Big,
I feel your pain, but I disagree with your fundamental premise. Experience may or may not help prepary a new associate. I will agree that law school is fairly impractical and could be far more practical if we made the entire third year nothing but clinics. That would help, but I don't think it would have quite the effect you are seeking. For instance. To become a CPA, you have to work under the supervision of a CPA for two years and peform 1,000 hours of supervised audits (in Nevada, anyway) before you are eligible for licensure. You may take the CPA Exam prior to that, but passing the exam does not confer a license until the apprenticeship forms are turned into the state. I find that newly minted CPAs are not much better than newly minted lawyers. As Morten suggested about law, Accounting is also a very broad field. Most CPAs only work on a small cross-section of clients. Even CPAs at large firms generally have a profile of the types of clients they serve. So, even a new CPA, with two or more years under his belt, is really not much more capable than the graduate fresh out of school. A new CPA has some experience and undoubtedly knows more than the fresh graduate, but they are hardly experts and many would not feel comfortable completing big audits without a supervising CPA or managing partner to review their work.
In law, I would think that it is really not much different. A CPA at an accounting firm probably gets far more exposure to accounting than a new associate at a big firm. So, two years at a big law firm would probably not prepare anyone very much for the practice of law, especially because most new associates do little more than research or due dilligence. At least a non-CPA actually does real audit work or real tax work, albeit under the supervision of a CPA. Law is just too diverse a field to require apprenticeship prior to licensure. Would you suggest a different path for a litigator rather than a transactional attorney?
Can a lawyer fresh out of law school win cases? Absolutely. It has happened. One of the major civil rights cases we studied in Civ Pro was won by two fresh law school graduates. Does is happen often? Probably not. Would more practical education in law school correct this? Maybe, but probably not. Ultimately, trial lawyers have an innate talent that they develop in practice. I don't believe that you can teach someone the presence and the soft skills that make one a successful trial attorney. Either you have it or you don't. I do think that you can probably teach practical skills in law school, but there are so many to teach. Ultimately, you learn on the job. That is really how nearly every profession works. Even doctors and dentists, who have some practical experience in school, don't feel very comfortable when the service their first clients. I actually had a long converation with my dentist about this. He said that it took him 2-3 years to feel comfortable doing his job. I found this to be true in accounting, as well. I don't think law school or any school can ever bridge that gap.