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Are the law schools of today preparing new attorneys for the legal profession of tomorrow? The Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law provided a strong critique of legal academia, and contended that new attorneys are not taught the practical, real-world skills, that attorneys need. As the report noted, to the extent that professors can “bridge the gap between the analytical and practical knowledge,” new attorneys would be better situated to compete in the marketplace and obtain the ever-so-important first job. A 2010 study by NALP similarly found that “experiential learning opportunities,” “hands-on” or “simulated learning opportunities,” are “instrumental in preparing new associates for the demands of the practice of law.”

Putting aside any disagreements over these studies, most in the academy and in practice would probably agree that there is a gap–of some size–between what is taught in law schools today, and what students today need to work as lawyers.

What about the skills that lawyers will need in the near-future? That, is a tougher question. The legal profession has remained largely the same for some time. Attorneys, as a bunch, are generally resistant to change. Sure, new areas of law come into vogue (e.g., international law), and new tools are introduced to make research easier (e.g., WestLaw Next), but for the most part, the legal profession consists of a lawyer, or group of lawyers, providing a one-off, customized service–such as a brief, memo, will, contract, trust, etc.–to a single client. Law schools aim to prepare students for this manner of work.

The future of the legal profession may look different. Richard Susskind in The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, augurs an evolution–enabled by advanced technologies, outsourced labor, and weak demand for expensive associates–from a time-consuming, customized labor-intensive legal market to an on-demand, commoditized information-based legal service. Professor Larry Ribstein, co-author of Law’s Information Revolution, similarly writes “that much of law’s future isn’t in how to price one-to-one customized legal services, but in the development of legal information products.” Many legal services that are created today through individualized, customized efforts by toiling associates, will be replaced by information products that can be downloaded on demand, like a commodity. Think of a hybrid of LegalZoom.com, Google,and Facebook: instantly obtain legal services customized to your personal situation with the click of a mouse. To preempt many objections, don’t be so certain your practice of law will be excluded from this automation. This transform no doubt would dramatically change the skills attorneys of the not-so-distant future will need.

To repeat the question I opened with, are the law schools of today preparing new attorneys for the legal profession of tomorrow? In many respects, the law student depicted in Norman Rockwell’s 1927 classic portrait (pictured above, I call him Abe) is not too different from the law student of today. Students are taught (hopefully) basic legal research skills, how to write, how to make oral arguments, how to read cases, and how to “think like a lawyer” (whatever that means). If Susskind, Ribstein, and others are right about the progression of how law is practiced, I ponder whether law students–as well as the Professoriate–will be prepared for the future legal profession. Will the gap between academia and practice grow even further?

So how do we prepare law students for the legal profession of tomorrow? The answer is well beyond the scope of this post, which I provide as food for thought. Though, for starters, banning laptops in the classroom is probably not going in the right direction. I hope to blog about this topic more in the coming month, but for now check out my liveblogged Google Doc article work-in-progress, as well as here, here, here, and generally here.

Crossposted at ConcurringOpinions.com.

Article I, Section 7, Clause 2, provides:

2:  Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.  If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.  But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.  If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Sounds simple, right? But this infographic shows how a bill actually becomes a law (with plenty of points for lobbyists to rent seek and capture the legislature). No wonder some Judges refuse to look at all the stuff that happens *before* the law is enacted.

It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I am a fan of Jersey Shore (see all of my Jersey Shore posts here). As you may know, the Seaside Octet is filming the newest season in Florence, Italy. As I eagerly await the premier in July, I already know about a number of the major plot arcs. Snooki got into a car accident and got her drivers license revoked. Ronnie beat the crap out of the Situation, but they made up. Some University of Florida Co-Eds hook up with cast members. Etc.

So I must ask, what’s the point of a reality show if I already know what’s going to happen? Sure, I’ll probably still watch Jersey Shore, but the paparazzi are taking a lot of the fun and surprise out of the show.

OK, back to thinking about important things like the Constitution and the like.

A cool article in the Emory Law Journal about how the law should take note of developing technologies that can scan a person’s brain to reveal their experiences. Here is the abstract:

Pain, suffering, anxiety, and other experiences are fundamentally important to civil and criminal law. Despite their importance, we have limited ability to measure experiences, even though legal proceedings turn on such measurements every day. Fortunately, technological advances in neuroscience are improving our ability to measure experiences and will do so more dramatically in what I call “the experiential future.”

In this article, I describe how new technologies will improve our assessments of physical pain, emotional distress, and a variety of psychiatric disorders. I also describe more particular techniques to assess whether: (1) a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, (2) a placebo treatment relieves pain, (3) an alleged victim has been abused as a child, (4) an inmate being executed is in pain, (5) an interrogatee has been tortured, and more. I argue that as new technologies emerge to better reveal people’s experiences, virtually every area of the law should do more to take these experiences into account.

From the Article:

My central claim is that as new technologies emerge to better reveal people’s experiences, the law ought to do more to take these experiences into account. In tort and criminal law, we often ignore or downplay the importance of subjective experience. This is no surprise. During the hundreds of years in which these bodies of law developed, we had very poor methods of making inferences about the experiences of others. As we get better at measuring experiences, however, I make the normative claim that we ought to change fundamental aspects of the law to take better account of people’s experiences.

H/T Freakonomics

The Times attempts to find a silver lining on the destruction of recent tornados, giving credence to the Broken Window Fallacy, in a piece titled Reconstruction Lifts Economy After Disasters.

The deadly tornadoes and widespread flooding that have left a trail of death and destruction throughout the South and the Midwest have also disrupted dozens of local economies just as the unsteady recovery seemed to be finding a foothold.

But a new phase is slowly beginning in some hard-hit areas: reconstruction, which past disasters show is typically accompanied by a burst of new, and different, economic activity. There is no silver lining to a funnel cloud, as anyone who survived the tornadoes can attest, but reconstruction can help rebuild local economies as well as neighborhoods.

“A Burst of new, and different economic activity?” Seriously. Well yes, there will be funds spent on repairing decimated towns. But what would that money have been spent on in the absence of this horrific natural disaster? Think of all the homes and life savings destroyed by these tornadoes. But all the Times can see if reconstruction efforts.

But there are already stirrings of economic activity. Home Depot, whose store in Joplin was destroyed, began selling lumber and other supplies from a parking lot there on Tuesday as it prepared to open a 30,000-square-foot temporary store.

But what about all of the other stores that will go out of business? Sure, after you break a window the glass maker (or Home Depot!) gets business. What about the tailor? Who can buy a suit from him when all money must be spent to rebuild?

No one would suggest that disasters are a desirable form of economic stimulus. But economists who have studied the impact of floods, tornadoes and hurricanes have found that after the initial anguish and huge economic disruptions, periods of increased economic activity frequently follow as insurance money and disaster relief flow in to jump-start rebuilding.

So money “flows” into the disaster area. Flows from where? And how is the source of that money flow affected?

Even as the natural disasters eliminated thousands of jobs, the needs of recovery have created others. Companies like Unified Recovery Group, which is clearing storm wreckage in Alabama and Tennessee, are hiring workers and subcontractors to cart off debris. Construction companies are hiring, too. In Tuscaloosa, James E. Latham, chief executive officer of WAR Construction, said his firm had rehired workers who had been laid off during the downturn and had added new employees to prepare for the work ahead, like rebuilding an elementary school.

What about high-skilled jobs in all of the businesses decimated by the Tornado? Replacing those jobs with manual labor jobs?

After Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, employment dropped steeply, said Marianne T. Hill, a senior economist at the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning. By May 2008, however, the area had 99 percent of the total jobs it had before the storm, Ms. Hill said, but the employment makeup had changed. There were more construction jobs and government jobs, and fewer jobs in manufacturing, retail, transportation and, as tourism suffered, leisure and hospitality.

The Times actually supported my intuition. Surely this is not a net benefit?

As insurance claims are paid, a further economic stimulus lies in the shopping that some people will do to replace lost goods.

There is no stimulus in replacing lost goods! There is a net loss. People are spending money on things they didn’t previously need.

Finally, after a page of fluff, the Times gets to something an actual economist wrote.

When researchers studied the economic impact of a deadly tornado that hit Oklahoma City in 1999, they found that the labor market improved after the storm, and not just in the construction sector.

“The fact of the matter is, it created this catalyst for a renewal,” said one of the researchers, Jamie Brown Kruse, director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research at East Carolina University.

“Catalyst for renewal.” That is quite a far cry from “A Burst of new, and different economic activity.” Certainly when cities are destroyed, they must be “renewed” (or abandoned). But the total net cost of these disasters is staggering.

Why am I even surprised anymore?

My heart goes out to the poor people in these devastated regions. I wish you the best of luck in your recovery, though try not to listen to the Times for economics advice.