Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Henderson: Advice to University Presidents: Restructure Your Law Schools, or Close Them
National Law Journal, Law Schools: A Special Report:
- William D. Henderson (Indiana), The Calculus of University Presidents: Many Must Decide Between Two Difficult Paths: Tackle Law School Restructuring or Close Their Law Schools:
For the class entering law school in the fall of 2013, law school applicants have ebbed to a 30-year low. The collapse in demand for law school admission is producing profoundly serious business problems for a large proportion of U.S. law schools — problems that, for the moment, are hidden from public view as the resulting budgetary issues migrate from the dean's suite to the office of university presidents.
In a nutshell, central universities are being asked — or will be asked, in ways that will not inspire confidence in the current law school leadership — to provide a financial backstop so their law schools can enroll fewer students or offer more sizeable scholarships to fill the requisite number of seats. Because of the magnitude of the financial stakes involved — million-dollar shortfalls just for the upcoming fiscal year with no clear end in sight — this is as difficult a decision as a university president will ever face.
Below is the letter I would write to a university president who sought my advice on what to do. But the intended audience is law professors and practicing lawyers who seek to help their alumni institutions. For many of these readers, the best way to protect your law school is to make the university president's job easier by (1) coming to terms with the brutal facts, (2) honestly communicating your dilemma to the central administration and (3) proposing a solution that is realistic and potentially viable, even if the short- to medium-term tradeoffs are extraordinarily difficult and painful. ...
[C]losure may be the best long-term course for the university. One step short of closure may be rolling the law school into the College of Arts and Sciences under a newly created law department that can service the undergraduate population. Faculty teaching loads and salaries can be rationalized accordingly. This would permit a dramatically pared down J.D. program that could one day be rehabilitated.
The one militating factor is your faculty's willingness to restructure its curriculum and mindset. Law school graduates are not wanting for jobs because law is going away. Rather, the legal industry is suffering from a productivity imperative — both private citizens and wealthy corporations need better, faster, cheaper legal solutions. Delivery on this imperative requires a redesign of both the legal system and the migration away from customized legal services to standardized legal products.
The first hurdle in restructuring is the faculty tself embracing the need for change. The second hurdle is your own willingness to expand the scope of academic productivity. The most successful law schools in the future will be closely engaged with employers seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing industry. These same schools will also need to effectively collaborate with professionals from other disciplines, including systems engineering, information technology, finance, marketing and project management. Law faculties locked into the traditional positional competition over published legal scholarship are going to be unable to meet these heightened job demands. As the university president, you need to provide the law faculty with the latitude to adapt.
Frankly, saving your law school is going to require courage and leadership. Brace yourself for vilification. Even if you are successful, your efforts and intentions will not be appreciated for years to come. I do not envy your choices. I certainly wish you the best of luck — you will need it.
- Karen Sloan, Law for Laymen; Law Schools Hope to Fill Seats by Offering Master's Degrees
- Karen Sloan, Masters Programs Move Online
- Karen Sloan, A Place for Lawyers to Learn Executive Skills: Harvard, Georgetown Follow Business School Model
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/05/henderson.html
Comments
@noway,
Strategies are underfoot to eliminate GradPLUS loans, which will shatter the operations of law schools (I doubt private lenders will step in given what we know of law school outcomes for the last few years). See, inter alia, the machinations of Gates, Lumina, and Bowles-Simpson.
Posted by: Unemployed_Northeastern | May 23, 2013 7:10:46 AM
"The only thing keeping many law schools afloat at this point is the artificial monopoly granted them by the Faustian pact with the American Bar Association and state supreme courts."
Wrong. What keeps them afloat is the student loan racket. If you take away the non-dischargeable nature of that debt, or if you made law schools participate in the losses arie sing from bad loans, watch a cascade of law school closings unlike anything ever seen.
Posted by: noway | May 23, 2013 6:02:37 AM
This ignores that the universities have been relying on law schools as cash cows that fund other underperforming/less revenue-generating parts of the university. If law schools were permitted to keep all the funding they bring in, they could respond accordingly (eg cutting staff, salary freezes, etc.). If law schools cared about their students, law school would be cut to a year and a half (1L plus first summer to learn the basics of tort, contract, civil procedure, evidence, property, constitutional law, criminal law; corporate law; first semester of 2L devoted to learning specialty issues) with the second half of the second year engaged in practical experience.
Posted by: Deeg | May 23, 2013 5:30:20 AM
Not going to happen.
The only thing keeping many law schools afloat at this point is the artificial monopoly granted them by the Faustian pact with the American Bar Association and state supreme courts. There are numerous ways in which legal education can be delivered but the ability to do so with any dramatic change is controlled by the regulators. Some university presidents may take some action but most are themselves under enrollment and student debt pressures. As law schools slump financially and numerically the impetus to retain them within quite a few universities will weaken considerably. Tenure track law faculty simply have an unrealistic perception of the importance of what they do, spend a great deal of time writing articles for the "choir" of other academics who share their perspectives, and have extremely well-paid positions with lifetime job guarantees (until now) that have allowed them to develop a skewed outlook on change, alternatives and other effective strategic approaches. The result is that for many law professors and law schools the "sky is falling" and there isn't much they will do about it. Let's be realistic. The warnings and trends have been obvious for considerably more than a decade but the popular laments by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, Bill Henderson and so forth are "riding a wave" that has already passed and is on the down slope of the curve in terms of being able to do much about the situation for perhaps as many as 50-75 law schools.
Posted by: David Barnhizer | May 22, 2013 12:43:43 PM
But without law schools, whence our politicians.
Oh, I see your point.
Posted by: PacRim Jim | May 23, 2013 3:01:46 PM