Chuck Newton

Belmont University College of Law Is Awarded Provisional Approval

Nashville, Tennessee now has an ABA approved law school that might one day rival Vanderbilt.

On June 11, 2013 the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar of the American Bar Association (that is a mouthful) granted Belmont University School of Law provisional accreditation.

A law school cannot apply for ABA accreditation until it has been in operation for one year. Belmont announced its intention to create a new law school on October 7, 2009, and it seated its first entering class in the fall of 2011. With a site evaluation, the law school must establish that it "is in substantial compliance with each of the Standards" set by the ABA, and it must present "a reliable plan for bringing the school into full compliance with the Standards within three year afer receiving provisional approval." A provisionally approved law school is entitled to the same recognition that is accorded graduates of fully approved schools. Belmont must remain on provisional approval for three years before it can be granted full approved.

Regardless of the road ahead, provisional approval on the first try is a substantial achievement.

Belmont is the largest Christian university in the State of Tennessee and the second largest private university behind Vanderbilt in the state. The university is well respected and is closely associated with the music industry in Nashville. For example, Belmont is the home of the only Association of Advance Collegiate School of Business (AACSB) accredited Music Business program. Its College of Entertainment & Music Business (CEMB) consists of a number of current and former authors, performers, artist, record label executives, songwriters and lawyers who are renown in the music industry.

Belmont is intent on utilizing its law school to play to the university's strengths.

Like Vanderbilt, the tuition at Belmont is rich. For the 2013-14 school year it is $34,800.00, with an estimated cost of attendance at $59,055.

The Jurassic Law Firm

You believe the Mayans understood the future? The patron saint of any amateur futurist is Alvin Toffler.  Future Shock and The Third Wave seem old in comparison now, but as we look around us today nearly everything he predicted has come or is coming into focus.

Toffler stated: "Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn." Citing Herbert Gerjuoy, Toffler explained: "The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and back, how to look at problems from a new direction — how to teach himself. Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn."

In short, you can have a law degree and still be functionally illiterate by the standards of the tech age.

Sure we have a million lawyers in this country, but in the next decade or so 400,000 will leave the practice of law through retirement, death, incapacity or changed professions. To often these lawyers recognizing this fact allow themselves to get so many generations behind in regard to tech that neither they nor their practices can survive. The problem is that what use to take a generation or better to evolve now takes just a few years. The possibility of being left in a Jurassic period is neither that hard, nor takes that long.

We all know lawyers that are stuck in the fax age, which for me began in 1986. They have computers that are so old they are incapable of handling updates. These lawyers are still tethered to the walls and are overcome by an avalanche of paper. These lawyers and law firms often pretend to update to meet the new generation of practice management, but in reality they fake it. For example, I heard of a law firm that cuts apart paper documents, tapes the pieces into new documents, makes a copy of the documents so constructed, and then scans it into their computer system. This is not learning how to learn.

It is a shame really because I always thought that a law degree was the ultimate Third Wave education. When you think about it, unlike most educational programs, what a legal education essentially does is teach students to teach themselves. A law school education is suppose to be a program that teaches its students how to learn and then relearn.

These law firms too often cling to these doomed law office technologies:

1.    Fax Machines. Fax technology might not have yet died, but it is on complete life support. Most lawyers keep the technology around, like an old eight-track tape player, for the increasingly few clients and lawyers that still rely on them. It is a cheap online add on. I get about one fax a week, if that. In the last few years even my poorest and most elderly clients can find a way to scan and email, often uploading documents directly to my cloud-based client server. What must clients and lawyers think when they receive a fax (especially a fax with handwriting) from a lawyer? I vow to remove my fax number from my pleadings in the near future and eventually bury the technology altogether.

2.    Business Cards. I know, this is not really tech, but I have to admit to you that I have not had business cards printed in about 5 years. It has not hurt my business. People find you online. After I meet people, I find them online, I email them, connect with them on social media, and I set them up for email blasts. If an immediate exchange of contact information is deemed necessary, we program each other into our cell phone then and there. When I think to refer someone, I do not go looking for a business card. I look them up online and provide that information.

3.    Landlines. I have not had one since 2007. For a while I used a virtual PBX to direct calls. Now I use Google Voice, which is free. Other than that I use Skype and my cell phone.

4.    Desktop Computers. Well, maybe not entirely dead as I just bought a new one. They are cheap and they work well in supporting multiple monitors in which to put out a serious amount of work. But, they are dead in terms of being the center of the law firm. The key now is portability and connectivity. With free apps like Microsoft's Live Mesh all of my tech is synchronized with the same information.

5.    Computer storage. Hard drives and discs continue to live only because they are now dirt cheap. But, you just feel everything moving into the cloud. No more paper or document fiefdoms in law firm or between lawyers and their clients. It promotes availability and connectivity. Its the best thing since the 7-11 store decided to stay open all night long.

I was about to list outside space or a law office to my list, but I understand that sometimes you need a place to meet clients. However, If you walk into a law firm today and they still have a receptionist for the primary purpose of answering the phone, the firm has a fax machine, they have business cards at the front desk, landlines on every desk, a network server, and/or individual computers with small or bulky monitors from which to work, you are looking at a Jurassic law.

The Third Wave Continues To Revolutionize The World

HuffPo had a great slide show on those things that became obsolete in their opinion this decade.  No matter what the list or opinions, it demonstrates more than anything the vision of Alvin Toffler and the challenges, from our perspective, of the practice of law in this new era (or wave).

It can be a problem because innovation is happening so fast, and now new tech is gobbling up old tech at an amazing pace.  The new innovations do not even last a decade.

I was at a family get together this season and speaking with lawyers who, for whatever reason, are just now discovering the Internet and smart phones.  This is problematic because, at their pace, what might in the past represent a generation of innovation behind, these lawyers are running multiple generations behind and risk, themselves, of becoming obsolete.  They need to not only advance more quickly, but they need to get past the point where these tools are not just novelties.  These tools need to be included in their practices, but their practices need to be integrated around the cheap tech.  If for no other reason, cheap tech is liberating.

So, what has died, is dying or changing:

1.  Social media is overtaking communication, ahead of calling.  On top of texting, Tweeter, the Google Wave, Facebook, My Space, Linkedin, and the like, Americans sent more than 110 billion text messages in December 2008 alone, and that number is increasing.

2.  Classified Ads in Newspapers.  Dying.  Craigslist now cover 500 cities.

3.  Dial up internet.  I know some rural-based people are still stuck with this, but it is on the verge of being nostalgic.

4.  Encyclopedias.  Oh, I miss the days of pulling a volume of our encyclopedias off the shelf to do a report for school.  NOT!  But, it is important to note that Microsoft just killed its online pay-for encyclopedia business.  Whatever the problems, Wikipedia we love you.  Increasingly, I am figuring out who to serve and the correct names of companies included in lawsuits with Wikipedia.

The Law School Scam?

There is a lot of truth to this video contending there is a law school scam.  I personally think there is a law school scam, but probably not for the reasons stated in this video.  For you see, you can argue that a lot of law school graduates are not getting employed immediately after law school, and that traditional law job are falling, but I hardly think it is because of India and China or the relatively small increase in law school seats.  The truth of the matters is that all traditional jobs in this country are dissipating.  It is simple not the way we work any longer in this world.

Alvin Toffler said, "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn".  It is a flexibility that too many law students lack, or it is a mode they get into that hurts their chances at good living.

We are being washed by the Third Wave and work styles and opportunities are changing.  They are not less.  They are not worse.  You can call it the "post-industrial" society and the "information age" if you prefer.  But, this society is represented by "subcults" or diverse lifestyles, "adhocracies" or fluid organizations that adapt quickly to change, and where information begins to substitute for most material resources.  As to the latter point, information becomes the main material for workers, each of which is only loosely affiliated.  Mass production is replaced by mass customization; offering personalized and cheaper goods and services.  Third Wave lawyers, like Third Wavers in every field work from homes or cubicles or small shared offices free from the confines of standardization, centralization, concentration, synchronization and bureaucracy, which have primarily contributed to the dissatisfaction of lawyers with the practice of law.  Third Wavers support and fight for diverse lifestyles.  Third Wavers do not employ other lawyers or staff so much as we operate within theseadhocracies or fluid organizations in which we as attorneys and firms come together only to work on specific cases or tasks.  In other words, we are freelancers.  We survive not on libraries, expensive associates, in-house computer systems, and high rise offices of marble and mahogany, but off the Internet, online research, information and social media.  In short, we do what attorneys were programmed to do -- we collect information, process information, analyze information, repackage information, and sell it in packages or in a means to make the lives of ordinary people and organizations better.  Shorter still, Third Wave law firms and lawyers provide personalization and mass customization of the law for the consumer or prosumer in a more cost effective manner.

And frankly, law school graduates are not ending up on skid row, as the video might suggest.  They are slowly finding and developing a life in the law in this Third Wave environment.  It is a shame they have to do it on their own.

The scam that law schools perpetrate is that ranking systems do not keep up with reality.  Law school are trying to please the ranking gods.  They do this by perverting statistics.  Then we expect them not to use these statistics to promote their law school.  Therefore they develop systems, training, and realities that do not reflect what is actually happening in the "real world".  Law schools are a bit like Ward and June Clever.  Those old show are fun to watch, but they are not realistic either.

The problem with law schools engaging in this deception is that they are wholly failing to prepare, train, or educate their attorneys for this "real world" or Third Wave environment.  They sell something that is not true, which is shameful because they could easily sell that which does reflect what is going on and what is likely to happen on graduation.  Sure, it has to be disappointing to go through law school being told there is a standard Dagwood or GeorgeJetson type of job out there for you when you graduate, and there is not.  But, there is work for you and lots of it.  The problem is that the law schools have mainly ignored (or just minimally complied with) any type of practical education.  They need to be producing practice read attorneys, without a lot of debt, that can take on the market because that is the reality of the situation.

There is no allusion in other professions about this.  Most doctors now they are going out on their own or into small group practices when they graduate.  Dentist know this.  Nobody has to solicit those to become a Realtor based on promises of high paying salaries, fast cars and an easy life.

The lie really needs to stop.  I agree.  I just do not agree that there is as much dissatisfaction out there as this video would suggest.  Maybe some initial upset as law graduates must learn on their own to adapt.

I wish I could start a law school that recruited students with the correct information, prepared them for the right things, and trained them for the real world experience of the Third Wave.  I think it would be one of the best law schools in the country, one of the cheapest law school in the country from a tuition standpoint, and one of the lowest ranked.  Why?  Because the rankings do not care about real world issues or real world matrix.  They are designed to sell advertising.  Statistics are combined to deceive.  I am not even sure such a law school could achieve ABA approval, but with a lot of work, maybe it could.

This Is Not The Third Wave As We Intend It

I guess anybody can use the term Third Wave, as does Jesus Camp and Sarah Palin, but I do not buy into the "Third Wave of the Holy Spirit" or what is also known as the New Apostolic Reformation movement that believe they need to train armies to take dominion over the United States and the World.

To these people, Iraq is a religious war they must win as they believe God is telling them to attack and show the enemy (non-Christians or Christians that do not believe as they do) no mercy.  Sarah Palin is deeply involved in the Wasilla Assembly of God church and is deeply involved in their Third Wave activities and theology.  The Third Wave, to these folks, is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.  While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000. The beliefs and manifestations of the movement include the use of 'strategic level spiritual warfare' to expel territorial demons from American and world cities. Worship includes excessive charismatic manifestations such as hundreds of people falling, 'slain in the spirit,' and congregations laughing, jerking, and shrieking uncontrollably.

I understand Palin is Pentecoastal, but this video of and about the activities of her church and the so-called "Third Wave" are a tad frightening to this poor staid Catholic boy.

I Have Surpassed A Thousand Posts!!!

It was not really a goal of mine, so it has been a little slow in coming.  However, I just surpassed 1,000 posts on this blog.  This will actually make 1,010.  Now, I know a lot of my brethren have already accomplished this, but this is a lot of content.  Not being modest, a lot of it is really good content.  Some is funny.  A little is frivolous (kind of like this post), but all in all I think most of the posts are helpful.  I very much appreciate those who have read my blog and the effort I have put into it.

Future Shock

I have always been amazed at the number of emails, mainly, that I receive which take pot shots on how I chose to practice law at home and virtually, with no public office space, and without staff.  Some act like I have chosen to practice this way just to offend them.  I try to be polite about it, but just because I chose to encourage the Third Wave practice of law, it is not like I force anybody to read my blog or to do what I do.  If you want to continue with office space, staff and associates, then do it.  Please do not let me stop you.

The question is why do some lawyers find this so offensive.  Alvin Toffler, the man who defined the Third Wave, stated, "Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock". 

I have got to admit that I came to where I am, and in my beliefs in how a law firm should operate in stages because I did not have the initial capacity to accept such changes.  I had to move into a series of smaller offices with fewer staff and fewer lawyers in order to realize where I was heading.  All I could do was go as far as I could see, and then, of course, I could see further.

I tend to think that those who disagree with me suffer from the same lack of capacity for change.  They feel overwhelmed in considering what I am suggesting.  They act like I am asking them to give up all of their wealth and belongings and to follow me.  But, I am not.  They cannot get their heads around the concept because it is just too foreign to them.  They are overwhelmed and they are suffering future shock.  They are suffering from, to quote Toffler further, "shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short of time".

Yet, they know the practice of law must change or that it is changing radically around them.  Why else would they seek out my little blog and read anything that I have written.

If you are suffering from future shock, and believe you just cannot make the sacrifice, then I suggest that you do as I did.  Just start making steps in the direction that i suggest.  You will always go further.

Documentary Of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock -- With Orson Wells -- 1972

Interesting how they looked at Alvin Toffler's observations in 1972.  Fear.  Yet we are here.  An interesting view.

The Man -- Alvin Toffler -- Identifier Of The Third Wave -- On The Gregory Mantell Show

Me Sane?

The Third Wave guru, Alvin Toffler, said:  "One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal.  Soon we'll need a new definition".

Certainly we can address things like modern tech that allows you to alter pictures in ways that seem real, but I think Alvin Toffler was speaking more of perception.  It is our minds that judge what is real and what is unreal.  If I say there is a tree in my front yard and there is no tree, that cannot be sanity.  However, growth generated Big Law with its towers, many hundreds of lawyers, staff, overhead and starched white shirts can only be imagined as a pillar of strength and genius by many.  To think that Joe Blow, or Grant Griffith, or Chuck Newton, or Susan Cartier Liebel, housing in a spare room are somehow not equal is the new lunacy.  Thinking that small firms such as Rick Georges are at a technologically disadvantage is insanity.  Business, and especially Big Business pays too much and it takes too much of a toll in retaining these firms.

Too often, by two many, especially law students, Big Law is viewed as the hope, the strength, the future that can get them where they want to go.  However, more often it is fair to say that Big Law is a concept made up of smoke and mirrors.  It is like saying the big fat guy (me excluded) is a great athlete because of its his speed and termination, only to find out the momentum in not in his legs, but in the inertia of his weight with which his legs are trying to keep up.  I tend to think that Big Law is lumbering and it tries to project that as agility.  It is not.

I have blogged about it before.  The general counsel of Sun Microsystems, who knows something about referring out cases to law firms, has said Big Law will go the way of the Mastodon.

So, when I point to Big Law is what I am seeing real or unreal?  Am I sane or insane?

We need a new definition.