Practice Management

Reality Distortion Field

By chucknewton

This is a term used to describe the persuasive ability of some like Steve Jobs (since the term originated at Apple Computers in the 80s to describe his particular charisma).  Those close to this person become passionately committed to possibly insane ideas, without regard to the practicality of their implementation or competitive forces in the marketplace.  In their presence reality is malleable.  They can convinced anyone of practically anything.  Of course the charm wears off when the person is no longer around, but this makes it hard to have realistic plans and alternatives.

Now this is what I tend to think about many law schools these days.  They tend too often to create a reality distortion field in which they get the smart and the brightest passionately committed to pursuing what are essentially the Second Wave course of law that no longer has any practicality of implementation and which is not as a competitive force in the marketplace.  It is based upon the premise of do what I do and do what I say, and you will come out alright.

But, who are the ones doing and saying?  Has any of your law professors practice a Third Wave course of practice?  Chances are they have migrated over soon after law school, or out of a Second Wave big law firm, or from a government position.  They still depend on books for money and direction when law students have the entire library on their notebook computers.  They still charge you for building, naming, and maintaining those monoliths, those monstrosities, they call law libraries that few actually use except for places to hide and study -- ON THEIR NOTEBOOK COMPUTERS.  In reality a law school class needs little more than a blog to fill in the gaps, outline the course, and inform the students of the cases they need to look up online and brief.

How many of them still ban tech in the classroom?  Believe it or not there are some that do.

How few law professors incorporate wiki in their learning process?

The Socratic method?  Please!  Too much already.  Paper Chase is dead.

True life legal experience?  Oh, there are some clinics, but really where is it.

There are some law office management courses, but what is that in this day and age.  We do not need to know how to use a copy machine!  We need to calendar deadlines.  We get it.  We need real courses in how to start solo practices (where most law school grads end up).  Susan Cartier Liebel, one of the best in this field, had her popular class on the subject demoted to non-credit status because it interfered with classes of tenured professors.  The class had a waiting list a mile long.  But, it did not matter because these types of classes and training hurt the law schools U.S. News rankings.

I could go into a greater litany of it all, but that is not the point.  What is the point is that a law school education is increasingly not in reality to how one actually practices law.  It is based on structures and systems and hierarchies and facilities that no longer work in the real world.

Now, you really do not have a choice if you want to practice law.  You will have to get the education to pass the bar exam at law school and figure out the rest later.  That is unfortunate.  But, at least you do not have to drink the cool-aid.  You can at least avoid the reality distortion field.

(In a prior version of the post I had stated that Susan Cartier Liebel's class on going solo out of law school had been "booted", but in a second reading it was unclear if I had left the impression that there had been an unjust action against Susan.  By the term I had meant only that it was not right for the law school to reduce the class from credit course to a non-credit course.  I did not wish to convey that Susan had been outed or terminated in any way, as that would not be true.  Therefore, I edited the post to remove the unfortunate word.  Read Susan's actual post, as it is linked in the piece.  The discussion of this is presented in the comments to this post).

Full post as published by Chuck Newton on January 27, 2008 (boomark / email).