Al Podboy, Director of Library Services, authored an article, "Apocalypse Know," which was published in the January 2010 edition of Practice Innovations: Managing in a Changing Legal Environment, a Thomson West publication.
According to Podboy, "The current economy has caused law firms to reduce new associate hiring, leaving law students with limited employment opportunities. The students' resulting anger and frustration at a perceived failure of their legal education has established an apocalypse of knowledge that has created a new opportunity for legal education and professional training."
Podboy continues: "The new legal associate hiring business paradigm has created for legal education an opportunity to reevaluate and retool its curriculum and educational methodology. This curriculum and methodology have long been criticized as being too theoretical and not rooted in practice. Unlike earlier critiques, however, the current push for legal education reform is marketplace driven. The current associate hiring market is forcing legal education to reevaluate its educational model and discuss or develop a practice-oriented, educational team approach, which will train a new generation of self-sufficient, flexible, tech-savvy, networked attorney lifelong learners. This will result in a team that integrates traditional legal scholarship methodologies with technology in a functional, practice/process-oriented collaborative network.
Click to read the full article from the Practice Innovations website.