Friday, March 29, 2024
 
Lawyers Respond to NYT Commentary on Their Profession’s Burdens

NEW YORK, NY Mar. 19 (DPI) – A Hollywood screenwriter who went to law school but ditched the law early on offered up a commentary on her old profession today. She suggested that those law schools abandoning the LSAT are making a mistake because doing so won’t attract more applicants who actually want to be lawyers.

The writer, Akilah Green, began her NYtimes.com piece with an odd analogy that trivialized legal education, declaring that going to law school was “one of my biggest regrets, ranking right up there with the time I accidentally bought low-fat Brie.”

She went on to repeat an old truism about the law: A lot of people in law school are not all that interested in becoming lawyers, and many applied to law school because “they aren’t sure what to do with their lives.”

The commentary was intended to remark on recent decisions by Harvard Law and a small law school in Arizona that they would no longer require the LSAT for admission, and would instead use the broader Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The headline” Will Dropping the LSAT Requirement Create More Miserable Lawyers?”

Many of the 100 or so readers who elected to comment on Green’s essay identified themselves as lawyers or law students, and many of those focused on the ongoing problem of law schools cranking out too many lawyers. But many defended their profession for its intellectual and psychological rewards – tough work, to be sure, but satisfying for those who do it well.

And one poster rather pointedly asserted that “dropping the LSAT is a purely financial move to save law schools and law school faculty salaries.”

The most popular comments on NYTimes.com

I was tempted to agree with Ms. Green, but I cannot in good conscience. The conundrum is this: there are too many lawyers to make the profession profitable, while there are not enough lawyers to ensure equal access to justice. Most often the profession offers neither comfort nor respect. As a lawyer you will be despised by society at large, by judges (especially by judges) by law clerks, by opponents and even by your own clients. And, if you hope to see that justice is done, your heart will break so often that you will become hardened and completely disillusioned. But the world needs justice and a system of law to see that justice is done. If you can stomach fighting for those you do not love against those you do not hate, you will some day have the chance to do good, which will make it all worth while.

In the late 1970’s I took the LSAT, did well, and in law school discovered that I really liked the challenges and rewards of practicing law. Sure, any profession has its challenges, especially after a few years, but I recently retired after 36 years of practice and I think that it was a great run. Just because it wasn’t your cup of tea, don’t discourage others who might really like it.

Honestly, what does the LSAT have to do with lawyer misery? All it represents is another fake marker of what portends success in the field. LSATs are what direct you to higher tiered schools. Law schools direct you to big law prospects depending on the school and/or placing well in class standing. Bar exams try to separate the wheat from chaff in the licensing process. BUT not one of these efforts succeeds in its mission, nor are they useful predictors. They are part of the self-sustaining and entirely anachronistic system. If we want more satisfied lawyers, then bring back the apprentice system. Give young law students a real chance to see what a practice is like before they commit upfront, both financially and psychically.

Dropping the LSAT is a purely financial move to save law schools and law school faculty salaries. That’s all it is: Bring in more foreign students, and get more US students by whatever means possible.

The LSAT is an intellectual killer, having looked at the test runs done by family members as prep. It was surprising to hear that Harvard was dropping the requirement but they probably have lots of other qualifiers to winnow out the unqualified. I believe that for a lot of lower rank law schools (who are more interested in bums on seats) the requirement is already more observed in the breach than the observance. And for a lot of the students at these schools it’s going to be very hard to get a good job in the law after graduation.

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