Can New York regulate the elite law schools?

New York has made a couple of changes that have the potential to affect elite law schools (where, presumably, a substantial portion of the students want to maintain the option of taking the NY bar). One is the requirement for a stand-alone PR course. I have over 30 PR students this semester who are foreign LLM students and many of them have told me that they need to maintain their NY eligibility. The other is NY's new 50 hour pro bono requirement for people sitting for the bar exam. Reuters and Above the Law are reporting that the loose standards for what counts as pro bono may mean that the requirement will have little impact on many students and little benefit to the under-represented poor.

If the New York, California, Texas, Florida, and Illinois bars had a mind to reform legal education, they might be able to effectively regulate most law schools. I don't imagine that they'd really want to take on an overhaul of legal education, but they might seek some significant changes. For example, California is considering adding a requirement for practical skills training. No doubt, the law schools will oppose many of these measures. (At The Faculty Lounge, Dan Filler has a post on the possibility that states will get more involved in law school regulation.)

Comments

[John David Galt]

The problem of college-level schools failing to prepare their students for the job market is much broader than just law schools.

I believe that if the only losses were the students' own time and money, then public forums in which the students could warn others about the problem would be sufficient to cure the problem. But with huge amounts of federal money going to the bad schools, there ought to be a permanent agency of active federal investigators with the power to revoke a school's funding eligibility for not finding good jobs for its graduates.

[Stephen Gillers]

I begin by being skeptical about the wisdom of greater court control of law school curricula via conditions on bar admission. But I think the NY rule requiring a freestanding 2-credit legal ethics class for all applicants (JD and LLM) is correct and I lobbied for it (by talking and writing). While many schools satisfy the ABA legal ethics requirement with a course, some have not done so and do not have to because the requirement is weak. These schools have relied on inadequate substitutes. This will no longer work, at least not for students who don't want to exclude NY as a possible site of admission. If the ABA changes its rule to require a freestanding class, as apparently it is considering doing, that will secure the legal ethics class nationwide. (I actually think it should be three credits.)

The fact is that the law school franchise is a great benefit to legal academics, especially financially. The level of control the courts and the ABA Standards impose on content of legal education (as opposed to length of it, library requirements, admission issues, etc.) has, however, been slight. Overall, I think that's good. Faculty can be expected to offer a variety of different kinds of classes to satisfy diverse student bodies. IF nothing else, the market will monitor this as will the students.

But let's face it, legal academics are increasingly uninterested in the practicing bar and the profession. There are exceptions, of course. So I think the courts must watch curricula and be ready to impose content requirements when society and the needs of students -- needs that the faculties may not fully anticipate or appreciate -- require it. Legal ethics is Exhibit A, too long a stepchild in the academy if considered part of the family at all, but of vital importance in practice.

[Al-Joufi Law Firm-Saudi Business Law Firm, Saudi Lawyers & Legal Advisors]

They should learn to give back by doing the required Pro Bono services. This will greatly influence their ethics in the legal profession. Let them have the exposure to work for free and have a feel of the essence of legal profession. http://www.aljoufilaw.com/