Building a Law School Ratings System: Part I - Introduction

Introduction

I've decided to build my own damn law school ratings system from the ground-up. This has been inspired by a number of things, but chiefly among them are these two:

• The need for a broader amount of useful, helpful information for prospective law students.
  
• The complete inadequacy of current systems being used to compare law schools.
  

A "Ratings" System

The first problem of other systems, ranging from serious rankings like U.S. News and World Reports and Prof. Leiter's and completely frivolous ones like this thing running on allourideas.com is that a system premised on finding whether x > y does not accurately reflect the legal landscape.

As anyone who lives, works, or studies law knows, the difference between the 10th best USNWR school (schools like Michigan, Virginia, Northwestern) and the 50th best USNWR school (currently schools like Utah, SMU, Florida) is a much greater difference than that between those schools ranked 50th and the schools ranked around 90th (Marquette, Denver, UNLV).

Whereas a rankings system seems to presuppose a linear progression, the actual "value" of law degrees from different institutions seems exponential and top-heavy.

Furthermore, a "rankings" system conveys the message that the "best" schools, those at the top of the list, are always worth going to, while the ones at the bottom of the list are not. Neither of these assumptions has any theoretical basis. Indeed, it could be possible that any law school is a profitable enterprise; in such a situation, it would misleading to assert any school is in some hellish 4th tier. Likewise, an assumption that any law school - even one ranked 5th - is worth going to may be in error.

For these reasons, my system will use simple letter-grade ratings similar to how investment analysts may rate a company's securities or debt. I will use the standard American school letter grades with half-step increments (A, A-, B+, etc.).

The end-game here is to ultimately give every law school in America a simple letter grade representing how worthwhile it is to attend that particular institution under various circumstances. Schools will not be ranked on an x > y basis.

How To Evaluate Law Schools?

It seems to me that any rankings or ratings system should have the following characteristics:

1. Accuracy - It should accurately reflect the existing field of legal education.
2. Reliability - It should be open in its methodology and able to be reproduced consistently with similar results.
3. Integrity - It should have sound reason for doing what it is doing and should be impervious to artificial manipulation by those whom it sets out to evaluate (here's looking at you, Villanova).

Current rankings systems fail on a number of these fronts. Often they use the LSAT and undergraduate GPA of a previous student body as some type of indicator of the school's quality. The USNWR recently defended this practice even though the ABA is considering dropping the LSAT as a requirement for law school admission.

Frankly, I don't understand why they ever used it in the first place. After matriculation to law school, no one seriously cares about LSAT scores or undergraduate GPAs. Furthermore, even if it were some proxy for student body "quality" (and that assumption is fraught with error), you would be evaluating what students chose to attend the school rather than the school's value. Since prospective students have little first-hand knowledge of whether the school is "good" or "bad" prior to attending it, this is a rather stupid way of judging a school's quality.

Additionally, using LSAT scores as a heuristic for determining law school quality is obviously open to manipulation, which the law schools have had almost no qualms doing. Schools regularly offer scholarships to higher-scoring kids in an attempt to boost their USNWR rank. The very fact that UC-Irvine literally built a law school and claimed - after enrolling its first class - that it would have placed in the top 20 of a real-life law school rankings system is patently ridiculous.

In addition to the use of LSAT rankings, most law school rankings systems rely on self-reported data that is provided directly by the law schools with no auditing or means of ensuring the data has any sort of reliability. The criteria provided to the ABA is similarly unhelpful to prospective students because schools are allowed to include temporary jobs and non-legal work like minimum wage retail jobs. This distortion means the rankings cannot accurately reflect legal hiring or the demand for lawyer work.

Many law school rankings systems also feature completely irrelevant criteria, such as the number of citations a law schools' faculty has in the past year. Because law school is not a school of philosophy, it should not be judged on similar criteria as a liberal arts college. Law school is a professional training ground where the subjects are generally not esoteric, cutting edge areas of study, but rather areas requiring practical application of commonly-understood principles. I see next to no connection between a faculty's abilities to research and its ability to produce good practitioners of the law. Almost no one goes to a school because a certain professor teaches there. Furthermore, using such measures as a proxy for faculty quality is open to manipulation depending on which schools have the biggest pocketbooks or the most-read law reviews.

Finally, current ranking systems seem to live in an alternate reality; they do not factor in things like bimodal hiring that may shock some prospective law students upon first encountering them.

My own ranking system will try to address these problems on a number of fronts. Although it is impossible to work in certain numbers without data that I have no access to, I plan on using what available data is out there to develop a more usable system of evaluating schools.

More specific explanations of the system will follow in future parts.

Part 1: Introduction (this Page)
Part 2: Top-Line/"National" Employment
Part 3: Bottom-Line/"Local" Employment
Part 4: Saturation and Regional Considerations
Part 5: Applying Investment Principles
Part 6: Conclusion

One final note: if you take issue with any of my methodology, I encourage you, instead of merely sniping at mine, to start your own system.

News Roundup: Technology and Burnout; Lawyers' Lack of Self-Awareness

This morning I have two sobering stories for your weekend.

The first is from the ABA Journal about a recent report that cited technology and the changing BigLaw model as sources of significant stress and burnout in the legal profession. Kids, if any of you still think the Perry Mason model of legal services is what is common, you need to read this:

“Electronic communication has fueled a culture in which clients want more legal information, answers on the spot, and lawyers who can interpret, rather than simply provide, information,” the report says.The result is more specialization and an emphasis on ability to deliver higher quality services at a lower cost and in less time.
...
“Work settings which do not address stressors of the modern practice of law will continue to produce a significant number of lawyers who are depressed, dissatisfied with the quality of their lives, spend too little time with their families and communities, continue to be isolated and show increased levels of depression and addictive behaviors,” the report says.

While the reaction of many who read this may be "no shit, Sherlock," the real question is whether the professional organizations who are supposed to regulate the attorney profession actually do anything about their industry slipping dangerously close to being the white-collar equivalent of a 19th-century textile mill.

Our second article today may point out why so many lawyers may be "depressed, dissatisfied with the quality of their lives, spend too little time with their families and communities, continue to be isolated and show increased levels of depression and addictive behaviors" and not wish to do a damn thing about it.

In his Sunday Reflection (published on a Friday), attorney Glenn Harlan Reynolds delves into the argument of whether America's problems are in having too many lawyers, or in just plain having too many laws. Although I find that a fascinating question (can you say "yes" to both?), what I found most interesting was his discussion of a new book, which I need to find, called "The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System" by Ben Barton at Tennessee. This is interesting:

[Barton] notes that in America, pretty much all judges (except for a few justices of the Peace and such) are lawyers. And, after examining the work of judges in a number of different areas, he concludes that judges systematically rule in ways that favor lawyers, and that make the legal system more complex. (And legislators, mostly lawyers themselves, aren't much better).

Barton tells me that his thesis gets two very different reactions depending on the audience: Non-lawyers find it painfully obvious, while most lawyers and legal academics find it shocking and offensive.

"Shocking and offensive?"

Are lawyers - at least the type Barton interviewed - really that incapable of self-criticism? As a lawyer, you have to realize that your entire job is dependent on problem-solving being a byzantine endeavor out-of-reach for normal people who have better things to do than learn the intricacies of American law.

It is "painfully obvious" that one of our government's chief accomplishments over the last sixty years is to make law more needlessly complex; even though there's been minor movements to streamline and make uniform certain areas of the law (like the UCC), often the arrogance of each generation wanting to have its own voice has made multiple conflicting editions (why did we need a 3rd restatement of basic Tort law?) and the federal government's ability to (and stupidity in) drafting 2,000-page laws has created entire armies who do nothing but interpret ERISA or the tax code. And our Supreme Court, supposed to be the exemplars of the legal system, has cast aside brevity as a goal and turned the once-pragmatic exercise of jurisprudence into a labyrinthine exhaustion of bombast.

Lawyers find this "shocking and offensive?" What do you think you get paid for, except to untangle the massive knots? Could there be any less self-awareness than by grown professionals who have no idea why their field has more work than their French or Spanish peers? That don't understand why their profession has expanded exponentially over the last fifty years?

This doesn't make lawyer work any less "valuable," unless you take the absurd position that work has to have some innate value.

But self-awareness is the first step in correcting a problem, in being a contented human being at peace with himself and the world. If lawyers can't even recognize the most basic conditions and causes of their profession, how can they be expected to realize when their work lives resemble that of sweatshop workers? Will they continue to convince themselves that their 75-hour workweeks are more of a normative benefit to society than work that only exists because their predecessors made it for them?

Lawyers, like everyone else, are self-interested. They make more work for themselves and others; fundamentally, they're no different than auto mechanics who find new things wrong with every car that comes in. The only difference is that they do it on a much larger, more damaging scale. Until lawyers realize that fundamental truth about themselves and their peers, I don't see how it can ever be entrusted to self-regulate.

A Rant/Calculation on Professor Salaries

Recently, I noticed someone had added a post on an old entry of TTR defending the salaries of law professors that are paid over $200,000. Their defense rested on two principal grounds: (1) the cost of living in the particular city (in this case, San Francisco) and (2) that they're exceptional teachers and "worth every penny."

It got me wondering what the actual "worth," in annual salary, of a law professor is. Considering what follows, I'd have to be convinced to pay one more than $100,000 given the current oversupply of qualified people for such positions and the fact that law schools are professional schools that exist for the public's benefit. And I'd only pay that much to retain someone who is outstanding and legitimately has other offers. To do otherwise, I think, is a disservice for institutions of "public benefit."

The hardest-working law professors I've come across teach two large lecture courses and a smaller seminar-level course over an academic year. Let's assume - to give the professors the benefit of the doubt - that they teach this schedule and that the large courses have 90 students and the smaller course has 20. That is 200 students total.

Let's assume that the two large lecture courses meet for 4 hours each week on average and that the smaller course meets for 3 hours a week. Assuming 15-week semesters, that's going to be around 165 hours a year of in-class instruction. Let's assume that the professor puts 3 hours of preparation into every hour of in-class instruction (considering their expertise and how the Socratic method works, this is probably excessive). Generous preparation time would add 495 hours.

There is also office hours. Let's assume the professor puts in 2 office hours each week for the entire year, which, from my experience, is fairly standard. That adds 60 hours. And then there's grading. To keep things simple, let's assume the teacher spends an hour grading each student's final exam or paper. That adds 200 hours of work for 200 students.

All tallied, that's 920 hours of work to teach three classes in an academic year. That may sound like a lot, but under normal labor conditions (40 hr/week), that's only 23 weeks. If you're a lawyer who works 60 hours a week, it takes you only need to work about 15 or so to get to 920.

At 920 hours, a professor that makes $200,000 is pulling in $217 an hour.

But wait! you may say. Professors also write articles and books! And they must attend faculty meets and are supposed to go to all sorts of events at the schools! Okay, sure, let's say there's two hours of meetings each week and that the professor spends six weeks each year writing things to build the college's reputation. That would add 344 hours and lower the per/hour taking to $158 an hour. In a world where some graduates make minimum wage selling t-shirts, I'm skeptical that complies with any definition of reasonableness.

A common claim made in defense of professor pay is that they could make more in the private sector. Well, even if that's true, so what? I'm sure there are lots of people who could make more doing something else. Most of our Congress could make more doing something else, but they all chose to do what they're doing. And it seems to me that being a law professor has numerous perks over private practice. I can't speak for everyone, but personally I'd sure as hell rather make $200k working 30 weeks a year in a fairly low-stress position than make twice as much working 60+ hours a week as an attorney.

You might argue that professors bring some level of expertise that is in short supply on the market. To me, this argument really only holds water for small, specialty areas of the law, like Military Law or Advanced Energy Law. I could legitimately see where certain areas like that are legitimately hard to find someone qualified to teach them. But for 90% of law courses, there's not really a shortage of "expertise." For first-year and some upper-level courses, there are literally tens of thousands of people produced every single year who are competent in the subject matter. There a slew of people with specialized knowledge in areas like copyright, environmental law, and constitutional law that are either unemployed or working outside of their area of "expertise." Explaining legal concepts isn't brain surgery (unless you try to do something stupid like reconcile the politicized Supreme Court's history into unified objective rules); that's why there are 10 gazillion study aides available for any given legal subject.

The only thing keeping the law schools from paying less and hiring the law school equivalent of SAT/LSAT tutors is that there remains a "prestige" in having Harvard graduates stock your faculty. Personally, since law school is professional training and not a philosophy-based institution, I think it's absurd that they run them the same way you would a liberal arts college, and were I in charge, I would definitely have a preference for hiring adjuncts who actually work, but that's just me.

All in all, I don't want to make a blanket claim that all professors are overpaid, but let's not pretend that most professors aren't benefiting gratuitously from an extremely fortuitous situation, where they're compensated at a favorable rate for doing a task where, in normal market conditions, there would be a significant oversupply of qualified applicants driving down wages. There is a reason professorial jobs are coveted like medieval salt; through devices like tenure and misplaced elitism they've basically rigged the labor market.

I would gladly teach Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Evidence, and Professional Responsibility at a Fourth-tier law school for $40 an hour, even in San Francisco. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Peter Keane makes 4 times as much (per GG's tax return cited on TTR) - if not more - teaching those pedestrian, run-of-the-mill courses. Plus, he gets to fly around the country and reap the harvest of being a "dean emeritus." And he regularly makes TV appearances. Golden Gate pays him significantly more than market rate even though I can practically guarantee you that no one goes to Golden Gate University Law School because Peter Keane is there. To me, that's economic silliness and a waste of money, but I don't fault Keane for rigging a sweat deal; I fault the "public benefit, not-for-profit" institution that pays him.

As for the cost-of-living argument, I can't take that seriously when professors are paid significantly more than the local average and the schools they work for expect their students to live on a fraction of that amount.

Finally, one can't help but ignore the role of escalating professor salaries in contributing to ridiculous tuition increases. While, again, I can't fault the professors for capitalizing on absurd conditions that pay them quadruple what the market would likely bear, I would have moral difficulties cashing an inflated paycheck from somewhere like Golden Gate knowing that my salary increase was partially paid for by loans that fourth-tier graduates will have an increasingly hard time paying back, all because I conned someone into thinking that an education from me was something special and worth paying four or five times the market rate.

If certain, patently-overpaid professors had any kind of a moral conscience that trumped their financial motivation, it seems to me that they would take voluntary pay cuts to aid their universities in providing their "public benefit" at a reasonable cost. But alas, as the last two decades have taught us, the education sector no more believes in the true "public benefit" than Microsoft or Alcoa. Non-profit or for-profit alike, those at the head-table will resource-grab as much as they legally can. Again, I can't fault professors for being human and wanting to exploit the mine for as much gold as possible, but I sure as hell can and will fault the system for giving them bigger pick-axes and carts.

A Message to Yale Grads

So the Yale Daily News today published this piece about Yale grads applying to law school and/or putting it off in the wake of recent events.

In case any Yale grads (or grads of any other elite school) come around here, I want you to remember four simple words: you are not immune.

There is a tenancy at many "elite" undergraduate schools to think that you are "set for life," and I'm sure there are still many out there who believe if you go to school [x] that you should have no trouble finding a good job, even if a stagnant economy. Many of you are probably thinking that because you went to a school like Yale and did well, you would be able to thrive at any law school in the country, be it NYU or NYLS.

I'm going to tell you you are not immune to the conditions of the so-called "real world." Your Yale degree will mean jack squat at whatever law school you go to. You will be thrown in the same bin with Southeast Utah Tech grads. Finals are graded anonymously, and even though you may develop into an expert on Tort or Contract law, the odds are you will get a B after working significantly harder than you did at Yale to get A/A-'s. And if you choose to attend a non-elite law school, be it because of easy scholarship money (which you will have to work hard to keep) or because you couldn't score well on the LSAT, almost no one will care that you went to Yale.

There, in two paragraphs, I gave you better advice for your future than much of this article. For example, your newspaper chooses to devote the entire middle third of the story to allow Wendy Margolis of LSAC to advertise. To wit:

Margolis speculated that fewer students are interested in law school overall because of increased media attention regarding the impact of a poor economy on the legal job market.

“Last year, with the other sectors of the economy slowing down, people were taking the opportunity to enhance their education by going to law school,” she said. “People were still thinking that law school was a good investment. It is still a good investment, but people are just being more realistic about what the outcome is going to be.”

Um...yeah. The "increased media attention" is only minimally related to the economy, and the whole point of it is that law school is NOT a good investment for many people, including, I'm sure, some Yale grads.

But at least there are some good advisers at Yale.

“A lot of people say they’re considering it because there’s nothing else to do,” [student Kwaku Osei] said, “but the process is really complicated and the number of people who actually apply is much lower.”

He added that while most people have encouraged his own choice to apply to law school, his adviser in the Political Science Department told him not to apply. Osei said his adviser warned him of the high cost and the fact that law school only prepares students to become lawyers.

First of all, if you think the process to apply is "really complicated," you want no part of law school or being a lawyer itself. And second, your adviser is smart, unlike this fine representative of your lying-through-its-teeth career services department:

Elayne Mazzarella, deputy director at Yale Undergraduate Career Services, said Yalies turn to law school not just to prepare themselves to practice law, adding that students also use the degree to “to advance their careers, to make themselves more marketable in specific industries, to teach [or] for the love of learning.”

My god, seriously? If you love learning or want to make yourself marketable in any industry except law/government/compliance, law school is the LAST place you should go.

Apparently, Yale students aren't immune from having crap spewed at them, either. 50k for tuition and room and board and they can't even give you sane advice. At least some students learn about reality the hard way:

Shelagh Mahbubani ’11 said she had planned to apply to law school, but decided against it after an internship with The Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit legal services provider in New York City.

“I got to see lawyers working, and I realized that I wasn’t interested enough in the work to be able to put in the hours that are required to be a good lawyer,” she said. “They work ridiculously long hours to prepare for trials and I don’t want to spend that much time around paper, and doing one kind of work.”

While I'm wondering what the hell she thought lawyers did, and what jobs in this economy don't involve the dreaded "paper" or "one kind of work," it's good that she actually did the internship and that her experience was published to the whole community.

Because, kids, you're not immune. Unless you have choice connections, you're getting thrown in the same meat-grinder as everyone else. And if you think it's hard getting a job with a Yale liberal arts degree in this economy, it's even harder if you go into a field that has long-term shifts affecting it beyond the current recession's effect, and especially if you go to a non-elite law school.

George Leef: The Secret Is Out

This is a week old, but some messages bear repeating. Here's just a sample from this nice little write-up by George Leef at the Pope Center:

One of the principles law students learn in their contracts courses is that a contract entered into as a result of fraud is voidable at the option of the defrauded party. If a law school employs false or misleading statistics to make it seem as though enrolling there is an almost certain path to a high-paying legal job, it has crossed the line. As Professor Henderson says, “law schools have a special moral obligation to tell the truth about themselves.” Clearly, some are not.

The reason why they don’t isn’t hard to find: they’re cash cows.

Leef says, almost verbatim, the exact same things the so-called "scambloggers" have been saying for two years.

Leef is not some random, anonymous, disgruntled loner. He is the Pope's Director of Research and a Duke Law graduate who has spent his recent professional life advocating free markets.

University of Iowa Law Review: The Future of Legal Education, Brought to You By UC-Irvine Law

The University of Iowa Law Review is hosting a symposium on February 25-26 entitled "The Future of Legal Education." Among the topics will be economic viability, preparation for legal practice, judges' perspectives, and the ABA.

On the surface, it sounds like the exact same issues that independent legal bloggers (including the "scambloggers" and the guys at Law School Transparency) have become experts on over the past two years. Furthermore, journalists like David Segal (and even some at the ABA Journal) have examined in-depth the current state of legal education.

But now let's take a look at the distinguished guest list for this symposium, shall we?

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Keynote Speaker	University of California, Irvine School of Law
Dean Gail B. Argawal	University of Iowa College of Law
Professor Judith C. Areen	Georgetown University Law Center
Justice David L. Baker	Iowa Supreme Court
Joel W. Barrows	Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of Iowa
Dean Jay Conison	Valparaiso University School of Law
Dean Michael A. Fitts	University of Pennsylvania Law School
Kelly M. Hnatt	Partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP
Dean Kevin R. Johnson	University of California, Davis School of Law
Dean Richard A. Matasar	New York Law School
Judge Michael J. Melloy	U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Cyndi Nance	University of Arkansas School of Law
Associate Dean Larry E. Ribstein	University of Illinois College of Law
Associate Dean Catherine E. Smith	University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Dean Kent D. Syverud	Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Judge Deanell R. Tacha	U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Dean Kellye Y. Testy	University of Washington School of Law
President David E. Van Zandt	The New School

3 judges, 2 working attorneys, and 13 current or former law school administrators.

Doesn't this seem a little imbalanced?

To be fair, some of the administrators, such as Larry Ribstein or Richard Matasar, are actually established in the field or on record as commenting on these issues. But many of them aren't, and it seems to me that letting someone like Dean Chemerinsky of all people serve as keynote speaker eradicates any objective, academic intent of the program. After all, this is a man running a manipulative scheme whose sole mission was to buy high LSAT scores to game the USNWR rankings.

In fact, three weeks ago, when I heard about this event, I emailed the University of Iowa Law Review expressing my detailed concerns on these exact points. After all, you would never host an honest symposium about the future of the automobile where almost all the participants are from Ford, GM, Exxon, Chevron, etc. Why do it for law?

Iowa Law Review has not even bothered to send me a response.

Let's hope some of the honest administrators and non-law school personnel make this a worthwhile event rather than the de facto advertising circus that the guest list would seem to suggest.

Meet Mary Cheney, #3 in her Class, Retail Clerk

For those of you who automatically think people who go to lower-tiered schools and can't find work don't work hard (or if you think that the legal profession is, in any way, promoting an efficient use of human resources, I encourage you to read the testimonial of Mary Cheney on IPWatchdog:

First-year law students are told to study hard, earn that invitation onto law review, become involved in extracurricular activities, obtain real-world experience through legal externships and graduate at the top of their class. They are told that if they do these things, they will land that Associate Attorney position at a reputable law firm. I followed this advice. I earned those honors, and I am currently working, not as an attorney but in the retail industry for about minimum wage.

Mary has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from UC-San Diego. She graduated #3 at Thomas Jefferson Law School (now with new campus!), where she also served as a Law Review editor. She also has multiple items of legal experience, including an intern stint at Pfizer.

If you read this, or her resume, and your first response to her working in minimum wage retail is "she should have gone somewhere like UCLA," you need to have your god-damned head examined.