The surplus of graduating lawyers is reviewed frequently by news outlets across the U.S. who routinely highlight that only 55 percent of 2011 law school graduates are actually employed in a law-related job nine months after graduation. Signaling that prospective law students are beginning to understand that their post-law school outlook is not so bright, there has been a 25 percent drop in LSAT takers in the last two years.

As law school revenues look posed to fall drastically, law schools are now being forced to reconsider an educational model that has been broken for years. Law schools have been criticized for their classes which focus on the Socratic teaching method and an academic, almost philosophy focused, emphasis rather than applicable practical work and teaching that actually prepares students to become practicing attorneys. This failure has had no repercussions whatsoever for law school tuitions which have increased over 400%, a rate much higher than inflation, since 1985.

Some schools are taking steps to correct these educational deficiencies. For example, Washington and Lee School of Law in Virginia now devotes its’ third year to practical training. Students are able to have real client engagement, while also taking courses in diverse but necessary topics from professionalism and office maturity, to conflict resolution and the transactional landscape. Washington and Lee’s choice will challenge the typical element of untested and inexperienced law professors earning six figures a year for teaching with the Socratic method that only leaves students with mountains of debt for a degree which does painfully little to teach them how to serve as lawyers.