A Change -in Legal Education - is Gonna Come (with apologies to Sam Cook)

I attended the ABA Workshop for Law School Dean on being a law school dean in tough times. It had the expected advice about how to weather the current economic storms. But there was also a not so veiled undercurrent: the old strategies may not work this time because legal education is undergoing a sea change.

I am in that camp. Economic and educational forces are combining in ways that will create a different world in which law schools will operate and lawyers will practice.

What are the economic forces?

• Law firms are shedding jobs that are not likely to be re-created when the recession ends.
• The remaining jobs will not pay so much as before.
  
• Students will be reluctant to take on large debt unless there are jobs waiting for them.
• Law Firms will demand job-ready applicants

What are the educational forces?

• Calls for fundamental legal education reform are gaining momentum
• The ABA is moving toward outcome-based accreditation standards
• Students are demanding different approaches and want to see value for their tuition dollars.
  

In my view, schools that are mission driven and can measure their effectiveness will thrive. This means that life as law schools have known it for the last 20 years is over: if rankings survive, they will have take into account the new value that students will seek. And law schools will not be able to pump up tuition without regard to student debt load. And the faculty salad days may be over.

Perhaps it will create a caste system for law school but, as UMKC Dean Ellen Suni said, "So what? We've got that already." Perhaps, mission driven schools will be able to pursue their vision and prospective students will recognize our value. (BTW, the Sam Cook original may be one of the greatest R & B songs ever. IMHO).

Changing what Law Schools Practice and Law Firms Teach

Temple Law School Dean Joanne Epps has an interesting piece in the National Law Journal entitled A Tipping Point for Law Schools? Dean Epps argues that the economic crisis gives law schools and law firms an opportunity to re-think the way we educate law students. The old bargain between the profession where law schools taught "the law" and law firms taught skills has broken down.

Of course, that was only true for the largest firms. Law schools that sent their graduates into small firms, state agencies, and solo practice have always embraced a mission to teach legal theory AND to prepare their graduates to practice law. That's why my law school - UALR William H. Bowen School of Law - has required an upper level skills course since 1974. The ABA only mandated a skills requirement in 2006. The recession and the reform movement in legal education have exposed the divide between the law school "haves" and the rest of us. In truth, the "haves" are now experiencing what the rest of us have always known and are now embracing what the rest of us have always done.

In fairness, Dean Epps' school - Temple - has been at the forefront of clinical legal education. I'm not picking on her. In fact, she gets it about right: that there is no single template for legal education in the 21st Century and that the future will be marked by flexibility and collaboration. As she says:

"I [don't] expect that change will come from one law school or even a handful of law firms. Rather, I think it is imperative that a dialogue get under way that harnesses our collective experiences from across the spectrum of the industry to think strategically about the role legal education should play during the next 20 to 50 years."

Indeed.

Wisconsin Diploma Privilege and The Dormant Commerce Clause

7th Circuit reinstates the case challenging Wisconsin's diploma privilege.

UC Irvine and Innovation

One of my students (@msalorio) asked me on twitter (@jmdipippa) what I thought of UC Irvine Law School's approach to legal education. My answer: I like most of what they are doing. Here is how they describe what they're doing. What I like: the idea that an innovative curriculum that focuses on experiential learning and on public service does not come at the expense of scholarship and reputation. Indeed, if they accomplish their goal of being ranked in USNEW's top 20, there is hope for the rest of us! It may mean that law schools do not have to be clones of Langdell's 19th Century Harvard. Rather, we can be well-respected in the academic world and in the legal practice world and that we can educate students to be lawyers with apology. I also like the ambitious goal of a tuition-free law school.

BTW, lots of good stuff on the Legal Innovation Blog including a discussion of UC Irvine.

The Future of Legal Education

Notice this provocative article from the ABA Journal: "Are Law Schools Like GM? Why Profs Should Mull End of Salad Days" discussing Indiana University Law Professor William Henderson's blog post. Henderson wonders whether law schools have GM's problems: complacency and a sense of invincibility. The problem is that, unlike medical or business schools, law schools don't address the problems of modern practice and, consequently, the legal profession does not look to them as a valuable resource except to produce fresh bodies to inhabit spots on the Associate track. Couple that with students' rising debt loads and a shrinking market and you have a crisis (or a disaster) waiting to happen.

I want to take the GM metaphor a little farther. GM ignored its competition, refused to innovate, and was content with short term profit. While Toyota and Honda were building small, fuel efficient and reliable cars, GM was riding the wave of low oil prices to produce bigger and less fuel efficient and less reliable cars. When short term profits kept rolling in, everything was fine. But when the bottom fell out, GM had no where to go and was too big to move quickly anyway.

Law Schools face an Gm-like environment today: new competitors, changing customer demands (students and employers), and a an antiquated business model. But, as in the past, many of us typically respond to demands for change like GM: we just trot out bigger versions of what we've always done. The future of legal education will belong to those institutions that learn from GM's debacle: adapt or die.