Young lawyers depart law school with thousands in debt and no jobs. Older lawyers refuse to retire for either financial or personal reasons. Potential clients represent themselves, shunning would-be lawyers because of high costs.
“This is a recipe for disaster,” said Brad Gallant, 59, president of the Connecticut Bar Association. “We need to think about what the consequences will be if thiscontinues.”
Gallant assumed the presidency of the Connecticut Bar Association on July 1, heading an organization whose membership dwindled to 9,500, reflecting the nationwide trend in voluntary industry associations.
With his profession in turmoil, Gallant wants to remind Connecticut lawyers what it means to be lawyers, which includes preparing the next generation for the future. The theme for his one-year presidency: equal protection.
“My purpose in choosing equal protection is to remind lawyers why they became a lawyer, so they don’t worry about billable hours all the time,” Gallant said. “We are a profession, not a trade, and if we lose sight of that, then we become a trade.”
As young lawyers without jobs at law firms need to pay bills, they will be less discriminating about the cases they take, giving credence to ill-advised claims, Gallant said. At the same time, young lawyers won’t get the mentoring or training they need from more experienced attorneys, hampering their long-term development.
This crisis burdens the future of the profession and society as a whole, Gallant said. Lawyers need on-the-job training and continual education; and having an army of litigators without necessary skills is perilous.
“I’m very concerned young lawyers will make a silly mistake when they are first getting started, and it will haunt them for the rest of their careers,” Gallant said. “Once a lawyer loses their reputation, it is gone.”
To help the profession, particularly training young lawyers, Gallant is promoting and developing Connecticut Bar Association programs that help lawyers get the experience they need, even if they don’t get the pay they want.
The bar has a mentoring program where young lawyers are matched with experienced lawyers who help guide them through their early years in the field. Gallant, who has practiced law for 32 years, had three mentors when he was starting out and said their guidance made all the difference in his professional development.
“They didn’t teach me the ins and outs of the job necessarily; they taught me how to be a lawyer,” said Gallant, who is a partner at the New Haven offices of Day Pitney LLP.
The bar association encourages its young lawyers — particularly those still looking for a job — to take as much pro bono work as possible. By working with real clients with real problems, they get necessary experience.
“They’ve got to get out there and start practicing law,” Gallant said.
The bar also has continuing education programs for young and old lawyers alike, helping them learn the intricacies of the ever-changing profession.
But, Gallant notes, none of these bar programs create jobs for young lawyers, still leaving them hungry for a paycheck.
Part of the problem is the practice of law is getting more complicated as new technology emerges, causing law firms to change how they hire and operate. Research, for example, is a lot easier and quicker with the Internet.
The larger issue is there isn’t enough work for the number of lawyers in Connecticut. In family law, for example, 80 percent of all divorce cases have one or both sides self-represented, Gallant said. The high cost of hiring a lawyer is pricing out people who really need representation.
The legal profession could develop a different pricing model where a client hires a lawyer only for a certain aspect of their case — child custody, for example — and the client does the rest on his or her own.
“We are certainly open at the Connecticut Bar Association to being creative,” Gallant said. “We are open to different models.”
Of course, the profession’s recipe for disaster is much more than a Connecticut Bar problem, Gallant said. The issues need to be addressed by law schools, firms, state and federal governments and society as a whole.
But in his 12 months as president — the bar’s executives are limited to one-year terms — Gallant plans to do what he can to set the profession up for the future.
“Being the president of the Connecticut Bar Association is a tremendous honor for any lawyer,” Gallant said. “Ultimately, it is the ability to try to improve the administration of justice for the people of Connecticut.”
