Legal Marketing & PR

Fordham Law School to offer Law Firm Marketing in JD Program

By Larry Bodine

We have all been:

• Waiting for the other shoe to drop
• Waiting for Hell to freeze over
• Waiting for a law school to teach marketing to students as for-credit course.

The long wait is finally over. Fordham University School of Law in New York will begin offering a course on 'Law Firm Marketing' that counts as 2 credits towards a law degree. Taught by academic pioneer Dr. Silvia Hodges, the elective course is designed to bring reality into the classroom starting in Spring 2011.

No marketing course is offered in any JD program at any other law school.

Hodges has already taught a similar master's degree level, for-credit course on professional services/law firm marketing at Emerson College in Boston since May 2008. She also teaches the course 'Law firm as a business' at Fordham Law School. In spring 2010, Hodges has moved to New York, and will continue to teach the popular courses at both Emerson as well as Fordham Law School as an adjunct professor.

"We are painfully familiar with client complaints that large law firms charge too much for new associates who know too little about the practice of law to be worth it," said Hodges. "The clients may have a broader complaint. For all their glittering academic records, these young lawyers not only don't know much about the realities of the practice, they know even less about the business world. Associate Dean Sheila Foster really understands what's going on in the market place. Marketing is a very good thing for law students to study,' Hodges said.

A LexisNexis survey reveals that law school students are feeling the impact of the current turmoil within the legal industry. More than half of law school students surveyed (54%) say that the current state of the legal industry has made them consider career alternatives, while almost two-thirds (65%) believe law school does not teach the practical business skills needed to practice law.

'Especially in this competitive world they need to have the tools and be prepared for what they're up against. Law graduates must understand their clients and how they choose lawyers. And they need to see the business side to hit the ground running,' Hodges said.

Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).