How to kill (or save) a law school
By Jordan Furlong ? Published: December 6th, 2012
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Back in August 2010, I wrote a post called “How to kill a law firm” that continues to receive a steady stream of traffic and responses. Recently, John P. Mayer on Twitter suggested it was time for a law school version of that article. I agree.
My interest in applying a legal education focus to this topic was further heightened by the recent publication of two op-ed pieces by law school deans:This one by the dean of Case Western University Law School in The New York Timesand this one by the dean of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law in Canadian Lawyer. You can also read thorough critiques of each article at The Girl’s Guide To Law School and Slaw, respectively. The articles and their responses neatly frame both the enormous challenges facing law schools and the apparent inability of their leadership to appreciate those challenges.
My goal, I should probably make clear, is not to help annihilate law schools
across Canada and the United States — I like law schools, and I hope they prosper. Nor is my goal to create a road map for potential competitors to carry out that destruction — believe me, they don’t need any road map sketched out for them. The schools have all but drawn up the blueprints themselves, although they don’t realize it.
What I want to do is encourage law schools to participate in an exercise around creative destruction. I want them to think: if a new competitor for the role of legal education provider were to target us, how would they do it? If they wanted to knock us down and replace us, how would they go about it? What weak spots and vulnerabilities in our model would they attack? What market needs, unmet by us, would they strive to meet? Then, once they’ve identified their strategic exposures, I’d like law schools to exploit those vulnerabilities themselves first, before the upstarts can do so. The world’s most successful companies, from GE to Apple, do this regularly — they set out to destroy their own business before anyone else can. Law schools badly need to do the same.
Finally, it’s worth explaining who I mean by “competitors.” Most law school faculty and administration would probably dismiss outright the idea that they have any competition at all, except for other law schools that operate exactly the same way they do. This tunnel vision itself qualifies as a major vulnerability, but we’ll let that pass. The primary competitors I have in mind
are:
? low-ranked law schools in danger of closure and therefore with nothing to lose from experimentation (i.e., the “fourth-place network”); ? universities or other licensed educational institutes without a law school but seeking to create one clearly differentiated from the current model;
? non-academic business training providers already aligned with the “practical skills” demands of both students and law firm recruiting directors; and
? the legal profession itself, through governing bodies or bar associations, moving to create competing legal education programs geared to their needs.
There are almost certainly others out there, especially in the rapidly expanding online education sphere (Solo Practice University has been building its lead there for several years now), but we can start with these four because they’re all plausible present-day candidates for disruptive market entry.
So, with all that established, let’s start noting the weaknesses in law schools’ current approach to the market. As you’ll see, there is no shortage.
1. Price. The first and easiest pressure point to identify is the price of a law school education, which at almost every school in North America has risen by
multiples of 100% over the past 15-20 years. More affordable tuition would be a legitimate drawing card for good applicants, and it’s a sign of law schools’ cartel-like behaviour that few if any schools have pursued this path.
Is it realistic to expect a challenger to offer a robust legal education at below-market prices? I think it is, because almost all the factors driving up the price of law school are institutional, not curricular — that is, they have everything to do with internal educational politics or arbitrary external forces, and little to do with the quality and substance of the law degree itself. We’ll examine these factors in #4, below.
2. Faculty. The single greatest impediment to law schools’ ability to change is their faculty. Many if not most law school faculty members have held their positions for decades and are fully insulated from outside pressures by virtue of both tenure and age-discrimination laws. They are researchers and publishers first, teachers second or third. Most have never practised law (at numerous schools, more than two years in a law practice disqualifies law professors from tenure) and they have no interest in the Bar. They fight change almost as a matter of course. They are a millstone around the law school’s neck when it comes to innovation.
It will take at least 5-10 years for attrition to solve this problem at most schools; in that time, new entrants can make their move. Legal education disruptors will identify respected practitioners, retired judges, and even
non-lawyer experts to lead their courses. They will train these individuals in 21st-century teaching methods, assign them courses with tightly controlled syllabi, and operate a streamlined and strategically coherent educational system. They will recognize that extensive academic pedigree, admirable and worthwhile as it certainly is, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient qualification to teach the law.
3. Curriculum. Closely related to the obstacle of faculty is the conundrum of curriculum. The first-year courses mandated for students at my alma mater today are the same as when I enrolled 22 years ago and have not changed substantially since the 1950s. The menu of optional courses has expanded significantly, especially those taught by “adjunct” (freelance) faculty, but most are still delivered as lectures and graded by exams, as if everyone involved were still in junior high. But the primary vulnerability is and always has been the paucity of courses that strive to prepare future lawyers in some way for their first few years in the marketplace.
Law professors are fond of saying that it’s the Bar’s responsibility to prepare students for practice, not law schools’. But that is precisely the point they miss — it isn’t a question of responsibility, but opportunity. What courses might a school teach that would differentiate it from other schools and prove more attractive to both students and recruiters? What programs could it create that would bridge the gap between basic legal knowledge and initial professional