Incubators

January 3rd, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt

Several years ago, my city’s bar association started an incubator program for new lawyers. The program is small, but draws positive reviews from a few graduates I know. More recently, I read that IIT Chicago-Kent’s College of Law had started an incubator for its alumni. This article in the Illinois Bar Journal offers a good opportunity to think about incubators–as well as about the relative merits of incubators housed at law schools or in the community.

The Chicago-Kent incubator currently hosts five new lawyers, all of whom graduated from the school. The lawyers receive free office space, along with access to copiers, the school’s law library, and Westlaw/Lexis subscriptions. Clinic faculty mentor the new lawyers and can also refer cases to them. In return, the incubating lawyers donate up to ten hours a week helping the clinic with its cases. An incubator lawyer, for example, might handle a status call that the clinic students are unavailable to cover. The new lawyers also pay for their own malpractice insurance.

Incubators, whether housed in a law school or practice community, have several attractions:

(1) They provide a safety net for new lawyers who want to establish a solo or small practice. Law faculty or practitioners can help the new lawyers handle unfamiliar challenges. Some incubators also develop regular programming to instruct participants in ethical issues, office management, marketing, and other matters.

(2) The incubator reduces overhead costs for fledgling lawyers. Universities and bar associations often can provide heat, light, libraries, and other amenities at lower cost than the lawyers would find on the market. In at least some cases, the incubator provides these services free–drawing upon excess capacity or altruistic motives.

(3) By training lawyers for effective small-office practice, the incubators may help create competent, reasonably priced providers for low- and mid-income clients. Many incubators complement this public purpose by requiring participants to provide some pro bono service during their time in the incubator.

(4) Lawyers won’t make a lot of money while practicing in an incubator, but they’ll make more than they would as volunteer interns. Incubators give new lawyers a chance to develop some practice skills–which they may be able to market to larger firms, government, or corporations–without forfeiting all income.

But, of course, there are downsides:

(1) Incubators will do little to expand the number of clients who can pay for small-office legal services. Incubators can train lawyers, but can they produce enough paying clients to sustain the lawyer in the long run? Will the incubator graduates simply compete with other solo practitioners for a dwindling number of paying clients?

(2) By the same token, incubators won’t solve the problem of unmet legal needs–unless they help lawyers develop ways to deliver legal services at lower cost. The American public doesn’t suffer from a lack of lawyers; it suffers from a lack of lawyers who can afford to deliver services at rates the public is willing to pay.

(3) If solo practice won’t sustain incubator graduates, they may seek work with other employers. But will larger firms, government agencies, and corporations value the work performed in incubators? Employers seem to give less weight to clinical experience than their demand for “hands on” training would suggest. Will they adopt the same attitude toward incubator experience? Will the incubator work prove worthwhile only for jobs in the same legal field?

What about the differences between law school incubators and practice-based ones? A law school incubator can strengthen bonds among current students, alumni, and faculty. If a clinic has strong community connections, it may also be able to feed the incubator clients, benefiting both those clients and the new lawyers. Clinical law faculty are accustomed to mentoring new lawyers; working with recent graduates builds naturally on work with current students. For the school, there is also the attraction of benefiting its own alumni–and enhancing their employment outcomes.

On the other hand, some law school mentors may lack knowledge about issues that matter to new solo practitioners. Many clinics provide free legal services and benefit from university-provided facilities. Do faculty in these clinics have sufficient experience with budgeting for a small office practice, marketing their services, developing client bases, setting fees, and collecting payments from clients? On some of these issues, and depending upon the school, new lawyers might receive better mentoring from bar-hosted incubators. A bar-based incubator can also create important bonds within the legal community; larger mentoring relationships might grow out of the incubator.

The biggest question for all incubator programs may be: Can schools or bar associations take these programs to scale, so that they benefit more new lawyers? If not, what lessons can incubators offer other organizations that mentor new lawyers? Can the incubators teach law schools or employers how to better educate lawyers?