Solo Practice University Begins To Work With Law Schools To Build Bridges

Solo Practice University, which is the number one online educational and professional networking community for lawyers and law students, as developed the Bridges program, which partners with law schools to help bridge the gap from law school to solo practice for its law graduates. It is a program that is intended to start before graduation for most law students.

I have thought about this problem quite a lot lately, with my oldest daughter graduating from law school in December, and as a result of the dozens of soon to be or recent law school graduates that email me for advice on how to make this leap from law school to practice. It really is the problem that can no longer be ignored.

I believe it does start with the realization by law schools that the overwhelming majority of their graduates will go out on their own, or associate with small law firms, where they are expected to be more practice ready, know in what areas they wish to practice, and have some guidance about how to succeed in this regard.

Law school clinics aside, law schools have not been very good in helping in this regard.

Bridges is probably a good name for it, because what the law graduate is trying to do mentally, conceptually, and educationally is to figure out how to make it across that void between law school and the actual practice of law. For most law graduates, that void is deep and uncertain. The consequences of jumping and missing can be devastating financially and emotionally, and law graduates know this. It is the reason for much anxiety. I hear it from them almost every day.

Bar associations and others are starting to recognize this void.  For example, The State Bar of Texas has created its Transition to Practice program.

And, it is more than just transitioning to a solo practice. This void in terms of practice readiness, an idea of practice areas in which to engage, and relationship building with the legal community is the difference as to whether law graduates can find law jobs more easily after graduation, especially if they are coveted top 10% of their graduating class (a category not possessed by 90% of the graduating class).

SPU's Bridges program will be unveiled at the 2011 Future Ed conference in New York City on April 16, 2011, and New York Law School will be the first to join in.

It is time law schools, especially, face the facts. Tuition is too high, the amount of student loans too much, and the commitment by law students too overwhelming to continue to ignore the issue of the lack of bridges or transition help for their graduates into the real world of law practice. This is just the truth.

Now, as a disclaimer, SPU does not pay me any money, but it does allow me to hangout in their network community to offer advice where I can.

Comments

[Patrick H. Stiehm]

Chuck, when you say, in regard to preparation of law students to practice law, that "...law schools have not been very good in helping in this regard" you show yourself to be a master of understatement. The legal academic community, as represented by law school administrations and faculties, have had a historic distained for and contempt of any suggestion that they should participate in actually preparing students to practice law. That is perhaps understandable given the fact that so many of them really have no meaningful law practice experience themselves. Hopefully, this attitude will change but I am not at all optimistic.