Teaching Lawyers to Actually Run a Law Practice

Here’s an excellent post by Ron Fox at the Lawyer Satisfaction Blog about how poorly law schools prepare their students to actually practice law and run a law office and something called “Solo Practice University.” 

Nothing in law school prepares one for the responsibility of running the business of a law practice.  Law schools traditionally have trained students to be judges’ law clerks and junior associates in big firms, ignoring the reality that many will within a few years have their own practice.

In the State Bar of Georgia, we have a Transition to Practice Program that provides seasoned mentors for new lawyers in their first year of practice and a Law Practice Management Program to provide resources and training on practical realities of managing a law office.  Both are good programs that we should continue to cultivate and advance.

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney at Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, LLP, in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale), and is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Mr. Shigley has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury cases.  Currently he is Secretary of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.