Bloomberg Law recently released the results of its Law School Preparedness survey and announced its newly added resources for law students, including an “In Focus: Law Student Development” page.
The new In Focus page provides resources that help students develop critical lawyering skills and aid in their early career choices by identifying what type of work is commonly performed by a given type of attorney, information on how to get started in those positions, and how to make lateral moves to other positions.
The page also provides Bloomberg Law tools to help law students with coursework and research, including law review and law library resources and information on circuit splits. It provides guides to well-being to help navigate the stress of school while seeking post-graduation employment.
Also available on the new In Focus page are the results of Bloomberg Law’s biannual Law School Preparedness survey, which measures perspectives on readiness to enter the profession. Bloomberg Law surveyed more than 2,700 individuals in the fall of 2023, including practicing attorneys, law students and others in the legal profession. Each group was asked about
their law school experiences and opinions throughout their professional career.
Among the survey’s key findings:
• Knowledge of legal tech saw the largest rise in importance for attorneys, with 62% suggesting new lawyers should study legal technology, up from 39% just months ago.
• More than 70% of those surveyed support the idea of students learning to use generative AI (artificial intelligence) as part of their legal education. Only 6% of those surveyed are “strongly opposed” to teaching law students to use the technology in their practice.
•About half of practicing attorneys think law students should learn to use AI for legal research, but most students and teachers don’t know whether their school teaches any AI use at all or are sure that it doesn’t.
• Attorneys rate the junior associates they supervise as most skilled at digital literacy and tech savviness, and least-skilled at negotiations and business development.
• Teachers, including anyone who teaches law students, including some practicing attorneys, rated new attorneys as highly skilled at spotting and analyzing issues by the time they graduate.
• Nearly half of current students describe their overall well-being as having gotten worse since starting law school, with most relating law school to increased anxiety and trouble sleeping.
To download a copy of the Law School Preparedness survey, visit aboutblaw.com/bcPH or for more information, visit Bloomberg Law.
