New York Law Journal:  FDR Did Fine Without a 3L Year:
New York May Let Law Students Once Again Take the Bar Exam After Two Years:

The third year of law school has long been a punching bag for critics
who argue it's a waste of time and drives up the costs of a law degree,
but there have been few serious attempts to do anything about it. Until
now.

Legal educators and top New York state court officials will
gather on January 18 to discuss whether to allow candidates to sit for
the New York state bar examination after just two years in law school.
The idea was floated by Samuel Estreicher, a professor at New York
University School of Law, who believes skyrocketing law school tuition
and diminishing job prospects for new lawyers have created a climate
favorable to reform. …

Estreicher laid out his proposal in an article, The Roosevelt-Cardozo
Way: The Case for Bar Eligibility After Two Years of Law School, in the
New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.
(The title refers to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, both of whom obtained their law
degrees when two years was the norm.) He described two benefits to the
two-year option, not least that the cost of becoming a lawyer would be
reduced by one-third and that, with lower student loan debt, graduates
would be in a better position to take lower-paying jobs representing
low-income clients. Second, an optional 3L year would give schools
incentives to create third-year curricula of more use to students, he
wrote; if students saw no real benefit to the 3L curriculum, they would
sit for the bar exam instead. …

Patricia Salkin, dean of Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center,
fears the two-year option wouldn't satisfy legal employers' demands for
practice-ready attorneys. "If students spend the first and second years
taking core courses, when are they going to develop the practical
skills that firms say they want?" she said. "And for the students, will
the firms hire someone with only two years of law school, even if they
pass the bar?"

The answer to that question, at least for the law
firms, judges and federal agencies that tend to hire a large chunk of
NYU graduates, is likely no, said dean Richard Revesz. He predicted that
few NYU students would be interested in the two-year option. "I'm not a
fan of the proposal," he said. "I think it would not be beneficial, but
I'm interested in hearing a lot of viewpoints." Revesz said he is
skeptical that a two-year option would be an added incentive for schools
to revamp curriculum, given that many — including NYU — have already
changed their 3L curricula or are weighing such reforms.