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Law Schools Stepping In For Deferred 3Ls

Northwestern and UCLA Law Schools grabbed a smart marketing opportunity. As things begin to slowly improve at the nation’s top law firms, there remain a number of graduating third year law students who have been asked to defer their start date at big firms, according to Above the Law..

The schools are offering an additional year of school to obtain an LL.M. degree. UCLA is calling it “transition to practice.” The idea will be to teach real practical skills to enhance the learning about the law they experienced in school so far.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of something I have felt pretty strongly about for years. Medical students spend a full half of their time in medical school in actual clinical training working in a real teaching hospital. They handle very real illnesses and are trained by actual practicing physicians. On the day of graduation they are given the power to handle a patient on their own.

The tradition of law school is to drill the Socratic method of teaching for three years, change the way the students think, make them ready to spot issues and argue both sides of any case. The truth is, that has all pretty much happened by the time the second year of law school is done.

There is some marginal benefit to the additional substantive material taught in advanced courses in third year. But I think students would benefit much more using some of the third year time to have required clinical training, either simulated or real. Many schools offer clinics, but few if any require them.

Hey maybe law firms would be willing to do some training within their firm in exchange for free work. That’s part of what UCLA is doing. The nation’s law schools are awesome, and hopefully also not afraid to revisit some of the basics in our fast moving world.