The Utah Bar Commission wants to know if it should start telling the public which law school a lawyer attended. According to the most recent edition of the Utah Bar eBulletin (Nov. 2003, vol. 2) (emphasis added),
“Information obtained by the Bar indicating the law school from which a lawyer has graduated has by policy been considered non-public and accordingly has not been disclosed to the public.”
The Commission is seeking your opinion regarding whether or not the name of the law school from which a lawyer has graduated should remain confidential as a matter of privacy or may be disclosed to the public to assist in lawyer selection and because such information is already almost universally available in a variety of published voluntary listings.
Please send your comments by January 31, 2004 to Bar Executive Director John Baldwin at barsurvey@utahbar.org.
Frankly, I had no idea this was even an issue in any state, nor how it is treated elsewhere. Using an ethicalEsq? posting concerning disclosure of attorney discipline records (the archives are still available at this site, with access by topic from the right margin menu), I clicked on the Washington State Bar Status Directory and the Illinois Bar’s Lawyer Search and found that neither state lists the school attended as part of the publically available record online.
Why shouldn’t this information be publically available? Clearly, consumers might find the law school attended to be relevant when starting a search for a lawyer — especially when they have very little additional information upon which to begin a selection process that can be quite time-consuming. Lawyers often want to know this information about other attorneys, and they know how to find it quickly from many sources, but the average consumer does not. Is the bar worried about unfair advantages or disadvantages stemming from the general reputation of particular schools?
Is this the snobbery problem that we bounced around back in September, starting with Scheherazade‘s Why Are Lawyers Such Snobs, Ernie‘s Does It Matter Which Law School You Went To? and Prof. Bainbridge‘s question Is the legal profession a den of credential snobs? We piped in here.
Utah has only two ABA accredited law schools, so I quickly checked out their USNews ranking to see if there is some great disparity in prestige that might have caused certain bar members to wish to cover up their academic background. However, Brigham Young is ranked 31st and University of Utah 40th, so that does not seem to be a problem (at least in this era).
I think an interested consumer should be able to easily find out what law school a lawyer attended. Calling such information “confidential” seems absurd, and I don’t think we can or should generalize about how any particular consumer might use or abuse such information. (E.g., some folks would want to avoid Ivy League lawyers, and others might feel far more comfortable with someone educated at a local school.) I know she’s cavorting at a bankruptcy law conference in Palm Springs right now, but I’d like to know what Scherazade would say about this. And, you, too. [Note: Scheherazade did respond, and I to her. You can follow the discussion thread here.]
- Afterthought (12-11-03): Re-reading our October 3 posting Consumers Deserve Better Lawyer Referral Services this morning, I noticed that then-ABA president-elect Robert A. Hirshon called for giving consumers information on lawyers’ educational background, in order to make lawyer referral systems more user-friendly. (see ABA’s 2000 National Lawyer Referral Workshop.) Also, the Florida Bar’s Statement of Client’s Rights for Contingency Fees affirms “(3) Before hiring a lawyer, you, the client, have the right to know about the lawyer’s education, training, and experience.“
First, David, I recommend you enable your blog to accept comments from those who don’t wish to publish their email addresses. I just lost a long and better-written comment than this will be when it was not accepted for that reason.
As to the question, I wonder whether how the Utah bar association would respond to inquiries about what a particular lawyer’s zodiac sign were? It is information that might help some clients choose a lawyer who would work well with them, and it is information the Bar Association has at its fingertips, and it is info that people in the know could find out pretty easily via Martindale Hubble or something.
The easy answer is that of course the Bar Association shouldn’t hide something that is not “confidential,” that consumers want to know, and that lay people would naturally look to the Bar Association to find out. The harder part is the implication that the Bar Association is signing on to the consumer’s presumption that knowing the name on a lawyer’s diploma will tell them whether that lawyer will represent them well in a particular matter.
I don’t know what it means to be a good lawyer yet, but the best lawyers I know are smart, practical, down-to-earth, and enjoy good relationships with other attorneys. They have a great bedside manner with clients. Show me the law school that gives this to people who don’t have it, or that takes it away from people who do, and I can get excited about consumers “right to know” this information.
Comment by Scheherazade — December 7, 2003 @ 5:03 pm
First, David, I recommend you enable your blog to accept comments from those who don’t wish to publish their email addresses. I just lost a long and better-written comment than this will be when it was not accepted for that reason.
As to the question, I wonder whether how the Utah bar association would respond to inquiries about what a particular lawyer’s zodiac sign were? It is information that might help some clients choose a lawyer who would work well with them, and it is information the Bar Association has at its fingertips, and it is info that people in the know could find out pretty easily via Martindale Hubble or something.
The easy answer is that of course the Bar Association shouldn’t hide something that is not “confidential,” that consumers want to know, and that lay people would naturally look to the Bar Association to find out. The harder part is the implication that the Bar Association is signing on to the consumer’s presumption that knowing the name on a lawyer’s diploma will tell them whether that lawyer will represent them well in a particular matter.
I don’t know what it means to be a good lawyer yet, but the best lawyers I know are smart, practical, down-to-earth, and enjoy good relationships with other attorneys. They have a great bedside manner with clients. Show me the law school that gives this to people who don’t have it, or that takes it away from people who do, and I can get excited about consumers “right to know” this information.
Comment by Scheherazade — December 7, 2003 @ 5:03 pm
Sorry about your lost Comment, Sherry — wish I could have seen it. I had no idea that an e-mail address is absolutely required, but I’m not sure if I want to ditch that requirement. I’d suggest putting in a fake e-mail address — make sure it has an @ (and make up the domain name, if that would make you feel more comfortable.
As to the law school disclosure issue, it seems to me that the consumer often has very few (if any) pieces of information when starting to look for a lawyer, and that the law school attended is a lot more relevant than most other types of information that are likely to be readily available about each lawyer (and already collected by the Bar).
The consumer wants to feel comfortable with the chosen attorney on a number of levels other than the very broad notion of being “represented well in a particular matter.” And, whether lawyers like it or not, the consumer is the boss. Therefore, the consumer should get to choose which pieces of information are relevant to beginning the process of choosing a lawyer.
There may be very few consumers for whom the law school attended matters, but they should be allowed that quirk, especially since there certainly are a lot of lawyers who think it matters.
If a wife, whose spouse has just retained a divorce lawyer who went to X Law School, would prefer someone who went somewhere else, should she have to call around to law firms for the information, as opposed to making a getting online to the Bar Commission?
You give the consumer very little credit (bankruptcy joke!) if you think that he or she will misuse the information, or that each will have the same conceptions or preferences about various law schools. The law client is often buying a very expensive “package,” and the name on the diploma might indeed be a part of that package that is relevant to the client — whether the consumer is a snob or a populist.
Comment by David Giacalone — December 7, 2003 @ 7:40 pm
Sorry about your lost Comment, Sherry — wish I could have seen it. I had no idea that an e-mail address is absolutely required, but I’m not sure if I want to ditch that requirement. I’d suggest putting in a fake e-mail address — make sure it has an @ (and make up the domain name, if that would make you feel more comfortable.
As to the law school disclosure issue, it seems to me that the consumer often has very few (if any) pieces of information when starting to look for a lawyer, and that the law school attended is a lot more relevant than most other types of information that are likely to be readily available about each lawyer (and already collected by the Bar).
The consumer wants to feel comfortable with the chosen attorney on a number of levels other than the very broad notion of being “represented well in a particular matter.” And, whether lawyers like it or not, the consumer is the boss. Therefore, the consumer should get to choose which pieces of information are relevant to beginning the process of choosing a lawyer.
There may be very few consumers for whom the law school attended matters, but they should be allowed that quirk, especially since there certainly are a lot of lawyers who think it matters.
If a wife, whose spouse has just retained a divorce lawyer who went to X Law School, would prefer someone who went somewhere else, should she have to call around to law firms for the information, as opposed to making a getting online to the Bar Commission?
You give the consumer very little credit (bankruptcy joke!) if you think that he or she will misuse the information, or that each will have the same conceptions or preferences about various law schools. The law client is often buying a very expensive “package,” and the name on the diploma might indeed be a part of that package that is relevant to the client — whether the consumer is a snob or a populist.
Comment by David Giacalone — December 7, 2003 @ 7:40 pm
Speaking as a consumer, not a lawyer, who follows many of these legal blogs (out of some twisted curiosity) I can assure you that average consumers *do* care a great deal… the prestige of the law school you did or didn’t attend has a direct reflection, warranted or not, on your abilities as a lawyer.
Consumers look for that diploma when they enter your office, and they glance to see where it’s from. It might not be a deal maker or breaker, but they definitely notice.
Comment by Dave! — December 9, 2003 @ 2:57 pm
Speaking as a consumer, not a lawyer, who follows many of these legal blogs (out of some twisted curiosity) I can assure you that average consumers *do* care a great deal… the prestige of the law school you did or didn’t attend has a direct reflection, warranted or not, on your abilities as a lawyer.
Consumers look for that diploma when they enter your office, and they glance to see where it’s from. It might not be a deal maker or breaker, but they definitely notice.
Comment by Dave! — December 9, 2003 @ 2:57 pm