By STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF
Law schools have come under fire during these tough economic times, with critics saying that they leave too many graduates in debt, chasing too few employment opportunities. But it could be worse. Consider the plight of veterinarians.
The average tuition and expenses for a veterinary degree at a private school has doubled in the last 10 years to over $200,000, well above the typical cost of law school. Yet their pay remains moribund at an average of $66,469 - much less than lawyers.
But unlike law schools, veterinary school is not regularly being called a scam or bubble. In fact, applications to veterinary schools were up about 2 percent last year.
Meanwhile, the number of applicants to law school is down 13.7 percent for this year's class after a 10 percent drop from 2011, according to the Law Students Admissions Council.
Perhaps today's youth are more eager to defend animals than people. Or maybe lawyers are better at voicing their dissatisfaction.
Regardless, the trend away from law schools has prompted much discussion about what structural changes may be needed. Should law schools charge less? Should they strip down their programs? Should they abandon their collegiate ivory towers in favor of a trade-school approach by having "real world" lawyers teach practical skills?
None of these solutions, however, are likely to improve the economics of law school.
I believe that law students do need more training in practical skills, but a focus on that is probably only going to make law school more expensive.
A single law professor can easily teach 70 students in one contracts law class, but a clinical professor is limited to six to 10 people a class. If reducing costs is the goal, then more clinical education will only increase it.
A second alternative is to pay professors less, or replace them with practitioners who would also be paid less. The average senior law professor who is not at a top-ranked school makes $130,000 to $150,000 according to a survey by the Society of American Law Teachers. It's a nice salary, but certainly not comparable to what a law firm partner earns.
This year, the law school at Ohio State University, where I teach, hired a former editor in chief of The Michigan Law Review and a Supreme Court clerk. Both could be paid far more in the private sector, where the hiring bonus alone for a Supreme Court clerk can be $280,000. If the salaries for their positions are even further reduced to make Ohio State's law school cheaper, they are likely to be replaced by less qualified people.
For this reason, good practitioners are likely to be even more expensive than law professors. After all, the average partner at a big law firm can make well over a million dollars a year.
So what if universities hire less qualified, lower-paid practitioners instead, you may ask? Well, quality matters.
U.S. News & World Report lists 15 law schools where tuition is currently less than $15,000 a year. CUNY School of Law, in New York City, has an in-state tuition of $12,090 and is ranked in the third tier by U.S. News. But there is not a flight of applications to these lower-cost schools from higher-paying ones. Instead, students still flock to top-tier schools with the highest-quality professors. In 2011, CUNY's applications were down from the year before.
Creating less expensive law schools with less-qualified staff may give graduates a degree, but that may not better qualify them for jobs. This points to another inherent problem with critiques of law schools - all are lumped together. This points to another inherent problem with critiques of law schools - all are lumped together.
There is, however, a qualitative difference between the top 15 law schools and the rest. These elite schools charge sky-high tuition that can exceed $50,000 a year. But graduates have a good chance of securing a coveted job with a starting salary of $165,000 a year - a salary that is likely to improve as the economy does. For a 26-year-old, that's certainly good money. Duke, for instance, which was No. 11 on the U.S. News rankings, said its graduates had a 95 percent employment rate last year, with an average private sector salary of $160,000.
There may be valid criticism about lower-ranked law schools, particularly those U.S. News places in the third and fourth tier. Such private schools often charge significant tuition but do not obtain the same employment outcomes. The question is whether changes can be made to lower their costs, and whether this will lead to better opportunities for their graduates.
The problem of law school is one that is ubiquitous to higher education - the current model is inherently expensive but even today, lower-priced alternatives don't seem to meet the standards or be desired by many students.
It is here where revolutionary technologies like online learning may come into play. If it becomes accepted that many basics like contracts law can be easily taught by one professor online to thousands of students, then a law school can charge a lot less. But this is still mostly a theoretical change embraced by those outside academia that has yet to sweep universities. Even with one online course, some local presence will be needed to facilitate learning, particularly if there is skills training involved.
It may not be simple enough to just pin the blame on the costs of law school education. For 2011 law school graduates, as of nine months after graduation, only 65.4 percent were employed in jobs requiring passage of the bar. And law schools should learn to be more innovative, as other types of graduate programs are doing.
Law schools have also hurt themselves badly by failing to fully disclose certain statistics, including their employment rates. It is clear that the number of lawyers in the United States will fall as fewer people apply to law school. But this trend will probably shrink enrollment, not decrease the number of schools over all.
In the longer term, the question is whether there will be a recovery in law jobs as the economy heals. There is hope that will be the case. One study has found that the average lawyer will earn about $4 million - or twice as much as someone with a bachelor's degree - over their lifetime of employment. In addition, law school provides a general education that is useful in other areas. Both presidential candidates have law degrees, as do the chief executives of a substantial number of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
A hard look at reform appears to be a worthy goal, but any changes should consider whether they will actually reduce costs, and provide something students want. The problem of law school is thus the problem that all schools of higher education, even veterinary school, face.
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