Paul Caron, at TaxProf, has posted some executive summary parts and the link to a GAO report on drivers of law school cost as well as minority enrollment. Regarding costs of legal education, the GAO summary says:
According to law school officials, the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and competition among schools for higher rankings appear to be the main factors driving the cost of law school, while ABA accreditation requirements appear to play a minor role. Additionally, officials at public law schools reported that recent decreases in state funding are a contributor to rising tuition at public schools.
Very interesting post over at TaxProfBlog — the screen shots include a number of powerpoint charts and graphs from the GAO report. I agree with the GAO report and its surveyed law school officials that accreditation plays very little role in driving up law school costs, and that rankings are an important driver. They are also an important driver in things schools spend money on that drive up costs, such as faculty student ratios, for example.
I also believe, however — but wouldn’t try to defend here — that law schools respond to the availability of federal dollars and capture that money from students, and that law school tuition rates reflect perceptions of the return on investment available to students in going to work for law firms. At least in my discussions with fellow professors who have some idea about law school economics, the thought is that mid tier schools found that they could place more of their students into large law firms, not necessarily the very top firms, but large workhorse firms that paid well.
And in my discussions with professors, the concerns are two-fold. First, that if the big law model is genuinely collapsing into the long term, then the returns on law school investment might well be declining to ... what, exactly? Well, for those of us here in Washington DC, it might be to something closer to what government lawyers earn. Not to be sneezed at, heaven knows, particularly if you factor in the security and benefits, but not necessarily the returns long term that can support the rate of tuition increases at even mid tier schools like my own.
Second, if the USG becomes the lender directly, the pressure on it to intervene in the tuition “market” (I use that term very loosely indeed) and impose some cost controls is strong. That could well be characterized, and might actually be, a regulatory mechanism for ensuring that subsidies aimed at students don’t wind up in the hands of a law school oligopoly. Or not. At least, that’s the substance of conversations I have with friends at a variety of schools in roughly my school’s tier.
Given the fascination of law professors with all things having to do with the ranking and dissection of the law school world, is it possible that someone has already done a genuine empirical study of the cost structures of law schools and their implied or explicit business models?
As a side note, I certainly find that I think harder than I used to about whether I am providing value to students, and I think of it as dollar value and return on long term investment. I treat myself a lot more as an educational fiduciary than I used to. I’m not alone in that, I suspect — I had a fascinating dinner conversation with a friend who teaches comp lit at a top five university; he told me that he thinks all the time about what he is going to convey and what it should mean, particularly as it is not professional education — it is inherently long term and about learning to think, reason, interpret, and write effectively, and in the context of the humanities and values. He has a son about to enter college and it is on his mind same as it is on mine. Yet it’s easier, really, for me to answer that teaching in a professional school — I don’t mean that the humanities, literature, etc., are not important, far from it, but that it’s an easier pedagogical question in a law school or medical school than in a literature department.
That means, from my point of view, thinking about law student education and what I think they need that they are not professionally able to determine for themselves. I’m not an agent for a principal, I’m a fiduciary for an only partly competent principal. My best advice, I suppose, is that you need a mix of plumbing classes and grad school classes; classes that teach you about the nuts and bolts, but also classes that teach you to think creatively and amply, because the field is not static, at least not in American law. It might mean law and economics, to learn to think in a forward manner about incentives, for some students; and to learn to write and interpret difficult texts for others; and still something else for others.
Students, on the other hand, tend to think they know more than they do about what they need from law school, and at the extreme end, tend to think of themselves as the purchasers of a very expensive commodity called legal education, and I am the guy on the other side of the Starbuck’s counter purveying it to them. Wants and needs. There was a song about that, right?
Calderon says:
According to law school officials, the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education and ...
What does that statement from the ABA mean? When I first read it, the only thing I could think of that it would refer to is expanding clinic programs, but I’m skeptical that all or even a large percentage of law schools are expanding their clinic programs (though maybe I’m just wrong about that).
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October 27, 2009, 7:01 pmBigBob says:
Off topic, but I would love for you to elaborate on this statement sometime:
“Given the fascination of law professors with all things having to do with the ranking and dissection of the law school world....”
Assuming of course you don’t mean ALL professors, do you mean most law professors? A substantial percentage? It might be a small, visible minority, right? Just how widespread are things like rankings obsession?
Topic for another post and threat, I know.
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October 27, 2009, 7:01 pmBC says:
I agree with the GAO report and its surveyed law school officials that accreditation plays very little role in driving up law school costs
I’m not so sure. I mean, if you take a critical look at the ABA’s accreditation criteria, it quickly becomes apparent that they’re heavily influenced by a kind of “this is what law school looked like when I went through it, and so this is what it should look like for all time” traditionalism that has little bearing on the quality of legal education delivered to students — for example, the ABA’s resistance to distance learning.
Granted, there are fly-by-night schools out there that a lack of accreditation properly warns us against, but there are nonetheless non-accredited schools providing competitive legal education at a fraction of the tuition as at accredited schools, in no small part because they don’t jump through the ABA’s hoops, and accreditation is somehow a non-factor in driving tuition? Again: I’m not so sure.
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October 27, 2009, 7:28 pmBruce Hayden says:
This may be heresy here (except maybe to David Kopel who is getting ready to teach Con Law at DU as an adjunct), but one of my pet peeves with ABA accreditation is its strong push against adjunct professors, who cost a lot less, but often have a lot more real life experience in the relevant area of law.
I had civil procedure from an adjunct who had practiced civil litigation for 30 years, and could show us how the rules applied in real life. I had criminal procedure from a sitting judge who had spent 20 years on the bench seeing every trick in the book, on both sides. This was someone who had spent maybe 3/4 of his time trying felony cases over those 20 years. And I took criminal law from a top criminal defense attorney, whom you occasionally see as a talking head on TV. 20 years later, I still remember him telling us that often the difference between 1st and 2nd degree murder is that the former is typically far less bloody than the later — which is why I never was convinced of O.J.‘s guilt in those murders. The time line was too close to be a crime of passion, but the murders were far too bloody to be crimes of premeditation. And, therefore, on my part, a reasonable doubt. These guys knew their subject matter far better than most tenured professors would in their areas of expertise.
Sure, I had a lot of great tenured (or tenure track) professors too. But some of my worst classes were taught by tenured professors who were well beyond their sell-by date, but had tenure, so what could anyone do about them? They had to teach something, and as a 1L, you didn’t have much choice.
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October 27, 2009, 8:47 pmLaw Student says:
I graduated from a mid-tier school with high honors, multiple awards and journal experience in 2009. I am now teaching an LSAT class for Kaplan and working for next-to-nothing at a small firm. My student loan lenders continue to harass me. If the model is broken that what happens to the last group of people who were snookered? What kind of relief should I get from my law school? What are you planning to do for your students who are in my situation?
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October 27, 2009, 9:42 pmApu Nahasapasapeemipetilon says:
As someone currently in the law school application process, I am simultaneously fascinated and horrified at the level of reverence attributed to the rankings. It would be pretty cool if you guys could continue posting about rankings and admissions and such once in a while.
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October 27, 2009, 9:42 pmtheobromophile says:
A small factor may be that information about student indebtedness is always out-of-date. For example, if a student who is considering enrolling in law school read a study about a recent crop of graduates — say, the class of 2006 or 2007 — he may think that law school is affordable. If tuition is going up by $3,000/year (about 6%), however, a 2013 graduate will accumulate about $50,000 more in debt than a 2006 grad from the same school. (Yes, there’s inflation, but fifty grand is no small matter.)
The other thing, which Law Student brings up, is that students don’t start paying their loans until after graduation — just when the true monetary value of their education becomes evident. Those loans are paid to a third-party loan provider (not the law school), so there is little economic incentive for a law school to use its money wisely and even less economic incentive to price its tuition in accordance with its students’ earning power.
The solution to the last part is the exact opposite of the government’s current path, though: far better for it to require law schools to provide loans to their students, rather than having the government do it.
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October 27, 2009, 10:57 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Wow, this report is a total joke. Among other things: Yes, the ABA allows a 20–1 faculty-student ratio, but also limits the hiring of adjuncts and limits how much any faculty member can be asked to teach. And the questions the GAO seems to have asked about minority enrollment so clearly miss the point that it has to be intentional.
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October 27, 2009, 11:07 pmlaw firms – Law Firm Billing Software says:
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