Law Schools and the 21st Century Lawyer

Jackie Gardina, J.D., dean and chief academic officer at The Colleges of Law, writes about reimagining a law school education in a changing market for legal services.

Over the last decade, the legal services market has gone through significant transformation driven primarily by technology. Yet legal education has failed to adjust. Law schools continue to prepare graduates for careers in a market where the traditional practice of law is shrinking, the business of delivering legal services is expanding, and states—hungry to address access to justice gaps—are considering allowing professionals other than lawyers to provide legal services. Legal education, like many sectors in higher education, is facing an existential crisis: how to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.  

Since 2007, the legal services market has steadily declined, shrinking by more than 10%. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector lost 60,000 jobs during the recession, and as of 2017 it had recovered only 10,000. To adjust to the new labor market realities, law graduates are turning to emerging job opportunities in business and compliance where a J.D. is an advantage but not a requirement. In addition, an increasing number of lawyers are working in the gig economy using platforms such as Lawyer Exchange or AdviseHub to find short-term projects. 

While the traditional legal services market is shrinking, the business of delivering legal services is expanding. Rapid advances to technology, including artificial intelligence, allows many routine legal tasks to be automated. The “other legal services” market, primarily dominated by technology companies, completes tasks that use to consume the billable hours of new attorneys, including document retrieval, e-discovery, full-service patent and literature search, and the filing of court documents. This new market will continue to chip away at every part of the practice of law that is not the pure provision of legal advice.  

Technology is also affecting how consumers seek legal advice. Law is moving from a pervasive one-to-one consultative legal service to one where technology enables one-to-many legal solutions. Platforms like Rocket Lawyer and Legal Zoom allow consumers to find lawyers and legal solutions at a significantly lower cost. Other technology companies have created solutions for consumers who don’t know if they need an attorney, such as Legal Risk Detector, or who can’t afford an attorney, such as Law Help Interactive. These tools are advancing the democratization of legal knowledge, allowing consumers direct access. 

Despite these advances, there is still a significant access to justice gap in the U.S. In a 2017 study, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) found that 86% of low-income Americans with a civil legal problem received no or inadequate legal help. The National Center for State Courts echoed this finding when it reported that 76% of civil cases in the state courts had at least one self-represented party. These statistics expose a fundamental failure of our legal system. Access to justice is one its defining features. In Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court case that laid the foundation of the federal judiciary’s power, Chief Justice John Marshall said, “The essence of civil liberty certainly consists of the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws.”  

Law schools have indirectly contributed to this growing gap. For decades, law school tuition has outpaced inflation. After adjusting for inflation, public law school is five times as expensive in 2019 as it was in 1985. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, law students graduate with an average debt of $145,500 and an average monthly loan payment of $1,656. Entry level attorneys who work for public service organizations that seek to help underserved communities have a median salary of $50,800. The low salary creates a nearly insurmountable debt-to-income ratio, making it difficult if not impossible for new graduates to help the underserved. 

States seeking solutions to the access to the justice gap are starting to explore alternatives to the traditional legal services model. Technology and market forces are undermining the premise that lawyers, and lawyers alone, can provide suitable legal services. Current laws and regulatory rules, however, hobble the innovation of lower costs meant to provide legal help to underserved communities. While laws criminalizing the “unlicensed practice of law” and ethical rules that bar attorneys from working easily across disciplines are intended to protect the public, they also hinder creative solutions to the current crisis.  

Washington was the first state to look to alternative legal service providers. It created a limited license legal technician, also known as a legal technician or an LLLT. An LLLT is licensed by the Washington Supreme Court to advise and assist people going through divorce, child custody disputes, and other family law matters in Washington. The LLLTs provide many of the same services as an attorney, consulting with and advising clients, completing and filing necessary court documents, and advising and participating in mediation, arbitration, and settlement conferences. They also help with court scheduling and support clients in navigating the legal system. While LLLTs must complete a defined educational program, it is significantly shorter and less expensive than a traditional J.D. 

Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, and California are also exploring changes to the legal and regulatory framework that governs the practice of law, opening the door to other professionals to provide legal services. The Utah Working Group on Regulatory Reform asked and answered the question, “Should room be made for people other than lawyers and organizations other than law firms to provide certain legal services?” with an unequivocal “yes.” The California State Bar created the Task Force on Access Through Innovation of Legal Services specifically to explore how the public interest could be better served by regulatory approaches that encourage innovation in the one-to-many legal solutions created by professionals from multiple disciplines. 

In this environment, law schools have an exciting opportunity to reimagine legal education, a task that hasn’t been done in 150 years. In 1870, Christopher Langdell, the dean of Harvard Law School, introduced the case method of instruction and a first-year curriculum of contracts, property, torts, criminal law, and civil procedure. At the time, no other law school in the country used that method or taught that foundational curriculum. Now it is standard in every American law school. While law schools have nibbled around the edges of innovation, introducing clinics, externships, and skills-based courses and creating upper-level electives in emerging fields of law, the core curriculum remains unchanged. Law schools continue to teach a 20^th century curriculum to students entering a 21^st century legal services market. 

Legal education reform takes equal parts courage, imagination, and deliberation. It requires legal educators to eschew precedent, an almost heretical statement in the law. It requires them to take risks, an action counter to their training. It requires them to rethink a business model that creates significant student debt with long-term consequences for their graduates. But by embracing this opportunity, law schools can help shape the future of the legal profession and legal services in the U.S. rather than simply reacting to the changes imposed. They can lead, rather than follow. 

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