What Do Legal Employers Want to See in New Graduates?: Using Focus Groups to Find Out

49 Pages Posted: 23 Nov 2013 Last revised: 14 Dec 2017

See all articles by Susan Wawrose

Susan Wawrose

University of Dayton School of Law

Date Written: November 21, 2013

Abstract

What do legal employers expect from new law school graduates? What skills and competencies do employers value most? With the slow legal hiring market and the pressure on law schools to produce graduates with adequate skills to enter law practice, these are burning questions at law schools today. We went directly to typical employers of our law school’s graduates to find the answers. This Article describes the original research of a Bar Outreach Project formed by three legal research and writing professors at the University of Dayton School of Law. We conducted formal focus groups with legal employers and used that data to support updates and revisions to our legal writing courses. This Article describes the methodology of using focus groups for research, discusses the results of our conversations with employers, and offers recommendations for updating legal writing instruction to reflect employer preferences.

Keywords: graduates, employers, skills, professionalism, legal writing, research, focus groups

Suggested Citation

Wawrose, Susan, What Do Legal Employers Want to See in New Graduates?: Using Focus Groups to Find Out (November 21, 2013). Ohio North University Law Review, Vol. 39, p. 505, 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2358060

Susan Wawrose (Contact Author)

University of Dayton School of Law ( email )

300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
711
Abstract Views
5,845
Rank
66,853
PlumX Metrics