For decades, the legal profession has outsourced to law firms the early-years development of its newest members. Law firms, tiring of the deal, are in a position to demand an entirely new arrangement.
Somehow all these wicked issues in the legal profession, these structural and systemic problems, bring us back to a familiar place: gatekeeping and monopolisation. No matter where you look in the system you’ll find the same tendencies: in legal education, lawyer formation, legal representation, opposition to alternative business structures, or the resistance to innovation. No part of this system is optimising for anything but monopolistic control and gatekeeping. Really, which other social system or industry behaves this way?
This is precisely what has long been needing to be said loud and clear. The perversely symbiotic relationship between law firms and law schools has long bothered me and given rise to a variety of incentives that are to the detriment of many.
All would be solved if a person wanting to become a lawyer could just apprentice with a licensed lawyer for X number of years at very sub attorney salaries. Person learns the black letter law (law school) and the application/practice of that law in actual client settings (law practice). Meanwhile long lasting relationships are developed which likely improves the succession issues. But the lawyer licensing complex would lose out to the tune of billions and that is the reason why this will never happen. But the fact that apprenticing is not an option is a travesty.
Well said. This same lack of training, coupled with law schools cranking out an oversupply of lawyers, has created major mentoring vacuums for new lawyers who open solo practices right out of law school. Just having a law license doesn’t ensure a new lawyer knows the appropriate ways to interact with clients, opposing counsel, or judges.
Somehow all these wicked issues in the legal profession, these structural and systemic problems, bring us back to a familiar place: gatekeeping and monopolisation. No matter where you look in the system you’ll find the same tendencies: in legal education, lawyer formation, legal representation, opposition to alternative business structures, or the resistance to innovation. No part of this system is optimising for anything but monopolistic control and gatekeeping. Really, which other social system or industry behaves this way?
This is precisely what has long been needing to be said loud and clear. The perversely symbiotic relationship between law firms and law schools has long bothered me and given rise to a variety of incentives that are to the detriment of many.
All would be solved if a person wanting to become a lawyer could just apprentice with a licensed lawyer for X number of years at very sub attorney salaries. Person learns the black letter law (law school) and the application/practice of that law in actual client settings (law practice). Meanwhile long lasting relationships are developed which likely improves the succession issues. But the lawyer licensing complex would lose out to the tune of billions and that is the reason why this will never happen. But the fact that apprenticing is not an option is a travesty.
Bravo Jordan, this is spot on!
Well said. This same lack of training, coupled with law schools cranking out an oversupply of lawyers, has created major mentoring vacuums for new lawyers who open solo practices right out of law school. Just having a law license doesn’t ensure a new lawyer knows the appropriate ways to interact with clients, opposing counsel, or judges.