Restoring Dignity to the Law: south texas

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Study Immigration Law Near the Scenic Rio Grande: Another Law School Proposed!

I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried. People are trying to build law schools faster than the federal government can process the financial aid stuff. Yet another political group is attempting to get a law school in a place that doesn't need one. This time? South Texas. From the Texas Tribune via the New York Times:

Texas produces more law school graduates than it has jobs for. But that has not stopped some lawmakers from proposing that the state build a public law school in the Rio Grande Valley.

Supporters of a new school say there is geographic inequity. The public law school nearest the state’s southernmost region is more than 300 miles away, at the University of Texas in Austin. In addition, they point out, the Rio Grande Valley has one of the lowest lawyer-to-citizen ratios in the state.

Also cited in the article are the state's alleged shortage of attorneys that can cater to low-income people and the possibility that a more southern public college of law would increase the ranks of minority lawyers.

Of course, never mind the fact that Texas has severe budget problems and a new law school costs $80 million. Never mind that their state higher education board is against it. Never mind that Texas pumps out an excess of graduates for the jobs available. And never mind that there is already a South Texas College of Law and a Texas Southern Thurgood Marshall College of Law, both in Houston. With those choice names gone, what's this fourth-tier monstrosity going to be called?

Are we seriously now building law schools just because some small percentage of the population has to move to go to law school? Are there actually elected officials out there who think this harebrained strategy is a good approach to higher education?

Texas already has four public law schools (Texas, U. of Houston, Texas Tech, and Texas Southern), two well-regarded private schools (SMU and Baylor) and a trio of bottom-tier private schools (St. Mary's, Texas Wesleyan, and South Texas). Another public, North Texas, is opening next year in Dallas, since the people there had to drive all the way to Austin or Lubbock to go to public school. Are they in some sort of competition with Florida or New York or flood their state with lawyers? Is the next Civil War going to be fought using the Federal Rules of Civ. Procedure or something?

I understand Texas has a growing population, but the reasons for building law schools become more silly and ripe for satire by the month. "Geographic inequity?" My God, this is law school, not buying groceries or voting. It's not really a big deal that some people might have to move if they want to take such a large career step.

About RDTTL

I am a current law student who dreads the end of the conveyor belt and wishes to see positive change in the legal community.

To me, a dignified profession is one that is respected, one whose members serve as ambassadors for its social value, one that lets its practitioners lead healthy, productive, and active civic lives, and one where the members of the profession take active steps to protect the profession's honor.

It is self-evident that the legal profession has problems on that front (or all of those fronts, if you want to break it down). Lawyers are twice as likely to kill themselves as the average person. They are significantly more likely to become depressed or alcoholic. Along with other factors, an oversupply of labor has led to smaller salaries for most - putting the ability to have families or manage debt at risk - while making attorney work an impossibility for others. Last year roughly 1/3 of recent juris doctor recipients did not have jobs. Legal process outsourcing makes it far less likely that they'll ever get them.

These issues existed before the recession and extend beyond its effects. This blog explores these issues and seeks to provide helpful information and commentary, especially with regards to legal education, the reform of which I believe would aid many the other issues that prevent the law from being a fully-dignified profession.

I have chosen to use pseudonymous speech for roughly the same reasons outlined by zerohedge, even though I don't think the risk of retaliation is that high in my case (of all the professors I've had, I can only think of one who would "retaliate").

If you wish to contact me, please leave a comment. In the interest of simplifying my life, I am cutting my email addresses down, including the one that used to appear here, which has become unmanageable due to spam.