MONDAY ESSAY: The Lawyer Glut: Causes, Consequences And Solutions To A Growing Concern

Introduction

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience!

Concerns about the number of law students have been steadily growing in recent times. Some sections of the legal profession have echoed the popular warning of an actual or impending “glut” of lawyers. The implications are that law faculties and schools, are adding massively to the number of law students who will, on being called to the bar, be unemployed. The thought of hundreds of unemployed lawyers roaming the streets looking for work or trying to create work is a nightmare which many people hope would not become a reality. Admittedly, there may be real problems with legal education, however, the crucial issue should be the quality of that education much more than the issues related to quantity. Improving legal education requires consideration of issues much broader than the mere numbers of lawyers and law students. Changes in law, society and legal practice as well as the variety of careers law graduates pursue should challenge law schools to maintain a system of education that is relevant to the needs of students, the profession and the community they serve. Not embracing change means that the system would continue to produce too many graduates equipped for the legal practice of the past and ill-suited to the range of work they will perform in the next century.

Quality not quantity

The wide variety of careers that lawyers may come to pursue coupled with the way lawyers move to and from the profession should serve as a sign for law schools to focus on the kind of education students currently receive. Law courses need not change simply because persons with different career aspirations are attending law school. A person comes to the law mainly to read the law and not something else. However, within the same scheme of things and thinking, law students need more than a training in traditional legal skills. They need a legal education that is geared towards broadening their understanding of the context in which those skills are used. Thus, law students would need to learn other disciplines and by so doing, learn to look at the law in a broader way, enabling them to become better practitioners who understand the context of client’s problems and the way client’s see those problems. Law schools are likely to make their greatest contribution in this manner by setting benchmarks not by merely flooding the market. This would require the willingness to make changes in accordance with student comments and reactions so as to design course contents that equip students with a range of skills and knowledge better suited to the future of law than its past.

Quality and its effect on quantity

The author’s refusal to over-emphasize on quantity does not mean that quantity is irrelevant in legal education. There are a number of ways that quality can be sacrificed for quantity. This reflects in instances of massive intakes leading to poor staff-student ratios or relatively weaker staff. It would also mean that important facilities like law libraries would not be able to serve the needs of the large number of law student intakes. In order to ensure quality of legal education, the quantity of law students and graduates may matter but not necessarily be the main point of consideration. Allowing graduates to receive the kind of education that both equips them for legal practice in a changing world and for work within that world outside of the law is a better safeguard. The reverse is what should be the worry, which is that teaching a narrow and less dynamic traditional curriculum would in turn lead to producing too many lawyers who cannot be competitive in seeking work or who lack the ability to translate their skills into non-legal careers. It is the large quantity of such kind of lawyers that should be dreaded and avoided at all cost.

Conclusion

The lawyer glut is a growing concern with far-reaching implications for the legal profession. As law faculties and schools continue to churn out graduates, the oversaturation of the market poses significant challenges for lawyers, policymakers and the justice system. To mitigate the consequences, stakeholders must work together to address the root causes, some of which have been highlighted in the essay, including inadequate career guidance, unrealistic expectations and lack of effective practical skills training. Solutions such as adopting a dynamic curriculum, encouraging entrepreneurship and providing continuing professional development opportunities can help maintain quality which would in itself help absorb the excess supply of lawyers, if at all. Ultimately, a multifaceted approach would ensure a profession that remains vibrant, dynamic and responsive to the needs of society so as to create a more sustainable future for legal professionals.

God bless!