Saturday, September 17, 2011

The best defense

One thing that's struck me about the reaction to this little project from legal academics is the almost complete absence of any substantive defense of American legal education in its present form.  Consider this post from Paul Horwitz, which appears to confess under the equivalent of rhetorical torture that signing the Law School Transparency Petition might be worth considering.  Horwitz doesn't like the tone of my posts, which is hardly surprising, but what's remarkable is that his criticism of the substance of this blog adds up to "nothing that Campos is saying is really new." And I'm happy to take quasi-judicial notice of that fact. It's true: lots of people before me -- going back for many decades even -- have pointed out with great eloquence and fervor that law school tends to be intellectually vacuous and teaches people very little about practicing law.  The only new element to this critique is that the combination of the skyrocketing cost of going to law school with the ongoing contraction of the market for high-priced legal services has made the all-too-glaring defects of American legal education much less tolerable to those who are (literally) bearing the costs of those defects.

The "defense" of American legal education, to the extent it exists at all, tends to take the form of a kind of Platonic ideal of pure denial, such as in this anonymous comment to Horwitz's post: "That there are some 'people who feel scammed by law school' does not mean they have actually been scammed, and so far neither Campos nor anyone else has explained why the feelings are justified."  Seriously professor? (I'm guessing this is a law professor -- again, who else can you possibly imagine saying something like that?). 

I was talking to a recent law grad the other day who attended not one but two top tier law schools. He transferred from the first in part because he was shocked by how bad the teaching was, only to discover that his new school was even worse. As an undergraduate he attended a a well-known liberal arts college, and he estimates that 95% of the classes he took there were good to excellent. I asked him how many of his law school classes came up to that standard, and he told me that two had. He said that four-fifths of his classes were complete wastes of time, a few others were pretty poor but very occasionally had moments where something worth learning was touched on, and two were actually good (This is someone with a superb overall academic record, who was on full merit scholarships in both college in law school, and who had substantial law-related work experience before going to law school. He tells me that if law school hadn't been free he would have quit as soon as he realized that, in comparison to his undergraduate experience, it was a bad joke).

Yes, anecdotes are not data, but how many anecdotes have you ever heard from people who thought they got their money's worth from law school in terms of either intellectual value or vocational training? (And I'm talking about people who went to law school before it cost $200,000, in an economy with one new position for every two law school graduates).   I went to what in retrospect was a terrific law school, comparatively speaking, and I had a half dozen good classes in three years.  (I learned next to nothing about practicing law of course). In fact just about the only people who ever seem to have much of a good word for their overall law school experience are law professors. What does that tell you?

Here's a simple, straightforward question for the defenders of the status quo:  Who is willing to defend the proposition that, under current circumstances, the third year of law school is worth the money?  (Recently I ran into an article in the Harvard Law Review from the 1920s pointing out that the third year in particular was a total waste of time, which only seemed to exist because someone had decided that law school should be three years rather than two.)  I'm genuinely curious if anyone in legal academia is willing to step up to the plate on this one.  Because in my experience even the most fervent establishment types will admit that the third year should be dispensed with altogether, or at least transformed into an externship/residency experience of some sort.  That's where we are today: the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the present system pretty much admit that at a minimum a full third of the money and time students are required to invest in that system has no real justification.  And yet these very same people will express deep puzzlement when law graduates with hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational debt and no job prospects report that they "feel scammed by law school."

76 comments:

  1. None of it can ever be justified but I wouldn't mind it so much if these barriers to entry (3 years of mind-numbing boredom where you don't even learn the basics of how to practice) didn't cost so damn much. It is this combination (along with the lack of jobs) that makes the situation so nasty and completely and totally a scam no matter what justification a pompous self-interested academic ass attempts to use.

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  2. Years ago I took a class called law in society in my third year at the University of Tn. At least I think that was the name of it. The law professor had written a book on a football game fixing scandal in the 1960s. The book was the textbook-I kid you not. What idiocy---easy 4.0 though. What it had todo with law--I have no idea.

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  3. Of course when I took the above class, tuition was something like 1500 dollars a semester in 1987 dollars.

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  4. On the third year - Mitu Gulati and Rick Sander wrote a great piece called The Happy Charade looking at just how checked out third years are. And drawing conclusions about what that means about law school (largely credentialing); and making a few suggestions about where to go from here.

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  5. Here's what I wrote on Prof. Horwitz's post:

    We could wait to see if Cooley/NYLS can get the suits dismissed on a technicality as you hope, or we can do something right now. I say anyone who is upset by anon 8:03's disingenuous and obfuscating comment can teach him/her a lesson by (a) finding out the name of the law school where he/she teaches, (b) collecting the names of the 2010 graduates of that law school (c) calling every one of them to find out what they are REALLY doing and (c) publishing a website where they compare the truth vs. the statistics published by his/her school. Then you'll have a nice well packaged basis for a fraud lawsuit right there, and if you can find a good prosecutor, perhaps even a criminal fraud prosecution.

    So let's this ball rolling, where do you teach anon 8:03?

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  6. Eliminating the third year won't solve the problem at all. It'll just increase the capacity of law schools, and probably the supply of lawyers into the market. Having no job with $200,000 of debt isn't that much different than having no job with $133,000 of debt.

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  7. "I was talking to a recent law grad the other day who attended not one but two top tier law schools. He transferred from the first in part because he was shocked by how bad the teaching was, only to discover that his new school was even worse. As an undergraduate he attended a a well-known liberal arts college, and he estimates that 95% of the classes he took there were good to excellent. I asked him how many of his law school classes came up to that standard, and he told me that two had. He said that four-fifths of his classes were complete wastes of time, a few others were pretty poor but very occasionally had moments where something worth learning was touched on, and two were actually good "

    -----------------

    The problem is that, with the socratic method, I can take the presentation of the thought "Apples are red or green, or some other colors" and present it over 30 minutes of awkward, twisted back and forth "guess what's in my mind" tortured questioning. The socratic method is downright retarded. No other form of education worth a dime would use it. For example, if anyone doing corporate training for large companies tried to use it he would be fired and probably get his ass kicked in the parking lot.

    But it's used in law school because it's a great way for lazy professors to be lazy.

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  8. "The law professor had written a book on a football game fixing scandal in the 1960s. The book was the textbook-I kid you not. What idiocy---easy 4.0 though. What it had todo with law--I have no idea."

    lol.

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  9. 9:27
    Well, it did teach me never to bet against AL if they are playing GA.

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  10. Everyone knows it takes 3 years to train a Leader of Society. I think that's in the Bible, or the Constitution, or something.

    @tdennis: You don't need a law school class to know that Bama will teach the Bulldogs to behave.

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  11. 9:19 here, Horwitz deleted that comment even though I saw nothing wrong with it. Did you guys see anything wrong with the comment I posted at 9:19?

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  12. BL1Y:
    LOL---actually, I do. Went to Vandy undergrad---we don't learn a lot about winning SEC football teams there : )

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  13. 9:19:

    I still see your comment. Looks fine to me. I'm the one that's for a consumer protection claim action. 8:03's comment doesn't appear, though.

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  14. That's odd, I see 8:03's comment and my reposted comment (I reposted it with a request to explain why it was deleted). I guess it was internet gremlins.

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  15. FYI http://angrylawadmissions.blogspot.com/

    You know, maybe None is right and that LawProf might want to start linking other blogs on his site. It would be nice to have an index of all the scamblogs.

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  16. Quote from above blog:

    "people still flock to law schools. True, applications to law schools across the nation are down by about 11% compared to last year (applications to my law school are down almost 20% compared to last year), but we still had more than 1,600 people apply for fewer than 200 seats in our entering class. I got a scholarship application today from a guy with six kids, no job, a $200,000 mortgage, and $80,000 in student loan debt that is in forbearance. God only knows how many other people like him we have in our entering class who didn't fill out scholarship applications."

    Wow. How do we explain someone like this?

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  17. There already is an index of the scamblogs, it's called the blogroll of all the other scamblogs. If that's not good enough, just create a scamblogindex.blogspot.com.

    One of the things that turns a lot of people off from the scamblogs however is the internal pissing contests. I'd rather just see Campos do his own thing and not get caught up in that nonsense.

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  18. 10:30:
    Maybe he doesn't know how babies are made?

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  19. The guy in 10:30 represents modern America. He's probably a tea partier too!

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  20. BL1Y, good argument with that JDU admin. His "you can't link on my site unless you link me on your site" policy is bs. I've noticed he's driven a lot of entertaining posters away. I don't even read his board more than once every few weeks now. He's a real control freak.

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  21. Jesus, if this is going to turn into tdennis' personal comment section my time here is done. You say nothing of substance and a whole of it, apparently.

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  22. Not Trish, but I thought you were leaving.

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  23. Not the same guy, Trish, but can you leave?

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  24. I find her comments to be very interesting and helpful so I think you should leave, as you said you would do.

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  25. 11:20:

    Hey. (I don't think 11:06 likes me very much.---so sad. I guess I don't get his/her vote for Jr.High class president. Oh snap!)

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  26. We all know you're the same person Trish. But yay, I love listening to middle aged bored attys who have lived through none if this pontificate on who should say what and how. Yay.

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  27. 11:25:

    How's this for substance?
    1. Force the closure of all but fifty schools through clawback of stud t loan money using civil fraud suits ands tae consumer protection laws.
    2. Change ABA accretiting (sic) standards requiring law professors to be actively practicing lawyers or judges.
    3. Require an third year to be an internship/practicum.

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  28. LawProf-- do you know what percentage of students' tuition at your school goes to pay for faculty salaries, and how much that has increased over the years?

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  29. Wow, how interesting and original Trish

    /Campos what kind of academic are you? Why do keep trying to censor?

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  30. Horwitz deletes comments frequently, and in fact one of mine responding to that post was deleted. For those who haven't read it, the gist of Horwitz' post was that he thought the petition served a timely and necessary end, but he found Campos' style too distasteful to support it personally.

    I responded by saying that we unemployed and underemployed law graduates were hoping for an independently wealthy law professor who could quit to make the same points while maintaining moral purity, but were forced to settle for Campos. I pointed out that Orin Kerr, Eugene Volokh or Paul Horwitz could have put up the same petition, but ultimately only that rabble-rousing fraud Paul Campos did - again, it pained us, but we were forced to settle for Campos. I invited him to participate more fully in remaking legal education once transparency made it clear which schools were worth $50,000 a year and which were merely charging that much. The reply lasted maybe ten minutes.

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  31. Now John is doing something effective. Kudos. So Campos, do you really want to be compared to Horowitz? Keep censoring...

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  32. John: LOL, as the kids say.

    11:57: I've only deleted about five posts out of the 3000+ that have been posted on this site, all in an attempt to stop pointless compulsive trolling as opposed to "censoring" dissent. Now go ahead and post ten more comments about how you're being persecuted.

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  33. John, Horwitz wants to create, rather than listen to, the public's voice.

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  34. I graduated from law school in the late 90s. I would say that the education and training I received was worth more than the 60k I paid. But I still overpaid in the sense that the school could have delivered the same education and training for a lot less money.

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  35. Yea OK Campos, nice hyperbole. What happened to your post about how law school is filled with ass-kissing formality...instead I get to hear the sanctimonious BS of trish and how we should be use ass kissing formality while you censor criticism of that POV. Telling an ass to stfu =/ troll. Dolt.

    Now Im off to the day of rage rally while people like Trish and you sit in judgment of "trolls." I'll let you know how it goes....hopefully i dont end up in jail. But yea, Im a troll.

    ....and you started out so refreshingly.

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  36. How will closing all but fifty law schools affect the price of legal education and legal services in the country? If you "clawback" tuition payments, will the graduates keep their JDs?

    I suppose the requirement of having practicing lawyers teach is on the model of medical schools. That needs to be looked at very seriously, thinking out the differences between the two very different types of professions. Members of medical faculties can make a million dollars or more a year. The "best" ones, the ones who bring in the most research dollars and are the most prestigious, do not teach. The ones who don't bring as much research money, teach because they have time. There are strict hierarchies about practice, clinial work, and research. So, in the law school model, to get great practitioners who would be willing to give up part of remunerative practices, they would have to be paid a lot, too. That might okay if there are only fifty law schools, and the price of attending goes up.

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  37. I suspect 12:24 = Leiter or Horwitz, he constantly posts here trying to derail the discussion onto something completely irrelevant.

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  38. "I suppose the requirement of having practicing lawyers teach is on the model of medical schools."

    As I understand, per the ABA's ridiculous accreditation rules, you can't have a faculty of all adjuncts. You have to have full time academics!

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  39. "Now Im off to the day of rage rally"

    Cool. Let us know how it goes. So far I haven't seen any news coverage, so you guys will need to do something bold to get the media's attention.

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  40. Law Prof, you answered John's accusations. Could you answer my questions? At Colorado, what percentage of students' tution goes to pay faculty salaries, and has that changed over the past few years?

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  41. Can we please stop with the hyperbolic "solutions" to the law school problem?

    Immediately shut down 50 schools! Give all the students their money back! Hang the deans!

    It's like watching the GOP debates and hearing answers that start with "Well first, we're going to fix the economy..."

    Can we maybe focus on useful ideas?

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  42. 12':30
    Why wouldn't they keep their degrees? if they passed the bar at the time their school was accredited they would remain licensed lawyers. I believe Northwestern decided to close it's dental school; but it's graduates remain dentist. If you borrowed money to pay for a service under false pretenses, the clock does not wind back--the court can 't nod whatever little service you received. Check out consumer protection and fraud cases for more info.

    Many experienced , very competent lawyers would be happy to teach on an adjunct basis. They would make the time. But your right, ABA doesn't like adjuncts.

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  43. "Many experienced , very competent lawyers would be happy to teach on an adjunct basis."

    Really? You'd be happy to teach a course for a measily $4,000?

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  44. 12:34: That's correct -- the ABA has strict requirements limiting the number of adjuncts that can be used.

    12:40: At Colorado a little more than half the total operating budget is covered by tuition. I don't know how that compares to law schools in general, although Stanford's dean was recently quoted as saying Stanford had a similar budget breakdown.

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  45. BL1y:

    If you do not figure out a way to shut down a lot of law schools, either by true market forces, as a consequence of consumer protection/fraud damage awards, or the ABA doing it on it's own you will never solve the problem of too many of you not having jobs. There are too many law schools producing too many lawyers! Call my solution of using litigation as pressure to shut down law schools hyperbole if you wish, but at the end of the day, you are left with too many law schools producing too many lawyers.

    You're a lawyer, propose something better and I will support it. But whatever solution you propose will not occur overnight. Therefore, if your requirement for an executable solution is that the solution have quick effect, I don't think such a solution exists. It took decades to get to this crisis; entrenched powers are invested in the status quo; and the victims of this system are just now organizing themselves, barely.

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  46. 12:59
    Why not? The Nashville school of Law is set up on that model. It's not Harvard, granted---because most of the people that get out of there can practice law. A supreme court justice has taught there, the Metro-Nashville AG teaches there, a former US attorney has taught there, several of the best trial lawyers in Nashville teach there. I know it is hard to grasp that some baby boomers want to give something to the next generation, but some of us who experienced some good fortune do. Given how my generation has screwed your generation, I can understand your skepticism, though.

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  47. Thanks, Law Prof. So, half the total operating budget, which would include salaries, financial aid, buildings and maintenance and all other items that go into running a school. That, with cuts in state funding and, I would guess, relatively poorer performance on investments for the endowment in this economic climate. So, I guess there is no way to pull out Colorado's tuitions' contribution to salary versus to financial aid or to buildings.

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  48. tdennis: Add 1 credit writing/skills classes to accompany traditional lectures, sort of like labs for college chemistry classes. When you sign up for wills, you can take a wills lab that will focus on what to ask clients, how to write a will, how to do the formalities, what to do when a client finally dies, etc. Corporations would have an optional corp lab where you learn what documents to file, how to write bylaws, examining typical contracts (employment contracts, covenants not to compete, basic sales agreement, etc).

    I don't think the real problem is the cost or the supply of lawyers. It's that lawyers graduate without skills the market values. Supply is relative to demand. Allow lawyers to graduate with skills they can put to use on Day 1, and demand will go way up.

    Younger lawyers can also become more proactive in creating CLE programs. That can help you become better established in your community. You can offer them for a low price, which will save your follow young attorneys some money, while putting a couple bucks into your own pocket. Maybe offer them for free for people practicing <5 years, $25 for others, and pull in a couple hundred dollars. Then, write about your experience online, give advice for other CLE rookies so they can learn how to do it. That's not a fixing law schools suggestion, but there's a bigger issue of improving quality of life of law grads.

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  49. LP: My last comment disappeared. I'll blame the internet gremlins (I don't have paranoid delusions about comment persecution). Would you mind checking your deleted/spam folder?

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  50. So I understand law school budgets to be largely devoted to two things: salaries and financial aid. Yes, buildings cost money - but those are often (usually?) paid for through capital campaigns. And on another topic - adjuncts can be great, but they're hardly the solution. Remember, they are people with full time jobs. Whose clients come first (because they have to). And yes, they essentially work for free. Some of them may do it for the love of teaching. But lots do it because it looks fancy on their resume to say that they're associated with NYU (or, whatever).

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  51. @BL1Y/12:48 p.m.:

    Agreed. Hopefully, what follows will be useful.

    First, our protests can do nothing to affect the supply of law school berths. Accreditation decisions are made by the American Bar Association, which is unlikely to remove it once granted. State universities like opening them in the hopes of creating a low-overhead profit center to subsidize less profitable undergraduate and graduate programs. At this time, the Department of Education is willing to fund degrees at any of them up to the full cost, and isn't willing to discriminate against any based on employment reporting.

    Thus, our best hope in changing the game is to choke off demand for their product, by presenting clear and representative employment data to the two key constituents: prospective law students and the people who control federal student loan policy. If law students know that their chances are working in law are far less than formerly advertised, demand will fall, most in those places whose graduates are least likely to obtain full-time legal employment after graduation. While I don't expect the Department of Education or either of the congressional committees devoted to education to mandate anything drastic, it doesn't seem unreasonable to believe that they could mandate transparency reforms if the ABA will likely not. Right now, we are a generation of attorneys that can't repay our student loans without ongoing assistance from the government. Nobody, Democrat or Republican, wants to pay law schools to produce graduates unprepared to work as attorneys when they can't repay their taxpayer-backed loans.

    Certainly, a rock-throwing, blood-spattered riot by disgruntled former law graduates at their school would draw a lot of media attention, in addition to giving Bench Press Bro an image to masturbate over. However, the housing crisis has proven that the non-screwed American public is incredibly unsympathetic to people who made terrible investments while being manipulated by more sophisticated parties, and I would expect that dynamic to play out with us. We'd be spoiled rich kids, unwilling to start at the bottom and work their way up. (If you don't believe me, look at Prawfsblawg and Volokh.)

    I think the place to begin is to raise awareness. We should think about alternatives to the ABA reporting process if they fail to improve (U.S. News has already shown it's sympathetic to us). We should think about approaches to the Department of Education and Congress to force transparency at least, or a wholesale reevaluation of how student loans are made if we're really lucky. That, to me, seems like our best bet.

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  52. BL1y:

    I love your suggestions! The lab idea is positively brilliant and the cle idea is definitely a bear that will dance. You know,BL1Y, in a parallel universe, that is how lawyers are trained. I wish you could run a research project. Set up your methods at a law school using your methods. At the end of three years compare your grads on their real world law skills and other competencies versus those from a comparably ranked schools. I think I can guess the out come. Professor,why do law schools not have labs of the type BL1y is describing. It is truly inelegant solution to the "lack of training problem ",don't you think?

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  53. Capital campaigns do not pay the for the total cost of buildings. They are
    just the start. But financial aid and salaries of administrators, faculty, and staff are big costs. It would interesting to have specific information about
    what area takes the biggest chunk of student fees. That may be hard to tease out
    given the relationship between law schools and universities, who take the money
    and give a percentage back to the law school.

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  54. 1:52: Law libraries are also very expensive.

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  55. I would echo 12:40's question on a general (and non-critical) basis. It might be valuable information to have in discussing law school economics. I wouldn't put any particular rush on it, though.

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  56. That should have read "an elegant solution".

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  57. John:
    Good suggestions. I must acknowledge that my suggestion, persuading the ABA to allow adjuncts has the drawback of making law school cheaper which could resultant in people attending despite law school transparency data.

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  58. LP: "Expensive" barely begins to describe the cost of law libraries.

    Staff salaries alone (not counting any benefits or overhead) cost each student about $1200 per year. http://www.constitutionaldaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=611

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  59. I am going to ask a dumb question. Besides looking good for the rankings, is there any other reason that law schools have book libraries instead of digital which is probably cheaper?

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  60. In my city, solo lawyers who can't afford electronic research services use the law school's practice guides and such.

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  61. @tdennis239

    You hit on an important point. The cost of a physical library must include the physical space that it occupies, the staff, the cost of heat and cooling, etc. It is an enormous cost but it is really important to the ABA and AALS. Transitioning to a much more cost effective, digital model is viewed with great alarm in that world.

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  62. @ 2:19
    You are making an important point. But there are ways to provide that service to the Bar without committing millions of dollar to an ever expanding physical library. Some years ago I wrote about the problem at Judge Hill's Rule, 23 Ind. L. Rev. 137 (1990). You might enjoy Judge Hill's practical Hoosier solution.

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  63. What about trying to influence USNWR to change it's rankings system to take into account more factors that reduce costs rather than drive them?

    For example, USNWR currently considers "faculty resources" as 15% of a school's top score. This category includes spending per student, student/faculty ratio, and library size. We already know that these factors drive costs because they incentivize schools to burn money, by hiring more professors to teach small seminars, build new buildings, etc. However, it's never really been proven that these categories lead to better outcomes for students- for example every law student knows that 1L classes (the most important classes in terms of full-time employment) are usually large lectures at every school. We could suggest replacing that category with a category that takes into account financial aid awarded, total tuition and fees, debt burden, and other things that are of more interest to students than how many volumes are in the library.

    We might also suggest that the schools replace the "peer assessment score" which counts for a full .25 with a "graduate satisfaction score." Peer assessment scores incentivize schools to chase well-known professors with larger salaries and perks, and incentivizes professors to spend more time on scholarship and outside activities that increase their national profile. This would measure how satisfied graduates are with their law school education and whether they feel attending law school was a good bet.

    This proposal would allow USNWR to keep a ranking system that is about the only thing the magazine has going for them. Some deans and administrators wouldn't like this even though they constantly complain about being beholden to USNWR, but enough schools stand to benefit (state schools, schools that lose a lot of good faculty to better schools) that these administrators might sign on. And prospective students would continue to be able to worship USNWR (as they only really look at overall ranking) while having better information at their disposal about things that actually matter to them.

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  64. I don't know, being in smaller classes was a respite for me in law school. I got practice writing and got to know professors. A couple of them served as references for jobs and as mentors. It would have been harder for me to have had meaningful interactions with people who have been helpul to me if all my classes had been huge.

    As for graduate scores. That is important. But it took a few years for me to understand who had really taught me things versus people who were popular with students. That could take years to find out really.

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  65. I posted a comment about how Alabama raised tuition (in state) from $15.5k to $18k in one year (14%!) but Horwitz deleted that too.

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  66. (and yes $18k is low, but the 14% annual increase suggests a desire to eliminate that characteristic ASAP)

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  67. I'm writing this here since Horwitz has closed comments on that thread. Regarding Brian Tamanaha, I think most of the scamblog audience is aware of the things he's written in the past. I remember reading them with great excitement, particularly this:

    http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/06/wake-up-fellow-law-professors-to.html

    Its a great piece, but it didn't create half the stir that this blog has made. There are several reasons for that, I'm sure. Maybe some of it has to do with Campos' "distasteful" style, but I think its something different. By creating and dedicating an entire blog to the subject, Campos has turned up the volume on the message. It is reaching more people and creating more discussion, which is really the point. And if its part of some book deal plan for Campos, great, then they're will be a book out there on the subject. It could have been Tamanaha. He could have blogged about it more often, (he still can). I'm sure it would be great. So far he has not. They've both spoken, but Campos is trying harder to be heard.

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  68. I agree Fred. Law review articles were how you disseminated and discussed ideas 100 years ago. Back then, legal academics and judges and such would get their law reviews, read them, perhaps write a response and so on.

    Today that form of discourse is completely ineffective and obsolete. Today, if you seriously want to discuss a topic, you should start a blog about it.

    How many law professors have the courage to start a blog about their law review article thesis, and discuss it in such depth? Well, first of all no one would read their blog because their thesis is completely irrelevant. But even more, they don't like to be criticized and they don't want their articles dissected in that manner, so they put them into law reviews where they will get the citation credit without any discussion or critique.

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  69. Of course law school classes are useless and horrible. A majority of the people who bother to attend the lectures don't pay attention in class (and why should they?). Class time is just used to check your fantasy sports teams or TMZ.com.

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  70. I've said it before and I'll say it again: law libraries don't have more digital (and therefore cheaper) resources because the professors are too lazy to learn to use them. The professors insist on having paper materials physically delivered to their offices. They cannot google. They cannot use WestLaw. They cannot use the library's catalog. Law libraries would have more digital resources if the professors weren't so lazy an illiterate about them.

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