When Douglas J. Sylvester, dean of the law school at Arizona State University, was visiting the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota a couple of years ago, he mentioned the shifting job market for his students—far fewer offers and a new demand for graduates already able to draft documents and interact with clients, The New York Times reported yesterday. The Mayo dean responded that his medical students and graduates gained clinical experience in hospital rounds closely supervised by attending physicians. “I realized that was what we needed,” Sylvester recalled. “A teaching hospital for law school graduates.” The result is a nonprofit law firm that Arizona State is setting up this summer for some of its graduates. Over the next few years, 30 graduates will work under seasoned lawyers and be paid for a wide range of services provided at relatively low cost to the people of Phoenix. The plan is one of a dozen efforts across the country to address two acute—and seemingly contradictory—problems: heavily indebted law graduates with no clients and a vast number of Americans unable to afford a lawyer. This paradox, fed by the growth of Internet-based legal research and services, is at the heart of a crisis looming over the legal profession after decades of relentless growth and accumulated wealth. The problem is also evident in the sharp drop in law school applications and the increasing numbers of Americans showing up in court without a lawyer.
