[caffeine5150]

I come from a family with several California lawyers (I am a lawyer as well) and see this transition from apprenticeship to law school in my family. My great, great uncle was a lawyer and a judge in a small town in the Bay Area. He never went to law school. His nephew, my grandfather, went to law school, but only needed a 2 year college degree to attend law school. He became the judge in the town after his uncle retired. Both were successful and well regarded professionally.

Reading this article, it’s easy to conflate bar passage success with being an effective lawyer. Law school is probably better training for passing the bar than it is for practicing law. Thus, it wouldn’t surprise me that apprentices have lower passage rates than law school grads. Apprentices are training to practice – not to take tests. It is well understood among lawyers that law school may give you some discipline, some research skills, and some understanding about how to think about fundamental aspects of “the Law”, but that it doesn’t by itself result in being able to practice law. That happens over the course of about the first 5 years of practicing law. Becoming a lawyer or a doctor both take about 8-9 years, but with law, you do most of it out in practice. So in this sense, all lawyers are apprentices. Another thing that illustrates this point is the fact that a lawyer’s effectiveness has much less to do with the quality of their law school than is generally thought. I know many excellent attorneys who attended local law schools here in San Diego that do not rank well. What they did in their first 5 years (and other factors) mattered more than law school.

I see the arc of the profession as one that used to be more tuned toward apprenticeship in the context of a much slower overall pace of business and life toward one where it is increasingly hard to access that critical one-the-job training. Historically, clients would essentially subsidize the training of new associate attorneys, but, particularly since the belt tightening post-2008, clients increasingly refuse to do so and many law grads are left to figure it out themselves. Some have rules that no attorneys with e.g. less than 3 years’ experience are allowed to work on their matters. Another challenge are the strict laws in California on unpaid internships. I would be happy to provide training to a new lawyer in exchange for some unpaid help and know many new attorneys who would jump at the chance, but that is not allowed in California.

[nkw]

This is a very insightful comment. In my opinion one of the largest shortcomings of our system of minting new lawyers is a lack of practical training. While doctors generally must both go to medical school and complete an internship and/or residency in order to treat patients, a freshly licensed lawyer can represent someone without previously having ever entered a courthouse, drafted a will, or taken a deposition. I think most recognize this is a problem and there are some law schools that are doing an excellent job of addressing the issue by requiring 3rd year practice court, externships, or clinics that actually give lawyers some experience in the things they will be doing after law school. Bar associations are trying to address the issue through mentor programs and CLEs aimed at new lawyers. No longer can the profession depend on mid to large law firms to bring lawyers up through the ranks, both because their clients aren't really interested in subsidizing it and the firms cannot or will not put in the resources to train all those entering the profession.

[caffeine5150]

Thanks. Agreed that it's a problem. I was active in leadership in the local bar association and often ran into attorneys straight out of the local law schools (e.g. <6 mos.) who had opened their own practice due to a lack of other options and need to repay their student loans. The old system of training is broken.

[JBlue42]

Thanks for the insightful comment.

I might be missing something about the part regarding unpaid internships. Is this because those internships do, or can, pay so well (my former roommate IIRC was bringing in a couple thousand a week over the summer)? I don't really know the content of what those interns do but it seems if it's something that someone would be paid to do as a job that they should be compensated. CA has strict rules about that stuff because they have been, and still are, abused (see the entertainment industry).

Overall though, whether lawyers or other professions, our move away from apprenticeships and other sorts of on the job training or investment in employees has most likely been detrimental. When you read complaints about us Millenials job hopping and 'having no loyalty' a quick peek behind the curtain should reveal that it's not only economic (esp. given student debts) but you learn rapidly how merciless companies can be.

[caffeine5150]

On internships, there are different contexts. One can clerk at a law firm during law school and be paid for it and a starting attorney at a firm is often arguably paid more than they are worth making them akin to an intern (the firm is investing in cultivating future attorneys for their firm). These are the opportunities I am suggesting are shrinking dramatically, but still exist. The intern context I’m speaking about is in the context of small firms such as my 6 partner transactional firm. California sets out a set of requirements for a unpaid internships to be legal. Essentially, it must be an educational experience where the intern is not really engaged in productive work for the benefit of the business. Our firm is not in the position to create an educational experience for an intern without tangible benefit to the firm. At the same time, the services they might provide to our firm are not important enough to us to merit paying them even the minimum wage (plus deal with other employer hassles and risk). Transactional work (e.g. negotiating a SaaS agreement) is particularly challenging in this regard because it doesn’t require much low-level work as compared to litigation or M&A work. All of that said, I’d be happy to mentor a new attorney in negotiating and drafting commercial agreements in exchange for them say, organizing my forms library. I believe that this would be a mutually beneficial arrangement and I don’t think there is much likelihood of abuse. New attorneys are capable of evaluating the benefits of this arrangement and leaving if it doesn’t work out. Entertainment is a peculiar example where there is unusual desperation to get into the industry and unusual concentration of power in individuals in the industry (and many egos and *holes). I’ve heard of production companies where the interns not only didn’t get paid, but had to pay the company e.g. $30k. I’m sure there are industries where these unpaid internship restrictions provide some important protections and I’ve no illusions about businesses’ capacity to take advantage of people, but in my context, I think it’s preventing what would be a useful arrangement to help address a critical need.

[JBlue42]

That makes more sense now given the specific context of law. I guess it's a field most that us non-lawyers are unaware of in terms of how it operates internally. Thank you for clearing it up!