President Obama's remarks on the utility of the third year of law school have rekindled public debate over the value of requiring students to finish three years of law school before they can take the bar examination and practice law. We are proposing a Public Service Residency Program as a practical alternative to the third year of law school. We believe that this Program, which can be flexibly implemented in accordance with local legal and political requirements, will produce new lawyers with greater experience and less debt, and thus with more to offer to prospective employers and greater freedom to take legal jobs of their choice and further the needs of the community.

The Public Service Residency Program would be an option that students might select. It would not require law schools or the ABA to change their current requirements for a JD degree.

The parameters of the proposal (which would require action by the State Supreme Court) are set out later, but the nuts and bolts are simple. After completing a core curriculum in the first two years of law school, participating students would, beginning in the summer after the second year, undertake a year's Public Service Residency with a participating law firm, corporate legal office, government agency, or nongovernmental organization. These sponsoring organizations would be responsible for providing the Residents with three things: supervised legal work on behalf of one or more clients involved in public service matters, compensation, and certification at the year's end of the Resident's satisfactory performance. There is no requirement that the sponsoring organization offer the Resident a permanent position at the end of the Residency.