Robert R. Kuehn (Washington University; Google Scholar), How New Lawyers Value Law School Experiential Training:

While the legal academy continues to debate the appropriate role of experiential training in preparing graduates for practice, one group consistently embraces its value: newly-licensed lawyers. In repeated surveys over the past twenty years, early career lawyers, as well as experienced attorneys, report that law clinic, externship, and simulation courses play an important role in legal education. The research summarized herein demonstrates that newly-licensed lawyers highly value their law school experiential courses, deem them important in their transition to practice, and believe their legal education did not sufficiently prepare them for practice.

The most extensive research on early career lawyers are the After the JD surveys by the National Association of Law Placement (NALP) and American Bar Foundation that tracked more than 4,500 lawyers over the first ten years of their practice. Survey respondents were asked to rate the helpfulness of various law school experiences in their transition to practice on a scale of 1 (“not helpful at all”) to 7 (“extremely helpful”). After two years of practice, clinical courses and internships rated a median score of 5, ahead of upper-level lectures, first-year courses, and course concentrations, all with a median of 4, but behind employment during the summer and school year.

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