How to Make Yourself Practice-Ready upon Graduation

Student blogger:
Brandon Howard (’14)
President of the Business & Investment Law Society

In January, Chapman Law Review hosted an all-day symposium that was right up my alley, so I decided to attend every panel they were offering, all day long (minus an hour for my Constitutional Law class – I was contemplating skipping it, but my good angel won that debate). The theme/title of the event was “The Future of Law, Business, and Legal Education: How to Prepare Students to Meet Corporate Needs.” I honestly thought it would be more about various aspects of business law, but what ended up driving the discussion throughout the day was this concept of legal education reform. I hadn’t heard much about it before, but with the number of law school applicants waning in the past few years, legal professionals and academics can’t help but turn their attention to this pressing topic.

Why do we need reform? Because the legal job market is weak and law school graduates don’t know anything about the practice of law when they graduate. How do we fix it? By providing law students with hands-on legal experience before they graduate. Some schools are already implementing programs that achieve this, but more are hopping on the bandwagon every day, because that’s what traditional law firms now want from their new associates.

While I have yet to land a full-time, post-grad job, the steps I’m taking in law school to acquire some actual legal skills before graduating will help me in my job search. I am currently externing in the in-house legal department for CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a company that compiles real estate data and creates products using that data to sell to its clients. Within the legal department, I am working with the team that manages mergers and acquisitions, all of the sub-entities that come out of those acquisitions, and securities regulation issues, such as complying with SEC reporting and disclosure requirements. It’s fascinating, and it’s exactly the type of work I wanted to do before coming to law school. At the same time, I’m enrolled in a mergers and acquisitions class and a business planning class. I learn about purchase agreements and stock deals one day, and I get to review actual purchase agreements and draft parts of a stock deal the next day. I feel like I’m learning way more than I would be if I were only taking the class or only taking the externship.

Ideally, I think this is the best way to train future lawyers – providing the kind of education and theory required to properly approach legal issues while also placing students in clinical or externship positions to directly apply what they are learning in those classes. While this curriculum change is in its nascent stages, many of the opportunities are already there. However, it’s up to the student to take full advantage. Take classes in areas you might want to practice, and, when possible, work in those areas as well. Chapman is unique in offering externship credit for working in a corporation’s in-house legal department, and I am incredibly grateful to have that opportunity.

The views expressed in the student blogs are those of the author and not the law school.