ADDITIONAL NOTES AND COMMENTS
I've gotten some additional notes and comments and thought that I would retype some of them here.
One
John Grisham's The Rainmaker should be required reading for all law professors.
Not the whole thing, just the first hundred and thirty pages or so where the protagonist has a job offer withdrawn right before graduation and is forced to start looking for another position. The story covers the process quite well and provides some excellent perspective.
I went through just that. I know a number of other kids who went through the same situation. Top half of the class (or better). Mergers were the least of it. Down-sizing. Workers Compensation tort reform killing off entire defense divisions.
After everything else, with graduation in sight, it is a terrible thing to launch into the interview market so late in the game. Things are better than they would have been if I hadn't gotten the "you no longer fit our employment plans" letter, but I'm still not whole from the experience.
Two
"The Man who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as honesty. Possibly more."
Richard J. Needham.
Three
The FBI hires a number of attorneys -- not only as attorneys, but also as investigators. In fact, the best prospective litigator I knew at JRC became an investigator for the FBI and has made a rewarding career from that decision.
Besides being able to shoot straight, good physical health and a clean background are the important requirements.
The CIA also does some hiring, with the same requirements.
In the private sector, insurance adjusting can be as rewarding as legal practice.
One of my clients was hurt so badly in an automobile accident he had to change professions. As of July in his first year as an adjuster, he had made over $70,000.00.
Of course he travels, puts in long hours, and has to be able to use a computer.
But no first year associate in America will be able to claim that they made more money in their first year of practice than the $140,000 my client will have made as a "storm trooper" and few will also have had over thirty days of vacation time.
Generally, adjusters make less than that, but they do make more than legal services or Hyatt (etc.) attorneys.
Adjusters work hard, but less than the 3000 hours a year necessary to put in 2400 billable hours. They have pressure, but less than the 50% (or worse) up or out rate many firms have.
Four
Conventional insurance agents are a dying breed -- they just don't know it yet. The same is true of "financial planners."
Every attorney in office practice ought to also sell a little insurance, a mutual fund or two, on the side.
The method is simple. You subscribe to Consumer Reports and you also pass the licensing exams. Then you contact the companies.
Whenever the moment is right, you give your clients photocopies of the most recent Consumer Reports evaluations of insurance companies and mutual funds.
You suggest that your clients might save money if they reconsider and change their insurers to the ones that Consumer Reports rates as the best. Then you sell them replacement insurance policies.
Unlike insurance agents, people trust their attorneys. Unlike insurance agents, attorneys can look at the ratings first and then pick a company (most agents pick a company and then pray for good ratings).
And you don't go to clients, they come to you. Just one more service. No pressure. No promises. Just complete information and a reliable third party doing the rating.
Financial planning goes down the same way. Pick up the reports, then choose the best mutual funds, etc.
I started thinking about it when I received a Consumer Reports and changed my insurance -- saving a substantial amount every year. A number of clients really appreciated copies of the article -- they saved money too.
On reflection I realized that what I had done was sell a substantial body of insurance. Since I did not (and do not) have a license (or any connection with the insurance company -- I sue insurance companies and thought it would be rather much a conflict), I managed to originate five figures in premium income for an agent with no financial rewards.
He doesn't even know where the extra business came from.
But, if you don't have a conflict like mine, then it seems that you can do more than have a good feeling over helping clients choose better insurance than they have.
Five
My personal belief is that the reason women and minority students have so much trouble in graduate schools is that they are not significantly different from mainstream male students.
Take a mainstream male student and treat him the way that women or minorities get treated, and he'll reflect similar performance losses. Deprive him of respect, support and proper education in the formative years and you will have the same result often seen in female students.
Provide him with proper support, he'll show the same improvements.
This can be readily observed in watching Asian students in California. They use methods that result in their doing better than the average (and thus, in being discriminated against on admissions). When schools have attempted to model programs to aid other minorities, copying the methods [used by Asians] copies the results.
We do have equality of potential. Since the playing field is not level, we may never get equality of result. What is really left is to provide equality of opportunity and to have students learn because of the way they are taught -- not in spite of the way they are taught.
Six
How should a critical review of legal education affect the ABA reconsideration of accreditation guidelines?
That is the real world question.
It seems that the first thing, the crucial thing, is to insist on better student-teacher ratios.
The only way to implement proper teaching methods, so that students are actually taught (rather than abused and warehoused) is to have substantial investment of faculty time and effort for each student. That requirement translates into requiring more faculty -- not loosening up on already insufficient requirements.
Require more faculty.
Require more faculty/student time (either in supervising study groups or in scheduled office hour consultations).
Require more writing.
That is what the ABA should be doing.
Seven
Very few transactions are really "win-win" other than the goodwill that is created by a personable and likable transaction. Consider buying gasoline or groceries.
On the other hand, very few transactions are so devoid of human factors that they can justify a scorched earth approach.
Yet, negotiation classes often prepare students with only those two models. Either slit the other guy's throat or marry him.
Neither is generally appropriate to most situations, including employment in the modern environment.
"Win-win" dialogue makes you sound like a telephone solicitor (the current drills all talk the talk). Throat slitting makes you act and appear like a hungry rabid wolf.
Eight
I spoke with an MBA with several years of experience placing professionals about the employment market and the ethics of teaching students that they need to opt out.
He pointed out that all of America is being over educated.
Basically, education was a rite of passage that a small social group went through on their way to professional and white collar jobs. Because the openings were limited to that social group, the competence level was relatively low.
Allowing women to play in the game doubled the players. Letting in other whites quadrupled it. Add in minorities and there are additional players.
The end result is that we are educating too many people at every level for the job openings available. Too many lawyers, too many MBAs, too many nurses too many doctors.
Not enough Physicians Assistants, but that only because PAs are stealing market share from nurses (insurance and government plans reimburse for PA conducted procedures that they don't reimburse for when a nurse does them -- even though nurses are probably better trained -- because PAs are traditionally male, nurses female) and doctors (in the HMOing of America, the general practice doctor has been replaced by the PA, the same in many Emergency Rooms).
Count on an oversupply of PAs in twenty years.
20-25% of the jobs that require a BS do so only as a paper hurdle. Engineers are used just to cut down on the number of applicants.
As a result, wages, autonomy and satisfaction are all on a downward spiral.
Consider, Legal Services attorneys (with doctorates) make less than teachers with bachelors degrees. And there is fierce competition for the jobs. Top half of the class only need apply.
A student with a LSC job would have been financially better off if they had dropped out of law school after the first semester, taken a loading dock job, and worked their way up the corporate ladder.
Once they get the degree, they make everyone nervous and their employability actually goes down. (This rule is more observed in watching MBAs who attempt this route. If they are competent, they scare everyone they work for. How would you feel if you could get hit by a car tomorrow and the loading clerk could take over your job and do it better?).
Thus consider what happens when JDs apply for paralegal jobs.
The MBA I talked to had run the numbers and couldn't see how schools could run on their normal model if they properly prepared students to consider and act on opting out.
Worse, he noted that a number of kids in the top 25% of solid professional programs (including the kid who finished second in his class) consider opting out when they discover (for the first time in their lives) that they are not in the top 10% (or top 1%). These are all people that a school wants to keep -- and the most likely to take the jump for a "better" (i.e. top 10% potential) track.
How would graduate schools run if they lost half their students after the first finals came out? Placement might be able to do something with that, but the rest of the school?
The MBA had no solutions, just questions and considerations he had been thinking of ever since his "second in the class" room mate talked with him about opting out.
Nine
If someone really wants to prepare for law school, they ought to take the bar review class for their state two or three times (every summer while they are an undergraduate).
By the time they've sat through it three or four times it ought to have sunk in. If they pay for it the last couple of times, then they'll get the study materials and have practice taking the tests as well.
They should be able to clean up on the first year of law school -- and after the first year, who cares what your grades are. You can just look at an interviewer and say "Oh, rest assured, I graded on to Law Review."
I came up with that response for a friend whose grades dropped to the middle of the pack after the first year and no interviewer ever asked the question again or expressed further concern about his grades.
Of course it makes you wonder just how credible the teaching is in law school if a couple semester hours worth of review classes can push someone from the bottom third to the top 10% (at least for the first year).
Law Schools might find themselves like some MBA programs -- forced to screen out people who have had "too much" preparation for fear of what it does to the grade distribution.
Ten
A friend who teaches an LSAT preparation class remarked that applicants had been dropping a little every year and recently by almost 50%. Interesting.
Made me wonder how long it will be until law school admission applications start to drop off by that much as well.
Some of the lower tier schools are already showing substantial application drop-off, but the trend will be real when it hits the top 25% or so. Which may make for a new criteria for where a law school sits -- has its admission application dropped off or not.
Seriously though, the public is beginning to appreciate that almost half of the students who obtain JD degrees are unable to find employment within the legal profession that is superior to what they can find outside of it.
Since half the schools are not going to be closed by some sort of fiat, then the problem will endure and become more and more a part of the public's perception -- with many of the best and the brightest opting for different career fields. Reprinted from Volumes 1-4, for reference purposes:
OUTLINE OF CRITICAL SYLLABUS
INTRODUCTION
A Critical Syllabus is a collection of all the source essays necessary to critically analyze a position. The critical syllabus for these essays contains all of the source essays necessary to evaluate and critically analyze my proposals for pragmatic reform of legal education. Copies are available from Assistant Dean Kathy Pullins, 339 JRCB, Provo, Utah 84602. The most significant essays are bold-faced.
VOLUME ONE
Table of Contents
Introduction and Summary
A. Stephen R. Marsh, Pragmatic Reform of Legal Education -- Three Essays (1995).
B. The SALT Equalizer, April 1994.
C. The Law Teacher, Spring 1994.
D. Touro College Teaching Assistant Materials.
E. Cathaleen A. Roach Problem Set.
F. Charles Richard Calleros, Variations on the Problem Method in First-Year and Upper-Division Classes, 20 University of San Francisco Law Review 455 (Spring 1986).
G. Editor Kristine Knapland, The Learning Curve, Vol. 1, Issue 1 to Vol. 2, Issue 1.
H. Cathaleen A. Roach, A River Runs Through It, 36 Arizona Law Review 667 (1994).
VOLUME TWO
I. Mary E. Levin and Joel R. Levin, A Critical Examination of Academic Retention Programs, 32 Journal of College Student Development 323 (July 1991).
J. Sandra Anderson Garcia and Katurah Presley, An Assessment and Evaluation Program for Black University Students in Academic Jeopardy: A Descriptive Analysis, 9 Journal of Community Psychology 67 (1981).
K. McKinney Academic Support Method Materials (Complete Syllabus, Course Outline, Materials).
L. First Year Law Study ... a survival manual, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
VOLUME THREE
M. Kristine Knapland and Richard H. Sander, The Art and Science of Academic Support, Journal of Legal Education Vol 45, No. 2 (June 1995), 157-234, especially 225-234.
N. Stephen R. Marsh, Critical Reform of Legal Education, Three Essays (1995).
O. Suzette Haden Elgin, Uphill All The Way -- Persuasion in Adverse Circumstances, reprinted by express permission. [includes resource ordering information, in duplicate].
P. Julie M. Cheslik, Teaching Assistants: A Study of Their Use in Law School Research and Writing Programs, Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 44, No. 3 (September 1994).
Q. J. M. Feinman, Teaching Assistants, 41 Journal of Legal Education 269-287 (1991).; see also Why Law Teachers Should Teach Undergraduates. Feinman includes two outlines.
R. Proper Considerations, 1995 edition, etc.
S. Class Outline and Syllabus, Orientation to Legal Practice.
VOLUME FOUR
T. Paula Lustbader, Seattle University School of Law Syllabus. (with notes).
Law Offices of
Stephen R. Marsh
Attorney and Counselor at Law _________________________________________________________________________________
1401 Holliday Street Suite 316 Union Square Wichita Falls, Texas 76301-7193 (817) 322-3624
December 12, 1995
I wanted to make some comments of my own on education and related things.
I have a friend who graduated from Exeter when 180 out of 300 kids were admitted to Harvard from each graduating class. His son goes to Andover -- because Exeter has dropped in the ratings (so to speak) since then.
In visiting with his son's class, the thing that amazed him was just what percentage of the kids there intended to be pre-med. Because of the income disparity, 95% of them want to go to medical school. (His son doesn't, but John is a fourth generation lawyer married to the daughter of a third generation lawyer, so his son can be forgiven other goals).
One interesting result of the pre-med orientation is that many Ivy League schools reject 40% to 60% of the kids with good grades and SAT scores of 1400 or higher who apply as pre-med students (Brown is a good example at that range). (Currently, 1400 composite on the SAT test is 99% in math and 99% in verbal).
The advice they give the kids is to take science, prepare for the MCAT and hide their graduate school goal. Apply as journalism majors or some such. Then study the classes necessary to take the MCAT and with a high score -- and something else besides pre-med on your record -- the kids can expect to get in.
Several things came to mind. First, law school used to draw the best and brightest. Now, on an overwhelming level, prep schools and ivy league schools have their enrollment saturated with kids aimed at medical school (over half of admissions) -- to the point the schools are trying to weed them out to avoid becoming pre-med education centers.
Second, most law schools have a substantial portion of their class in students who graduated from college without any useful skills (i.e. unable to obtain employment) and unable to apply to any other type of graduate school. I suspect that in the future law schools will start to see "ex" pre-med students -- and many of them highly competitive at that.
I suspect that a lot of other things will happen too -- things I'm completely unable to guess at the present.
Sincerely yours,
Stephen R. Marsh
Resources:
Hogg Foundation for Mental Health University of Texas P.O.Box 7998 Austin, Texas 78713-7998
Mental Health and Policy Publications -- Free Some excellent material.
Suzette Haden Elgin Ozark Center for Language Studies Route 4, Box 192-E Post Office Box 1137 Huntsville, Arkansas 72740-1137 (501) 559-2273
Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense Training and Seminars. Also has a newsletter, and a number of excellent books.
Law Offices of
Stephen R. Marsh
Attorney and Counselor at Law
1401 Holliday Street Suite 316 Union Square Wichita Falls, Texas 76301-7193 (940) 322-3624
December 19, 1995
Setting the Record Straight
Small law office practice can be incredibly satisfying. You meet with real people. You actually help your clients. You solve problems. People love you. Clients send you flowers and gift baskets and small presents and cards and smile at you on the street. You touch lives and make the world a better place.
If you have other attorneys (especially in a good office sharing arrangement or a Fegen Suite) and friendly staff people, a small office is a warm, rewarding and supportive environment.
You can work reasonable hours, you can take time for a family and hobbies. You can be involved in your community and in helping the lives of others.
The down side is revenue.
In Texas, ten to fifteen years ago the common wisdom said that the general practice office was dead. Lawyers specialized in narrower and narrower areas. Then the boom ended and the glut began. Now every criminal law attorney I know will take a divorce if a client asks him. Every divorce attorney will handle a personal injury claim. Every business litigator will also incorporate you. (I've had potential paying clients just about go into shock when I suggested that another attorney might be better for their needs. And I've seen a number of attorneys wander off in strange paths and become lost.).
The economic cycle is going to be long and hard. Economic corrections, because of the lack of a perfect market and the cost and time of obtaining accurate information, take substantial time to come to pass. We may well see a return to the historic days of the 1920s through the 1940s when law clerks worked for free for several years prior to being paid.
But to the extent that it remains possible, the freedom and satisfaction of small office practice in smaller towns (250,000 people or less) is substantial. Too bad there isn't anyone to tell the normal law school student about it.
Sincerely yours,
Stephen R. Marsh
Copyright 1996 Stephen R. Marsh All Rights Reserved Return to Central Index for Reform of Legal Education and the Law
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