ANALYSIS: Law Schools Need to Address Skill, Tech Gaps in 2024

Law school should prepare students to practice law, yet a sentiment held by many legal professionals is that while schools do well teaching doctrinal law, many fail at teaching students how to be a lawyer. And recent technological advancements involving generative artificial intelligence are likely to emphasize this disconnect.

As assignments traditionally reserved for new attorneys—such as legal research and initial drafting—are delegated to AI-powered tools, it will be more important than ever for new lawyers to not only understand this technology but also to learn how to “be a lawyer” by perfecting certain practical skills that need a human touch.

An analysis of recent Bloomberg Law data, coupled with the buzz around AI, indicate that legal instruction is ripe for change. Next year, law schools need to prioritize teaching students both practical and technological skills—or risk high unemployment rates among their graduates.

Addressing the Existing Practical Skill Gap

Top Skills New Lawyers Need...

In Bloomberg Law’s most recent Law School Preparedness Survey, 936 attorneys weighed in on what skills, apart from traditional legal research, new attorneys should be familiar with before they begin practice. Four skills—time management, professional writing, client communications and interactions, and issue spotting and analysis—stood out.

Interestingly, legal tech and other tech-centric skills (data literacy and legal operations) were the least important to become familiar with, according to attorneys. Perhaps these practitioners think that students and new attorneys already know about legal tech, or learned about it in law school, but this isn’t an assumption that should be made.

...But Don’t Necessarily Have

Delving deeper into legal skills, the survey asked supervising attorneys and law school faculty members more nuanced questions about the soft skills of new associates and recent graduates. The responses provide insight into just how practice-ready law students are upon graduation.

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Both practicing attorneys with a supervising role and law school faculty said that new associates and recent graduates were deficient in client-centric skills, including client counseling and advising, client relationship management, and client communications and interactions.

Most supervising attorneys said that new associates have weak networking, decision-making, and leadership skills. However, fewer faculty said that recent graduates were lacking in these areas—perhaps because these are skills that more frequently come into play in an office setting.

Law school faculty and attorneys differed in their views of how graduates and new associates perform in a number of additional areas (such as investigation and evaluation and issue spotting and analysis), which may also be explained by the school/office divide.

Although supervising attorneys and law school faculty have differing views on the skill level of new associates or recent graduates, one thing is clear from both sets of responses: “practice-ready” is not a reality for most recent law graduates.

The practical skill gap isn’t a new conversation; law firms have struggled for years to address the deficiency in lawyering skills of their new associates. But if this burden remains solely on law firms or other employers of new attorneys, it’s likely this gap will continue to widen, especially with the rise of generative AI.

Eliminating the Taboo of Technology

The legal industry is typically adverse to change, and lawyers at large have struggled with technology. However, the industry seems to be more open to adopting generative AI, according to Bloomberg Law data.

Yet law schools are still wrestling with the proper way to handle student usage of generative AI. For example, some schools have banned their applicants from using it on their admissions essays, while others have expressly permitted such use, so long as the information is disclosed.

Even though we’re living in a tech-centric world, the widespread implementation of AI instruction at law schools seems far off, as only 8% of second and third-year law students reported taking a legal tech class in the Law School Preparedness Survey.

While it’s understandable that law schools are taking a cautionary approach to allowing students to use generative AI, there’s no reason legal tech-related courses should see such low attendance rates in 2023. Technology is integral to the practice of law today, and schools that don’t create a space for their students to learn how to use it properly and to their advantage are putting their students at a disadvantage.

Setting Current Law Students Up for Success

In order to successfully practice law in the 21st century, attorneys must have basic practical skills and be tech-savvy. Law schools have had years to implement more lawyering skills and technology into their curriculum to produce practice-ready attorneys but haven’t—apart from a few. This forces employers to pick up the educational slack, even though their new hires have just spent three years (and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars), to become prepared to enter the profession.

Now that AI has been thrust upon the legal industry and the bar exam is set to integrate skills testing in 2026, law schools have an even more urgent duty in the coming year to update their offerings for the benefit of their graduates—and ultimately, the profession.

Access additional analyses from our Bloomberg Law 2024 series here, covering trends in Litigation, Transactions & Contracts, Artificial Intelligence, Regulatory & Compliance, and the Practice of Law.

Related content is available for free on our In Focus: Lawyer Well-Being and Law School Innovation page. Bloomberg Law subscribers can find additional content geared toward firm associates, including practical guidance, workflow tools, surveys, and more on our In Focus: Core Skills – Litigation and In Focus: Lawyer Development pages.

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