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What skills do new lawyers need? Lawyers asked to provide answers in new survey
June 12, 2025, 12:39 pm CDT
What kind of lawyering skills will be needed as artificial intelligence and new technologies change the profession? (Image from Shutterstock)
What kind of lawyering skills will be needed as artificial intelligence and new technologies change the profession?
That is one question that may be answered by practicing lawyers who are being asked to respond to the Foundations 2.0 survey being emailed beginning Monday. The survey is sponsored by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver and the Law School Admission Council.
The survey seeks to identify the skills and competencies that new lawyers need to be ready to practice and to be effective. The results will provide guidance to law schools that may want to incorporate the findings into their curricula, as well as bar associations that provide continuing legal education to lawyers.
“We are hoping we can use this research to create a competency model for the profession,” says Zachariah J. DeMeola, the senior director of strategic initiatives for the LSAC. “We look at it as a real investment in the future.”
The profession may be realizing that, with automation, certain skills will become more important in the future, DeMeola says.
“Machines will have trouble replicating the human element,” including interpersonal communications, strategic thinking and practical judgment, he explains.
DeMeola stresses the importance of responding to the survey, which is being emailed to lawyers by state bars and the two groups that are jointly spearheading the survey. It will be available for about a month and will take 15 to 25 minutes to complete.
Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer, who helped coordinate distribution of the survey in her state, is calling on lawyers to take the survey.
“To ensure competent representation within our legal system, we need lawyers who are thoroughly prepared—not just at the time of graduation but as they grow throughout their careers,” Timmer said in a statement. “The Foundations 2.0 survey gives us an important opportunity to hear directly from lawyers about the competencies needed from Day One, the skills essential to develop in the early years of practice, and how the profession can best support that development. I strongly encourage all lawyers to take a few minutes to participate. Your insights will help shape how we educate, license and support lawyers across the profession.”
More than 24,000 lawyers from all 50 states responded to the first Foundations for Practice survey that launched in 2014. The hope is that lawyers responding to the new survey will represent every legal field and every geographic and demographic sector, according to online information here and here.
The first Foundations survey was followed by focus groups, leading to a Building a Better Bar report on the building blocks of minimum competence. Information from those initiatives is being used by Oregon and Utah as a blueprint for efforts to create alternative pathways to bar admission, DeMeola says.
DeMeola thinks that there is still a skills gap among new lawyers. He points to several recent studies, including a 2024 survey in which 45% of junior associates said law school did not sufficiently prepare them for their current role.
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