I was in Chicago for some bar business the other day when Tom Lyons, of Rhode Island, told me that he had just been appointed to an American Bar Association committee studying the future of legal education. Tom is half of the Fred Ury/Tom Lyons tag team that has been traveling the country telling lawyers how the profession is changing and urging bars to get ahead of the trends that threaten to reshape (demolish?) the practice of law as we know it.
Tom told me that he recently had been taking the “future-of-the-profession” show to law schools. He described presenting the faculty of one low-tier school with a picture of the rapid changes affecting every aspect of law practice and what the future might hold for lawyers. He said that the dean had warned him to expect hostile pushback. The response he got was stunned silence. When I asked him how many classes that school offered in the practical aspects of running a law office and representing clients, he said none, but they did offer two courses in genocide.
