From Robert Anderson:
The American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has published a series of proposed changes to the rules for law schools. One of them is a change to "Interpretation 305-2" (current 305-3), a change that would repeal the current ban on law schools giving academic credit for field placements (i.e., externships) for which law students are paid. The current Interpretation prohibits your law school from giving you credit for paid work experience, no matter how practical the experience gained or how closely related to your proposed area of practice. The proposed change would lift this prohibition to allow law schools to decide whether to offer such credit.
I don't think I need to remind you that law school is expensive and that most students graduate with debt, often substantial debt. One of the best things a law student can do during law school is to work at a law firm to gain practical experience and defray some of the costs of tuition and living expenses. I have found that students' paid work experience often provides them with deep and valuable understanding in areas of the law that I teach, and often when a student has a truly interesting insight in one of my classes, it came from that student's paid law firm work. The opportunity to combine paid work and law school credit would be an ideal "bridge" to practice that would give students valuable contacts and experience in the real world while decreasing the cost of law school.
Unfortunately, a small but organized minority of law professors don't want you to be able to be paid for work and receive academic credit at the same time, and they are the ones being heard by the ABA. The Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) and the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), which are special interest groups that advocate for the interests of law school professors, are lobbying the ABA to try to stop it from allowing you to receive pay and credit for the same externship. CLEA is very experienced at this sort of lobbying, regularly pressuring the ABA to add requirements to accreditation that pile on more tuition cost for law school students. These groups are adding insult to injury by depriving law students of the opportunity to defray some of the cost they themselves have created by preventing students from taking paying jobs and simultaneously earning law school credit.
Go read the whole thing and then take Prof Anderson's advice:
I encourage all interested law students and recent graduates to make their voices heard (whether you agree with me or not) by submitting a comment to [email protected], even though the "deadline" for comment has passed.
