“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

^†Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, speaking about the collapse of Lehman Brothers in November 2008.

Reflections on the reform of legal education in the US, UK, and Australia

Abstract

Scholarly and academic commentators have been warning of a “crisis” in American legal education since the beginning of the 2008 recession. This article critically examines what they mean by a “crisis”, whether the evidence supports their claims, and the responses they propose.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^† Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, speaking about the collapse of Lehman Brothers in November 2008.

[1] In March 2013, nearly 70 distinguished law professors across the political spectrum wrote the ABA Task Force to “draw attention to the problems confronting legal education”. But the ‘crisis’ in legal education is dwarfed by that in graduate medical education, which received more than US$15 billion from the government in 2012 and comparable amounts ever since the introduction of Medicare in 1965 (Eden et al., 2014).

[2] Japan has dramatically increased the production of bengoshi in recent years (Chan, 2012).

[3] At any given time some catastrophist is warning of too many or too few people (Mayhew, 2013).

[4] Total US employment in legal services (not just lawyers) fell from a peak of 1.123 million in 2004 to 1.075 million in 2010 before recovering to 1.134 million in 2013 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013).

[5] The Association of American Medical Colleges anticipates a shortfall of 45,000 primary care doctors and 46,000 specialists by 2020 (New York Times, 2014b).

[6] Indiana Institute of Technology (Fort Wayne), Duncan School of Law (Knoxville, Tennessee), Concordia University (Boise, Idaho), Belmont University (Nashville, Tennessee), Judge Paul Pressler School of Law (Shreveport, Louisiana), and University of North Texas Dallas College of Law.

[7] For example, Henry VI, Part 2 and The Merchant of Venice.

[8] According to the National Association for Law Placement, firms with 100 lawyers or more hired 16% of law graduates in 1982, steadily increasing their share to 41% in 2008 before dropping sharply. But firms with more than 500 lawyers accounted for 21% of 2013 graduates hired by law firms, up from 16% in 2011 (Stetz, 2014b).

[9] Partly because of limited places in medical schools and residencies, osteopathy has exploded in the US, growing from 14 schools enrolling 4,940 students in 1980 to 30 schools with more than 23,000 in 2014, accounting for about 22% of all new doctors (Bergerjuly, 2014).

[10] Similarly, medical assistants may pay as much as a year's salary for their training, after which many find no jobs (Carey, 2014).

[11] UCLA was pleased that the class entering in 2013 tied for the sixth highest median LSAT and fifth highest median GPA; it maintained these medians in 2014 while enrolling 21 more students. In 2014 it enrolled a record 45 transfer students and 158 LL.M. students.

[12] University of California Hastings fell from 19th place in 1992 to 54th in 2014, mainly because fewer than half of its graduates had full-time permanent jobs requiring a law degree nine months after graduation. It responded by cutting enrolment and instituting new programmes (Chen, 2014).

[13] US News increased its response rate to 32% by asking schools to provide the names of 10 people who know it—replacing one distortion with another (Sloan, 2014c).

[14] Washington & Lee fell 17 places when the proportion of graduates in employment declined 6%. Wisconsin rose 10 places and Arizona State University 13 when their proportions rose 6% and 8%, respectively. Catholic University experienced the greatest decline, 27 places, when its acceptance rate rose from 36% to 55% because the number of applicants declined (Sloan, 2014c).

[15] The New York Times is poised to enter the college ranking game (Anderson, 2014).

[16] At Vermont Law School, eight full-time faculty members voluntarily became part-time (National Jurist, 2013b).

[17] Thomas Jefferson Law School made 12 redundant; eight accepted buyouts at New England Law School (National Jurist, 2013c); Washington & Lee cut 12 positions; Thomas M. Cooley laid off half its faculty and staff (Douglas-Gabriel, 2015).

[18] Since 2013, law school websites have disclosed graduate employment rates, scholarship retention, and tuition, among other data (Sloan, 2014t).

[19] Silicon Valley has no qualms about producing coders in a few weeks through intensive boot camps (Lewin, 2014).

[20] Pressure on law schools to ensure that a high proportion of graduates pass the bar exam—including the threat of losing ABA accreditation—accentuates this tendency (Sloan, 2014i).

[21] Cooley Law School admitted no new students to its Ann Arbor campus for autumn 2014 (National Jurist, 2014g).

[22] Undergraduate colleges are under growing pressure to increase the class diversity of their students (Leonhardt, 2014b).

[23] California will require 15 hours in order to take its bar exam; the ABA has recommended a minimum of six (National Jurist, 2013k; State Bar of California, 2013; Sloan, 2014d).

[24] The ABA rejected paid externships in part because of the “perceived tension between the obligations of someone who is a paid employee and a student” (Sloan, 2014q).

[25] Providers other than barristers or solicitors accounted for nearly a third of UK legal services turnover in 2010 (Fletcher, 2014).