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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am the OP, and I am not a lawyer.  I was just wondering.  It's interesting that law schools are not training lawyers. I wonder what their value added is.  Perhaps law schools need to refocus their training on actually training lawyers through cooperative programs or apprenticeships with actual law firms.  What stops that idea?  It would certainly save firms money and train up lawyers who can do the job out of the gate.  You are actually learning a trade, after all.  [/quote]

I wonder this too, and I wonder whether there would ever be any changes like this. Just to add a different perspective, I'm from the UK and am qualified both here and in the UK, but I started and trained in the UK. There, it is much more of a vocational training process. There is the academic part of law school (which you can do as an undergraduate, or you can do any undergraduate degree and then a postgraduate in law), then there are very practical courses which are focused on the specific skills of being lawyer (including subject matter expertise depending on your interests but also things like accounts for lawyers, ethics, advocacy, etc. But even the subject-specific stuff is designed to be practical - for example, you might have studied real estate law in the academic stage of law school, but then at the vocational training stage, you'll learn how to draft the leases and sale and purchase documents and about the processes of selling/buying land). These courses are usually developed with firms so firms have a lot of input into what they would find useful for their lawyers to learn. Then once you have completed this stage, you have to work in a law firm for 2 years, rotating around different practice areas (also good because you get significant experience in different practice areas and can make an educated decision after 2 years on the area that you want to stay in). You are basically a first/second year associate (you do the same work that 1st/2nd years do in the US, because it's the most junior level work) but you are not qualified as a lawyer until you have completed this stage. There's no exam at that point, your firm just certifies that you have completed the training period. The obvious advantage for lawyers/clients is that once you are qualified, you have had actual training and experience. The main disadvantage for the lawyer is pay - as a trainee you are not paid like a US first year associate (around half or less)! You get the first year salary when you are qualified (well, probably less because UK firms generally don't pay as well as US firms). But clients are happy paying very low fees for the low level of work that is done by trainees (whereas in my firm here in the US, we often have to write off first year fees because clients won't pay those fees for that kind of work). Of course, law school fees in the UK aren't anything like they are in the US, so lawyers aren't having to spend a lot of their salary paying off debt, which I think must be the reason for the high biglaw salaries here. Most firms in the UK will pay for your law school plus a small stipend, so you don't end up in debt at all when you start. It's not a perfect system at all but I think the practical training is generally a good idea. [/quote]

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