Law school in the United States

In the United States, a law school is an institution where students obtain a professional education in law. A law student must hold an undergraduate degree in any field. In most cases the degree awarded by U.S. law schools is the Juris Doctor, or J.D., degree. Other, higher, degrees that are awarded include the Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) and the Doctor of Juridical Science degree (J.S.D. or S.J.D.). Though most law schools are hosted by a larger post-secondary institution, the school itself is largely autonomous from the hosting institution.

Admission

In the United States, most law schools require a bachelor's degree, a satisfactory undergraduate grade point average, and a satisfactory score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) in order to be considered for admission. Some states that have non-ABA-approved schools or state-accredited schools have equivalency requirements that usually equal 90 credits toward a bachelor's degree. Additional personal factors are evaluated through essays, short-answer questions, letters of recommendation, and other application materials. The standards for grades and LSAT scores vary from school to school. Highly-regarded law schools accept only those applicants with very high LSAT scores, GPAs or financial and political leverage. Many of the top schools strongly favor GPAs of 3.3 or above and LSAT's of at least 160 (out of 180). The vast majority of applicants admitted to schools like Harvard and Yale have GPAs of 3.7 or better and strongly favor LSAT scores of 170 or better (a score of 170 is a score in the 99th percentile of all LSAT takers). For actual admissions statistics, visit http://officialguide.lsac.org/search/cgi-bin/results.asp?PageNo= and choose the law school. A vast majority of law schools will provide statistical grids indicating the number of admitted students from a given LSAT/GPA range. The ones that do not will still provide their 25%, average and 75% ranges for LSAT/GPA.

For admission data from real applicants for this application cycle visit lawschoolnumbers.com.

Individual factors are also very important, although applicants are virtually never asked to interview as part of the application process. Such factors are evaluated through other application materials, and while these factors can compensate for a low GPA and/or LSAT score, where they are weak they can also detract from high scores. Many law schools actively seek applicants from outside the traditional pool in order to boost campus diversity, both racial and economic. Most law schools now factor in extracurricular activities, work experience, and unique courses of study in their evaluation of applicants. A growing number of law school applicants have several years of work experience, and correspondingly fewer law students enter immediately after completing their undergraduate education (for example, at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, for the Class of 2008, the average age of an entering first year law student was 25; most college graduates come directly from high school and are approximately 21 or 22 when they receive their undergraduate degree).

Students considering law school should note that although law school tuition is notoriously high, it is not uncommon for law students to receive grants and scholarships, or more rarely complete tuition waivers, from their schools. While each school's financial aid system operates differently, there is a rule of thumb relating to GPA and LSAT scores: a student whose grades and LSAT are distinctly higher than those of most students admitted to a given school--in other words, a student who could get into a "better" school--has a good chance of being offered some kind of scholarship by the lower-ranked school. Likewise, some law students choose lower ranked schools due to their inability to get into higher ranked schools because of low LSAT scores and GPA, and then transfer to the better schools after their first year of study, provided that they received good grades in the first year of law school. Many highly-ranked schools do not accept many transfer applicants due to lack of space in the class, and transferring may make it more difficult for a student to participate in on campus recruiting from potential employers.

Accreditation

In order to sit for the bar exam, the vast majority of state bar associations requires that an applicant's law school be accredited by the American Bar Association. The ABA has promulgated detailed requirements covering every aspect of a law school, down to the precise contents of the law library.

California is the most famous exception to the rule. The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners approves many schools which may not qualify for or request ABA accreditation. Graduates of such schools can sit for the bar exam in California, and once they have passed that exam, a large number of states allow those students to sit for their bars (after practicing for a certain number of years in California). California is also the first state to allow graduates of online law schools to take its bar exam.

Graduates who attend such schools in California and who pass the bar exam may practice in Wisconsin.

Curriculum

Law students are referred to as 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls, based on their year of study. In the United States, the American Bar Association does not mandate a particular curriculum for 1Ls. ABA Standard 302(a)(1) requires only the study of "substantive law" that will lead to "effective and responsible participation in the legal profession." However, most law schools have their own mandatory curriculum which typically includes:

These basic courses are intended to provide an overview of the broad study of law. Not all ABA-approved law schools offer all of these courses in the 1L year; a significant number of schools do not require constitutional law and/or criminal law. Some schools roll legal research and legal writing into a single year-long "lawyering skills" course, which may also include a small oral argument component.

After the first year, law students are generally free to pursue different fields of legal study, such as administrative law, corporate law, international law, admiralty law, intellectual property law, and tax law.

The ABA also requires that all students at ABA-approved schools take a course in professional responsibility (ethics). The course is typically an upper-level course, most often taken in the 2L year. This requirement was added after the Watergate scandal, which seriously damaged the public image of the profession, because of the fact that President Richard Nixon and most of his alleged cohorts were lawyers. The ABA hoped to demonstrate that the legal profession could regulate itself (and also hoped to prevent direct federal regulation of the profession).

As of 2004, to ensure that students' research and writing skills do not deteriorate, the ABA has added an upper division writing requirement. Law students must take at least one course as a 2L or 3L that requires the writing of a paper for credit.

Many non-lawyers are surprised to learn that most legal education does not consist of memorizing statutes. Legal education is about "learning to think like a lawyer" -- that is, learning the analytical skills it takes to succeed as a lawyer. While familiarity with the basic doctrines of important and basic areas of law is important because it provides a stepping stone to deeper doctrinal learning, the aim of these course is less about learning doctrine than it is about learning how to analyze legal problems, learning to read cases, learning to distill facts and apply law to facts. Legal education focuses on skill-learning, not law-learning.

Many of the top schools in the United States are much more interested in teaching students legal theory and analysis than they are in the specific doctrines or "black letter law." Top schools, though often possessing excellent clinical programs (that is, progams -- like a Guantánamo Detainee clinic or a Tax clinic -- that give students hands on experience with actual clients and cases), emphasize theory over practice for several reasons. First, these schools often train legal academics, who will be teaching future lawyers. Second, professors at these schools are often interested in questions of legal theory and legal reform, as they themselves are, and were, often not practitioners. Third, these schools often have the most prestigious journals, and students are encouraged to enagage in scholarship in order to publish in these journals.

However, clinical education is very important, and many schools differentiate themselves with excellent clinical programs. Moreover, students often seek out clinical programs because doctrinal courses offer little in the way of practical training.

In 1968, the Ford Foundation began disbursing $12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. However, conservative critics charge that the clinics have been used instead as an avenue for the professors to engage in left-wing political activism. Critics cite the financial involvement of the Ford Foundation as the turning point when such clinics began to change from giving practical experience to engaging in advocacy.Heather Mac Donald. "Clinical, Cynical." Wall Street Journal. January 11, 2006; Page A14.

As well, many law students participate in internship programs during their course of study.

Finally, it should be noted that the emphasis in law schools is almost never on the law of the particular state in which the law school sits, but on the state of the law generally throughout the country (contract law at the University of North Carolina, then, will focus not on contracts in North Carolina, but on the law of contracts generally). Although this makes studying for the bar more of a hassle -- since one must learn state-specific law -- the emphasis on legal skills over legal knowledge does serve lawyers well in the long run, particularly those not intending to practice in the same state they attend law school.

Pedagogical methods

Most law school education in the United States is based on standards developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames at Harvard Law School during the mid-1800s. Professors generally lead in-class debates over the issues in selected court cases, compiled into "casebooks" for each course. Traditionally, law professors chose not to lecture extensively, and instead used the Socratic method to force students to teach each other based on their individual understanding of legal theory and the facts of the case at hand. Examinations usually entail interpreting the facts of a hypothetical case, determining how legal theories apply to the case, and then writing an essay. This process is intended to train students in the reasoning methods necessary to interpret theories, statutes, and precedents correctly, and argue their validity, both orally and in writing. In contrast, most civil law countries base their legal education on professorial lectures and oral examinations, which are more suited for the mastery of complicated civil codes.

This style of teaching is often discomforting to first-year law students who are more accustomed to taking notes from professors' lectures. Most casebooks do not clearly outline the law; instead, they force the student to interpret the cases and draw the basic legal concepts from the cases themselves. As a result, many publishers market law school outlines that concisely summarize the basic concepts of each area of law, and good outlines are highly sought after by many students, although some professors discourage their use.

Legal pedagogy has also been criticized by scholars like Alan Watson in his book, The Shame of Legal Education.

For purposes of passing state bar examinations, most law school graduates find law school instruction inadequate, and resort to specialized bar review courses from private course providers. These bar reviews typically consist of lectures, often videorecorded.

Credentials obtainable while in law school

Within each U.S. law school, key credentials include:

Law review membership or editorial position (based either on grades or write-on competition or both). This is important for at least three reasons. First, membership on law review is often a distinction, indicating you are at or near the top of your class. Second, law review is seen as a rite of passage by many who hire graduating law students. Third, work on law review exposes a student to legal scholarship and editing, and often even forces the student to publish a significant piece of legal scholarship on his or her own.
Moot court membership or award (based on oral and written argument). Though often not as important as law review, success in moot court can distinguish one as an outstanding oral advocate and provides a degree of practical legal training that is often absent from law review membership.
Order of the Coif membership (based on grade point average). This is often coupled with Latin honors (summa and magna cum laude, though often not cum laude). Note, however, that a majority of law schools in the U.S. do not have Order of the Coif chapters.
Legal Journals. While often not as prestigious or established as the law review, most law schools have one or more legal journals that publish articles concerning a particular area of the law. These journals are very similar to law reviews, except for the fact that they concentrate their work on a more narrow area of law.

State and federal court clerkship

On the basis of a student's credentials, as well as favorable faculty recommendations, some students obtain a one or two-year clerkship with a judge after graduation. Clerkships may be with state or federal judges.

Clerkships are meant to provide the recent law school graduate (note: some clerks do not begin their clerkship until a few years of work in private practice, but this is somewhat rare) with experience working for a judge. Often, clerks engage in significant legal research and writing for the judge, writing memos to assist a judge in coming to a legal conclusion in some cases, and writing drafts of opinions based on the judge's decisions. Appellate court clerkships, although generally more prestigious, do not necessarily give one a great deal of practical experience in the day-to-day life of a lawyer in private practice. The average litigator might get much more out of a clerkship at the trial court level, where he or she will be learning about motions practices, dealing with lawyers, and generally learning how a trial court works on the inside. What a lawyer might lose in prestige he or she might gain in experience.

By and large, though, clerkships provide other valuable assets to a young lawyer. Judges often become mentors to young clerks, providing the young attorney with an experienced individual to whom he or she can go for advice. Fellow clerks can also become lifelong friends and/or professional connections. Those contemplating academia do well to obtain an appellate court clerkship at the federal level, since those clerkships provide a great opportunity to think at a very high level about the law.

Clerkships are great experiences for the new lawyers, and law schools encourage graduates to engage in a clerkship to broaden their professional experiences. However, there simply are not enough clerkships to accomodate all the academically eligible graduates.

United States Supreme Court clerkship

Some law school graduates are able to clerk for one of the Justices on the Supreme Court (each Justice takes 4 clerks per year). Often, these clerks are graduates of elite law schools, with Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago being the most highly represented schoolsBrian Leiter, Supreme Court Clerkship Placement, 1991 Through 2005 Terms, Leiter's Law School Rankings, Accessed April 26, 2006. All Supreme Court clerks are required to have clerked in a lower court, often for a year with a highly selective federal circuit court judge (such as Judges Alex Kozinski, Michael Luttig, Harvey Wilkinson, David Tatel, Richard Posner, to name a few). It is perhaps the most highly selective and prestigious title a lawyer can have, and Supreme Court clerks are often highly sought after by law firms, the government, and law schools. The vast majority of Supreme Court clerks either become academics at elite law schools, enter private practice as appellate attorneys, or take highly selective government positions.

Criticism of American Law Schools

Critics charge that the Socratic Method has fallen into disuse, and little debate occurs in law school classrooms, which are mostly lectures. The faculty at American law schools do not have to answer to the needs of students since their career advancement rests solely on publishing and peer review. Rare is the school where the ability to teach students, and the students' input into the professor's classroom experience, is given enough consideration as to determine the tenure status of a professor.

"In fact, law students learn their subjects on their own. With few exceptions, students avoid faculty as faculty avoid students. The wonderful opportunity to use the classroom as a laboratory to debate and review in an atmosphere that encourages critical thinking is lost." William I. Weston, Law Schools, Heal Thyself, 15 ABA Prof. Law. 24

Critics note the cost of legal education in the United States has made it out of reach for many poor or indebted people, and that applying for enough grants and loans to cover the cost is burdensome enough to discourage many qualified applicants from applying. For these people who enter school regardless, the financial struggle can often take a toll on a student's grades. It also limits the choice of employment for graduates, with many needing to work for large firms to pay their loan and credit card debt. The crushing burden of debt can also encourage unethical behavior.

Critics further charge that law schools are run as businesses with eyes on expansion and reputation, and not enough focus on the students and community they are meant to serve. Because of higher tuition, steady or declining grants and state aid, and a greater dependency on loans, the average student's debt has increased by more than 50 percent over the last decade, after accounting for inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Chicago Tribune, In Debt, Forever, March 5, 2006

A further criticism is that the third year of a juris doctor program is unnecessary, and would be better served in full legal employment.

A rather telling indictment of law schools is that at least one state, Washington, has recently enacted a requirement of further (albeit limited) of study after law school before a graduate is permitted to practice law.

There is no evidence that lawyers who have read into the law (study law via structured apprenticeships, as allowed in some states) make worse lawyers than those who have completed an academic program.

Top Tier Law Schools

Many different organizations rank law schools. The “U.S. News and World Report’s Top 100 Law Schools”, “The Leiter Reports”, and the like generate rankings from qualitative factors, e.g. faculty publishing statistics, entering student LSAT scores, percentage of alumni contributing money. In general, these rankings are controversial, not universally accepted as authoritative, and frequently used for a variety of purposes, e.g. alumni contribution appeals.

In contrast, a utilitarian approach to law school ranking looks at the relative employment prospects of graduates of the various tiers. Typically, the most prestigious opportunities in the country (e.g. U.S. Supreme Court Clerkships) are filled by graduates of Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Duke, Columbia, and Chicago; students at some other schools will, infrequently, fill the ranks of these elite positions. In addition, graduates of these schools typically find promising and geographically diverse employment opportunities upon graduation. Such schools may be called to be top tier.

As one moves down the “ranking” of the law schools, the less prestigious and diverse are the opportunities that await the school’s graduates. Whether the importance of ranking law schools is the exit opportunities available to their students, or simply the quality of the school as seen in the eyes of the legal community, there may be gross unanimity between the various rankings, although a precise ordering is difficult, fluid and probably meaningless.

Regional tiers

Most law schools outside the top tier are more regional in scope and often have very strong regional connections to these post-graduation opportunities. For example, a student graduating from a lower-tier law school may find opportunities in that school’s “home market”: the legal market containing many of that school’s alumni, where most of the school’s networking and career development energies are focused. In contrast, an upper-tier law school may be limited in terms of employment opportunities to the broad geographic region that the law school feeds.

Unaccredited schools

Many schools are not accredited by the American Bar Association. Most are located in California and authorized by the California Department of Education. Many jurisdictions do not allow graduates of unaccredited law schools to sit for the bar examination.