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Legal education in the United States generally refers to the education of lawyers, and that is the focus of this article. Other types of legal education, such as that of paralegals, of Limited Practice Officers in Washington State, and of the citizenry in general, is not presently incorporated in this article. A legal assistant or paralegal is a person, qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible (ABA House of Delegates,1997). ...
This article deals with the U.S. state. ...
Academic Degrees Legal education is typically received through a law school program. The professional degree granted by U.S. law schools is the Juris Doctor or Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.). Some American lawyers receive their education, not through a law school, but by reading the law, an arduous form of apprenticeship or study with an expert. Prospective lawyers who have been awarded the J.D. (or other appropriate credential), must fulfill additional, state-specific requirements in order to gain admission to the bar in the United States. // A law school is an institution where future lawyers obtain legal degrees. ...
Juris Doctor (J.D.) is a first degree in law offered by universities in a number of countries, most notably the United States. ...
In the United States, admission to the bar is permission granted by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. ...
In the United States, admission to the bar is permission granted by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. ...
In the United States, admission to the bar is permission granted by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. ...
The Juris Doctor (J.D.), like the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), is a professional doctorate. The Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.S.D.), Doctor of Judicial Science (S.J.D.), and Doctor of Comparative Law (D.C.L.), are research and academic-based doctorate level degrees. In the U.S. the Legum Doctor (LL.D.) is only awarded as an honorary degree.
Academic degrees for non-lawyers are available at the baccalaureate and master's level. A common baccalaureate level degree is a Bachelor of Science in Legal Studies (B.S.). Academic master's degrees in legal studies are available, such as the Master of Studies (M.S.), and the Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.).
Foreign lawyers seeking to practice in the U.S., who do not have a Juris Doctor (J.D.), often seek to obtain a Juris Master (J.M.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.), or a Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.).
Admission to the Bar Please see Admission to the bar in the United States. In the United States, admission to the bar is permission granted by a particular court system to a lawyer to practice law in that system. ...
Lawyer credentials, prestige, and career path American lawyers are very credential-oriented. Apart from the minimum requirements of a J.D. and admission to the state bar, there are certain credentials recognized within the profession to distinguish lawyers from one another. Those credentials are almost always mentioned in lawyer profiles and biographies, which are used to communicate to both fellow attorneys and prospective clients.
Law school rankings Law schools are informally divided into "tiers" based on the overall quality of each program. The US News and World Report publishes the most well-known and probably the most influential annual ranking of American programs, but a number of alternative rankings exist, such as the Leiter Reports Law School Rankings. A number of factors and statistics are compiled to produce the rankings each year, including academic reputation, the quality of the faculty (usually measured by the quality of its publications), the quality of the student body (usually measured by average LSAT score and undergraduate GPA), the number of volumes in the library, the earnings potential of graduates, bar passage rates, and job placement rates. Most of these measurements are acquired by voluntary self-reporting from each law program; others are compiled through a formal process of polling judges, legal professionals, recent graduates, law professors, and school administrators. The issuance of press releases that dismiss the rankings has become a yearly ritual for many law programs, but few fail to tout their ranking when it improves, and all but a handful cooperate in gathering and reporting statistics to the various ranking publications. U.S. News & World Report is a weekly newsmagazine. ...
Upper echelon Though the specific rankings change from year to year, the overall composition of the top schools has remained fairly constant. Most legal professionals (judges, practitioners, or professors) rank Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and University of Chicago in the top echelon of American law schools. Other programs that are frequently cited include University of Michigan, NYU, UC Berkeley, and University of Virginia, with Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Georgetown, and Cornell rounding out the upper crust. A number of other schools make appearances in the top rankings from year to year, including University of Texas at Austin, UCLA, USC, Vanderbilt, University of Minnesota Law School, and Boston University. The most prestigious and sought-after law jobs in the country -- U.S. Supreme Court Clerks, Legal faculty, Bristow Fellows, Office of Legal Counsel Lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorneys in cities like New York and Chicago -- are usually awarded to students and graduates in one of these programs. Recruiters from elite law firms visit top-tier law schools each fall to recruit new associates for the following summer. In contrast, small and mid-market law firms — which make up the bulk of law firms in the U.S. — cannot predict their labor needs that far in advance, and therefore most new law school graduates who do not graduate from top tier law schools have to aggressively seek out jobs at law firms during their third year or even after graduation. The elite firms are informally known to include the most prestigious firms in major legal markets such as New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. Prominent examples include Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, Williams & Connolly, Kirkland & Ellis, and O'Melveny & Meyers. Yale Law School, established in 1843 in New Haven, Connecticut, is a division of Yale University. ...
Stanford Law School is a graduate school of Stanford University located in Stanford, California in the Silicon Valley. ...
The crest of Harvard Law School is drawn from the Royall coat of arms Harvard Law School (HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. ...
The New York University School of Law (or simply NYU Law) is one of eight law schools in New York City, USA. It is generally considered to be among the top six law schools in the United States, and is ranked fifth in the nation by . ...
The University of Chicago Law School is a part of the University of Chicago. ...
An aerial view of the Law Quadrangle at the University of Michigan. ...
The New York University School of Law (or simply NYU Law) is one of eight law schools in New York City. ...
Boalt Halls law library was expanded in 1996 with the North Addition, pictured above. ...
The University of Virginia School of Law was founded in Charlottesville in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as one of the original subjects taught at his academical village, the University of Virginia. ...
Duke University School of Law The School of Law is one of 10 schools and colleges at Duke University. ...
The University of Pennsylvania Law School officially traces its origins to a series of lectures delivered in 1790 by U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson and former major architect of the Constitution, who had been named Professor of Law that year. ...
The Northwestern University School of Law is a private American law school in Chicago, Illinois. ...
The schools original sign, preserved on the north quad of the present-day campus. ...
Cornell Law Tower Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University. ...
The University of Texas at Austin, often called UT or Texas, is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. ...
The Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library, UCLA School of Law The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Law is the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. ...
The Vanderbilt University Law School is the law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. ...
Boston University School of Law (BUSL) is the law school affiliated with Boston University. ...
Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP (Cravath) is one of the most prestigious law firms in the United States. ...
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is a law firm headquartered in New York City, USA. The firm is much smaller than many of its peer firms, such as Cravath and Skadden. ...
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OMelveny & Myers LLP is an international law firm based in Los Angeles, California. ...
Lower tiers The majority of law school students do not end up at an elite university, but many can, and often do, find well-paying jobs in prestigious private firms or selective government positions. However, because there are so many law schools -- at last count, 179 accredited law schools -- and so many newly minted lawyers (about 40,000 each year), it is impossible for every graduating student to find an elite job. Students from schools outside of the "lower tiers" might not fare as well, and may struggle to pursue an active career as a legal practitioner.
Regional tiers It should be noted that lower tiers is an over-generalization. Schools without a strong national pedigree might have very strong regional connections. Northeastern Law School, for example, carries little national weight and is considered a lower-tier school by some ranking measures, but students graduating with a strong record will most likely find a well-paying job in the New England Market. The original mission of the school – to provide Boston’s first evening law school program for students who could not attend full-time day classes – seems reasonable today, but it was a revolutionary moment when Professor Robert Gray Dodge delivered the school’s first lecture in Property on October 3...
Regional rankings are subjective and approximate. Often they have little to do with the quality of the law school and are based on factors such as how many alumni work as practicing attorneys in the region, how many alumni the entire parent university has in the region, how many professional schools the parent university has (e.g., medicine, theology), how long the parent university has existed, the academic reputation of the parent university, and how many of the parent university's graduates hold high-profile positions in business or state or large-city government in the region.
Non-ABA schools. Many schools are not accredited by the American Bar Association. Most are located in California and authorized by the California Department of Education.
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.
- Membership on law review is often a distinction, indicating rank at or near the top of the class.
- Law review is seen as a rite of passage by many who hire graduating law students.
- Work on law review may have some substantive value, since it exposes a student to legal scholarship and editing, and often requires students to publish a significant piece of legal scholarship on their 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 advocate.
- 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).
A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, published by an organization of students at a law school. ...
Moot court (sometimes synonymous with mock trial) is an extracurricular activity in many law schools. ...
The Order of the Coif is an honorary society for law students. ...
A grade in education can mean either a teachers evaluation of a students work or a students level of educational progress, usually one grade per year (often denoted by an ordinal number, such as the 3rd Grade or the 12th Grade). This article is about evaluation of...
Court clerkship On the basis of these 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. Although there is a generally-recognized hierarchy with regard to clerkships (federal clerkships are considered more prestigious than state court clerkships, and appellate court clerkships are considered more prestigious than trial court clerkships), this hierarchy is a facile generalization.
The benefit to the lawyer from clerkships is 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.
Hierachies aside, clerkships are great experiences for the new lawyers, and law schools encourage graduates to engage in a clerkship to broaden their professional experiences.
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 schools) who have already clerked for at least one year with highly selective federal circuit court judges (such as Judges Alex Kozinski, Harvey Wilkinson, David Tatel, Richard Posner. It is perhaps the most highly selective and prestigious credential 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. Judge Alex Kozinski Judge Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a popular essayist. ...
David S. Tatel is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. ...
Judge Richard Allen Posner (born January 11, 1939, New York City) is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. ...
Career Path
Entry-Level Salary The salary of a lawyer varies depending on the legal market, whether the lawyer has had a clerkship or worked in government, and whether the lawyer works at a large firm.
The typical salary of an entry-level lawyer in a large, presitigious firm in a big city is approximately $125,000, before bonus (note: law firms in Los Angeles and New York are increasing their salaries, with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York recently increasing their entry level salary base to $145,000, before bonus, to entry level attorneys). Sullivan & Cromwell is a renowned and highly-regarded U.S. law firm known for representing large corporations such as ExxonMobil and Microsoft. ...
With a federal court clerkship, entry level attorneys can expect two things: first, to receive a signing bonus of about $25,000 at a prestigious law firm; and second, to enter a prestigious law firm as a second-year associate (or third, if the attorney has clerked for two year).
Attorneys who clerk at the Supreme Court can expect bonuses of close to $200,000 if they enter an elite firm, on top of their salary.
Aside from the elite firms, however, salaries vary. Some estimates suggest the average salary for a newly-minted attorney in a smaller legal market, in private practice, not working at an elite firm, might make around $38,500. Public interest attorneys and public defenders make much less.
Starting one's one law firm right out of law school is possible, but risky and requires start-up money. The new lawyer is not only learning a new trade but also starting a business.
Length of typical workweek at "megafirms" The "superstar" salaries and sign-up bonuses offered by megafirms have a downside—at most "megafirms" the standard workweek is about 80 hours. The economics of partnerships require that very few starting associates make partner in firms of that size. For these reasons, most law graduates stay at these "megafirms" only a few years. Morale at a number of these megafirms is often reported to be very low, but this varies between individuals and firms. Some practices maintain high levels of satisfaction despite the long hours and limited prospects. Further, many young attorneys do not see their first few years at a law firm as the beginning of a lifetime career, but as a way to start out, and reassess before the partnership decision is made. The high salaries offered by large firms are often compelling to a freshman attorney who has just graduated with a mountain of college debt that can be in excess of $100,000. After their megafirm tenure, attorneys may start a new private practice, move to a smaller legal market, teach, go into government, or leave the law. A legal education offers many options.
Career paths available with solid credentials With Order of the Coif and honors, law review, moot court, and a federal appellate clerkship on a resumé (or at least three of the four), an ambitious attorney has many options. He or she may strive to make partner at a large law firm, or become a law professor at a top-tier law school and try to get tenure. Alternatively, the lawyer may go to work for the Justice Department and try to obtain an appointment as a United States Attorney. Once a lawyer has reached any (or all) of those objectives, he or she may turn to developing connections with a political party and may hope for a presidential nomination to a federal judgeship or a senior position in an administration. A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. ...
Examples abound of attorneys who have followed such a career path. Some judges, for example, include Richard Posner, John G. Roberts, Michael Lutting, Samuel Alito, Edward Becker, and Alex Kozinski.
Less well publicized is the rate of attrition along this path. Each year, the number of new lawyers with top credentials entering the work force far exceeds the number of openings at the top created by retirements plus the expansion of the profession. Typically, major law firms hire more new associates each year than they have active partners; as this process repeats each year, the mathematics of advancement bear examination.
Even less well publicized is the fact that the vast majority of law school students do not make law review, Order of the Coif, et cetera., nor do they even interview at elite law firms or for clerkships.
Career earnings Per the U.S Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook, median earnings in 2002 for US attorneys was $90,290, with the middle 50% earning between $61,060 and $136,810. Less than 10% of lawyers in 2002 made above $150,000. This is comparable with many other professional and managerial positions. Earnings in the public sector are typically lower than in the private sector.
Other Issues Many sources also indicate the high level of stress, a “culture of hours” and ethical issues common in the legal profession leads to a lower level of job satisfaction relative to many other careers. See, for example, "Money and Ethics: The Young Lawyer's Conundrum", by Patrick J. Schiltz, January 2000 Washington State Bar News
See also Continuing Legal Education (commonly abbreviated as CLE) are requirements for attorneys in the United States to maintain their ability to practice law after initial admission to the bar. ...
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