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September 2, 2010 |
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| April 08, 2008 |
By: Alana Roberts |
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aw students spend three years preparing for a career in the legal profession, most do at least one internship while in law school and they are required to pass a tough exam and background check before they go to work.
But many older lawyers don’t think new lawyers are fully prepared to practice law.
A joint Florida Bar-Florida Supreme Court committee is recommending a mandatory one-year mentoring program for new members to address the perception that new lawyers are unprepared for the task at hand.
Committee members are particularly concerned young lawyers who start solo practices right after passing the Bar exam will have problems managing their financial records and trust accounts.
Data on the number of lawyers going into solo practice is not available because the Bar does not keep those figures.
Veterans see an overall lack of technical, communication and social skills necessary to attract and retain clients and a need for better counseling, interviewing and negotiating skills.
The Joint Committee on Mentoring, which is made up of members of The Bar and the Florida Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism, is spearheading the mentoring proposal.
“You can’t help but think if somebody who is just out of law school is really finding his or her way,” said committee member Michael Josephs, a founding member of Josephs Jack. “The Bar owes it to them to help them find their way and make sure that they know what practicing law really is.”
 Michael Josephs here
But Josephs said there have been no problems that he is aware of with new graduates who open their own practice right out of law school. And there has been no noticeable increase in disciplinary action against younger lawyers.
New lawyers aren’t a significant segment of the 400 lawyers disciplined each year by The Bar, which takes on about 3,000 new members annually. Disciplined attorneys tend to have practiced for seven or more years.
Bob Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center in Davie, questioned whether a mentoring program would reduce mistakes by new lawyers.
“While I think the mentoring program is a great idea, I would be very surprised if it had any effect on disciplinary rates or malpractice actions filed against young lawyers,” he said.
Kenneth Marvin, director of lawyer regulation for the Bar, said some disciplinary actions are the result of a lawyer’s discomfort communicating information that they think a client won’t like.
“One of the problems we do see in discipline all the time is lack of communication,” he said. “One of the areas where mentoring can help young lawyers is to be very forthright. In the long run, although you may lose a client here or there, you will be doing that client and all clients a favor.”
Josephs contends that in general there has been an erosion in professionalism among lawyers that the Bar hopes to fix with early intervention with new lawyers.
“It’s important they know how to behave,” said Carl Zahner, director of The Bar’s Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism. “Being a lawyer is complicated socially. You have to be very cautious about how you behave.”
Josephs expects a mentoring program to help instill the importance of ethics and treating peers, clients and judges with respect.
“Common sense kind of tells you the sooner you start teaching the right habits, the better chance you have of the right habits being there for a long time,” he said.
Josephs points to a pilot mentoring program implemented seven years ago in Miami-Dade, Escambia and Hillsborough counties as a guide to what the new program could be.
“In our pilot program there were face-to-face meetings that were required,” he said. “There were certain minimums in terms of contact. There were certain minimums with regard to the subjects to be discussed.”
Topics range from professionalism and etiquette to lawyer ethics, law firm administration and pro bono work. Discussion topics range from time management, the unwritten social mores of courts, techniques for collecting retainers, and ethical obligations to clients, the Bar and the courts.
The Dade County Bar Association’s voluntary program received more mentors than “mentees” willing to participate, but an online version had a better response.
Web access makes it easier for participants to connect and eliminates some administrative costs, which hurt a previous program the group launched, said Damian Thomas, president of the group’s Young Lawyers Section.
“It was burdensome for a small office to be in charge of matching up potentially hundreds of people,” Thomas said.
Details including the potential cost of administering a statewide program would be fleshed out if the idea is approved by The Bar’s board of governors, Josephs said.
Scott Chitoff, president-elect of the Broward County Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, said lawyers should emulate the way other professions prepare their new practitioners.
“There’s no basic training once you get out of law school and take the bar. There’s no basic training unlike the practice of medicine,” Chitoff said.
Eric Ginnis, who joined the Bar five years ago and launched a litigation shop with partner Roman Groysman in Fort Lauderdale eight months ago, said mentoring is important and he has no problem making it mandatory.
He said he was able to launch his firm in part because of his connections with other lawyers in the community and his experience with the Broward County state attorney’s office.
As a prosecutor, he tried 65 cases in more than two years and learned a great deal from the experience.
“I have so many colleagues in the field so if I have a question I know who to call,” he said. “For someone who is just out who says, ‘I don’t want to work for the state attorney’s office because they don’t pay much’ … it would be a great experience [to have someone] who can be a go-to. I think it’s a great idea.”
Anthony Alfieri, a law professor and director of the Center for Ethics & Public Service at the University of Miami School of Law, said mentoring is a good effort to pick up where schools leave off.
Law schools around the nation are beginning to change their curriculums or are implementing clinical programs to provide practical, hands-on training.
An example is a new third-year program including practical simulations, real-client interactions to develop law practice skills at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va.
A report produced last year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching critiqued the way law schools educate students and has spurred law schools to rethink how they educate students, Alfieri said.
The report identified legal education deficiencies such as a failure to provide hands-on opportunities and adequately teach the lawyering process, professional responsibility, social skills and the importance of public service.
“The Carnegie Foundation report is having a major impact on legal education,” Alfieri said.
Marvin said that as lawyers approach the practice more like a business rather than a profession, the quality of service and the selection of cases often are based on profit and not necessarily on what’s best for the client.
“It’s important for lawyers to know to take the high road and not make decisions based on business and your pocketbook,” Marvin said.
Alana Roberts can be reached at aroberts@alm.com or at (305) 347-6648.
Michael Josephs photo by A.M. Holt
Reader's comments
DISSOLVE THE FLORIDA BAR said:I have been a lawyer now for 18 years, no serious problems with the Bar, just the occasional complaint. We do not need more government/regulating authority. It is hard enough finding a job out of law school, paying student loans with the meager wages. Let lawyers after spending 7 years broke in school make a buck. The decisions are not made considering the pocketbook, but on need. April 8, 2008 at 11:07 p.m. |
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