St. Thomas Law Mentor Blog

Minnesota Lawyer recently launched JDs Rising, a new blog targeted at lawyers who are just entering the profession.  One of the bloggers, Daniel Koewler, blogged hereabout how the law schools in Minnesota have failed to teach their students marketing.  Those who follow our Mentor Externship and have seen our curriculum know that University of St. Thomas School of Law is introducing these practice concepts during law school.  In our 2L mentor curriculum we teach a class on networking and in our 3L curriculum we teach a class on marketing and business generation.

I agree with Mr. Koewler’s larger point, seconded here, that the traditional law school curriculum is not focused on practice orientated skills that many lawyers need.  In designing the Mentor Externship curriculum we tried to pay close attention to those skills, as identified by practicing lawyers, and introducing them to law students.

A related challenge, though, is how to get students to understand the necessity of these topics when they haven’t yet begun practicing law.  Mr. Koewler has been practicing law three years so he knows how much time is invested in marketing and business generation.  However, how many of us had any inclination that those topics were important while we were in law school?

One way we try to emphasize the importance of these topics is having our mentors in the program talking to students about practice orientated skills, including marketing.  Still, many of those practice orientated skills seem “obvious” or less important than the other parts of law school.  It can be challenging to create student engagement on these topics because many assume that once you get a job the legal work will follow.  Based on the feedback we get from our mentors we are confident that these are skills and concepts that will help students excel.  The bloggers at JDs Rising and Lawyerist seem to support that conclusion as well.  What are your thoughts on how to better convey their importance to a new professional who has not yet practiced?

Peter Williams, a third year student here at UST Law, recently shared some thoughts on his law school experience with idealist.org.  Among his thoughts was the following post on how students learn about service here at UST Law:

Service is a vital part of the St. Thomas culture. The emphasis placed on service is perhaps best exemplified in their public service requirement. In order to graduate, each student must fulfill 50 hours of public service. This service does not have to be legally related, but must be consistent with the mission of the school, focusing on morality and social justice.  It allows students to not only make a significant investment in the community, but to also actively pursue a life consistent with the school’s mission.  A truly unique aspect to the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s approach to service is their mentor externship program. The program pairs each student with a mentor in the legal field, carrying the requirement that the student meet with the mentor and take part in a set number of experiences with them.  In the second and third years, the program also carries a classroom component to discuss the crucial issues of being a part of the legal field. The program has given me the opportunity to learn from attorneys and judges who come from different fields of expertise, allowing me to explore, and pushing me to understand, service in the legal field in new ways 

Law school has solidified my desire to serve and while the end goal remains the same, the means by which I seek to achieve the goal have evolved. I have perspective and understanding that I never had three years ago. The concept I held of “service” when entering law school was concrete and specific; I had only one way of thinking about how to “truly” serve. Through my studies and service experiences, that concept has become fluid and I find opportunities to serve in all facets of the legal field. While my career and professional goals have not dramatically changed, the way that I think about and approach those particular goals has expanded with my definition of service. 

Thanks to Peter for all the hard work to take advantage of what the program can offer in terms of learning service skills!

Last Friday the ABA Journal posted an interesting online article that you can read here.  The article noted that many law firms are moving away from class rank and law school academic performance and evaluating hiring and promotional decisions based on practical skill sets.  The change is a result of how expensive it has become for law firms to train new associates in what they are actually expected to do each day.  “Firms are going to focus on what lawyers can actually do as opposed to what they should be doing at a particular level class year or school they are coming from,” said Beth Woods, managing director at a legal recruiter.  Market pressures are also driving this change as more and more clients refuse to pay the high bills associated with new lawyers learning on the job.

This article dovetails nicely with a recent Minnesota Lawyer article from Ed Poll (“How Lawyers Think Lawyers Should Be Trained”) [no link provided because the page requires a subscription].  Mr. Poll has been has been a long time advocate that law schools need to change their training model to better prepare students for the business realities of practicing law by teaching them of business concepts and practical skill development.  I recently exchanged a nice series of emails with Mr. Poll and he has had the opportunity to take a look at our program.  You can read more about Mr. Poll, including his blog, at http://www.lawbiz.com/.

The bottom line is that Mentor Externship offers students the opportunity to learn the key practical skills that law firms are going to be looking for.  It also offers students the opportunity to better understand the economic relationship between them and their employers, the “business of practicing law.”  It’s up to students to take advantage of these opportunities to make themselves more marketable and more appealing in the current marketplace.  Savvy students have the chance to get ahead of the curve on building the skills section of their resumes.

This is not to say that law students should ignore their academic performance in the traditional legal curriculum.  Learning to think like a lawyer and understanding how to analyze law remains a key professional skill.  It is, however, a clear message to law students not to ignore the practical classes and opportunities in their law school education.  The old paradigm of simply getting good grades and having a job land at your feet is dissolving.  More now than ever employers are looking for well-rounded students who have good academic credentials but also bring with them strong practical skill development and strong interpersonal skills. Change comes slowly in the law whether it is in law from hiring practices or legal education.  Based on these recent articles it appears that law firms have begun to change how they hire and promote new lawyers.  It also appears that they are going to be demanding better legal education in practical skill sets.

The Conference Board research group recently released its most recent Survey of Americans in the Workplace.  The survey revealed a twenty year low in the number of Americans who are satisfied with their job.  In fact, less than half of Americans report being satisfied at work.

Job satisfaction has long been a challenge for the legal profession.  I see parallels between the Conference Board study and the legal profession.  According the Conference Board workers have steadily grown increasingly less happy because their jobs are not interesting, their incomes have not kept up with inflation, and the cost of benefits at work in at least have in at least two of the three factors may apply to lawyers.  While lawyers make a good income (although few make the salary and wealth portrayed in pop culture) many lawyers struggle with keeping their jobs interesting and certainly all of us have been impacted cost of benefits, especially health insurance.  So what to do about the problem?

One of the keys for lawyers is about finding the right fit.  I think lawyers lose interest in their jobs because prior to graduating from law school they seldom know what a particular practice requires of them on a day to day basis.  There are too few opportunities for clerkships, experiential learning, and networking to find out what type of work will keep the lawyer engaged.

Similarly, although most lawyers earn a very good living, many find themselves earning less than what they may have expected when they began law school.  Again, there are insufficient opportunities for law students to connect with lawyers in different parts of the profession and to discuss income expectations related to a particular practice area or practice setting.

I would sum up a lot of the dissatisfaction reflected in the Conference Board report and the profession in general to set and manage one’s expectations of one’s career.  Indeed, in the Star Tribune article on the Conference Board one expert specifically noted, “Workers also have to figure out what they should be doing to be the most engaged in their jobs and the most productive.”       

For those in the mentor relationships they have the unique opportunity to increase their engagement and to help set their expectations.  Protégés should be asking their mentors all the questions they have about a practice are or a practice setting.  They should be asking the mentor how the mentor has managed to stay interested, engaged, and productive in their professional lives.  Mentors need to be honest with students with their own challenges and dissatisfactions and how the mentor has chosen to address those challenges.  In fact, for many mentors serving as a mentor is a way of refreshing and continuing to be engaged in their own careers and professional development.  The bottom line is that both sides benefit from honest and candid discussion of these key issues.

To all of our students, mentors, faculty and other readers, all of us at The St. Thomas Law Mentor Blog wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy start to 2010!  We will be taking a holiday break until next week.

One of the great advantages of our mentor program is that gives our students the change to explore different practice areas and practice settings so they can find the vocation that fits them best.  Law school is expensive and it can be hard to figure out exactly what type of lawyer or what type of employment will really fit you best.  Too many lawyers graduate and guess at what type of law they want to practice.  Many change jobs multiple times in the first five years of their career as they try to find the right fit.  Others end up staying in jobs where they are miserable and wonder how they ended up there.  For a good story about how you end up there check out this post from Lawyerist: http://lawyerist.com/what-kind-of-lawyer-do-you-really-want-to-be/ .

Interestingly, one of the key strategies recommended by Lawyerist is to find a mentor who practices in a practice area in which you are interested.  Getting a mentor has several advantages.  First, they can tell you what practicing in that area of law is really like.  Second, they can help you identify the key skills you need to develop to excel in your chosen practice area.  Finally, in this tough economy a mentor can help you network and understand the job market in that practice area.  Who knows, one of the connections your mentor helps you make could be the one that lands the job you really want.