| | |
|
LawSchoolandInternships 14 - 18 Jun 2008 - Main.BarbPitman
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="WebPreferences" |
|---|
I'm curious about how others are feeling about their internships and clerkships so far this summer. I know there was substantial concern among students this past year about how law school was training us and will continue to train us to do the work of a lawyer. For what it's worth, so far, I've been pleasantly surprised. I've worked on various types of projects in various areas within a large Indy law firm, and I'm finding that there is nothing that I can't think my way through and bottom out on, by using the "tools" that we were exposed to in law school, which I don't think I would have been able to do nearly as effectively before I started law school. But I also know that it takes me substantially longer to complete a project than would be the case with someone who has more experience under her belt. I'm certainly relying on my low billing rate to offset this discrepancy. Granted, I know it's a long way from here to thinking about partnership, but at least I feel like I've got some basics down. | | | So I think part of the problem with 1L year in terms of its value as a preparation for 1L summer jobs is that students end up in such a variety of different types of jobs that it is tough to fully prepare people for all of them. For example, while I definitely feel that thanks to LPW my legal research and memo writing skills are not what they could have been, I'm also in the position of wishing I had had access to better language training while at CLS. Obviously language training is the sort of thing that at law school will always be voluntary because most students probably don't care about it or don't need it, but language classes such as they are at CLS are very thin. I worked at and went to the "French Table" from time to time, and it generally seemed to just be a discussion in French, that while helpful in keeping the rust off, did not teach me much technical legal French vocabulary. Therefore, I was wondering if other people here thought that language classes might be better attended if the law school actually brought in profs/alums/lawyers who practice extensively overseas or with foreign clients and taught classes on "legal French/Spanish/Japanese/etc." Now before people dismiss this as far fetched, think about it this way, the school gets similar people to come in and teach LPW, so I imagine it would be a comparatively easy sell to get similar people to come in and teach languages to a bunch of students who are anxious to learn about technical vocabulary and who have voluntarily signed up for the class. It seems to me that for at least 5 languages (if not more) you could probably find 20 or so students willing to sign up for, say, a 1 credit class that meets once a week that teaches them the fundamental legal jargon of a foreign language. I know for me it certainly would have been a hell of a lot easier if I had known how to explain topics like easements etc in French before I arrived here instead of having to learn them on the fly. What do people think? Also are there any other ideas like this that people have? It just seems to me that the LPW system is definitely broken (and that most people agree about this) so I think it is interesting to try and think of ways to improve it or similar programs that might thrive along side it.
-- AlexLawrence - 16 Jun 2008 | |
>
> |
You make some good points, Alex. I guess I now better appreciate the implications that go with a career area that people describe as so versatile – there are so many different types of jobs out there that require legal skills and a law degree, and so many different areas of law (and even different countries in which to work!), that it is hard for law schools to develop curriculums that make students feel like they are being exposed to more than broad brushed principles, at least during the first year. I will say that whenever I come across or need to use legal terms and concepts, argumentative angles, and judgment calls on what to include in an analysis, I do appreciate what we picked up during our first year of school. What’s interesting to me is that I’ve found that several of my projects have butted up against administrative agencies and their procedures and regulations, such that, if I had to make one curriculum suggestion, it would be to include more of such in the first year. Then again, someone at my firm recently moved from another state (after moving from yet another one) and is prepping to take her third bar exam. She commented that a lot of Indiana agencies, as compared to agencies in the other two states in which she has practiced, are very dominant – so my perspective about this may be skewed. And, the projects I’ve worked on have involved entities like utility companies, which are heavily regulated, and the environmental agencies they have to answer to. I guess if all of my work were in, say, litigation, my perspective would be different. So I gather this just goes to show that people who work in the same firm may walk away from the summer experience with very different perceptions about law. And the more areas I work in and the more lawyers I work with, the harder it is to decide what area of law seems most promising. Talk about a crap shoot. All I’ve really walked away with at this point is the idea that I should keep an open mind and a positive attitude.
-- BarbPitman - 18 Jun 2008 | | | |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |