October 2011 Equipping Our Lawyers Newsletter #16

Editor's Note: See www.equippingourlawyers.org for a new Spotlight article by Ross Guberman on identifying and defining competencies in legal writing. Law firms, other legal employers, law schools and CLE providers have some catching up to do in the field of competency identification, teaching and measuring. Legal writing may be the place to start!
Chuck Bingaman, Editor <chuck@chuckbingaman.com>

Webster Scholars Program Continues to Thrive at UNH Law School

Prof. John Garvey

Prof. John Garvey, Director of the Daniel Webster Scholar (DWS) program at the University of New Hampshire Law School in Concord, reports that "We continue to refine and improve out program. This year, Negotiations will be expanded to include ADR.

In April, the new edition of Law School Confidential dedicated a new chapter 4 to our program and called it 'the future of legal eduction.' Here is a link to the summary: http://law.unh.edu/news/posts/2011-04-26-dws-book.php."

"For the second year in a row," Garvey adds, "2-L DWS students won the ABA Client Counseling Competition for Region One (Boston). This year, they made it to the national finals, where they finished third."

Editor's Comment: Here is the current DWS web page with some additional links: http://law.unh.edu/websterscholar/. The Summit Recommendations urge law schools to build practice skills and competencies into their curricula. The New Hampshire program, although reaching a limited number of honors students only, has been acclaimed in many circles for its efforts to turn out "client-ready" young lawyers. CCB

Encouraging Training and Pro Bono Work by Counting It Toward Billable Hour Requirements

According to Steven Harper in the September 16 AmLaw Daily, some law firms, while ramping up annual and even monthly billing hour requirements, are encouraging pro bono and training hours by counting them against such requirements. Will this be a trend? Will it offset the enormous sum of billables some firms are requiring? See Harper's take on it at http://is.gd/dPLi3Y.

New York State Schedules CLE Providers' Conference

The New York State Continuing Legal Education Board has announced its 8th annual one-day conference for accredited CLE providers November 3 at the Judicial Institute in White Plains. The morning session will feature a renowned voice in the field, Prof. Barbara Bichelmeyer of Indiana University, speaking on ways of making professional education more effective. The afternoon session will focus on the New York state MCLE rules. Space is limited, so accredited providers are limited to one representative, and early registration is recommended. For further information or to register for the conference, call 212-428-2105.

Editor's Note: Summit Recommendation #6 asks "CLE providers, MCLE regulators, the practicing bar, and the bench [to]... create communication frameworks for mandatory CLE rules to ensure that all parties share an understanding of the content of the rules, their needed evolution and their effects." This annual New York state program is a good example of the sort of framework the Summit conferees had in mind. CCB

Lardent Argues for Mandatory Pro Bono to Close "Chasm" Between Needs of the Poor for Legal Services and Their Ability to Hire Lawyers

Ester F. Lardent, CEO of the Pro Bono Institute

Ester F. Lardent, President and CEO of the Pro Bono Institute, argues in the National Law Journal that "U.S. legal system is facing a crisis of unparalleled proportions that threatens the heart of our democracy
--our commitment to the rule of law, our courts and our legal profession.

The gap--more accurately now a chasm--between the need for legal assistance and the availability of free legal services for the poor has been repeatedly documented in legal needs studies and most recently highlighted in the New York Times.

With the spike in the U.S. poverty population resulting from the Great Recession and the precipitous drop in funding and staffing of legal services programs, it's likely that the documented 80% of low income Americans without access to a lawyer has grown to an unthinkable 90%." See her column with specific recommendations at http://is.gd/4CPTL1.

Editor's Comment: Summit Recommendation #16 urges "the legal community...to develop programs that will prepare and encourage law students and all lawyers to serve the underserved." Clearly Lardent's hope is that the profession will go far beyond the Recommendation that focuses on law students' and newly admitted lawyers' roles in serving the poor. CCB

Who Really Controls the Legal Profession?

Mark Harris, in the September 20 issue of the Amlaw Corporate Law Blog, argues that the future of the American legal profession is in the hands of the general counsel of the largest 5% of American corporations. "Big company general counsel hold the purse strings," says Harris, "and their purchasing power is multiplied by the lack of concentration among law firms, where the world's largest firm boasts all of a 0.8 percent market share and the top 20 firms combined account for less than 10 percent, according to financial services firm William Blair & Company."

Those general counsel are the only ones with the clout to force change in the highly change-adverse market of "big law." See http://is.gd/GizdLI.

Zell Gift to Finance Law School Clinic for Entrepreneurs

Sam Zell

Chicago-based entrepreneur Sam Zell recently gave $5,000,000 to the University of Michigan School of Law to fund, among other things, a legal clinic for students to advise student and faculty entrepreneurs and start-up businesses.

See http://is.gd/5ory1u. "My goal with entrepreneurial ventures at the university has always been to create cross-pollination across multiple disciplines," Zell said. "We've got top schools in law, engineering, business and medicine. That's an entrepreneurial jackpot just waiting to be cashed in."

Editor's Note: Summit Recommendation #4 urges law schools to build practice competencies into their teaching mix. Well-organized and supervised practice clinics can offer such valuable teaching/learning opportunities for law students. CCB

Andy Grove on the Value of Mentoring

Summit Recommendation #11e suggests that law school, bar association, and legal employer programs enable solo practitioners, small firm lawyers, and public interest lawyers to participate in training and mentoring programs they created. In fact, following the example of the Georgia State Bar Association, several states are creating mentoring programs for new admittees.

Outspoken (and sometimes outrageous) former Intel CEO Andy Grove notes that the benefits of mentoring programs can--and should--flow in both directions. See his recent piece in the Bloomberg Businessweek "1st Annual How-to Guide" at http://is.gd/CAnsvT.

Survey Names “Most Useful” Law School Courses

Viva Chen reports that Prof. Orin Kerr of George Washington Law School surveyed 13,500 GW alums for their opinions on their "most useful" law school courses. The top three turned out to be evidence, administrative law, and corporations. Trial advocacy was was a distant fourth! See http://is.gd/MHd35g.

Editor's Comment: But what exactly does "most useful" mean and might it vary depending on whether one is surveying grads from the class of '66, '88 or '11? I wonder how courses related to practice competencies as suggested by the Summit Recommendations--had they been offered--would have fared in such a survey? Not sure what my top three "most useful" law school classes would be, but I don't think evidence, administrative law or corporations would make my list! How about yours? CCB