NY State Bar Urges ABA to Encourage Law Schools to Focus on Educating 'Practice Ready' Attorneys
Corrected: Arriving at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in Toronto with a draft resolution in hand, the New York State Bar Association is urging the ABA to consider increasing the focus on teaching practice skills to law students while they are still in law school.
“Legal education should have more of an emphasis on making sure graduates are ready to practice law,” said State Bar President Vincent Doyle III of Connors & Vilardo in an interview with the National Law Journal. “It is something that has been de-emphasized, and it shows.”
While teaching practical lawyering skills should not be the sole focus of a legal education, it needs to be more of a priority, Doyle said. His bar group is urging the ABA to require law schools to include more clinical work and meetings with clients in court and office settings, among other measures, so that students are “practice ready” when they graduate.
Updated at 10:25 a.m. to correct the source to the National Law Journal.
