The Legal Profession in Italy: From Law School to Practice

Alessandro Barzaghi, LL.M.*
abarzaghi@antonellicocuzza.it

PART I: LAW SCHOOLS AND APPRENTICESHIP

A. Law Schools: Ideology Failure

After more than one year spent in the United States, and after working at a U.S. law firm, I sometimes turn back to my past and my beginnings come to my mind. I have a remembrance of my first weeks at my first job in Milano: it is winter time, thick fog was coming down on the city, it’s me leaving the firm at 11pm, totally exhausted, trying to reach my apartment in the suburbs on my moped, getting home with just enough time for a bowl of precooked pasta and a shower.

It was not uncommon for young trainees like me to leave the firm so late at night, precisely like any other junior associate at a New York City law firm. With the material difference, however, that while our New York City colleagues are making $150,000 a year, we are often making a more modest $0. That’s right: many trainees, in Italy, do not get paid at all.

For example, when I started (in 1996, not so long ago), my wage equaled $0. I earned nothing. I had to thank the partners of the firm who gave me the unparalleled opportunity to be working under their divine supervision. After three months, I was called into the office of one of the partners, who, with great pomp, announced that from that day forward I would be paid “Il solito millione,” “The usual (!) $500 a month.” Just enough to pay for lunch and gas for my moped!

The Contemporary Italian Legal System

All the above are nothing but colorful details of real bits of the legal profession in my country. The situation has worsened for trainees in the last decades and the only way to remedy the situation the implementation of a thorough reform. It is definitely more difficult to be a lawyer today than it was fifty years ago, when Italy was coming out of World War II and our economic system was booming. Reforms of access to the legal practice are currently under discussion in the Italian Parliament and should be implemented in the following months. There have been many scandals involving bar exams in the recent Italian past.

This happens because the number of examinees has increased exponentially and the venues where the exam takes place are rarely adequate. Concert arenas have been used, expo stands, indoor soccer fields, huge rooms where up to 6,000 people sit next to each other. I took the exam in the basement of a concert arena. During the exam, for at least 2 hours, the band, which was going to be on stage that night, was rehearsing upstairs, at a pretty audible volume. Needless to say, that did not help us at all in concentrating in what we were doing. It is now clear to many people that the only way to update the system is by means of a radical reform made by legislative intervention.

Italy has a plethora of lawyers, not as many as the United States, but still a very high number. According to recent information, practicing lawyers right now in Italy reached 150,000 (this figure is based on lawyers regularly registering on a special list called “Albo”). The figure is quite amazing, considering that Italy is a Country with 57 million people. This means that 2.5 individuals out of 1,000 are lawyers. France, for instance, has 39,000 lawyers, for roughly the same population. This means a more balanced per capita number of 0.7 lawyers out of 1,000 individuals. Many may object that comparing lawyers in different countries is like comparing oranges and apples, because every country has different rules for accessing the practice of law in a broad sense. Even conceding a margin of error, the final conclusion remains the same: many licensed lawyers barely make a living, and end up to make ends meet by being ambulance chasers. Not dissimilar from what happens, to some extent, in the U.S.

Scholarly Beginnings

In Italy, there is no college. Students usually graduate from high school when they are 19 and dive right into graduate school. Graduate schools have different durations. For example, medical school is 6 years long, engineering school is 5 years long and law school is 4 years long.

Apprentice lawyers ideally graduate from law school when they are 23 years old. The academic system, however, is totally different from the U.S. one and completing law school in 4 years is frequently not the case.

It may very well happen (and in the majority of cases, it does) that it takes for Italians much longer to complete their studies than the standard, pre-fixed 4-year term. The laziest students may even spend 6-8 years in law school before graduating. This is possible because there is no “timeout” provision in Italian Law Schools. In most places, if you do not finish in a prescribed amount of time, the school is likely to kick you out. In Italy, you may stay for as long as it takes you to finish and this is largely the result of the ideology that teaches each individual has a full constitutionally guaranteed right to education. Idealistically, this is a valid and true value, but frequently and unfortunately, it is subject to abuse. Abuses occur mainly because of four factors:

1) Law Schools are free or very inexpensive in Italy (some private schools exist, but their cost does not even get come close to cost of U.S. schools) so being in law school for 1 year or 10 years does not make a big cost difference.

2) Students usually do not move away from their family to go study in another region (Italy is divided in 20 Regions) or city, and therefore they still enjoy the comforts of living at home during their graduate school years. It follows that housing is not usually an issue or an expense for students, who therefore do not feel the urge of speeding up completion of their law school education.

3) There is no ranking among Italian law schools, nor is there any restriction on the numbers of students who are accepted to law school. It does not really make any difference if you graduated from the University of Bari or the University of Milan. Acceptance and enrollment to law school is open to anybody. Therefore, students live in a much less competitive environment. The academic system is structured in such a way that merit is generally not taken in consideration, for the sake of a “we-are-all-equal” ideology that does not benefit students in the long term. The market is, in fact, unable to make a selection of candidates, and therefore the recruiting system is scanty and is often done on the basis of personal contacts. This reflects on students, who, having no incentive to be productive or good students, opt for a more relaxed life and enjoy life in the cafes and clubs.

4) Universities in Italy do not have the meticulous academic organization schools in the United States have. For example, it used to be (this has changed slightly, but the gist remains the same) that students could decide on their own when to take their exams. This was a consequence of the heavy student protests started in 1968 that eventually spread throughout Europe, which was aimed at achieving more rights for the student body. But this ideology became easy prey of abuse: students, basically regulating themselves, decide to postpone ad infinitum their commitments and end up wasting a lot of time (precious time when you are in your twenties).

Law School, being particularly versatile, in the sense that what is learned in law school may be used in many professions, and not so hard in the end, has been elected by many students as a “Parking School,” a school where people park themselves until they decide what they really want to do in life. In many cases, they just take a few exams and never graduate: more than 40% of the student body step out of law school far before graduating and go off to work, and will never access the exams to be taken in order to practice law.

From School to Practice

From this first, very quick overview, the negative aspects of Italian law schools are clear. Nevertheless, one thing must be said, truth be told: the quality of teaching and of the faculty at Italian law schools is, at many times, extraordinary.

This is not an obvious achievement, considering that a professor’s wage at an Italian law school is not more than $ 45,000 a year, while, as many know, superstar faculty in the U.S. often make far more than $150,000 a year. Many times Italian professors earn a great part of their money by sitting on Arbitration Panels (which is much similar to what happens in the U.S.).

Professors in Italy are usually very well trained, and as it is very difficult to reach tenure and by the time they do, they have devoted years if not decades to publishing books, doing research and teaching as adjunct lecturers.

The quality of legal reasoning in Italy, which by many is considered the cradle of Latin tradition legal thinking since the Roman times, is astounding, and leaves foreign scholars open-mouthed when they come to study in Italian Athenaeums. I believe this is a consequence of the depth of our approach, which is always keen to explore each logical consequence of a reason – sometimes up to a degree that becomes, frankly, excessive.

Another peculiarity of Italian law schools (and European law schools in general), which leaves the American student and lawyer bewildered, is that examinations in law schools are usually conducted orally and are held in public (anybody can listen in, although this is often difficult because of the number of people at exams). The student sits in front of the professor (or, because of the massive number of students, before an assistant professor who is helping the professor during exams) and must answer questions on the material studied. The “interview” is usually 30 minutes to 1 hour long, unless the candidate is so poorly prepared that he is sent back to his seat in a shorter amount of time. Questions asked are mainly hypothetical: this is another strong limitation of Italian law schools. Law is frequently learned in a vacuum, with poor contact with real life and actual cases. The direct opposite of what happens in U.S. Law School, where the approach is often hands-on (I know many law students would not agree with this proposition, but believe me, in comparison with the Italian system, the U.S. law school does have a much more practical approach to the study of law).

This method of testing the student’s knowledge, however, is considered very effective, because it requires that the student fully understands the materials so as to be able to formulate a reasoning of his own and enhancing his expressive qualities. In addition, students are not permitted to consult any book whatsoever during exams, and therefore, they are required to process a huge amount of information. Memorizing often helps understanding the material.

Another aspect in which U.S. and European law schools differ substantially is recruiting. As mentioned above because neither ranking nor restricted entry exists, employers usually face a huge number of prospective graduates without being given a tool to evaluate them. They all look alike.

No recruiting in the American sense takes place in the Italian universities, and I am sure many Italian lawyers would be surprised of learning that law firms in the U.S. go to recruit students while they are still in school and it is not vice versa.

Because of the different length of semesters (which in Italy are over in July and start again in September) and the structure of Italian law firms (which are still old-fashioned and definitely not as big and organized as U.S. law firms), the concept of summer associates does not exist in Italy. Students are students all throughout law school and never get to work at all, which is a problem when they start their apprenticeship. Clinics are not part of a typical curriculum at an Italian law school and students graduate with no hands-on experience whatsoever. Much like in the U.S., Italian law school is composed of mandatory classes (such as Civil Law, Public Law, Criminal Law and International Law) and optional classes – more or less the course offering in law school totals 50. The most fun classes I took were “Ancient Roman and Greek Tortures” and “Trade Unions Law.” From Ancient Roman and Greek Tortures, I remember the very peculiar practice of poena cullei, which originated as a form of Roman capital punishment imposed for parricide: the culprit was drowned in a leather sack together with a cock, a serpent, and a monkey. Certainly, not a pleasant experience. From Trade Unions Law, I learned that any important decision in Italian economic life needs to have trade union approval. Without it, it will go nowhere. Gaining union approval is often not a pleasant experience, either.

B. The Tortuous Road to the Bar Exam: Apprenticeship.

When students graduate from law school and want to become lawyers, they must to go through two equally adventurous and arduous things: apprenticeship and the bar exam.

Apprenticeship is two years long and should be of such kind that the young trainee is exposed to as much legal materials and experience as possible. I think that the concept is not too dissimilar from apprenticeship as it existed in the U.S. in the past or the summer clerkship programs now used.

With respect to statistics, the number of women practicing law in Italy is increasing. In 2002, women graduating from Italian law schools were 60% of the total. Among lawyers younger than 30 years old, women represented 51.7% of the total, and this percentage is going up every year. Among older lawyers, things change: women lawyers over 40 years old are only 16.4% of the total. This shows that in the past, the legal profession was seen as men’s business. Of the global population of lawyers, women represent today a respectable 33.7%. Statistics show that many women drop out of the profession after 5 to 6 years, due to difficulties in trying to match family and profession. Women are also virtually not represented in bodies governing lawyers and make considerably less money than their male colleagues. This shows that a lot still needs to be accomplished to grant real equality in the profession.

Italian law firms (especially in small towns and in central and southern Italy) tend to be organized as “workshops” or “boutiques” which revolve around a single lawyer (or, frequently, a family of lawyers), as it was typically in the past. The apprentice is supposed to be assigned to the experienced lawyer, almost a sort of father figure for him, and should learn as much as possible from his mentor.

The attorney-trainee relationship is thought to be very close. This is proved by the peculiar circumstance that, in legal jargon, the mentor is called “dominus,” which in Latin literally means “master,” almost to imply that the trainee be a “slave” to his boss, who should treat him with rigor but enlightened benignity. In reality, the trainee is often a sort of “slave” with too many duties and too few rights. The “slave” often shares with the “dominus” very few moments. To say the truth, this happens mainly because lawyers are so busy during the day that very little time is left for educating trainees.

As noted above, young apprentices do not receive such hefty salaries as their U.S. colleagues. Of course, this is a consequence, in part, of the fact that they do not have to undertake major expenses during their school years. However, this does not seem right because these young Italian clerks often devote long hours to their new job.

Despite their low pay, trainees usually work very hard because: a) nobody really teaches them what they need to know, and thus they often spend a lot of time and effort trying to find answers; and b) they want to prove how capable they are, and thus they try to show off a great eagerness to work (this characteristic usually dissipates after the first year when their ability to do work has increased and therefore, in the end, the total amount of hours spent in the office is the same).

During their second year of traineeship, young lawyers-to-be must attend a certain number of hearings. The purpose of this provision is, of course, that they get used to the legal system and learn how to act in court. After the first year, they are admitted to a lower bar and allowed to become involved in cases where the amount in controversy does not exceed 25,000 Euro.

Most of the time, however (I am referring to the Court of Milan, as it is the one I know better), these hearings are everything but educational. I can only refer to civil law proceedings because that is what I have mainly been involved. First, the hearing is held in the judge’s private office and not in a courtroom. This happens because there is a chronic lack of space at the Milan Hall of Justice and because it is much more convenient to physically sit in the judge’s room so documents must do not travel around the various floors of the courthouse.

Judges frequently schedule more than one hearing at the same time (and more than one lawyer must attend the hearings at the same time), and a paradoxical situation occurs: in the same room, searching through voluminous files, a large number of lawyers, trainees, even clients, all discuss, examine documents, talk heatedly at the same time, creating a situation more similar to a market than a hearing.

Trainees, in such a situation, are usually requested to hurriedly handwrite notes for the court record (no court reporters exist) which some other lawyer (seldom the judge) dictates to them in a very unintelligibly tone. They hardly catch a hint of what is going on in their case and often go back to their law firm having learned absolutely nothing. By way of compensation, their hands hurt and they feel more confused than before. After spending two years in training, young lawyers-to-be are allowed to sit for the bar exam. The actual exam is somehow interesting and peculiar. Its account is worth another article.

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* Alessandro Barzaghi, LL.M., 2003 at University of Pennsylvania Law School, practiced law in Italy for 5 years before coming to the U.S. Mr. Barzaghi specializes in corporate law and mergers & acquisitions. He has just completed a year with Pepper Hamilton LL.P. in Philadelphia as a foreign visiting attorney, before going back to his Italian firm in Milan, Antonelli Cocuzza & Associati (www.antonellicocuzza.it), a fast growing Italian law firm with a prominent international practice.