Claim:
Summer job placements are essential for Law School students to gain legal training and experience and to find productive jobs upon graduation. *** the proposed law school would be 30 miles from Naples Florida, a City of 22,000 people in a metropolitan area with few firms and more than a handful of lawyers.
Response:
At a national law school, students find summer employment throughout the country, many back home where they hope to practice, which is far wiser professionally. In any event, it betrays either gross ignorance or an outright attempt to deceive to say Naples is a City of 22,000 people. Technically, there are only 22,000 residents in the City limits. However, the metropolitan area constitutes about 301,000 people which swells to about 500,000 during the winter months. Bordering Collier County - and for all intents and purposes part of the same metropolitan area - is Lee County, with a population of 540,000, (by contrast Washetnaw County has only 341,000 people). More national law firms have offices in Collier and Lee County than in Detroit, and the top law firms in the nation have offices in Miami. Further, the Florida legal market with 17 million people is nearly twice the size of Michigan with only 10 million people.
Indeed Florida's economy and the whole South in general, has been expanding at record pace, and Southwest's Florida's economy has been among the fast growing in the nation. (U.S. Census)
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