Summary: With more law graduates starting their own firms, the need for them to know how to run a firm is becoming a crucial class that many law schools don’t offer.
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center in Davie will be starting a new class next summer. The traditional law school classes include torts, constitutional law, civil procedure, and contracts but now law firm management is gaining momentum.
The need for law students to understand how a law firm runs with things such as how to recruit clients, tracking billable hours, and managing a trust account is crucial if they end up starting a solo practice, which many law graduates did a few years ago when the economy was down.
Nova’s class will start out as an elective and may work its way into also being a continuing legal education course. Professors and law firm managing partners will be the ones teaching the course. They also hope to make the course ready for junior associates to take as a week long boot camp when preparing for partnership.
There are other universities that already teach their own law firm management and business of law courses. St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens and Florida International University College of Law offer a law firm management course but only a fourth of the students at Florida International choose to take the class.
Legal recruiter Joe Ankus of Ankus Consulting in Weston notes “Law schools have almost categorically ignored law firm economics to teaching theory in the past. They have fundamentally ignored the reality that law is a business and not just a profession. I’m delighted that law schools have woken up about the realities of the new employment model for law school graduates.”
Photo: legalproductivity.com