When bar exam passage fell like a rock last year, fingers were pointed all over the place. This year was worse, but it appears the blame has now been squarely placed on the admission of students unqualified to become lawyers.
At least two studies, including one this year that examined admissions exam scores from 2000 to 2011, have concluded that scores on the test, administered by the Law School Admission Council, closely track later bar passage rates.
[Kyle] McEntee of Law School Transparency, a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, said his group’s recent study showed that many schools were admitting students whose lack of legal aptitude made them vulnerable to failing the bar. And, at the same time, they are incurring six-figure student debt that will weigh them down in the future.
So blame the students for wanting to become lawyers? Blame the law schools for having empty seats to fill, salaries to be paid and new buildings to be built? Blame the bar exam for being a barrier to entry when there are people who can’t afford lawyers but still need representation? Blame technology for being
worthless
unhelpful in solving any problem? Blame society for refusing to accept the premise that if smart students can’t earn a decent living as a lawyer, they’re going elsewhere?
Dot connecting takes a lot of work, a level of knowledge of all the mechanisms that go into the making of a Rube Goldberg machine and a level of honesty about one’s role in a problem that compels the shedding of defensiveness and self-interest. None of the players in this melodrama seem capable of connecting the dots. It’s not that they aren’t smart enough to do so. It’s that they’ve got too much skin in the game which blinds them to their role in this disaster.
But does this matter? Should you find yourself standing before a judge, accused of something heinous that’s going to ruin your life, you bet it does. It’s going to go far better if the person standing next to you knows what he’s doing. Lawyers aren’t fungible, and law isn’t easy. And here’s an inside secret: it’s not fair.
Just because a lawyer had a cool website where he promised to love you long time doesn’t mean he has a clue. Contrary to popular belief, bar exam passage is a puny barrier. That so many fail is extremely telling, because it’s just not that hard to pass. The chasm between passage and competence as a lawyer is huge. Competence requires a whole lot more than mere bar passage.
Before this problem swirled around the toilet bowl, I urged law professors to grow up and vet their classes of students who had no chance of cutting it. Not passing the bar, but being lawyers. Not a chance this was going to happen. Instead, their
village
law school idiots were demagogued into scholars, as if empty platitudes was going to get a kid past the bar exam, no less qualified to practice law.
As if matters couldn’t get worse, Arstechnica posts that “law firm bosses,” an interesting choice of word smacking of Tammany Hall, see a Watson-type computer taking over much of the scut-work on which new lawyers learn their craft.
That’s according to a recent survey (PDF) of law firm leaders who say that within 10 years, new attorneys and paralegals could be replaced by an IBM Watson-like computer. The study, which included responses from high-ranking lawyers at 320 firms with at least 50 lawyers on staff, found that 35 percent of the top brass at responding law firms envision replacing first-year associates with some type of AI in the coming decade. Less than 25 percent of respondents gave the same answer in a similar survey in 2011. About 20 percent of those anonymous respondents also said second- and third-year attorneys could also be replaced by technology over the same period. Half of law firm leaders said that paralegals could be killed off by computers.
The question isn’t whether a computer can do the work. It’s neither hard nor particularly thoughtful. But without baby lawyers growing up, they’re never going to be big boy lawyers. And without baby lawyer jobs, smart kids won’t go to law school because, well, they’re not that stupid. Plus, they want nice things.
But one enormous factor that goes almost entirely unmentioned in this calculus of failure isn’t the lack of a universe of sufficiently intelligent students from which to draw, but the paradigm shift in the relationship between students and the world, including law school.
And the law professors are just as, if not more, guilty of contributing to this problem.
They have questions, and demand not only prompt answers, but answers that validate them. The will not tolerate the Socratic Method, as it belittles them and reflects a lack of respect. There are no longer wrong answers in law school, but just answers not as right as they could have been. And when a student disagrees, asserting that his answer is every bit as good as the one the professor “suggests,” they have no qualms about informing the professor of her error.
What does not happen anymore is a professor informing a law student that they are wrong. Dead, completely wrong. Totally wrong. There is no Kingsfield to hand Hart a dime. Any lawprof foolish enough to do so would learn that he was “condescending and disrespectful.”
We’re up to our eyeballs in flowery gestures, empty platitudes, microaggressions and social justice. Seats are filled with fragile teacups in need of safe places. Don’t tell students to be hard workers, as that demeans slavery. Don’t tell students they’re too entitled, as even the word “too” is sexist. And don’t tell students they’re not good enough. Even though they aren’t.
When you’re standing in the dock, your lawyer next to you, and the judge says, “denied, move on counselor,” who you gonna blame when Skippy, the Fairy Tale lawyer, too stupid, entitled, fragile, clueless but socially sensitive, starts crying? And nobody saw this coming?
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