Professor Hollis discussed in class how smaller organizations are often the first to “disrupt” the market, as they are more open to change than larger, more traditional institutions. This article echoes her sentiment.
The article states: “There are 1,281,432 attorneys in the United States, of which 470,926 of those attorneys are entrepreneurs.” Many of these “entrepreneurial attorneys” own their own firms as solo practitioners.
The article states that “[w]ith such a large and growing fraction of the legal sector launching their own firm, one must ask whether law schools are doing enough to prepare law students for entrepreneurship.” Interestingly, it’s not the T-14 schools that are trailblazing the path for entrepreneurial classes at law school. The article hones in on University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law and Marquette School of Law as trailblazers in entrepreneurial law classes.
Interesting read, and it’s certainly curious to think about the trend in law school classes: 10 years from now, will 1Ls still be enrolled in a traditional core curriculum? Will there be more entrepreneurial elective courses (or maybe even required courses)?
My good friend Tony Luppino has been instrumental in incorporating entrepreneurship content into UMKC’s curriculum and co-curricular offerings. The “traditionallly” highly-ranked schools simply have no incentive to change what they have been doing. By the time their consumers demand it., other institutions have been doing it long enough to do it better. Does that change rankings? No. At least – it hasn’t thus far. But more people are realizing that the bases for ranking institutions of higher education are at least 30 years out of date. When the public catches on to that, things will change much more quickly, and we’ll see a lot of surprises.