By Grace I. Liu and John M. Fitzgerald. America’s system for training lawyers is in crisis. Law students pay exorbitant prices for an education that does not prepare them to actually practice law. The legal degree, a J.D., is a professional degree. When did a professional education system become so divorced from the profession it supports?
As meticulously detailed in a report last year by a special committee of the Illinois State Bar Association, the “inadequate ‘practice ready’ skills of new graduates” have apparently contributed to “the reality that only 55 percent of the law school class of 2011 had full time, permanent jobs that required a J.D. nine months after graduation.” More...