Practical experience and law school teaching

This article from the Harvard Law Record (by way of Nuts & Boalts and Volokh) suggests that practical experience disqualifies a person from teaching in law school.  People often ask me if that isn't especially true about law professors who teach legal ethics, but in my experience lots of them have deep knowledge about practical lawyering if not deep experience doing actual lawyering.

Comments

[Steve Berenson]

I see two countervailing trends at play here. One is the move in legal education toward interdisciplinarity (I'm not sure that's a real word), which pushes schools in favor of hiring faculty candidates with PhDs in law-related fields. Naturally, these folks are less likely to have significant legal practice experience since they spent their time pursuing their advanced degrees rather than practicing law.

On the other hand, in response to Carnegie and other forces, there seems to me to be another trend in favor of increased practice-oriented education in law schools, which may drive schools to hiring folks with more extensive practice experience than was traditionally considered desirable in law faculty.

Again, just in terms of my own perception, I think that elite law schools, which are largely immune to market forces that might demand their graduates be able to practice law effectively immediately upon starting employment, are more driven by the first trend. On the other hand, lower tier law schools, whose graduates must compete hard for employment upon graduation are likely more driven by the second trend.

The result may be a sharper division between traditional "academic" faculty at elite law schools, and more practice oriented faculty at non-elite law schools. I believe this may be a return toward the status quo in legal education maybe 30 years ago, in contrast to a homoginizing trend in the credentials of law school faculty across the board over the last three decades or so.

Steve

[Bill Gallagher]

It's a little self-serving, but I have strong opinions that the kind of deep lawyerly judgment about law and legal practice that can develop from practicing law for more than a just a couple of years can significantly enhance law teaching--including the teaching of legal ethics (one of my fields)and first year courses. I say this from the perspective of a 12-year intellectual property litigator who entered full-time teaching only two years ago. I also have some book-learning and a Ph.D., but that scholarly training really is primarily relevant to my research, not my classroom teaching (although, of course, they overlap a bit). Most law schools are not elite schools, and most students (even at elite schools) need significant training in legal methods/applied legal analysis even in substantive law courses, where I believe an experienced practitioner can benefit students. So I do hope there is a "trend" in many schools not to automaticaly disqualify practitioners from entry into the legal academy. But my experiences in interviewing for law jobs at the AALS a couple of years ago(sociologically interesting!) suggests there are still significant barriers and biases against practicing lawyers entering the law teachng biz, at least at some schools, which is a shame.

[John Steele]

Steve & Bill,

Thanks for commenting. Your posts made me want to draw up a list of stereotypical PR profs. I'm not comparing, just drawing up a list.

1. Practicing adjunct.
2. Senior judge.
3. Dean or other senior "mensch" type professor.
3. Moral or political philosopher type.
4. Empirical researcher of legal profession.
5. Law and society or sociology type.
5. Policy-oriented professor.
6. Doctrinal style professor.
7. Clinical instructor or former direct services public interest lawyer.
8. Religious lawyering type.

[Bill Gallagher]

John:

That's interesting. I hadn't thought of this, but these categories certainly capture something--even if any particular PR teacher might overlap categories (such as you, I would think). I wonder what categories predominate and, if we could determine that, what difference it might make?

I think this is a version of a narrower question I have raised with you (and I think Bill Henderson) before: does teaching the PR/legal profession course from any particular perspective, such as the empirical study of what lawyers actually do, or the sociology of professions perspective help make better lawyers, more ethically attuned lawyers, etc.? I don't think we have any evidence of this, although I teach my course from these perspectives and think it makes the class more insightful and potentially relevant to students' lives--but that's possibly just because I tend to like the subject matter taught that way (and was bored out of my head when I took the class as a student from the doctrinal guy). Plus, I think that someone entering the legal profession can be expected to know something about the history and social structure of the profession or to examine critically what it even means to be a "professional", if anything. So, thanks. Food for thought.

[John Steele]

Bill,

That question always is food for thought, and I keep returning to it. Here are some possible conclusions, some of which I don't agree with.

1. Any course that teaches the Model Rules leaves students more ethical in the sense that they better grasp the black letter law that has been developed through countless historical lessons. In that sense, the "type" of teacher doesn't matter; the subject matter does.

2. Only courses that expressly address ethical concerns as such can have the effect of improving the students' ethics. Therefore, these types are unlikely to make students more ethical: empirical researcher of legal profession; law and society or sociology type; policy-oriented professor; doctrinal style professor. The other types are likely to address normative ethical standards expressly and hence may have an impact.

3. The only signficant impact comes from role models, not from doctrinal teaching. Hence the types that have a chance to make students more ethical include: practicing adjunct; senior judge; dean or other senior "mensch" type professor; clinical instructor and/or direct services public interest lawyer; religious lawyering type.

4. It's a pointless question, as the students' fixed personalities and the power of the workplace situations they will eventually face are the 100% determinants of their professional ethics. A mandatory course in PR doesn't have much impact (and has none at all in schools with wireless internet). It's all post-Watergate window dressing by the ABA.

5. If by "ethics" we mean a broader set of issues than the model rules, then a teacher can improve students' ethics by informing them of which parts of the profession better match the students' own ethical sensibilties, and by warning them about recurring situations where otherwise decent lawyers stumble.