, Order of the Coif, et cetera., nor do they even interview at elite law firms or for clerkships.

[edit] Career earnings

Per the U.S Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook, median earnings in 2002 for US attorneys was $90,290, with the middle 50% earning between $61,060 and $136,810. Less than 10% of lawyers in 2002 made above $150,000. This is comparable with many other professional and managerial positions. Earnings in the public sector are typically lower than in the private sector.

[edit] Criticism

Law school normally consists of only a classroom setting, unlike other training in other professions. (For example, medical school 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.

Many law schools have started to supplement classroom education with practical experience. Externship 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 and Appalachian School of Law are some of the few law schools that require student participation in law clinic courses.

[edit] 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

[edit] See also

[edit] References

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since March 2007.

[edit] External links

U.S. Law School Information - Online edition of the book Law School: Everything You Need to Know Before You Get There.
Top 100 Law Schools - According to US News
Law School Admission Data at lawschoolnumbers.com
The Best Law Schools in the United States - According to Lawschool100.com
Law School Discussion - Law school message board at Xoxohth
Listing of ABA-approved Law Schools
U.S. Law Schools News Brief - Latest news releases from U.S. law schools
The Truth About The Billable Hour
NALP Directory Directory of large firms

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../l/e/g/Legal_education_in_the_United_States_96fd.html"