Teaching law office management: why law students need to know the business of being a lawyer.

• Author: Curtis, Debra Moss

1. INTRODUCTION

   In 1996, I started teaching a class in the principles of Law Office Management to students at the Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University (NSU), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The demand for this information was great, and it has remained consistently high.

   One of the reasons for this consistent demand is the career path of many of our new law graduates. According to an employment survey conducted by our Career Development Office, the majority of our graduates, as with graduates nationwide, will go into private practice. (1) For the graduating class of 2006, 57.8% of our graduates reported being employed in private practice. (2) Of those working in private practice, almost three-quarters reported being employed in firms of ten attorneys or less, including solo practice. (3) New practitioners, particularly those working in small firms, want and need to be able to make the business decisions that will shape their law careers. (4) They appreciate the components of legal education that help them to transition to practice.

   Since its inception, the information taught at NSU Law in law office management has changed format several times. First, the information was focused largely on starting a new firm, presented in small extra-credit workshops. Subsequently, the class became a two-credit, large lecture class with a greater focus on general law practice. Finally, the course has evolved in its current form to a twenty-student, two-credit, hands-on workshop on making and understanding decisions in law practice management. Regardless of the format, the core of the information has remained the same--practical information on how law firms work from the inside out.

   The idea of incorporating professional skills in the law curriculum has arisen slowly over the past decades. However, a vast majority of legal scholarship on teaching professional skills for law students has focused on bringing clinical skills to the law curriculum. (5) Instead, this Article will discuss the importance of students learning the professional skill of Law Office Management. Part II will discuss what is "Law Office Management" as a subject area. Part III will explain why this information is critical to law students' education. Part IV will make suggestions for incorporating the core skills of this subject into a variety of curriculum.

2. WHAT IS LAW OFFICE MANAGEMENT?

   The practice of law is a business. (6) But while focusing on teaching law students to "think like a lawyer," law schools often omit to tell students about the economic realities of surviving in practice. (7) Lawyers are not necessarily interested in or trained as business people and thus comes the harsh reality--if most lawyers had wanted to be business people, they might have gone to business school instead. (8) So for many law students, the realization that to earn a living as a lawyer, they also have to learn a business, can be very challenging.

   But law students can be prepared to run the business of a law firm without first earning a business degree. (9) The misconception has arisen that law is only a profession and not a business. (10) Some argue that it does not matter if law is characterized as a profession or a business, (11) but the implication of this concept is widespread-you cannot compare the running of a law firm to, for example, an auto-mechanic's shop or a supermarket. Others believe that law is a business separate from the professional obligations to society. (12) But law indeed is a "professional service business" in which "[s]ound business practices" ensure that law actually is being practiced in a way which meets the demeanor that the profession requires. (13) The skills involved in managing a law practice are learnable by law students in a variety of formats, but they are not made available to many of them.

   In contrast, there is a wide variety of information available to practicing lawyers on the topic of law office management. For example, the American Bar Association (ABA) has a large section devoted to law management issues, with an extensive website to assist members. (14) On that website, members may learn about both live and webcast continuing legal education courses, access various e-zine and magazine publications, learn about conferences and other events at which to meet other lawyers interested in the topic, and purchase materials for their offices. (15) The website is so thorough that it divides its materials into units on marketing, management, technology, and finance--core groups dedicated to furthering attorneys' knowledge on these subjects. (16)

   In addition, most state bars have programs or information on law practice management for their members. (17) Florida, for example, has an extensive program dedicated to assisting its attorneys with the business of running a law office. (18) The program, titled LOMAS (Law Office Management Assistance Service), provides information on the topic, including forms for use by practitioners, hints and tips on hot topics, and even personnel to assist attorneys in the management of their firms. (19) A variety of private companies also produce information for practitioners to learn about law practice management techniques. (20) Many of these organizations will give students access to their information, but none are specifically directed toward law student education. For all the availability to practitioners, much of the information still remains limited for many law students.

3. LAW OFFICE MANAGEMENT AND LEGAL EDUCATION

   One question being asked by educators is, "what is the current purpose of law school?" (21) No determination may be made as to whether students, faculty, or administration are meeting their roles in the law school environment properly without knowing what their purposes are in that paradigm. (22)

   One suggestion is that "the goal of legal education is to produce graduates who possess the skills, knowledge, and values necessary to be successful legal professionals." (23) Forty years ago, a chasm arose between legal educators and the practicing bar regarding the preparation of law students to be lawyers. (24) Amid criticism from Chief Justice Burger and other visible critics, "[e]ducators responded that the role of the law schools was to train law students in the theories and substance of the law and 'how to think like lawyers"' rather than functioning as trade schools. (25) The proposal is that law school's purpose is, as has been asserted in the past, to teach people to "think like lawyers." However, a more modern interpretation of that phrase conceives of not merely cultivating analytical reasoning, but also including or helping students to develop a variety of skills and knowledge. (26) In addition, since that time, there has been a swing in the direction of more practical training being accepted as part of the law school curriculum. (27) The practicing bar continues in its urging of such change. (28)

   In their extensive report analyzing legal education, the authors of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Educating Lawyers dissect the history and framework of legal education, with an eye towards looking forward to connecting legal education to the practice of law. (29) They claim an "increasingly urgent need [for legal education] to bridge the gap between analytical and practical knowledge." (30)

   The standard curriculum of law schools in the early part of the twentieth century did not extend to the business of practicing law. (31) A course dealing with the practicality of managing a law office has been documented as part of the curriculum of a law school as early as the 1946-47 academic year. (32) However, this course has not been incorporated regularly into law school studies even today. Using law school listings of courses taught is one way to determine which schools are teaching the subject, even though they do not provide information about when a course is taught, how often it is taught, or how many students are enrolled in a course. (33) In 1995, about twenty law schools listed such a course. (34) In the 1999-2000 academic year, the number grew to about forty-nine schools and in the 2000-2001 year grew again to fifty-seven courses. (35)

   In 2007, I completed an internet review of law school webpages' course offerings at ABA accredited law schools. (36) Of the 195 schools, 131 did not list any course in their "course descriptions" that focused in a significant way on the basic principles of law office management. While other courses at these schools may touch upon aspects of law office management, not one course at these 131 schools listed these skills extensively in its description in the course listings. Sixty-one law schools did list at least one course which concentrated on the basic skills of law practice management. (37)

   Of the sixty-one schools that offered such courses, a total of sixty-five courses were located under a variety of course names and a variety of credit levels. Some schools offered more than one course that focused on the core skills. Table 1 charts the course titles, frequency of course titles among different law school curricula, and the number of credit hours for which each course was offered (where available).

   Seeing the wide range of names and credits under which schools offer these skills makes it clear how "unregulated" the teaching of this topic is compared with other law school offerings. While a wide variety of titles may exist among schools in many elective offerings, this extensive variation on the skills taught--and the different foci which may be emphasized within this skill-set--demonstrate that schools take different approaches to the teaching of the subject matter.

   A question which also has been raised is, "[w]hy teach law office management in the law school curriculum at all?" Law schools have been accused of teaching students how "to identify problems, but not how to solve them," thus blocking...