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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a couple of questions:

1. Unauthorized practice of law (UPL) - My understanding is that there is no clear line where practicing law begins and ends outside of litigating in court and providing a legal opinion.  It seems that traditional legal services are under assault by legal tech, the big 4/consultants, and general cost cutting.  For example, shifting previous attorney roles to lesser paid compliance roles; having compliance consultants copy in-house counsel to obtain attorney-client privilege on certain matters; or tax accountants editing formation/merger documents.  Do you see this trend continuing and how do you think it will affect the already saturated legal market?  Should law schools do something either by changing what is taught or better defining the practice of law to protect the value of the JD?

2. Legal education - It seems legal education has stagnated for sometime.  What needs to be updates to contend with the current job market and prepare students for the future impacts of things like AI? Do you think schools can evolve to tackle these issues?  Or will schools fail to evolve like after the introduction of ediscovery (where the big 4 ended up setting up ediscovery groups and the lawyers ended up in doc review)?

3. Cost - It seems to me that making law school a graduate program has allowed schools to exponentially up the cost due to the way loans are distributed (no caps for grad school loans, while undergraduate loans have caps).  Did the institutions you worked at ever siphone money paid by the law students to subsidize other programs or initiatives that would not have a direct or indirect benefit on the law students?  Given that law school admissions generally requires no pre-requisite classwork or specific work experience, it seems there would be a benefit to moving it back to a undergraduate degree to lower costs via the cap on student loans and by not requiring students to pay for a bachelors first.  Where do you stand on maintaining the JD graduate scheme?  If for the status quo, what are the benefits of keeping the JD a graduate degree?

4. Curves/grading - How accurate do you think schools are at ranking students along the curve?  After discussions with how some of my professors graded work, I was already concerned that there was some margin of error in ranking, but my law school experience led me to believe that it was higher than I imagined (eg, while drinking scotch on a plane). Some schools also have moved to the honors/pass/fail grading system.  Do you think that system better captures students ability/potential?[/quote]

(Not OP)

UPL is more complex than one might think.

As you know, the US economy is heavily affected by, and intertwined with, laws. We are a nation of laws. It would be much easier to change the definition of UPL than to enforce the unenforeable--which is the current system. The only US jurisdiction with reasonable UPL provisions is Wash DC where UPL restrictions were made to accommodate lobbyists.

Re: Legal Education. My opinion is that it is outdated. Law school should be reduced to 2 years, instead of 3, and a required third year should consist of supervised practical legal work experience.

Re: Cost of a law degree/legal education. For decades, law schools have been viewed as, and used as, cash cows for universities. The cost of adding additional law students is low and the return to the law school & university is high. The only constraint is employment results.[/quote]

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