You are currently browsing the archives for Deborah J. Merritt.
Take This Job and Count It
January 19th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
In an article in the Journal of Legal Metrics, two Law School Transparency team members outline LST’s methodology for the LST Score Reports, an online tool designed to improve decisions by prospective law students. LST uses employment outcomes, projected costs, and admissions stats to help prospective students navigate their law school options.
Kyle McEntee and Derek Tokaz, the authors of both this paper and the online tool, resist the urge to rank schools on a national scale. Instead, they sort schools by where their graduates work post-graduation, allowing applicants to consider schools by geographic profile. The reports then use reader-friendly terms, like the percentage of graduates who secured full-time legal jobs, to help prospective students make educated decisions about which schools, if any, can meet their needs.
McEntee and Tokaz designed the reports to help prospective law students, but this article has important information for legal educators as well. The U.S. News rankings won’t disappear any time soon, but I think prospective students will begin looking at LST’s Score Reports in addition to the rankings. The reports contain more nuanced information, which prospective applicants will value; they also try to direct applicants into deeper exploration of their law school options.
As McEntee and Tokaz show, employment scores correlate imperfectly with U.S. News rank. As applicants begin to consider these scores, together with more transparent employment information on the schools’ websites, some schools will benefit while others suffer. Schools that under-perform their U.S. News score in job placement may want to explore why. Prospective students certainly will.
The other lesson for educators is that the vast majority of legal hiring is local. Students tend to stay in the city, state, and general region where they earned their law degree. As employers increasingly demand internships and unpaid apprenticeships, this trend may become even more dominant. It is hard to work part-time for a firm in one city while attending class in another. It’s far from impossible these days, with internet commuting, but students who lack face-time with prospective employers will be at a disadvantage. It’s also daunting to relocate after law school without a job in hand.
Law schools may find this information discouraging; most schools cherish their “national reputation” and want to extend it. It’s important to recognize, however, that the best job opportunities for graduates may be local ones. Time that a school spends promoting its national brand may deliver less return for graduates than time spent at local bar meetings.
On the bright side, schools should understand that a “national reputation” can co-exist with primarily local placement rates. That, in fact, is the reality for a vast number of law schools today. People around the country have heard about many law schools, even when those schools place most of their graduates locally. National reputation takes many forms and can pay off in many ways–even for graduates in later years. One lesson that I take from McEntee and Tokaz’s paper, however, is that schools should focus more diligently on their local, state, and regional reputations. That’s where the majority of job opportunities for graduates will lie.
Business Education in Law School
January 18th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Robert Rhee, the Marbury Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland’s law school, is well qualified to write about the relationship of legal and business education. Rhee holds both a JD and an MBA; he has worked as a government lawyer, a law firm partner, and an investment banker; he co-directs Maryland’s Business Law Program; and he authored a book (Essential Concepts of Business for Lawyers) that introduces law students to key business principles.
Rhee’s most recent paper on legal education proposes creation of a “JD/MBL” curriculum. The “MBL” stands for “Masters of Business Law” but, as Rhee quickly explains, this is simply an “idea tag.” The name reflects a focused, interdisciplinary group of business courses pursued as part of the JD program. Candidates completing this work might receive a certificate, but they would not necessarily qualify for a separate master’s degree. Rhee uses the “MBL” name as a handy reference for the program he proposes.
The Program
Rhee’s proposed “MBL” includes (1) most of the traditional first-year courses; (2) Administrative Law, Evidence, and Professional Responsibility; (3) a full range of business-related law courses (Corporations; Partnerships; Income Tax; Securities Regulation; Corporate Finance Law; Partnership or Corporate Tax; Intellectual Property); (4) a set of business courses taught either at the business school or law school (Math & Excel Camp; Management; Financial Accounting; Corporate Finance; Business Communication; Litigation & Management; Managerial Economics; Early Stage Business Advising: Mature Stage Business Advising; Entrepreneurship; Leadership & Teamwork; Strategy); and (5) a few electives.
The curriculum is intense. In fact, my first response was “wow, no wonder business people are disappointed with their lawyers. There’s a lot we don’t know.” I still don’t know enough about practicing or teaching business law to comment on the specifics of Rhee’s proposed curriculum. But as Rhee explores his proposal, he offers a number of other insights that legal educators may find interesting. I summarize those, as well as some of my own reactions, below. Law schools considering the integration of law and business perspectives may find Rhee’s insights useful even if his specific proposal fails to serve their needs.
Integrating Business and Law: Insights
1. Rhee harpoons the notion that a standard JD prepares graduates for careers as corporate executives, investment bankers, management consultants, entrepreneurs, or other “business” people. Some JDs transition into those positions, Rhee acknowledges, but those outcomes stem from very adaptive lawyers who capitalize on unusual circumstances. If law school really prepared students for careers in business, why wouldn’t corporations, investment banks, and management consulting firms regularly recruit at law schools for their business positions? And why wouldn’t more BigLaw associates move into business (rather than in-house legal) positions when winnowed from their firms?
These points sound persuasive to me. A standard law degree might be useful for a student who planned to return to his family business–although, even there, it seems to provide more law and less business training than optimal. But why would a generalist law degree prepare students particularly to work in corporate management or investment banking positions? Those professionals make complex decisions based on bodies of knowledge as specialized as (but different from) the material we teach in law school.
If you have any doubts about Rhee’s argument on this score, take a look at his business-proficiency quiz on pp. 11-12. Answering these questions correctly wouldn’t qualify a student to work as an investment banker or management consultant; a good score would merely make a new lawyer conversant with business terms. Yet a large proportion of law graduates, I suspect, would fail even this basic quiz. Rhee’s rejection of law as a general-purpose degree that prepares graduates for today’s business world is an informed, and useful, counterpoint to generous claims about the versatility of the JD.
2. Rhee, notably, also rejects the utility of a joint JD/MBA for most graduates. The joint degree, he argues, offers too much business for a student who will practice law and too much law for one who will pursue business. A joint degree program can preserve options for a student who isn’t sure which path she will pursue, but it is an expensive option-saver. It is more efficient to develop programs that deliver useful business concepts to future business lawyers, without requiring those students to obtain a full MBA.
Rhee, by the way, notes that he did not obtain his two degrees in a joint program. He first earned his JD, clerked for a federal appellate judge, and worked in the Justice Department Honors Program. He left government for an MBA program precisely because he could not transition into business with a JD alone. Having changed his career goals, he needed a different degree.
3. The most effective way to train business lawyers, Rhee suggests, is through a three-year JD program that includes a heavy dose of business courses. That is his “MBL” model outlined above. This “Goldilocks” model aims to give business lawyers just the amount of business education that they need to gain an advantage in the workplace.
4. Rhee’s article is refreshingly candid in acknowledging that a specialized business program–no matter how artfully designed–cannot trump all other hiring considerations. He acknowledges that his proposal is not the silver bullet that will guarantee business law employment for all graduates. A BigLaw firm’s corporate department probably will hire a Harvard Law graduate over a Maryland one, even if the latter student has more focused business coursework. The proposal, Rhee suggests, will improve education, and may improve initial job placement at the margins. The student who completes an MBL-like program may win an entry-level job away from a peer at a similarly ranked school without such a program; an MBL school should not expect (or promise) more.
5. Rhee notes, however, that MBL courses may prepare a student to outperform peers after securing that first job. A JD with focused business preparation may impress clients and bosses, and may find a more secure workplace niche. This advantage could be useful in today’s workplace, where employers more frequently use apprentices, interns, and fellows; the MBL graduate may stand out in that type of position–as well as in more traditional associate jobs that rely upon the survival of the fittest.
Equally important, the MBL will give the graduate more ability to jump to business positions. The standard JD, in Rhee’s opinion, does not confer the type of business versatility that law schools claim. But a JD that incorporates a significant portion of the MBA curriculum may serve that purpose.
These points strike me as important in evaluating curricular changes at law schools. The job market will be volatile for the foreseeable future; volatility may be a constant for our future graduates. Rather than claim that the conventional JD is versatile, schools could explore how they can make their degree more versatile. No degree can be all things to all people in today’s world. But a JD with a business focus might give graduates options that neither the JD nor MBA alone can deliver.
6. Even for schools with no interest in developing an MBL-like program, Rhee’s review of the potential courses in that program is quite informative. As Rhee points out, most law students have little business, management, or financial competence. Those skills apply to many areas of law practice, not just to serving corporate clients. Almost any lawyer today, furthermore, will benefit from basic competence in these areas just to manage her own practice–or to understand how her organization is managed. Educational reformers of all types may find some of Rhee’s proposed courses useful.
Final Thoughts
There is more in Rhee’s article than the points I’ve outlined here. He discusses, for example, different ways of financing MBL courses, as well as some of the “sacred JD cows” that might have to be sacrificed for students taking part in his program. On the sacred cow side, I’ll note that although I currently teach Evidence (which Rhee would keep for his MBL students) rather than Constitutional Law (which he jettisons), I’m troubled by the idea of students earning a law degree with no knowledge of Constitutional Law. I understand that some schools overdo the Marbury stuff for future business lawyers, but surely we could find 2 credits for some basic constitutional principles?
On the grander scale, Rhee’s paper is useful for law school innovators because of the approach it adopts. Rhee takes a hard look at what the current JD curriculum delivers and what it doesn’t offer. He draws upon his experiences in law practice and business to formulate a specific proposal about how schools might educate students more effectively for careers that span business and law. He’s not afraid to get concrete, even about the elimination of Constitutional Law. And he doesn’t over promise what an MBL track could achieve.
I’d like to see similar proposals for other areas of law practice. What would a JD with a labor/employment, intellectual property, or other focus look like?
Earn the Third Year
January 18th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Samuel Estreicher and Daniel Rodriguez published an op-ed in the New York Times discussing Estreicher’s idea of an optional third year of law school.
Useful Data: JD Starting Salaries Over Time
January 17th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) has just published two graphs illustrating the progression of starting salaries for JD graduates over the last twenty-six years.
First some background information for readers who have not used NALP data: NALP gathers employment and salary information from all ABA-accredited law schools. Schools report the jobs and salaries that their graduates hold nine months after graduation. Salaries reported by 2011 graduates, therefore, were their salaries in February 2012. NALP publishes salary data only for graduates employed full-time in jobs that will last for at least one year; salary figures do not include unemployed graduates, part-time workers, or temporary job-holders.
NALP and the law schools rely primarily upon self-reported salary information from graduates. Schools, however, may supplement reported salaries with ones that are publicly available. In general, the publicly available salaries are from large law firms and federal government positions. Those salaries (especially the ones from large firms) represent the high end of entry-level law salaries. For that reason, NALP cautions that its reported salaries skew high.
Those caveats, however, are less important when comparing salaries over time. Although the median reported salary may be higher than the true median each year, that distortion probably doesn’t change much over time. That’s one reason that NALP’s graphs of salary trends are so interesting.
As the second graph on this page shows, median reported salaries have fluctuated over the last twenty-five years when recorded in constant dollars (i.e., after controlling for inflation). The dotted line, which represents the median for all salaries, peaked in 2002 and–after a slight dip–again in 2009. But the current median is virtually the same as the median back in 1985.
Analyzing median salary by sector is also instructive. The solid black line, at the top of the graph, represents private practice jobs. That median rose sharply between 1996 and 2001, receded somewhat between 2001 and 2004, and rose again to its all-time peak in 2009. The latter rise was so steep that the median reported salary for graduates in private practice almost doubled–in constant dollars–between 1996 and 2009. That heady rise undoubtedly fueled the assumption that law was a golden career with high salaries.
Even during that period, of course, the median masked a great deal of variation. 2009 was the peak year for entry-level salaries, with graduates at firms of 251+ lawyers reporting a median salary of $160,000. But only 6,624 graduates (15.1% of the class) obtained those jobs. A similar number of graduates (6,749) joined firms of 2-10 lawyers. Less than 40% of those graduates reported their salaries, and the ones who did generated a median of just $50,000. (These facts all appear in the chart linked earlier in this paragraph.)
Returning to the graphs showing median salary over time, median reported salaries in private practice have dropped sharply since 2009. The median in private practice, when measured in real dollars, has fallen closer to 1985 levels than to its 2009 peak.
Meanwhile, the same graph shows that median reported salaries for public interest, clerkship, and government jobs have been flat since 1985 in real dollars. The trend line for business jobs is more uneven, but median salaries there have also returned to close to 1985 levels (after controlling for inflation).
Stagnant entry-level salaries might not be surprising in a stable industry. New workers contribute a set value, which doesn’t shift much over time. The pattern is more surprising in an industry like law, which has experienced significant increases in productivity due to technology. Why aren’t new lawyers today, armed with laptops and smart phones, worth more than they were twenty-five years ago?
One answer is that either supervisors or clients are taking that value for themselves. Another is that the new lawyers actually aren’t more valuable: technology and outsourcing have eliminated some of the jobs that new lawyers used to do while they learned more sophisticated skills on the job. If that’s true, and I think there is evidence to support that, then new lawyers are worth less to employers today than they were twenty-five years ago. Those lawyers need to be trained, which costs money, are there aren’t enough profitable tasks for them to do until they are trained.
Whatever the reasons for these salary trends, the marketplace is telling us that today’s law graduates are worth no more than graduates were twenty-five years ago. That’s a sobering message for law schools. We are charging students much more today than we did in 1985. The resulting gap between educational investment and workplace return is driving much of the recent disenchantment with law schools.
he NALP graphs, furthermore, suggest that the gap does not stem solely from the recent recession. For some areas of law practice, salaries for new lawyers have been flat over the full twenty-six years. For most others, salaries have varied modestly and returned to 1985 levels. Only at the largest firms, which provide a declining percentage of jobs, did salaries rise sharply–and, even there, salaries are dropping back toward 1985 levels. Can we figure out how to address this gap between students’ investment and return?
I have posted a permanent link to the NALP graphs on our Useful Data page.
Optional Third Year
January 15th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
What if law students could take the bar exam after just two years of law school? That was the rule in New York until 1911: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Benjamin Cardozo, and many other eminent lawyers skipped the third year of law school after they passed the bar. This Friday, New York judges and legal educators will discuss whether to revive the “Roosevelt-Cardozo” option, allowing law students to qualify for the bar after their second year.
Samuel Estreicher, the Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law at New York University, provoked interest in this option through a paper published last year. Estreicher argues that the option would (1) reduce the cost of gaining bar admission and (2) encourage law schools to develop more useful third-year courses that would keep students in school. Practitioners might also step up, creating apprenticeships targeted at students who had passed the bar after two years of law school.
What are the pros and cons of the Estreicher proposal? Here are a few thoughts, building on those shared by Sam and others who have commented publicly:
Advantages
1. As Estreicher argues, allowing students to gain bar admission after just two years of law school would reduce the costs of obtaining a law license. In addition to saving a year of tuition, students could find paying work to cover living expenses and begin repaying loans.
2. Many students complain about boredom during the third year; many professors notice a significant decline in student engagement. If students find little benefit in their third year, and are able to pass the bar exam without those classes, why not let them start practicing?
3. The bar exam is designed to measure minimum competence. If students can pass the exam after the second year, then they have demonstrated that competence. Conversely, the exam will keep out students who need more time to master legal basics.
4. Law schools have been slow to respond to changes in the marketplace. If the third year of law school becomes optional, schools will have strong market incentives to develop programs that deliver real value to third-year students.
5. Practitioners and bar associations may also attempt to develop programs attractive to students who have passed the bar exam after just two years of law school. Even if employers are reluctant to hire these students for full-time positions, they may accept them into apprenticeships that offer more value than the current third year of law school.
Disadvantages
1. New lawyers who have completed only two years of law school will be even less “practice ready” than lawyers with three years of JD training. In particular, students are less likely to complete clinics or supervised externships during just two years of law school.
2. Under current accreditation rules, students who leave law school after two years will not earn a JD (unless their school offers a special accelerated program). ABA Standard 304 requires students to complete 58,000 minutes of instruction to earn the JD. Students who have completed two years of law school instruction may become lawyers (if states allow that), but they will not be JDs.
3. Law practice is much more complex than in the days of Roosevelt or Brandeis. Two years of instruction might have sufficed to produce a lawyer in 1911, but can the same amount of education produce a competent lawyer today?
4. Employers may not be willing to hire lawyers with only two years of law school training and no JD. If students pursue this option and fail to obtain employment, they may waste the time and money invested in both their legal education and bar study. If these students ultimately return to law school, they will find the third year even more frustrating–and will also have wasted a semester or two in a fruitless job search (although they will have already secured bar admission).
5. If just one state adopts this course, it is not clear how other states will respond. Will other states allow lawyers without a JD to waive into their jurisdictions? If not, these “two year” lawyers will suffer further disadvantages.
What do you think? I’m particularly curious about how potential employers view this proposal. Would you hire a lawyer who had completed just two years of law school but passed the bar exam? Would it matter that the lawyer lacked a JD?
Three/three
January 13th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The ABA allows law schools to admit students who have completed just three years of college. Standard 502(a) provides that “A law school shall require for admission to its J.D. degree program a bachelor’s degree, or successful completion of three-fourths of the work acceptable for a bachelor’s degree, from an institution that is accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the Department of Education.” This rule allows law schools to create “three/three” programs that admit students after three years of college. Students in these programs complete the normal three-year JD program, with their college applying one year of the JD study toward a BA degree. Students thus earn a BA and JD in a total of six years rather than seven.
According to a recent paper by Kyle McEntee, Patrick Lynch, and Derek Tokaz, thirteen law schools currrently advertise three/three programs. Those programs are:
Albany Law/Sage College
Chicago-Kent Law/Shimer College
Columbia University (scroll down)
Creighton University
Fordham University
Georgia State University
Florida Coastal Law/Jacksonville University
Hofstra University
Rutgers University-Camden
Seton Hall Law/NJ Institute of Technology
Southwestern Law/Cal State University
St. Thomas University
Willamette University (scroll down)
Many of the existing programs have strict limits. Creighton offers the option only to business students; Columbia chooses only one or two students a year. All thirteen of these programs, furthermore, reflect partnerships between a single college and a single law school–often under the same university umbrella. In this form, three/three programs serve very few students.
Should law schools expand three/three programs to encompass more students and schools? Here are some pros and cons:
Advantages of Three/Three Programs
1. For students, the programs reduce the cost of becoming a lawyer. Students devote just six years of higher education, rather than seven, to qualifying for the bar. They save a year of tuition and opportunity costs.
2. In most other countries, law is an undergraduate degree. From a systemic perspective, three/three programs could move the United States closer to parity with other nations. If U.S. students and new lawyers are disadvantaged by our longer education track, this change would assist them.
3. From a law school’s perspective, three/three programs may attract students who are otherwise reluctant to invest in law school.
4. Again from the school’s perspective, three/three programs may offer a way to “lock in” attendance by especially talented undergraduates at a partner school.
Disadvantages of Three/Three Programs
1. The programs do nothing to reduce the cost of legal education. As McEntee and his coauthors note in the paper cited above, three/three programs try to solve the problem of soaring law school tuition by cutting a year from college. Former law school dean and university president Gene Nichol sounded a similar theme while speaking at this year’s AALS meeting. Would it be healthier for law schools to address their costs more directly?
2. Unless three/three programs become dominant, the programs may do little to solve the problem of declining law school applications and enrollment. College seniors and graduates won’t care that a few other students saved money by enrolling in a three/three program; these potential applicants will continue to compare the cost of legal education to other graduate and workplace options. If high tuition and a diminished job market are discouraging students from attending law school, then schools need to find a way to address those problems for the bulk of their applicants–not just for a small number who matriculate through a three/three option.
3. The fourth year of college provides significant pedagogic value for many students. College seniors write undergraduate theses, pursue research projects with professors, and study abroad. Students who pursue three/three programs may miss these opportunities, hampering their personal development as well as the contributions they make to law schools and the workplace.
4. The students who would benefit most economically from three/three programs, those with few financial resources, may be the students who most need four years of college. Students from affluent backgrounds have the chance to take college-level courses in high school, travel abroad with their parents, and pursue other special programs before they set foot on a college campus. Less fortunate students only begin to catch up with these opportunities during college. Three/three programs may either give a bonus to wealthy students (who are educationally ready for law school after just three years of college) or further penalize disadvantaged students (who feel financially pressured to combine college and law school).
5. In a three/three program, the student saves a year of college tuition rather than one of law school tuition. If the student attends a low-cost college or has a substantial undergrad scholarship, the tuition savings may be small.
6. Although the ABA allows three/three programs, at least one state (Ohio) severely restricts the ability of these students to take the bar. Ohio’s Supreme Court Rule I.1(B) requires bar applicants to earn a bachelor’s degree (i) before beginning law school or (ii) “through completion of courses and credits other than those received in law school.” This rule precludes three/three applicants from gaining bar admission in Ohio unless their law school is willing to let them take a full year of credits outside the law school. I have not found any other state with this restrictive a rule, but schools or students considering three/three programs should look carefully at bar admission rules. For a quick guide to each state’s rules, check the Directory of Bar Admission Offices on the home page for the National Conference of Bar Examiners.
7. Current three/three programs offer students few, if any, choices among law schools. At least for now, the programs pair a single college and law school. A student who enrolls in one of these programs may sacrifice the opportunity to attend a more prestigious law school, one that would have offered a larger scholarship, or one with other attractions. The narrow focus of these programs similarly limits their utility to law schools. If a law school can strike a three/three partnership with only a few colleges, the number of students admitted under the three/three umbrella will be small.
8. Colleges may resist establishment of three/three programs because they (a) interfere with the liberal arts mission, and (b) reduce undergraduate revenues. Unless colleges are willing to endorse these programs, and to accept credits from a large number of law schools, the programs will remain small.
Unknowns
How will employers react to three/three graduates? Will they treat these students identically to other law students? Or will they find that three/three’s lack maturity or useful educational background? Some law students find jobs by combining undergraduate experiences–gained through externships, part-time jobs, or special study programs–with their law school degree. Will three/three students lack some of these opportunities?
On Balance
A three/three program may offer a useful option for a small number of students; my father obtained his Columbia BA and JD through a three/three program. But these programs seem unlikely to address the larger issues of cost associated with law school attendance. They may even interfere with full preparation of students for the workplace. Developing and administering any program takes time and money from a law school budget. Given the limited pay-off of three/three programs for schools and students, other innovations seem more promising than this one. But what do you think? What other costs and benefits have I missed?
Entering Class Size
January 9th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Preliminary ABA figures show that entering JD class size fell 9% at ABA-accredited schools in the fall of 2012. The fall 2012 enrollment of 44,481 students was 15% lower than the historic high of 52,488 students enrolled in the fall of 2010. This year’s JD entering class is the lowest recorded since 2000, when 43,518 students began their first-year studies.
Some of this attrition was planned. The University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, for example, announced a class-size reduction as part of a comprehensive strategic plan. Other reductions were ad hoc, as schools struggled to find sufficient students after a rapid decline in applications.
We’re deep into another year of declining applications, and many schools are considering both their fall 2013 enrollment and their longer term plans. Entering class size plays an important role in any law school budget or strategic plan. What are the benefits and costs of reducing class size? I list below the considerations I’ve heard from faculty, students, and practitioners around the country.
Please add your thoughts in the comments; I will post an updated list after hearing your feedback. Rather than think through this issue in isolation, we can pool some of our insights here. The right approach for individual schools, of course, may vary widely. But what are the factors for schools to weigh?
Benefits of Reducing Class Size
1. Schools should adjust class size in accordance with the job market. Some observers advance this principle as a moral one, arguing that schools should not charge students for expensive degrees that they know their graduates will have difficulty using. Others adopt a pragmatic approach, noting that informed consumers follow the market: If fewer jobs are available, then fewer students will apply to law school. The market will reduce class sizes for schools, and they might as well adopt a pro-active stance.
2. As applications fall, a reduced class size may be essential to preserve the quality of the student body. Student quality affects classroom instruction, peer interaction, graduate quality, the school’s reputation, and–last but far from least–U.S. News ranking.
3. A reduced class size can improve instructional quality, extracurricular activities, and other aspects of the law school experience. Reducing class size, for example, will allow a school to offer clinical spots to a larger percentage of the class. Similarly, a higher percentage of students may be able to join journals, compete on moot court teams, enroll in popular seminars or simulations, interact closely with faculty, and find mentors among graduates.
4. Reducing class size might improve a school’s U.S. News ranking on several metrics. In addition to maintaining the credentials of entering students, a reduced class size usually will improve a school’s JD acceptance rate, student/faculty ratio, and expenditures per student. Down the road, a reduced class size may also improve placement success and bar passage rates. The change might also improve reputation among members of the bar, if those respondents perceive the action as improving the quality of a school’s graduates or as a responsible action on the school’s part.
5. If other schools reduce class size, then reductions may be necessary simply to keep up with those schools on the U.S. News metrics described above.
6. On-line instruction is advancing rapidly. As these programs improve, schools may be able to maintain a wide selection of courses–even with a smaller number of enrolled students and full-time faculty. To distinguish themselves in an on-line world, in fact, schools may need to offer many more hands-on courses featuring extensive interaction with faculty. Reducing class size now will prepare schools for that shift.
7. Reduced class sizes may allow schools to focus on the education that practitioners and students consider essential: hands-on experience in problem solving, counseling, writing, and the other tasks that form the core of law practice.
Costs of Reducing Class Size
1. If a school reduces class size but maintains its current budget, then tuition will rise for other students. Tuition and graduate debt already are too high. Increasing these burdens further may be professionally irresponsible (as argued by some observers) or counter-productive (if students choose cheaper schools or other career options).
2. Schools may not be able to provide as many educational opportunities to a smaller student base. Some seminars and smaller classes may fail to draw sufficient enrollment. Some student journals, moot court teams, and extracurricular activities may also lack sufficient participation.
3. This fall-off in participation may disproportionately affect newer additions to the law school curriculum. Students, for example, may continue to participate in appellate moot court teams–which have a long pedigree at most schools. They may under-subscribe counseling competitions, transactional meets, and other newer programs that would provide better educational value if they had a chance to gain acceptance.
4. Reducing enrollment is likely to reduce the number of minority, first-generation, and low-income students admitted to law school. Even if the percentages of those students remain steady, their absolute numbers will decrease. Should schools cut back on enrollment while these groups are still seeking access to the profession? Will smaller absolute numbers of students in these categories affect their critical mass? If these issues are a concern, will schools be able to increase the percentage of students admitted from these categories?
5. Some students, faculty, and alumni view size as strength. If a school cuts enrollment, these individuals may view the school as weak or lacking confidence in its quality compared to other schools.
6. If schools reduce class size (and their accompanying budgets), they may adjust course offerings to satisfy the tastes of tenured faculty. This may yield fewer clinics, simulations, and other experiential courses that students and practitioners find highly valuable.
7. No matter its size, every law school class has a bottom half, third, quarter, and ten percent. Reducing class size, in fact, may push more talented students into those lower ranges. If employers pay close attention to class rank–as many seem to have done in the past–then smaller class sizes may not improve employability for graduates. Even at the top of the class, fewer students will qualify for the top ten percent or top quarter.
Unknowns and Trade-Offs
1. If schools reduce size significantly (e.g., by enough to eliminate one first-year section), they may be able to reduce faculty size accordingly. The latter reduction would eliminate gains in student-faculty ratio or per-student expenditure, but it might prevent excessive tuition increases.
2. How does class size affect administrative costs? Law schools may realize economies of scale; functions like admissions, placement, and library services may be more expensive per student in a smaller school than a larger one. On the other hand, large schools may require more coordination (generating new administrative costs). It is also possible that in a smaller, less administrative-heavy organization, faculty would be more willing to take back some administrative functions.
What do you think? Please add to the discussion here:
Derrick A. Bell, Jr.
January 9th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Derrick A. Bell, Jr., started law school in the mid-1950’s, shortly after the Supreme Court’s momentous Brown decision. It must have been a time of hope for a talented black student, one who had already completed a successful tour in the United States Air Force. But it was also a time when rhetoric conflicted with reality. Bell was the only black student in his law school class, and one of only three black students in the school. He secured a spot in the Justice Department’s prestigious Honors Program after graduation, but the Department forced him to resign when he joined the NAACP.
Bell moved on to work with Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter, and Constance Baker Motley on the difficult post-Brown tasks of dismantling segregation. He supervised more than 300 school desegregation cases, returned briefly to the federal government, and directed a center on law and poverty.
Harvard Law School invited Bell to join its faculty, and in 1971 he became the school’s first tenured black professor. He remained in the academy until his death, teaching at Harvard, Oregon (where he also served as Dean), Stanford, and NYU.
Bell was a controversial member of the academy. He wrote–and spoke–bluntly about racism. His views often offended white professors, but Bell persisted. Throughout his life, he flew at the front of the wedge in confronting racism and promoting integration. Bell’s tenaciousness, insights, and eloquence paid off. He changed, not only the face of the legal academy, but the way in which scholars, lawyers, and ordinary citizens think about racism and the law. On Sunday, the Association of American Law Schools honored Bell with its Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and to the Law.
When Bell began writing about racism in the 1970’s, his work was alien–and deeply unsettling–to white readers. Unease spawned rejection: Many early readers discredited Bell as someone who “complained too much” or “couldn’t get over racism, already.” Those are very mild versions of statements I heard throughout the late 70s and 80s, when Bell’s critical race theory was new.
Today, many more people–inside and outside the academy–perceive the deep roots and subtle shadows of racism. With that understanding, we have made more progress. But we got here only because people like Bell were willing to take us by the shoulders, shake us hard, and force us to re-think our assumptions.
Bell’s fight is far from over, but his victory lies in the truth of these words uttered by his widow, Janet Dewart Bell, when she accepted the award in his honor: “Derrick always worried that his work would die with him. But on this one thing, Derrick Bell was wrong.”*
* I paraphrase (and will update when the AALS tapes are available), but I’ve got the meaning. For more on Bell, please see this official site.
A Livable Calling
January 7th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The Presidential Program at this year’s AALS Annual Meeting featured a discussion of “Law Schools and Their Critics.” As part of that discussion, Gene Nichol offered a compelling challenge to law faculty.
Paralleling a paper published earlier this year, Nichol suggested that law schools have pushed tuition past the breaking point “without dramatically improving, or perhaps even paying close attention to, the actual learning experience of our students.” How can schools cut costs now that the crisis has arrived?
Nichol’s primary suggestion: Aim solutions at the central cost driver, tenure-track faculty salaries. To do that, Nichol suggested four mechanisms: (a) Return teaching loads to 12 credits per year. (b) Cut back overly generous policies for research leaves and sabbaticals. (c) Require faculty to teach more courses that students need for successful careers. (d) Reduce salaries to more realistic levels.
These are provocative proposals, at least for some faculty. And I offer an immediate caveat that Nichol did not have time in his short presentation to explain how he recommends implementing some of these steps. My imminent airline departure also prevented me from hearing the Q&A portion of this panel. Would Nichol trim salaries over time by cutting at corners (e.g., fewer summer research grants), freezing salaries (perhaps at the highest levels, where some of us have already attained so much), and attrition? Or would he recommend more dramatic steps? I will invite Gene to offer more details here at the Cafe if he’s willing to do so.
Meanwhile, there were three points embedded in Gene’s presentation that deserve particular mention. First, as noted above, he stressed the need to aim solutions at the problem. If high tuition is a problem, and if the high cost of tenure-track faculty lies behind that problem, then we need to address those costs. Making other reforms won’t cure the problem.
Second, Gene gently warned law schools that if we do not cure the problem of high tuition ourselves, then a combination of market and regulatory forces will solve the problem for us–perhaps in ways that are even less palatable to faculty or less supportive of legal education’s mission.
Finally, Gene suggested a silver lining in the cloud of faculty belt tightening. Most of us became teachers and scholars because it was our calling. We wanted to educate new lawyers and help the legal system gain new insights. Most of us, even 25 to 30 years ago, were delighted to learn that being a law professor was a “livable calling.” We would not have to make as many financial sacrifices as our friends who taught history, who became journalists, or who pursued careers in the arts. We could follow our passion, do what we believed in, and have an impact on the next generation, while still living comfortably.
Isn’t it possible, Gene asked, for law faculty to return to a livable calling? Do we need all of the extras that we awarded ourselves over the last few decades?
Employable from the Start
January 4th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Law schools once were a harbor for college graduates who hadn’t settled on a career. Schools even billed themselves as the equivalent of a “graduate degree in the liberal arts.” But the escalating cost of legal education, combined with a shrunken job market, has made that approach a bad bet for students. Most students who pay to attend law school today want to be lawyers. Should law schools consider the likelihood that individual applicants will achieve that goal? Or that the applicant will appeal to legal employers down the road?
Some business schools, according to the Wall Street Journal, are asking these questions as part of their admissions process. A few of these schools are including career services staff on admissions committees, and others are sending career counselors to admissions fairs. With both techniques, the schools say that they aim to (a) assess an applicant’s plan for using the MBA; (b) judge whether the applicant’s employment background, academic aptitude, career plans, and soft skills will appeal to employers; and (c) give the applicant useful feedback about the likelihood of capitalizing on an MBA.
What if law schools adopted a similar approach? What impacts would that have?
Building employability into the admissions process might force schools themselves to assess job outcomes more realistically. If a school is placing only 50% of its graduates in jobs that require a law license, should the school continue admitting twice as many students eager for those positions? If the school believes that other kinds of jobs are attractive for its graduates, should it admit students who express specific interest in those outcomes? If we believe, for example, that compliance jobs are attractive for part of our graduating class, should we seek applicants who know about those jobs, understand the salaries and career tracks, and are eager to use a JD in that world?
Connecting placement to admissions, in other words, might give schools a healthy dose of reality about the number of students they admit and the types of work they will find after graduation. The connection could complement–and further enhance–increased transparency about law school job outcomes. More important, it could push schools to think more deeply about the type of jobs that JDs want and that the degree qualifies them for.
What about the admissions process and admitted class? Some prospective students might welcome the opportunity to be judged on their employment background, the seriousness of their career plans, and their interview skills, rather than simply on LSAT scores and GPA. A school that involves career services in admissions might also impress applicants with the school’s attention to that goal.
Students applying to schools with an employability focus would have to research legal careers more thoroughly. They would no longer be able to rely upon essays proclaiming a broad desire “to help the world” or “become a BigLaw associate” if they had to converse with an interviewer knowledgeable about specific areas of law practice. But maybe that’s a good thing. Both law students and their schools might be better off with classes composed of people who have formulated serious career aims. Few people seem to choose medical, dental, or veterinary school as a generic “Plan B.” Does that fact give those schools more professional gravity?
Stressing employability, on the other hand, cuts against two notions that many legal educators cherish deeply. One is the idea that law is a broad intellectual discipline rather than simply a trade. But I don’t think of medical schools, dental schools, or veterinary schools as mere “trade schools.” If they are, I’m pretty thankful for their trade focus when I need a root canal or other help. And to the extent law school once was a program of intellectual study preparing graduates generally for thoughtful careers, we closed that door ourselves by raising tuition as high as we have.
A second strongly held belief is that law practice builds on a general foundation, that students should study many aspects of law, and that students shouldn’t have to specialize too early. If students shouldn’t specialize, then how could we possibly ask applicants to declare planned career paths?
I understand this belief–I certainly didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I was 22 years old–but it may be outmoded. We live in a sped-up world in which education is very expensive. People who choose to invest in education, especially graduate programs, may need to have specific plans for that investment.
Perhaps more important, today’s world is much more fluid than the old one. As a result of that, I think students understand (much better than I did thirty years ago) that no initial direction lasts forever. Planning a career involves setting a target, moving toward that target, and remaining adaptable as the environment changes. Ironically, fluidity may require more direction than the more static world of yesterday. If the economy, technology, and job market shift constantly, then someone with no direction may be completely lost–not just maintaining their options. To succeed in today’s rapidly changing world, it may be key to have a firm sense of direction combined with skills that allow continuous monitoring of that goal and adaptation as necessary.
I think of this as the GPS view of careers. A GPS device is exceedingly adaptable; it will take you anywhere you want to go. But the device won’t take you anywhere at all unless you ask for directions to a specific site. Maybe we need to start assessing our applicants’ GPS strength as well as their GPAs.
Hat tip to Richard L. Kaplan for the reference to the Wall Street Journal article.
About Law School Cafe
Cafe Manager & Co-Moderator
Deborah J. Merritt
Cafe Designer & Co-Moderator
Kyle McEntee
Law School Cafe is a resource for anyone interested in changes in legal education and the legal profession.
Around the Cafe
Subscribe
Categories
Recent Comments
- on Scholarship Advice
- on ExamSoft: New Evidence from NCBE
- on COVID-19 and the Bar Exam
- on Women Law Students: Still Not Equal
- on Ranking Academic Impact
Recent Posts
- The Bot Takes a Bow
- Fundamental Legal Concepts and Principles
- Lay Down the Law
- The Bot Updates the Bar Exam
- GPT-4 Beats the Bar Exam
Monthly Archives
Participate
Have something you think our audience would like to hear about? Interested in writing one or more guest posts? Send an email to the cafe manager at merritt52@gmail.com. We are interested in publishing posts from practitioners, students, faculty, and industry professionals.