I had planned to write a post in response to BoardBuzz's interesting post today about law schools changing their curriculum to be more practitioner oriented and whether that would affect schools (probably not was my conclusion). Also, I wanted to send a thank you to Andrew Paulson for calling school law: "a new and exciting field" (which obviously I agree with and appreciate). But, instead of a extended essay about how lawyers enter educational law later in their careers, I stumbled on something much cooler to post on.
Check this out. Okay, so I wanted to show how school law is not promoted at law schools, so I cruised around a few of the top law schools to show that they have student organizations for just about everything ... except educational law. Well ... um ... turns out my assumption was wrong. Now, that was not totally an assumption on my part. While in law school at Southern Illinois I researched starting an educational law society, but I didn't find much and it seemed a fruitless endeavor at the time, so I didn't pursue it. Well, only 4-5 short years later, I was shocked to see not just one, but SEVERAL educational law associations at major law schools. Here are a few for instance: Advocates 4 Education (Harvard); Project for Law and Education at Yale; Duke Education Law and Policy Society; Youth and Education Advocates of Stanford; Youth and Education Law Society (Cal); Georgetown Organization for Educational Law; I could go on (and may in a later post).
How cool is that, right? What a great sign!!! It really made my evening (which otherwise was devoted to t-tests, so it didn't take much).
However, as of yet, these groups are still largely unorganized nationally. There is no central organization behind these efforts that could provide technical assistance and even dollars to these students and law professors that are breaking new ground. Now that there seems to be a critical mass of educational law entities at law schools, it only makes sense that there should be some national organizational structure to allow these groups to communicate and collaborate. The Education Law Association should be actively marketing to the leaders of these groups and assisting them in their organizations. I think that membership in a Law School-based education law student organization should be enough to grant the members of that organization free membership in the Education Law Association. Further, I think the leaders of these groups should have free admittance to the Education Law Association conference each year ... and given a session and some meeting space so that they can talk and work on the issues they are having.
Young lawyers in education are a good thing, period. Education does not suffer from too many lawyers, we suffer from too few. I know my administrator and teacher readers are rolling their eyes as they read this, but believe me, a crop of young lawyers would be great for education. It is not that these young people are any more passionate than other young people presently in education, or that they would fight any harder ... it is that they would fight smarter for change (they are trained to change things and resolve problems). Fighting for change in courtrooms, boardrooms, and committee rooms is a lot different than fighting for change in university classrooms. Both are necessary, but right now education really lacks an advocate in many important locations.
On top of that, instead of mid-career lawyers switching to education (which I would argue accounts for the largest percentage of our school attorneys) young lawyers would be more apt to take leadership roles in educationally based professional organizations, would be more apt to cross boundaries, would be more apt to work with local universities, would be more apt to do professional development ... there is a whole range of positive effects that a younger generation of lawyers may have on education. Not that our present crop of school attorneys are bad, not by any means. It is just their priorities are pretty set by the time they approach partner status in law firms and those priorities might not include some of these additional activities that could really benefit education.
Anyway, to close what turned out to be a rather lengthy and fun post, yes education law is a "new and exciting field" but we still have a long, long way to go before we develop a consistent crop of young lawyers. However, we are making exciting progress. And the best part is that it is grassroots progress. Law students are seeing a need and answering the call. Sort of warms my heart.
NSBA's Council of School Attorney's: Is a Career in School Law Right for You.