Foundations For Practice

It didn’t surprise me when lawyers responding to our Foundations for Practice survey indicated that “life experience between college and law school” was helpful in identifying that a new lawyer has the foundations (characteristics, professional competencies, and legal skills) that they believe are important.

My work on the classroom/traditional side has never needed empirical justification. By contrast, my work on the experiential side has always been met by skepticism by those who share my belief in the value of the classroom. Experiential education is not the status quo; it is always subject to demands for empirical evidence of its value.

The latest IAALS report offers insights for legal employers and aims to close the employment gap. Many legal employers still rely on criteria like class rank, law school prestige, and law review participation to inform hiring decisions, but how effective are those criteria in making good hires? A study released today by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, finds that when it comes to hiring “the whole lawyer,” experience matters. IAALS’ latest report, Hiring the Whole Lawyer: Experience Matters, continues to share insights from a study of more than 24,000 lawyers that promises to inform the way new lawyers are educated and hired.

Our Foundations for Practice project has permeated the profession as law schools and legal employers seek to bridge the gap between ensuring students learn the right skills and competencies to be successful in practice and ensuring legal employers have the best hiring criteria to secure the right candidates.

By now, anyone who is familiar with the Foundations for Practice study knows that the data provides a gold mine of information for law schools, the legal profession (especially legal employers), and law students/recent grads.  What makes the list so surprising is not necessarily each individual item, but rather the fact that the things lawyers believe we aspiring attorneys need in the short term are all (mostly) completely within our own control.

Last month, we gathered legal educators, practitioners, and judges from across the country for—wait for it—our 5th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference. As we kicked off the conference on the first day of fall, we reflected on the meaning of harvest.

It’s September which means at IAALS, it's time for our 5th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference. This year’s Conference comes fresh off the heels of ETL’s groundbreaking report, Foundations for Practice: The Whole Lawyer and the Character Quotient, which revealed the keys to career success.

The results of our Foundations for Practice study continue to reverberate throughout law schools and the legal profession, and the concepts of “The Whole Lawyer and the Character Quotient” are being covered in the press as well.

After the release of the first two reports from our Foundations for Practice project, Law Week Colorado published an article highlighting the groundbreaking findings, which “have the power to radically shift the discussion about what law schools teach and how employers hire."

Our Foundations for Practice survey set out to define what new lawyers are lacking. After working with state bar organizations to distribute the survey across the country, we are sitting on more than 24,000 responses from lawyers in all 50 states. Today, we are releasing two exciting outcomes from the survey.