Hot Practice Areas for 2012

According to our last poll, NYCLA readers reveal that the hot practice area in 2012 is mortgage and consumer issues. Sixty-five percent of those polled chose mortgage and consumer issues. The FTC, whose activities have been heightens and highlighted in the media in recent months, would probably agree with these results.

White collar litigation (always active in New York), IP and technology transactions also received some votes.

And none of our pollsters believe that international arbitration or privacy regulation will be talked about much in 2012.

On a different note, I changed jobs at the beginning of the year which has kept me busy, busy, busy. I will be updating my profile, so stay tuned.

Feeling Unprepared

The results of the latest survey demonstrate that 85% of our respondents feel as though their law school education did not prepare them for private practice.

Navigating office politics, understanding the relevance of the billable hour, learning the cost and value of legal services -- none of these essential issues involved in private practice success were ever addressed in my law school education. Were they in yours?

Beyond practice skills, taught in clinics and legal writing, practical private practice skills need to be addressed in law schools. We can't pretend that the law is a purely academic endeavor.


On an unrelated note, we have been experiencing an uptick in readers and survey takers. (Take a look at the bottom left hand column, we are at nearly 13,000 page views!) I want to thank you all for taking the time to read and cast your votes. You can follow this blog and receive post updates by email by signing up on the NEW FEATURES in the bottom right column.

Law School Reform

On the subject of law school reform, a new suggestion taken from a practice of new/established technology-enhanced retail darling, Zappos. (So, for that reasom alone, I am biased towards it.)

http://slate.me/lawschoolarticle

"Paying students to quit law school.  An unorthodox solution to the problem of too many graduates unable to repay their loans."

Let me know your thoughts.

1/2 Mentored 1/2 Not

Our last poll surveyed NYCLA members to find out if they had a mentor who assisted them in their legal career. The results were curious: 50%  of respondents were lucky enough to have mentors guide their careers, while 50% were not so lucky and wished that they did have a mentor. 

Beyond the scarcity of mentoring, the poll doesn't say much.  It would be interesting to hear from both groups to compare where they are in their careers and development. Success is subjective.  I would be curious to know how those with mentors view their success in terms of the mentoring they received. Likewise, I would like to hear from those who wish they had mentors to know how they feel they would have advanced if mentored.


At least we hope to raise the statistics with NYCLA's mentoring program, now in its third year!

Fixing Law Schools

I recently read an interesting article on how legal education needs to change to be more useful to the graduating law students.  The article posits that law schools must "Prepar[e] student … for a lifetime of successful, ethical and personally rewarding practice." That's a tall order. See the article here:

http://chronicle.com/article/Theres-More-to-the-Law-Than/129493/

Criticism aside, I do agree that law schools need to be re-engineered. The following except taken from the article concerns stepping away from the Ivory Tower to  a more inclusive (and IMO relevant) way to view legal work:

It is necessity, not fashion, that causes lawyers to pay attention to the work of anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists. We look to those disciplines because their insights are useful—even indispensable—in understanding and solving legal problems in our complex and rapidly changing world.