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UCLA Law School

UCLA Law School

Recreating Law School: The New Normal

This week, Brad Feld, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, shared some insights certain to make law schools shudder. The old model – where large law firms hired and developed the best-and-the-brightest – is dead in Feld’s view. The new normal is for students to become “legal entrepreneurs,” responsible for their own development and career path.
How does this work in the real world? In his LInkedin column, Feld cites Phil Weiser, a good friend and Dean of The University of Colorado Law School, who has incorporated entrepreneurship in the school curriculum. Here are some of Weiser’s thoughts on what law schools and attorneys should expect from the “New Normal” in the coming years:

  • “Training law students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset is foundational for the New Normal. The reality is that large law firms are employing fewer and fewer law graduates, and the early interview week model is not what it once was. As such, law schools need to reorient their students’ thinking about their careers. An entrepreneurial mindset is a must in the New Normal…How law schools will transmit those lessons to a notoriously risk-averse group remains to be seen. But the age of law school as a risk-free option for people who expect a job to be handed to them at the end is over.”
  • “Challenging employers to think differently about entry-level hiring and summer jobs is a critical to adjusting to the New Normal…Most law students would welcome the chance to work at any number of successful law firms or in-house organizations in a temporary capacity over the summer or even upon graduation—even at lower rates than traditional summer associate or associate positions—because such jobs can offer valuable opportunities to build marketable skills and develop important networks, connections, and references…But a big impediment to developing such an opportunity is that firms often believe that they cannot provide them if they are not prepared to offer a long-term job when the student graduates. A number of law schools are taking this issue head on, such as the Cardozo New Resident Associate Mentor Program and, in Colorado, where both law schools…are collaborating on a Legal Residency program that encourages law firms or other employers to hire a recent graduate for 12 to 18 months, offer a quality experience, and provide apprenticeship outside of the traditional associate track.”
  • “The opportunity to graduate in 2.5 years, which can be achieved through accelerated schedules that permit saving a semester, is increasingly appealing as tuition costs has risen greatly over the past decade. Law schools encouraging such paths can work with partners like Cisco’s general counsel Mark Chandler, who is welcoming paid interns for seven months at Cisco from June 1st after their second year until the following January, enabling students to graduate not only with less debt, but with more experience.”
  • The New Normal means that “thinking like a lawyer” is not enough; we need lawyers who can “think like clients.” For lawyers to understand their clients, they need to learn their businesses. This concept applies to those working in the public sector as well as the private sector; lawyers with domain knowledge of the fields they are practicing in are simply more likely to succeed than those without such knowledge. This means more nontraditional courses, more interdisciplinary courses, and more “boot camp”-type experiences.”
  • “The reality is that law firm hiring is not coming back, and a core challenge for law schools is to develop nontraditional opportunities—such as ones in business development, compliance, human resources, and public policy—for law school graduates with the right skill sets. The challenge is that developing such partnerships and opportunities is a long game.”

Source: Linkedin

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