What Skills Do New Lawyers Need? ABA Journal Spotlights Foundations 2.0
What does it really mean to be ready to practice law today?
That’s the question at the heart of Foundations 2.0—a new national study launched by IAALS and the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to better understand the competencies that matter most in modern legal practice. And the ABA Journal is paying attention.
In a recent article, the ABA Journal highlights the significance of the project and its potential to reshape how we define and assess lawyer readiness: "What skills do new lawyers need? Lawyers asked to provide answers in Foundations 2.0 survey"
The Foundations 2.0 survey is now live, and we’re inviting lawyers across the country to weigh in. The goal? To ensure that legal education, licensure, and professional development are aligned with what success in the profession actually requires.
This isn’t just a refresh of an old study. It’s a timely, much-needed update to IAALS’ original 2015 Foundations for Practice research, which drew responses from over 24,000 lawyers and led to one of the first empirically grounded, comprehensive models of lawyer competence. A decade later, the legal profession has changed in dramatic ways—and we’re revisiting that work to reflect the realities of practice today.
The survey explores:
- Which competencies are most critical to legal practice
- When in a lawyer’s career those competencies are most needed (day one, early practice, advanced practice)
- How lawyers believe those competencies are best developed—through coursework, clinics, externships, life experience, bar prep, or something else entirely
Our aim is not only to describe what lawyers need to succeed—but to provide a foundation for building better pathways into the profession.
Updates to come soon on our Foundations project page: https://iaals.du.edu/projects/foundations-practice
Have questions about the study? Reach out to me: Logan Cornett, IAALS Director of Research, Legal Education & Licensure logan.cornett@du.edu.
