The Profession

Richard Posner: “I’m compulsive.”

To Place Graduates, Law Schools Are Opening Firms

“I realized that was what we needed — a teaching hospital for law school graduates.”
~Douglas J. Sylvester, dean of the law school at Arizona State University

“It’s a perfect storm. The longstanding concerns over access to justice for most Americans and a lack of skills among law graduates are now combined with the problems faced by all law schools. It’s creating conditions for change.”
~Stacy Caplow, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who focuses on clinical education

“We have these two issues running in opposite directions. There are unmet legal needs because of money and geography that seem to be growing, and the question of how to make use of unemployed recent graduates.”
~James R. Silkenat, incoming president of the American Bar Association

“We charge $50 an hour, and I don’t take any pay. If you are going to charge $125, you are not going to serve an underserved population.”
~Dennis A. Gladwell, runs a small firm at the University of Utah with a staff of five graduates started 16 months ago.

“You can’t just hang out a shingle and expect clients to show up in droves. We want to provide our graduates with the tools of success while serving low-and moderate-income clients. I would love to blink and wake up in 10 years and see where all this ends. We know about 10 to 15 programs opening in the coming years. That means there are 30 more behind them. Every faculty is talking about this.”
~Jennifer C. Friedman, executive director of the Pace Community Law Practice.

Read entire article in The New York Times