My law firm Berner Klaw & Watson launched a project three years ago, which we envisioned as a one-year opportunity for a handful of recent law school graduates to immerse themselves in the practice of family law under the attentive watch of our experienced attorneys and with lenient expectations about billing, required professional networking and constant exposure to law firm management. We likened our program to a judicial clerkship and dubbed the participants “law clerks.” The project remains a work in progress as we tweak it here and there to work as well as possible for the law clerks, our legal and support staff and our clients, but I’m ready to give a public progress report and invite others to join the conversation about training the next generation of attorneys.
Our firm has always welcomed undergraduates, law students and attorneys-in-transition (from another practice area) interested in family law practice. Each of our attorneys enjoys teaching — whether to a large audience at a PBI course or one-on-one with a protégé — and there has always been a steady stream of family lawyer wannabes at our door, seeking a chance to work with us for modest compensation or even for free. For years, we had no organized plan for incorporating this large pool of talent-in-training. With the increase in available, eager candidates, the constant pressure to provide affordable legal services to the “regular folk” (i.e., not the mega-rich who aren’t devastated by three-figure hourly rates) and the resolve of law schools to produce students who can do something with their expensive educations, we wanted to test a new model. More specifically, in 2010, I was inspired by two Villanova Law School graduates (who spent months volunteering with me on a difficult pro bono custody case) to brainstorm about a way for young lawyers to receive on-the-job training from experienced attorneys without the formality and expense of permanent employment and, at the same time, providing valuable, affordable legal services to clients.
