Massive UNLV Budget Cuts, Law School Will Jack Tuition; No Law Faculty Harmed

The University of Nevada-Las Vegas is facing severe budget cuts:

To meet proposed budget cuts, UNLV would eliminate 33 degree programs with more than 2,000 students in them, killing 315 jobs, UNLV President Neal Smatresk told school employees and students Tuesday.
...
Philosophy, Women's Studies and Social Work would go under Smatresk's proposal, which would ultimately require approval from the higher education system's Board of Regents.

When you have a university willing to sacrifice entire disciplines at the altar of "fiscal responsibility," you know something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Philosophy is an essential subject, indeed the foundation of many other subjects (putting the "Ph" in PhD"), including law. (side note: it's nice to see UNLV will continue its mid-major athletic existence even while sacrificing its ****ing low-cost philosophy department; I'm a huge sports fan, but c'mon!).

Of course, given such drastic measures, these cuts will go down to the The Boyd School of Law, which is ranked 78th according to the latest and greatest USNWR rankings. And the President is concerned, according to Legal Skills Prof Blog (also cited on the faculty alliance page, below):

These additional increases [in tuition] will undermine the Law School's successful formula and render it a mediocre institution.

"Mediocre, n., Moderate to inferior in quality; ordinary. See Synonyms at average."

What is the Boyd School now, if not mediocre? This is not Boston U. we're talking about. Of course, it's also not Thomas Cooley. But UNLV frankly can't drop that far. It's the only law school in Nevada, meaning it has a virtual monopoly over the students who most want to go there. And it's not like Nevada is unique in its severe budget troubles and the desperate need for cuts or tax increases no one wants.

And furthermore, what is the law school going to do, faced with these budget cuts?

From their Faculty Alliance blog:

Tuition increases will be used to cover the cuts. This will bring tuition increase totals more than triple the cost of just three years ago.

Yikes. In an age when law school demand is dropping, these counter-revolutionaries are going to raise tuition even further, as if students continuing to come are a foregone conclusion.

And according to this, despite this perilous situation, they're not cutting a single dollar of law professor salaries.

Look at this salary list from 2008:

Douglas Grant, Prof. of Law: $176,910.48
Joan Howarth, Prof. of Law: $170,468.67
Jeff Stempel, Prof. of Law: $169,206.54
John White, Prof. of Law and Dean: $167,423.65
Elaine Shoben, Prof. of Law: $164,341.98
Christopher Blakesley: Prof. of Law: $163,068.00

And so on. By the way, the cost of living in Las Vegas, Nevada is about 50-60% of what it is in New York. A salary of $160k in Nevada is similar to a salary of about $288k in New York.

Yet, with the state budget in peril and the flagship University possibly dumping its philosophy department, the school of law has chosen to drastically increase tuition rather than cut faculty positions. Tenured professors are going to get the unceremonious axe and these charlatans - in a class of people who often espouse this drivel about "public service" and "social justice" - won't take a pay-cut or see one of their own go, instead choosing to saddle the burden on students who they know will probably come to UNLV anyway.

This is absolutely deplorable, immoral decision-making. The dental school is cutting $1.3 million in salaries, but the law school can't spare a buck and would rather send tuition skyrocketing, which will inevitably put students who are actually dedicated to legal study deeper in debt.

Christ, the a public university is going to completely wipe out important programs (if you're a state institution, you should have a social work department), sending numerous professors into unemployment and the entire law faculty will continue living as comfortably as they did yesterday. They're like gluttons who eat a fourth meal while people starve next door, and if this proposal goes through, the law faculty who went along with it have no standing to tell anyone about "justice."

On "Scamblogging"

I wrote this a few nights nights ago. It might be out-of-date in internet time, but to be honest I'm low on sleep and alternative content (and in no mood to look for some), so here you go, as-is from my rough draft.

I've never viewed myself as a "scamblogger," even though I associate this blog's editorial point-of-view way more with blogs like TTR and BIDER than with Above the Law. There are many reasons why I chose to avoid such a direct path. For one, I don't feel like I have "standing" to be a true scamblogger because I have yet to graduate, much less be unemployed; my anger and what misery I carry come from a slightly different angle. Second, I've never liked the term "scamblogger," even when I was just a casual reader of these blogs last spring and summer, as I've never though law school was a "scam" even though, in retrospect, I probably should have chosen a different path with my recent life. And third, I was sort-of late to the party in terms of relaying raw anger about being screwed or even just exposing reality. Instead, if I wanted this blog to stand out and to have a purpose, I realized it needed to broaden the scope past just being pissed off at the system

So I tried - and try - to make this blog more in the vein of a rational, somewhat-objective commentary, sort-of in the same class as LSTB and similar sites. I picked the blog name with the belief that blogs like these needed to be more focused on the future, on positive solutions, on fixing problems, on pushing things like bankruptcy reform.

However, this is not to accuse "scambloggers" like Nando, JJD, or Knut of not wanting these things, nor of neglecting to promote them. If I understand things correctly, none of them nor their defunct peers chose the name "scamblogger." And I don't think any of them would seriously argue that there's a vast conspiracy among law deans, or that law school is a dead-ringer analog to three-card monte, or any of the other ridiculous straw men that get thrown around.

And on the same token, I've never found anything wrong with raw anger, whether expressed through scat metaphor, frank vulgarity, oozing sarcasm, or straight-up "I'm pissed."

Because here's the all-to-obvious rub: people react to arguments differently. Some people exhibit Spock-like rationality at all times and presenting something in an "in your face" style has no effect on them. Others simply won't get it unless you draw them a visual, and unless you convey your anger effectively, people whose view of the world is filtered through emotions will find you ineffective.

In fact, I can't think of a significant successful social movement that succeeded and was lacking either rational, intellectual discussion and populist, attention-grabbing, "in your face" imagery. The American Revolution had both. So did the Civil Rights movement and the woman's rights movement and the progressives and - heck - even the modern conservative movement.

This is not to say scamblogging has the social importance of any of those. Scamblogging isn't even a "movement," it's merely a push towards awareness (although it could certainly be part of a broader student justice movement). But if people who are running nationwide, historically-relevant political swings are okay with spreading their message through "in your face" metaphors, then I think it just might work for telling people law school ain't what it's cracked up to be, too.

Although some people may be repulsed by that approach to argumentation, it isn't like that style is the only source to find skepticism of the system. And it isn't like Nando at TTR isn't providing sources and facts to back up his harsh opinions and revolting visuals.

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When I first started leaving comments on these blogs and was pondering setting up a shop of my own, the first three I always read were TTR, BIDER, and Shilling Me Softly. Not to say others weren't good, but I thought those three complimented each other nicely, and so they were the names I usually told others to check out.

To her credit, Kimber Russell has done quite a bit in the last six months to bring attention to the issues of escalating tuition, increasing debt loads, lawyer oversupply, misleading advertising, etc. She worked hard shaping the New York Times article and I think the fact that she's "public" and not merely pseudonymous gave slightly more credibility to the message.

But, to cut to the chase, I was disheartened to see Kimber publish a piece explicitly divorcing herself from other "scambloggers."

I am herewith renouncing the title "scamblogger" to take up the less angry-sounding mantle of the plain old "blawger".

For some time now, it has been clear to me that for all the rhetorical power carried by the phrase "law school scam", the moniker is misleading, especially to those who have only been introduced to the notion that law school is not a guaranteed return on investment. The term "scam" is fraught with multifarious meanings, all of which are too bombastic to truly encompass what is a very complex situation.

Yeah, okay, this isn't really a new revelation - to anyone - so why make a big production of it? Why not merely change the focus of your blog? It's not like anyone really sees it as a major shift to go from "scamblogger" to "blawger" (and is THAT term supposed to get people to take one seriously?).

From here on out, my mission--in addition to keeping the SMS Crew entertained and informed--will be to advocate for a meaningful reformation of the American legal education industry.

How exactly is this a change? Did Kimber's previous mission not involve reforming the legal education industry? Do the "scambloggers" not want to see legal education reform? And what's this "SMS Crew" stuff? Is that really any different than a media demagogue (e.g. Rush Limbaugh) giving his legion of followers a catchy name? But I digress; she explains more in the comments:

[I]t has become increasingly apparent that as a true movement that can appeal to a wide general audience, we cannot be viewed as the online equivalent of a pitchfork-wielding, torch-bearing angry mob.

...[I]t is hard to create a legitimate and credible movement when one of its apparent "leaders" has become the Glenn Beck of scambloggers.

First of all, as I said earlier, scamblogging isn't a "movement," it's a push for awareness, and lighting a torch lets people know you're on the lawn. But more importantly, if you don't want to be seen as part of a "pitchfork-wielding, torch-bearing" mob, the response isn't to say "I'm not part of the mob." The real response is to actually put down the torch and the pitchfork, which Kimber seems to be doing anyway. I would advise her to get a new website and redirect SMS traffic to it, but in any event people can take you seriously even if they don't take the "mob" seriously.

But it's not like there's even a "mob" here. Nando ain't no Glen Beck, and I fail to see how his existence threatens actual change. Are there seriously people who say "I agree with your position, but that asshole from Third Tier Drake just ruins everything?" No, of course not. That's absurd. Either people believe what you're telling them or they don't. If they tell you they can't take you seriously because a non-present third-party has an archive of fecal matter jpegs that he connects to lower-rung law schools, they weren't going to take you seriously, anyway. No one so sensitive would have the fortitude to actually affect meaningful change.

I obviously agree with Kimber's "new" focus. I've tried something similar since this blog's inception. Look at the title I chose. But at the same time, it's a bad idea to create division without a valid reason. Nando and the other "scambloggers" are going to do their thing no matter what Kimber does. She could have merely rebranded her blog and changed its focus, which she's been doing the last two months anyway. Instead, she chose to "herewith renounce" the word "scamblogger" as if it were some monumental schism, of newfound maturity breaking away from a dirty rotten past.

You almost never see Republican strategists criticizing people like Limbaugh or Beck, even if they think that such shows de-legitimize certain Republican goals. Why? Because when you're trying to get a message out, you take all the help you can get and it's poor form to turn your back. As Knut has pointed out, SMS needed blogs like TTR to gain an initial readership. And looking over the brief history of this thing, I can't imagine Kimber ever sees the New York Times without the foundation of bile.

And so it's not like the so-called "scambloggers" really work against her. Their mission - to spread awareness - is identical to hers, since awareness is a prerequisite to problem-solving. She seems to believe it's time to "quit bitching" and move to working with the people in power. People like Nando disagree.

But disagreement is no cause for denouncement. If you want people to take you seriously as a reformer, just act like a serious reformer. And for the record, I'm not sure that serious reformers call out their allies, or that they post cheap jpegs like "In Soviet Russia, Law School Enters You," or that they maintain a podcast that regularly utilizes the word "douchebag" and the phrase "WTF, ABA."

The grand point here is that there's really no sharp line between "scamblogger" and "blawger." You can call a blog that works to reform the legal education process any name you want, but it's still a blog that works to reform the legal education process. SMS will be SMS and Nando will be Nando. There's no reason to unnecessarily piss people off if you're all on the same side in trying to get the message out there. Heck, if you really care about the message - and not the person giving it - the medium should become irrelevant.

In the end, all you can control is yourself. I don't fully agree with all Nando's techniques. There's parts of other blogs that I just don't get, including SMS. But that's no reason for me to call them out and say I disagree with them and no one will take me seriously if I'm associated with them. That accomplishes nothing; actually, it's a regression. And if one really wants to make progress, purposeful regressions and meaningless schisms seems a very poor way to do it.

Yes, Sally, the Mechanization of White Collar Jobs Can Be Easier than that of Blue Collar Jobs

From Paul Krugman's article today on education in the New York Times:

Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.” Therefore, any routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate....

And research by my Princeton colleagues Alan Blinder and Alan Krueger suggests that high-wage jobs performed by highly educated workers are, if anything, more “offshorable” than jobs done by low-paid, less-educated workers.

This makes intuitive sense, doesn't it? Most white-collar jobs have historically been premised on knowledge. Anyone can move boxes around a warehouse or change the oil in a car, but only a select few could navigate a personal injury claim or handle accounting books because of the specialized intellectual abilities involved. But computers are better at storing and retrieving knowledge than they are at making physical environmental adjustments.

A few months ago, I got into an argument with someone who claimed that the answer to the U.S.'s future was more intensive education, to essentially out-school the Chinese, Indians, etc., by promoting math and sciences education. I asked him point-blank what he would do if he were starting out at 18 today rather than at 58. Without hesitation, he said "engineering, just as I did back then."

The problem, of course, is that economies change and what "worked" 40 years ago doesn't necessarily work today. Although engineers seem better off than young lawyers, I know many an engineering grad my own age who was told to get a master's after believing a B.S. would land them a set-for-life job. And given that much of engineering is following explicit rules to produce well-designed products, I imagine we'll see computerized engineers long before we see computerized janitors.

Education is a fantastic normative goal, but we have to collectively realize that it has finite (and shrinking) returns economically. Because it benefits our democracy to have educated and hard-worked people, even if they can't all have jobs that require education, we also have to take steps to prevent citizens from being penalized for their intelligence or education, but that, I believe, is a much larger issue deserving of another entry entirely.

Pure Speculation on Robo-Lawyering and the Future

So the New York Times published an article yesterday on E-discovery/document review software that has the potential to reduce the need for "armies" of attorneys. Other blogs (see JJD and LSTB) have covered this already and I really don't want to discuss the article so much as just share some non-expert thoughts on the long-term future.

Basically, although I see this as a tool that will sharply decrease entry-level and document review work in the near-term future, in the long-run I see this type of technology as a major threat to the current legal order, specifically to the "BigLaw" business model.

Let me start with a wider lens. I'm no Marxist in the political sense, but sometimes it's difficult to discard Karl Marx's material way of viewing the world, at least its basic sociological principles. For example, it's hard to completely discredit his focus on materialism as a historical determinant, e.g.:

In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.

The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.

Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement – mors immortalis.

It's a gross over-simplification of complex society, but at the core there's some truth to it. Look no further than a basic and hackneyed evaluation of how people gained wealth and power over time. In the feudal ages in Europe, land ownership determined virtually everything. It was the one singular avenue to wealth. You either had land or, in one way or another, you leached off someone who did. But over time, technology brought other avenues of wealth. Security and improved transportation allowed a genuine merchant class to develop. With it came the roots of modern banking, whose centers sprang up along the most common routes of commerce. Then came the industrial revolution and suddenly there were at least four major ways to get to the top of the economic pyramid: land, commerce, production, and banking. And of course, the lawyer class developed along side all of this in order to sort out the quagmires that developed in post-feudal society.

Fast-forward to the 20th century and the possible routes to wealth increased exponentially. Advances in financial markets allowed people to earn entirely derivative wealth. The basic recording of audiovisual performances made what was once a temporal experience into intellectual property that made entire industries. Suddenly, knowledge, too, in the form biochemical reactions or software processes, became a billion-dollar, wealth-creating business.

I say all this only to suggest the following: technology, historically, has increased possible avenues to wealth, not taken them away, which is why it should not necessarily be feared here. Land still makes one money; it just doesn't give one the proportionate power it did 800 years ago; heck, ask the farmers who still somehow own their own land, it doesn't even give the power it did 100 years ago.

So, moving back to the topic at the outset, let's look at why BigLaw is the way it is today. A cursory view of the last fifty years or so suggests to me that BigLaw largely developed in response to ever-increasingly multinational corporations who preferred working with law firms who had offices in multiple major metropolitan areas. Large, multinational corporations more or less needed large, multinational law firms. The prestigious ones that got the choice corporate accounts merged when feasible to reduce economies of scale and - voila! - you had firms with hundreds of attorneys who raked in the top business and could charge prime rates precisely because there weren't many places that could offer the manpower of elite graduates, places like Jones Day or Skadden Arps or Winstron & Strawn.

There are, of course, other reasons the major corporations consistently go to the larger firms, prestige and experience being at the top of the list. But to Fortune 500 companies, cutting expenses to free up cash and improve profitability is a religion. I've heard from multiple sources that BigLaw has been under increased pressure the last few years to cut billing hours. I have no reason to doubt that.

And these corporations - with knowledgeable in-house counsel, many of whom sit on their boards and in their executive committee - will certainly have knowledge of this technology's existence. And since more than one company is currently developing this technology, there's no reason to think it won't be priced competitively, which will allow a broader range of firms access to the technology. Will Joe Schuck operating a sole proprietorship out of his basement be able to get it? Probably not, but firms with 25+ attorneys would find it advantageous to streamline their discovery process.

If the software can reduce what used to be done by 100 attorneys into manageable work for 2-3, the manpower advantages of the BigLaw model are dead on arrival. Because of the software, smaller firms can take on cases that resource restrictions would have prevented them from taking previously. Things like class actions can be handled by smaller and smaller firms.

Because the range of activities firms can take on will increase, real competition for legal business will increase with new entrants into the market. The result should be more robust price competition.

Of course, BigLaw will still have two key advantages, as noted above: its history of experience with large corporate matters and its prestige of being armored with "cream of the crop" lawyers. And of course, they can continue to charge more as a result of both of these competitive advantages, but the status quo cannot continue. Fortune 500 companies will simply not pay exorbitant rates if another lawyer down the street has the exact same technology and is charging a fraction of the hourly rate. Much of the prestige difference comes from the illusion of paying elite associates and staff attorneys to do the grunt work; if a computer is doing that grunt work, why would anyone pay the extra?

And with a reduction in resource costs, many BigLaw attorneys will be less likely to stick around. If a BigLaw partner has a great relationship with two or three key clients, that partner is far more likely to splinter off and set up a new firm and take his clients with him if there is software that can reduce the manpower advantage of bigger firms.

I'll admit I'm no expert, but it just seems to me that with technology like this, an extra key to wealth has been created by allowing a whole new class of firm into the market for bigger and bigger clients. If they can offer similar services at half the cost, most companies will go with the discount provider. At the very least, the price pressures should end escalating relative salaries and bonuses because the pseudo-oligopoly over high-end legal services will be broken. If I were a BigLaw partner, I'd be concerned that more firms and attorneys could do what I do, that an army of elite attorneys may become as worthless and unnecessary as an army of elite barber college graduates, and that America's successful corporations will start shopping around if I don't slice rates, and my take-home profit.

Of course, thousands of young attorneys will suffer from a collapsing marketplace for their services. That's a major problem. But transformative technology doesn't just hit the lowly; it also opens up new avenues for others to achieve wealth. It shakes the top of the pyramid, too, and if more firms can take on complex litigation, it'll help them jump into higher levels of law and in the end it's better for all of us by increasing competition and cutting litigation costs for large American companies.

Touro Trying to Reduce Class Size

Remember how Albany has decided to reduce its enrollment? It looks like Touro has joined in (maybe I just missed the news on it). From the Wall Street Journal:

[Albany and Touro] plan to admit 10 fewer students.

Still, the cuts represent an unprecedented acknowledgment among law deans that the product they’re churning out isn’t as highly valued now as it was, say, 5 years ago.

“It is the ethical and moral thing to do,” Touro Dean Lawrence Raful told the NLJ. “I don’t think the [job] placement situation is going to turn around for a number of years and I think we are concerned about the ethics of turning out quite so many students in debt when we know that not everyone can get a job to pay off that debt.”

According to the NLJ, if the Touro board agrees to Raful’s proposal, enrollment in this fall’s first-year class will dip to 270 from the 280 in 2010. Raful is proposing further 10-student reductions in the falls of 2012 and 2013.

Are they a few years late? Absolutely. But good for them for taking this stance rather that certain other states' deans*. It's not like anyone could reasonably expect the schools to just cut off 50% of their graduates at once.

They aren't completely waving the flag of justice and "the ethical and moral thing to do," but you have to applaud steps in the right direction. Good for Dean Raful for scaling Touro's wreckage back despite his self-interest. I wonder if we can expect the other New York lower-ranked schools (Hofstra, New York Law School, Syracuse, St. Johns, Pace, Brooklyn, Buffalo) to do likewise and help ease the saturation in the Empire State.

*My prime example here is Minnesota's four law deans, notably Thomas Mengler. Their sharp wit and brilliant approach to oversupplying the market can be seen here. Among the highlights are Mengler's assertions that lawyers are no different than coffee shops and that the market should be able to handle all St. Thomas grads because St. Thomas is a unique educational experience unrivaled by any other.

Iowa Law Symposium In Review: No Motel 6's For These Deans

Matt at LSTB has run a review of the recent Iowa Law Review Symposium/masturbation for academic eunuchs concerning the future of legal education, which I had mentioned earlier. He reviews the Chronicle of Higher Education's commentary and the fallacies and the moral dubiousness certain administrators keep spouting amidst some sensible concessions and realizations. He also asked my opinion, which is a mistake almost no one makes, but here goes.

I don't want to rehash the same ground, because LSTB's run-down is fairly brief and gets the point across well, but - setting aside the moral issues - I wanted to focus on the theme of law school efficiency, tradition, and readiness for legal practice. Here are some relevant excerpts from the Chronicle's review:

One reason schools are sticking with a familiar playbook: "It's a cost-effective method of education," Mr. Chemerinsky said.
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Richard A. Matasar, dean of New York Law School, summed up the attitude he sees at many campuses: "We're all old dogs trying to learn some new tricks, and all of us old dogs have got tenure and we're not going any place."
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Legal education does cost too much, Mr. Matasar said, mainly because it is "grossly inefficient." Schools could cut costs by stratifying—offering, as a friend characterized it to him, a "Motel 6" education with few bells and whistles, in which practicing lawyers teach many of the courses, as well as a "Ritz-Carlton" version taught by full-time, tenure-track professors. Neighboring schools could share library, faculty, and other resources, he said, adding, "Does every law school need an expert in the law of Timbuktu?"
...
Gail B. Agrawal, dean of law at the University of Iowa, cautioned that law schools should be careful, as they shift their emphasis toward practical skills like drafting motions and interviewing clients, that they don't shortchange broader goals, such as cultivating a commitment to social justice.

Reading through these responses conjured up two main streams of thought: (1) this is exactly the type of predictable "the sky's the limit"/"but we have so much to do" worthless-at-the-end-of-the-day dialogue I expected; (2) this is exhibit A as to why self-regulation is a bad idea for legal education.

From a student view, who in the hell would choose a non-elite "Ritz-Carlton" (a.k.a. "Undergrad II") law school model? I would think that student demand would be to actually learn how to draft legal documents, file motions, argue at hearings, and - you know - make money as a practicing attorney. Frankly, it's derisive, ego-centric, and presumptuous to call the tenured professor model the "Ritz-Carlton" and the efficient, functional model the "Motel 6." Is it really a "luxury" to learn the Rule in Shelley's Case?

In other words, given a choice at equal cost between a Ritz-Carlton and Motel 6, everyone would take the Ritz. Given a choice at equal cost between a functional, trade-type law school and an Undergrad II model, I would think 2/3+ would prefer the former, since I'm 95% certain that that school's graduates would succeed and be more employable than those who got a less-hands-on education.

But the casebook-Socratic method thrives. For one, it is, as Dean Chemerinsky asserts, cost-effective from the schools' point of view. From the students' point of view, it isn't effective at all (i.e., they're not even getting the product they paid for). And I take issue with the idea that teaching practical skills is inherently more expensive. Setting up a formal law clinic or an advocacy course, yes, that's expensive. But so is having an Israeli Law and Policy seminar with 5 students in it, and so is paying Professor Bookworm 250k to be an expert on arcane applications of federal procedure.

But if you're going to have a class called, say, Constitutional Law, why not look at actual Con Law cases and arguments made in the past 5 years? Why do they do an anguishing review of commerce clause cases from the 1930s? Do a brief intro and go straight to Lopez, Morrison, and Raich. Are the Lottery Case and the Shreveport Rate Case interesting? I suppose. Would anything of real value to practicing lawyers be lost? Nope. After all, when given a new topic to do legal research on, no one would ever start at square one. Why would you? We tell students in their first-year legal skills classes to go straight to Am. Jur. to figure out what's going on and yet, in the doctrinal classes, they start at time immemorial. Why, God, why?

But it's more than just professors being "old dogs." It's also that the ABA has built in a number of safeguards to ensure that this system will remain in place for a long time. They allude to this in the article, quoting Jay Connison, Valparaiso Dean and ABA Accreditation chairman, in saying that the ABA is looking into changing their standards. Of course that should have been done 20 years ago and probably won't be done now, but the deans are right when they say the ABA's standards limit their creativity. For example, read Standards section 4 and tell me how in the "Motel 6" model of law school is even possible. And how is a school supposed to share a library with section 6 in the way?

What I suspect Matasar knows full well is that such a vision is impossible under the ABA guidelines. And while deans may complain about the ABA guidelines publicly, they are the ones who run the show. You can't blame "the man" when you are "the man!" And despite Connison's words, nothing is going to change. Why would it? Deans are self-interested capitalists who love the Ritz-Carlton model. Do you think anyone makes six figures under a Motel 6 model? No, and no one gets to fly to Iowa to pontificate, either.

Thus, all of this mess comes back to the ABA's monopoly over national accreditation, which the deans - especially the vocal ones who seem to wind up at all these symposia - have power to change. So, they've essentially bound their own hands so they can cry about having their hands tied.

But because their restrictions require so much in the line of library resources, tenured faculty, scholarship, and all sorts of things that seem, to me, ancillary to legal education that they've effectively shut off price competition. It's a complex oligopoly. Instead of having price (tuition) stability, they let anyone compete against them, provided that they have the virtually the exact same expenditures (guaranteed by ABA regulations). This isn't how real business works, of course. In the "real world," there'd be "Motel 6" law schools everywhere by now. And as much as we joke about it, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Business has a natural tendency towards efficiency. We're seeing that in law firms, as they integrate LPO and cost-cutting. If "Motel 6" law schools could generate 90% bar passage rates at do teaching students part-time at $15k total cost, who in the hell would care? As long as there are still ethical and admission standards that the ABA holds the schools to, the American justice system wouldn't suffer at all. If anything, the range of options available may cause consumers (prospective students) to actually research the places more and figure out which schools are good, which are bad, which produce results, etc.

If you cut the resource requirements to what is actually reasonable, the "Motel 6" schools would have an incentive to keep costs low in a way that current TTT/TTTT schools simply can't. People bemoan the third-tier private schools that cost 30k+ a year, but the fact that every private law school has raised tuition in lock-step seems indicative that something else is driving their upward price movements. I don't think they're dumb enough to collude on prices, but nonetheless you wouldn't expect that in a world where the lower-tiered schools have at least some incentive to provide quality at a lower price. I think a lot of that comes back to the resource requirements (or perceived requirements), having a full-time tenured faculty, having a library, having state-of-the-art technology, having a scholarly output, etc.

Don't get me wrong, tuition has also gone up because of unnaturally-high demand for the product, but you can't tell me that it really costs 30k+ to teach someone enough law to pass the bar and be a practicing lawyer, and you can't tell me that all third- and fourth-tier private schools independently decided to set their tuition higher and higher every year because not onl are they trying to meet USNWR's (unreachable, for most) 2nd-tier status, they're also trying to outpace ambiguous ABA requirements.

And those regulations won't change. The deans have no intention of ever seeing a "Motel 6" law school genuinely compete for national students. No businessman - and that's what these guys are at heart - gives up a monopoly.

It's a remarkably simple problem with a remarkably simple solution, but it's one you'll never see at a symposium like this, where they'd rather show concern for "social justice" while implicitly supporting a system that is blatantly socially unjust. Where is the justice in stifling honest competition and innovation? Where is the justice in having an exclusive system that saddles students with $150k+ in non-dischargable debt? Where is the justice in forcing people to sit through instruction that has absolutely no relevance to their professional career, merely because some professor is interested in English common law conversion actions?

Fair criticisms aside, capitalism is excellent at rewarding efficiency. If you admit your system is inefficient, as Dean Matasar did, the answer is to remove any artificial constraints. Don't misread me: I don't think there should be law schools on every corner. I can't imagine the U.S. needing more than 100-150 law schools for its present population.

But I'm not about to grandfather in a bunch of inefficient dinosaurs merely because they have a second-tier name. If someone can make a law school that teaches ethics, gives hands-on experience, teaches practical skills, and gets a 90% bar passage rate for Costco-level pricing , I'm all for it. Anyone who is seriously concerned about tuition costs should be as well.

That, I think, is ultimately what the future of legal education hinges on: whether the ABA changes its ways or someone makes the ABA change its ways. Beyond that, I doubt it will be much more than morally duplicitous talk by men in nice suits who acknowledge the problems but want to find a solution that's more amenable to their interests.

Very long and winding and barely-coherent, I'm sure, but that's my basic take.

Replacing Some Advice From the Washington Post

A little bit off the beaten path today, but here is part of a letter that was written in to the Washington Post's advice column:

My girlfriend has recently started back to law school as a full-time student. She says she does not have time to see me AT ALL for the next three months. She said she will be able to communicate by e-mail or text.

I understand she is very busy with law school and her part-time job. She lives only five miles from me. I asked her if she would not mind seeing me weekly for a half-hour walk in her neighborhood, just to keep in touch. She said no.

I want to know if her behavior is reasonable, or am I being selfish in thinking that she should make some small amount of time for me?

The advice given by the Post's writer is basically that the schmuck doesn't possibly know her true intentions, so he either needs to decide for himself whether she is worth waiting for or not and either wait or move on.

While normally I don't interject myself in these things, I think this is incredibly poor advice. It said in the introduction paragraph that the guy is in his 30s, and if he's writing in to a newspaper for advice, he's likely not the type to take ambiguous advice well (i.e., he's going to wait like a schmuck and wind up miserable one way or another).

So here's my advice: you need to compose her an e-mail (her preferred method, apparently) that states, very clearly, that you are strongly interested in her, and you will gladly continue talking to her, but that you will be actively dating other people for the next three months and that, although you respect her, you do not agree with her course of behavior. Because here's the thing: she's being incredibly dumb and, if this course of behavior continues, you want absolutely nothing to do with this woman.

Let me explain. First, they tell you when you enter law school not to have a part-time job your first year and to be careful with work after that (generally a 15- or 20-hour limitation). I don't know what "recently" means, but if she's trying to work a part-time job while taking her 1L 2nd semester finals, she's an idiot.

Second, law school does not black out every fragment of time in a three-month period. Can it be busy, yes. Are there are multi-day blocks where seeing people really isn't an option? Of course. But under no circumstances is every weekend just wall-to-wall reading and writing and class-ing. Anyone who has to take every ounce of time to do well in law school should not be in law school.

Even if law school was a major time-hog for her, it's really unhealthy to sacrifice social interactions, including romantic ones. Given a choice between working 65 hours a week on law and making time for coffee or a walk around the neighborhood and working 75-80 hours a week, the 65-hour a week person will be healthy, happier, and probably a bigger success. It's a margin cost evaluation where the benefit of spending the extra 10 hours almost never justifies the high cost. And when you're talking about sacrificing parts of your life, it's a very high cost.

Most of the mental health issues lawyers have stem from law school behaviors. These include this perverse idea that you have to study obsessively and that if you haven't drowned out other pressures, you're not a hard-working student or aren't taking it seriously. This is bullshit. Being a lawyer is not worth being a shellshocked, socially-isolated zombie, but it's obviously a belief that many young legal students and professionals have and one this young woman seems to have adopted.

So let's go back to the facts. The Post writer said we can't know this woman's true intentions. That's fine; we don't have to. One of two basic things seems to be true: (1) she's really not interested in our letter-writer and is using law school as a passive excuse to phase him out so she doesn't have to break up with him; (2) she's interested in him, but views school as a priority that takes absolute precedence over him.

If it's (1) - and because he wrote the letter you know that's what he strongly suspects (and rightly so; what woman has time to email but not grab coffee somewhere?) - waiting around for three months is the worst thing you can possibly do. In this scenario, you want to force her to be honest with you and tell you she's not interested in seeing you anymore.

If it's (2), she's got a sickness that isn't going to be cured by waiting three months. If she has this belief now, what will stop her from having this belief if and when she's a young attorney? If you let yourself be marginalized now, you set a precedent (lawyers are big on this) where her school/work comes before your emotional needs, which are obvious from the letter.

If there's no time for you now, there won't be time for you next year or the year after, so even if she is Abigail to your John Adams, Simon to your Garfunkel, yin to your yang, your heart and your penis will grow moldy and stale on the shelf while she's scrutinizing RFA 13 in the Hawkins interrogatories at the kitchen table at 3 am because this is "a really important case."

And that's if she's lucky enough to be in the part that gains legal employment. For 1/3 (maybe more) of law school graduates, law school turns out to be no more important or door-opening than a hobby or a musical history class. This even happens to Georgetown grads. What if, 5 years from now, it turns out that you put your life on hold so she could get the part-time same job she has now? Won't you be bitter towards her? If I had to wait a few months for a woman who I knew was going to be making a good living (a doctor, for example), that's one thing. If I had to wait for a woman so she could pursue a degree that may only make her 40k, that's another ball of wax entirely.

So, letter-writer, I would advise you to give her a quasi-ultimatum and say that you accept the way things are, you don't agree with them, but you're opening the door for other people. Then gauge her response. It will be easy to tell whether she's really interested or not.

Above all else, do not wait three months for her. You'll drive yourself crazy obsessing, for one. And if she does actually like you, you should not let her have her cake and eat it, too. Letting type A personalities have things exactly as they want them is a bad idea. Grow some balls. You're a man, not a pony to be stabled until she wants to take you out in three months. If she insists on marginalizing you in such a way, all for a career that may not be that lucrative, you want no part of her slow-burning suicide, anyway.

You owe it to yourself, letter-writer, not to be placed in that mental prison. Go out and meet some other women if she doesn't want to spend time with you. Maybe you'll find one who isn't crazy enough to try this crap.