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.

Is There A Privacy Expert In The House

I recently attended an online privacy debate/discussion presented by Gotham Media at Frankfurt Kurnit.  I want to thank both of them for putting this type of program together: a mix of legal and non-legal and very cutting edge. Unfortunately, I left unsatisfied.

Each panel member was smart and specialized (government lawyer, Wired editor, journalism professor and ex-Microsoft lawyer) and the conversation was lively for the most part.  But, the panelists appeared to generally agree that (1) people want more privacy, (2) consumers need to be protected online (from advertisers? others, besides crooks? not sure who), and (3) the government is the entity that should police privacy.

I left the talk unsatisfied because I don't agree with any of those premises. (1) my public online presence is something I chose and am happy with, (2) I much prefer to get ads targeted to what I am looking for, especially if it includes a better price--I don't like to window shop, and (3) the discussion centered around privacy regulations that remain on the drafting boards since 2000. Social media and sharing sites (facebook, twitter, foursquare, flickr etc) were, of course, not even around in 2000. Which begs the question, who is writing the regs and do they have enough of an online presence to understand social media?

I prefer to be vigilant (not necessarily restrictive) about my own settings, so I can benefit from sharing and what is shared on my terms.


I am not a privacy lawyer, it is just an area of interest to me. If anyone can set my understanding straight, please comment, I would be grateful to hear why I am misinformed.

NYCLA thinking like a Techie

Our latest poll asked NYCLA members to think about the future of legal services and the extent that those services will become systematized in the future.  Surprisingly for a group of lawyers (since lawyers are notorious for resistance to technological changes) 87 percent of those surveyed said that more comprehensive legal services will be available online within the next 5 years.  The small minority disagreed saying that legal services need to be tailored, are too specialized and too complicated to be made available online.

I would love to hear more from those of you who predict more legal services will be available online in the future. What do you see: Skype consultations? form complaints? mutually agreed upon automated dispute resolution?