17 Dec Top French Law Firms Requiring UK and US Law Degrees
I don’t know very much about French legal education, but I’m still surprised by this article, which claims that because France lacks a first-rate law school, the most prestigious French law firms are now requiring their new hires to have an American or British law degree:
It isn’t easy for corporate law firms to find qualified law-school graduates in the land of Montesquieu, one of the founders of modern Western legal theory.
“Because law schools are so weak in economics and out of touch, people who want to be corporate lawyers go to business schools,” said Ted Kamman, an American partner at Clifford Chance in Paris.
Louis Vogel, the president of France’s oldest law school at the University of Paris II Assas-Pantheon, is trying to change that…
Vogel is battling France’s two-tiered system of higher education, where top high-school graduates compete for spots in the Grandes Ecoles, which offer engineering, government and business degrees. The study of law is left to public universities that are open to anyone who has passed the “baccalaureat” high- school exit examination.
The university system prevents Vogel from selecting his students and restricts funding. Yale Law School accepted 6.9 percent of its applicants this year, has 643 students and a $660 million endowment. Paris II has 18,000 students and no endowment.
[snip]
[T]he legal profession doesn’t have the same importance in France as in many other countries. There’s one lawyer for every 2,461 Frenchmen, compared with one for every 694 Britons and one for every 320 Americans, according to United Nations statistics.
While that’s beginning to change with the surge in cross- border mergers, international firms often recruit lawyers at the Grandes Ecoles, not French law schools.
Renaud Bonnet, a recruiting partner at Jones Day in Paris, said top candidates need business or economics degrees from a Grande Ecole and an American or British law degree.
“It’s no longer enough to just do law school,” he said.
I wish the article had been more specific about the kind of UK law degree the French firms want. Is an undergraduate law degree — the LLB — enough, or do they look for a graduate degree like an LLM or MPhil? In my experience, good LLB students are just as capable as good JD students, even if they have three years less of college (the LLB normally takes four years). So I wonder if the French firms differentiate between undergraduate and graduate law degrees.
I’d be very interested in hearing the reaction of French or French-educated readers to the article.
The story is true, but it’s not about the relative quality of French / English-US law schools. Remember that lawyers in France, even in US/English law firms, will be practicing French law, so knowledge of US or English law can be useful when talking to a US client, but is largely irrelevant otherwise. In fact, it’s all about selection. Who do you pick as a junior associate when you are a law firm? conversely, how do you get noticed by the top firms when you are a freshly qualified lawyer? US Law schools provide that service to law firms and students alike, by having competitive entrance requirements. Therefore, once you are accepted at Yale, you pretty much have a cushy job waiting for you after graduation. France works the other way: anyone with a high school degree can start law, but you then spend the following years surviving the weeding out and trying to differentiate yourself. The first selection is at university. Although law universities do not select their students at entrance level, only about 25 percent of first-year students will eventually reach the fourth-year. The others flunk out, especially during the first two years, that are largely designed for… Read more »
I could not help but notice that the persons quoted were from the Paris office of an American lawfirm and the Paris office of a UK lawfirm. And all but one of the firms that are cited in the article are persons from the french offices of non-french lawfirms. As compared to 20 years ago when most American lawyers only had an American degree while practicing in American lawfirms in Paris, with the merger of the professions in France it seems that one finds more Americans also getting a french degree when they want to work in a lawfirm located in France. So I suspect the forces are working both ways as to the selection of persons to work in these offices. And the additional degree is not so much important as a degree but as a filter that suggests one is “Anglicized”. As this kind of training abroad is expensive and is therefore likely only for the most elite students with significant funds, it appears neutral but really helps to keep out of these jobs all but the children of the french superelite. I wonder whether french lawfirms such as Gide Loyrette Nouel or other french lawfirms as opposed… Read more »
I agree with everything Sylvian said. Consider the recruitment page for Freshfields’ Paris office: “All candidates who apply for a position in Paris must have a CAPA (Bar exam), be fluent in English and preferably have a ‘double education’. For example, candidates may have studied law and conducted a business course or studied law and achieved an LLM.” One argument may be that French law schools aren’t as good, but I think another is that these types of additional requirements will only become more prevalent for lawyers worldwide. Consider the following commentary on the PIL field from this year’s Chambers Global: “Due to the growing number of ICSID disputes relating to Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and the call for expertise in this area, many firms are developing their practices in the field. However, there is a tendency for lawyers to come at this from a commercial arbitration angle rather than the more academic PIL discipline. It is hard to get the balance right, but one leading practitioner commented: ‘The smart firms have gone out and hired PIL PhD students.'” Perhaps French law firms are simply ahead of the curve. A JD, LLB, etc. simply does not offer the skills needed… Read more »
My school, Washington College of Law, has a sizable LLM program for foreign students, and increasingly I get French law students – as in ten or so this year, and 8-10 last year – in my IBT and finance classes. Plus nunmerous students from Spain, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. Part of the attraction at the moment is the exchange rate – a US education is relatively a bargain. The backgrounds of the students are not necessarily superelite French students. Some are, but I would say many more are students who came from good but not absolute top universities. As many, many of them have said to me in the last couple of years, they have found that the top positions in French law are often closed to them, and that going abroad, first via the increasingly customary and increasingly elite French-British joint legal education (Nanterre, eg), where they get their English down cold, and then to the United States for a LLM that both teaches them a lot of economics and finance that they don’t get in Europe. It allows them, as I am often told, a sort of end run around the very rigid and closed internal French system… Read more »