I mentioned last week that there was some good news about the sequel to the University of Miami Law School Foreclosure Fellowship program. (See U Miami Law Foreclosure Fellowships 2009-2010 Final Report.) We placed eleven recent law graduates with a variety of organizations providing legal assistance to homeowners facing foreclosures. We helped a lot of people, and we also helped some of our graduates find jobs. The program died for lack of funding, but I'm glad to report that it has spawned a bigger, and I hope better, successor in the UM Law Legal Corps Fellowship Program.
Dean Patricia White has announced that she is, in effect, going to clone the Foreclosure Fellows program and expand it beyond fighting foreclosures to encompass a wide range of pro bono activities, and not just in Florida. The law school will pay students who pass a state bar after graduation a stipend of $2,500 per month for up to six months after graduation to do pro bono work. The plan — although I gather things are still a bit fluid — is to run a massively larger program than my eleven graduates, with the goal to reach perhaps as many as 100 new lawyers, or even more (the press release quoted below speaks of “more than 200 potential placements” but one can have more opportunities than takers).
As I understand it, details are still being worked out — including what students will have to do to qualify (although the press release suggests all graduates who pass a bar will be “eligible” it also speaks of those “qualified,” neatly leaving open the issue of whether it will take more than passing a bar to be qualified for a Fellowship), whether we can find a way to provide Fellows with affordable health insurance, the extent to which the law school will take on the responsibility of finding placements for the graduates, and the legal implications of each of these decisions for tax, malpractice, and other types of liability. I'm also a little unclear about how the out-of-state component will work. On the one hand, I think it's great to open up the program to out-of-state bar takers, who would then do pro bono work in the state where they plan to stay. On the other hand, it may be quite hard to arrange for the out-of-staters to participate in the planned “rigorous biweekly professional development sessions” either where they are located or remotely. Not to mention getting them CLE credit. But these are details, and good problems to have as they are the sign of an ambitious program taking off.
What I liked best about Dean's White's presentation of the idea to the faculty at a recent meeting is that she emphasized that her objective was to make the Fellowships both meaningful and prestigious — to match strong graduates with placements where their participation would result in good works; that her aim is to make the Legal Corps something that our graduates will brag about being a part of. That, I think, is a critical goal.
If this sort of thing takes off, I wonder if US legal education will end up with a de facto equivalent to a medical residency, or the UK barrister's pupilage and solicitor's articles. There are pluses (it can be very good training) and minuses (more time before the graduate starts earning a real salary) to these semi-apprenticeship models, but it's something to think about. Arguably, we've had something like that already with judicial clerkships (although they pay better) but we limited them to a small number of students.
Below I reprint the University of Miami School of Law's press release, issued today, announcing the Legal Corps program:
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