---

Being an Entrepreneur Lawyer

I think that we law students need similar skills, whether we want to pawn our licenses or use them productively for ourselves. I'm not sure that what I've experienced over the past year has given me as much of what I'll need to do that in the coming decades as I had hoped, but there's still time. I know that I don't want to tell my children I work for anyone but myself. It's about pride, and it's about clarity: picking my own clients and picking my own projects is the only way I can imagine living my life happily. To make that happen, I'll need many skills. Law School seems to be helping with some, but it could learn a lot from the business school. Thinking like an entrepreneur would do an average lawyer a lot of good.

Things Done Right

These are the useful things I think the law school already emphasizes for our toolkits:

Close Reading of Text

Cognitive Dissonance

Communication in the Face of Intellectual Assault ("Spin," "Arguing Well" or "Dealing with the Socratic Method")

I don't think they need further elucidation here.

Things That Could Use Help

These are the areas in which law school needs a lot of help, but we could find it nearby:

Technological Integration

There are distinct gains to be made in legal learning through intelligent use of technology. A large part of what we pay can be explained in economic terms as what the market will bear (ie waste). In California, correspondence law schools teach the same subjects as CLS (though quite differently) at a fraction of the cost. That simple fact militates for a reconsideration of our teaching model here, to see if we can gain some of that efficiency. The goal is not to abandon all of our classroom interactions, nor to lose our sense of community, but to strengthen both. Just because the internet has made it easier for less prestigious and less wealthy institutions to spread knowledge doesn't mean it can't do the same for schools older than our country. The future of social interaction is bound up in technology, and the better we can adapt our education to that fact, the more equipped our lawyers will be to deal with their clients' problems - both in understanding and in capacity.

Collaboration vs. Competition

The fixation on grades at this school is a nominally pro-student phenomenon. The firms want grades, so our students should have some by the time EIP rolls around. This justification is flimsy, and has been discussed at length in this class over the course of the semester. Why is doesn't it hold in Uris hall? How is it that Business School is the most touchy-feely, collaborative, judgment-free place on this campus? It seems that in the raw pursuit of lucre, working together works. Why is this less true for lawyers? What solo practitioner ever achieved anything without the ability to convince other people to work with her? What project ever gets done in a big firm by one single hired brain? Lawyers don't work in organizations any smaller than businesspeople do, in fact, they are businesspeople. Whether they litigate, negotiate, advise, or write, lawyers work for and with people. Strengthening their ability to do that should be a prime goal of law school.

It's arguable that activities such as journals, moot court, and even student organizations foster that kind of collaboration, and Columbia's mandated moot court program and wide range of journal opportunities are something that help it teach its law students how to work together. That said, the core courses do not seem to foster any meaningful collaboration. Study groups may be fun, but by introducing diverging goals (grades) to compete with the shared goal of learning, collaboration is not really going to get off the ground. Of course there are always competing goals in life and work, but the blunt pressure not to help each other out makes grades worse than pointless - they're counter-productive.

Social Relationship Construction ("Networking")

Law schools have begun to recognize how important building a professional network is, but I am not certain they've grasped exactly how it works. Their concept of it seems to be confined to getting drunk and getting to know your peers or potential employers. More broadly, perhaps, you're encouraged to go to office hours and find a mentor. This seems to be a silly way to teach people to interact professionally, and to build professional relationships. The lack of emphasis on collaboration really goes hand in hand with this issue - people gain trust in each other and connect by working together. Until you create conditions where they have to do this in a regular, extensive and long term fashion, as in the workplace, these networks will not be built.

Project-Based Work

There is not enough follow-through and follow-up work in Law School.

-- By DRussellKraft - 17 Apr 2010