Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

From Rutgers-Camden Law To Rowan Law?

In what would be fairly radical restructing of higher education in New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has proposed that Rutgers-Camden be merged with Rowan University - the former Glassboro State College, in Glassboro, NJ.  At the same time, the University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ) would be folded in as well.  All of them would operate under the banner of Rowan University.  

This would a signficant change for Rutgers-Camden, in particularly, since its research structure - in everything from the law school to the history department (home of a newly minted MacArthur fellow) - appears better developed than Rowan's.  In addition, those individuals associated with Rutgers-Camden - students, faculty, alumni, and donors - will likely smart at the loss of the school's highly respected name.  (It didn't take long to get a nice petition going.)  On the other hand, there would no doubt be efficiencies in the merger and it would bring together a South Jersey med school and law school under a single banner.

David Segal Interviewed on Bloomberg

Segal is the author of a series of New York Times articles on law schools over the last year, some of which were silly and incompetent, as we noted.  He does much better, however, in this interview, largely focusing on real issues, including correctly discussing the role of U.S. News in so much of the mischief.  I did laugh, though, when the interviewer opened up by noting that as a reporter, Segal doesn't cover law or law schools.  One might have guessed as much!

Summer Jobs: Some Striking Data

UPDATED WITH CORRECTIONS:  The original verison had some of the numbers wrong.

NYU, to its credit, posts very detailed job information, including about summer jobs held by rising 3Ls.  For the Class of 2009--so the class interviewing in fall 2007 for summer 2008 jobs--88% of NYU students had firm jobs.  That dropped a bit for the Class of 2010 (interviewing in fall 2008 for summer 2009 jobs--the effects of the economic collapse now being felt), to 80%.  But then for the Class of 2011--so NYU students interviewing in fall 2009 for summer 2010 jobs--that plunged to just 55% getting summer associate jobs with private firms.  This, of course, was the point where the firms, absorbing the effects of the economic downturn, had downsized their summer programs.

I was curious whether a similar pattern had emerged for Chicago students, so asked my CSO colleagues for data.   For the Class of 2010 (interviewing in fall 2008 for summer 2009 jobs), not quite 91% secured summer jobs with private law firms.  For the Class of of 2011, that dropped to about  70%, a slightly smaller drop than at NYU (a not quite 21% drop, versus 25%), and from a higher base line.  For the Class of 2012, that number went back up to almost 80% in private firm jobs in the summer of 2011.  (I don't know the comparable NYU figure.)  What might explain the differences, given that student numerical credentials are comparable at the two schools, though Chicago enjoys a reputational advantage among practitioners.  Perhaps the latter explains the differing outcomes, though anecdotal evidence suggests something else is at work.  When the leading law firms reduce the size of their summer programs by a quarter to a third, they still typically want to have students from a diverse array of top law schools.  But the cut-back in the size of the summer programs means that instead of 2 or 3 students from Chicago, they may only have 1 or 2.  Of course, if all firms follow a similar strategy, the net effect is going to be very different for a law school like NYU with a large class (about 450) versus the net effect for a law school like Chicago with a small class (about 200).   My guess is we'll see a similar pattern if we compare, say, summer job placement at Yale (about 200) to Harvard (about 550), or Cornell (about 200) to Georgetown (about 600).   If that data is on-line somewhere, please send me the links.  While large law schools can have some advantages (mostly in the array offerings), if the preceding hypothesis is correct, they may now be at a decided disadvantage in terms of job placement at leading law firms, all else being equal.

Legal education in Australia--Melbourne Moving to the US Post-Graduate Degree Model (though law was never quite an undergraduate degree in the U.S. sense either)

Kevin Heller, a law professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, wrote to correct my claim about Australian legal education in my post from the other day.  Professor Heller notes that Melbourne "has just finished transitioning to a [post-graduate] JD-only model....We realized that a JD is a much more competitive degree internationally, even in Europe (and especially in the US, Canada, and Asia), where a very significant percentage of our graduates want to work."  He also added some useful context about what it really meant to say law used to be an undergraduate degree:

I would add...that the nature of [undergraduate] LLB legal education, at least in Australia and New Zealand, was always a bit more complicated than it's often made out to be.  More than (I think) 80% of our LLB students did joint law/arts or law/business degrees.  A double degree at Melbourne normally took at least five, and far more often six, years to complete.  (Undergraduate degrees here on their own took about three years to complete, not the four that is standard in the U.S.)  So although our LLB students started taking law courses earlier in their university education than our JDs will (usually the first LLB law course was second semester of their second undergraduate year, though many began law in year three, when they had one year left in their other degree), it normally took six years for them to complete their LLB and arts/commerce B.A.  That is exactly how long our JD graduates will have spent in school, assuming they did their required undergraduate degree in three years.  (We also have options for students to complete their JDs in 2.5 and 2 years, if they are willing to take summer and winter courses.)

Declining Public Support for State Universities

The chart here is striking, and mostly confirms what one would have suspected. It also, of course, explains the generally dramatic increases in tuition at state law schools during this period.

Make law an undergraduate degree?

That's, in essence, the proposal of Professor McGinnis (Northwestern) and his co-author; it is, of course, the reality in Britain and Australia, as well as almost all civil law jurisdicitions I'm aware of, where it seems to work perfectly well (though note that these jurisdiction do not employ the "Socratic method" to teach law, a method, such as it is, that might not work as well with undergraduates).  That would, in all likelihood, increase the supply of lawyers, but would at least dramatically reduce the cost of becoming one.  But as Dean Rodriguez (Northwestern) notes in reply,

“The high cost of graduate legal education,” (McGinnis and Mangas) write[], “limits the supply of lawyers and leaders to higher legal fees.” Causal claim, certainly not proven. And not especially plausible. It is only in the last couple of years that law school applications have dipped; and law school spots have remained steady. For better or worse, the supply of new lawyers has held fairly steady. Legal fees, by contrast, are shrinking — which is the essential point, after all, behind growing calls for major reform in legal education and, at the very least, greater transparency by law schools with regard to employment opportunities. The causal connection between law student demand, space in law school, supply of lawyers, and legal fees is, to say the least, a complex one; we need not, and in response to McMangas, I won’t simply stipulate the connection.

There may well be, of course, other sensible reasons to reduce aggregate student debt. But the linchpin claim that widescale adoption of the European model is a panacea for high legal fees and limited access to legal work by middle and sub-middle class is not well supported in the op-ed.

Professor McGinnis and co-author reply to these concerns here.

Lateral Faculty Moves List

Over at the Faculty Lounge, I've put up my initial (and significantly incomplete) 2012 law school lateral faculty moves list.  As always, I'm seeking information about the many moves I've missed.

How much employment data are school disclosing?

The Vanderbilt grads who run "Law School Transparency" (LST) have compiled a detailed chart, for which the bottom line is:  most schools ain't disclosing much!  LST's ideal of complete disclosure involves a bit of overkill, though there may be schools for which it would, indeed, be useful to have all of the information categories they assess.  Be that as it may, the overall chart is stark confirmation that a lot of really central information that any prospective law student would want isn't presently available at a huge number of law schools across the "ranking" spectrum.

In Memoriam: Charles Haar

Charles Haar, the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School passed away on January 10.  He was 91.  Haar joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor in 1952.  After becoming an emeritus faculty member at Harvard, he taught at the University of Miami School of Law.  He was an expert in land use, urban development and property law.  Among his various achievements,  Haar was one of the key draftsmen responsible for developing four of President Johnson's important urban policy initiatives: the Demonstration and Model Cities Act of 1966; the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1968; Title IV of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 (New Communities); and the Section 236 Affordable Housing Guarantee Program.

Post links to law school employment stats here

Several more schools e-mailed me after yesterday's post, so I'm going to open comments for posting links to employment statiscis that law schools have put on-line.

More Law Schools with Detailed Employment Stats

Both have had them up for awhile:  Northwestern (very detailed) and Iowa (also lots of detail).   Also Chapman (not sure if this is recent or not).

Updated Dean Search List

I have updated my annual list of law school dean searches here.  

Four Law Schools Elected to Membership in the AALS

They are:  Drexel, North Carolina Central, St. Thomas (Minnesota), and Texas Wesleyan. 

How to improve your citation count

If US News ever incorporates citation measures to its rankings, expect this to happen quickly!

In Memoriam: Hans Smit

Professor Hans Smit, an international arbitration scholar at Columbia Law School, passed away Saturday.  He was 84.  Smit, who was born in Holland, was a significant figure both within the law school and in the international legal community.  He had been at Columbia for 50 years, having joined its faculty in 1960.  

One Week, Three New Law School Deans

Last week, three law schools appointed new deans.  Appalachian Law School appointed Lucy McGough, a professor at LSU Law.  Stetson College of Law named LSU Law Vice Chancellor Christopher Pietruszkiewicz.  And McGeorge hired Francis "Jay" Mootz III from UNLV Law as its new dean.  

Cabranes v. Rodriguez

Here and here.  Judge Cabranes's story about the student in the housing clinic who had never had property has to refer to Yale, by the way, which is the only law school I am aware of that does not require property.  (Judge Cabranes's wife, Kate Stith, is also a professor at Yale.)

UPDATE:  Orin Kerr (George Washington) poses some interesting questions.

What do you need to find out now that you've gotten a tenure-track offer?

MOVING TO FRONT FROM NOVEMBER 24, 2009 (AND NOV. 6, 2011)

With luck (and luck will help more than usual in what is a difficult year on the academic job market), some of you seeking law teaching jobs will get offers of tenure-track positions in the next couple of months.  What then?  Here's roughly what I tell my Texas and Chicago advisees they need to find out, and in the interest of having it written down in one place and for the benefit of others too, here it is (not in order of importance):

1.  You will want to get (in writing eventually) the basic salary information, obviously, and the nature of summer research support and the criteria for its award (is it automatic for junior faculty?  contingent on prior publication [if so, how much?]?  awarded competitively (if so, based on what criteria/process)?).   You should also find out how salary raises are determined.  Are they, for example, lock-step for junior faculty?  Fixed by union contract?  (Rutgers faculty, for example, are unionized, a huge advantage and why they are among the best-paid faculty, not just in law, in the country.)  Is it a 'merit' system, and if so is it decanal discretion or is their a faculty committee that reviews your teaching and work each year?

2.  You should ask for a copy of the school's tenure standards and get clear about the expectations and the timeline.  Does any work you have already published count towards meeting the tenure standard?

3.  What research leave policy, if any, does the school have?  A term off after every three full years of teaching is a very good leave policy; some schools have even better policies, most have less generous leave policies.  (If there is a norm, it is a term off after every six years.)  Many schools have a special leave policy for junior faculty, designed to give them some time off prior to the tenure decision.  Find out if the school has such a policy.

4.  One of the most important things to be clear about is not just your teaching load, but what courses you will be teaching precisely.  You should ask whether the school can guarantee a stable set of courses until after the tenure decision.  Preparing new courses is hugely time-consuming, and you also get better at teaching the course the more times you do it.  As a tenure-track faculty member, having a stable package of, say, three courses (plus a seminar) will make a huge difference in terms of your ability to conduct research and write.   In my experience, most schools will commit in writing to a set of courses for the tenure-track years (and do ask for this in writing), but some schools either won't or can't.   In my view, it's a good reason to prefer one school to another that one will give you the courses you want and promise them that they're yours, while another won't--a consideration that overrides lots of other factors, including salary. 

5.  You should ask for the school's materials on benefits:  retirement, life insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, and so on.  The biggest, and certainly the most easily discernible differences, are often in the retirement and life insurance categories (sometimes longterm disability insurance too, though unlike life insurance, you're hopefully less likely to utilize this!).  What is the university's contribution to retirement?  At the low end are schools contributing only 5-6% of your base salary to retirement; the more competitive schools will be in the 8% range, and some will be higher.  The big issue on life insurance concerns the amount you are guaranteed irrespective of your health history.  500-600K increasingly seem to be the norm.  And, of course, if your health is perfect, this doesn't matter, but I've worked with plenty of candidates where this was a serious issue.  (Life insurance companies have no incentives to insure faculty beyond the base amount they have to provide, so even health matters that strike you as trivial may disqualify you from more coverage.)  A final benefits issue concerns education/tuition benefits for children.  State schools don't offer these; the wealthier private schools do, and if you have kids or expect to have kids, this is worth looking into.  At the high end is Chicago, which pays up to 75% of Chicago tuition anywhere for each child.  Most of the wealthier private schools will pay 30-50% of the home school tuition for faculty children, wherever they go.  Some will offer a larger benefit if your kids go to that school.  But there are differences, and they don't track your ordinary expectations about prestige (e.g., last time I looked, the Wash U/St. Louis benefit was much better than the benefit at Penn or Cornell).  In any case, get the information.  But remember, university-wide benefits are rarely a subject for negotiation--the law school can't give you a higher benefit.  Of course, if you have a competitive offer, they may be able to compensate for a significant benefits differential.

6.  Finally, once you have an offer, this is a good time to raise issues about the employment prospects for a spouse or partner.  Sometimes you may just want help:  can the Dean help the significant other make relevant professional contacts in the area?  Sometimes you may be hoping for more:  e.g., a position in the law school, or in another university department, for the significant other.  It is certainly fair to explain the situation and ask.  Schools vary in their ability to response effectively to these situations, but many have formal universities policies pertaining at least to spouses who are academics.  Raise the issue, and see if the school can help.  But realize that the school made you the offer, and they may be able to hire you, and that's that.

The last point relates to a more general issue.  If you don't have other offers, you are not in a position to bargain.  Period.  You may certainly ask about things, raise concerns, etc.  But unless you're going to walk away from a tenure-track offer (not a wise thing to do in this market), don't make demands.  And even then, a collegial discussion about issues of concern is far better than demands.  Even if you have other offers, this advice applies:  proceed with caution and respect for the institution.  You can report that School Y is offering you a salary 20K higher, and ask whether the Dean of School X, to whom your talking, has any flexibility on this front.  But remember:  you may end up at School X (because of location, or colleagues in your field, or a better teaching load etc.) and living with that Dean and the other faculty for many years to come.  Don't poison the well by displaying a sense of entitlement and self-importance before you even get through the door.  Remember:  no matter how good you are, you're quite dispensable--in almost every instance, you need the job more than the school needs you.  Approach any 'bargaining' or discussion of the package in that spirit.  A good school has every reason to want you to succeed and to try to help fashion a package of professional duties and support in that spirit.  A good school doesn't need a prima donna.

I invite signed comments from faculty or deans on these issues.  A comment without a full name and e-mail address won't appear.  Post your comment only once; comments are moderated and may take awhile to appear.

Good luck to all job seekers!

"Leiter Reports"

That's the title of this interview with a Paris-based magazine (but one mostly written by Brits), but which several of my law colleagues here and elsewhere found interesting--it's mostly about philosophical topics, but also some jurisprudential ones.  In any case, I hope it might interest some readers.  The interviewer was extremely well-informed; it was easily the most rewarding interview I ever gave.

In Memoriam: Robert Fletcher

Professor Bob Fletcher, a retired faculty member at the University of Washington, the husband of retired Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher, and father of Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher, died last week.  He was 93.  He was an active member of the UW faculty from 1956-89 and later taught at Hastings, Seattle, and Vermont.  

More on NY Times Reporting on Law Schools: The Case of Duncan Law School

The plot thickens.

In Memoriam: Daniel H. Benson

On December 28, 2011, Professor Dan Benson passed away.  He served on the Texas Tech law faculty from 1973 until 2004, and continued teaching after retirement up until his death.  Benson taught in the area of criminal law.  He was 75.

If law schools took the medical school model seriously

A very interesting comment from Matt Spitzer (Texas), the former Dean at USC, over at Dean Rodriguez's new blog:

Much of the current disenchantment stems from the enormous economic downturn and attendant layoffs and failure-to-hires of recent law school graduates. This produces a demand for both better information about placement (and, perhaps, bar passage), as well as heartfelt but unfocused requests for training that will enable graduates to function as lawyers. If and when the economy improves, these feelings will not disappear, but will become less intense. To the extent that we take the latter request seriously, it will not lead, by and large, to doing a lot more public interest work. Although that work may produce some generalized skills training (e.g. how to draft a complaint), there is precious little paid work in public interest. Rather, taking the demand for skill seriously leads down a path to law schools having a law firm (just as medical schools have hospitals) where students start to learn how to practice under lawyer-professors, who both provide training and who charge clients for their services. We would need to work hard to make the position of lawyer-professor prestigious, so that we could attract the best and the brightest. Law school might become 4 years instead of 3. And there will be negotiations between the lawyer-professors and the Deans of law schools about how to split fees. Deans of law schools will need new sets of skills, akin to managing partner at a large law firm.

Northwestern Dean Dan Rodriguez Has a Blog!

This is, I believe, a first for a Dean of an elite law school!  I gather it's fairly common among Deans of elite business schools.  The wave of the future?

The best philosophy programs

Some readers might be interested in the report on Anglophone graduate programs in philosophy I orchestrate (and which is published by Blackwell), which is based on surveys of more than 300 philosophers around the world.  The most recent edition was released last month.  As you'll see, while some top philosophy departments are at universities with top law schools, many are not.

What if the federal loans for legal education become harder to get?

It seems inevitable.

And now Michigan posts its employment stats...

...in more or less the Yale/Chicago format.  One thing surprising here is that Michigan has salary data on only a bit more than half of the class of 2010, which seems rather low.

CORRECTION:  A colleague at Michigan tells me that Michigan has posted employment stats in this format for a number of years.