Monday, February 11, 2013

Sound Familiar?

From the Times:
Faced with profound and seemingly irreversible shifts, the legal profession is contemplating radical changes to its educational system, including cutting the curriculum, requiring far more on-the-ground training and licensing technicians who are not full lawyers.
Well.  At least we're not the only ones.

The problem in law is a bit more complex than the one facing mainline churches.  They actually have a shortage of law school applicants, for example.  But there are certainly some eerie parallels.  The stunning indebtedness of recent graduates is one.  Another, somewhat counterintuitively, is that many institutions aren't able to hire those graduates.  Law firms still make truckloads of money, but they don't quite make the truckloads required to provide on-the-job training for an annual legion of book-smart kids with no real practical knowledge.  Churches don't mind hiring the kids (who come cheaper, and generally have more field experience than lawyers built into their curriculum); churches are just tanking left and right.

Anyway, it's worth a read.

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