WHITHER LAW SCHOOLS? – No one has been better on the Higher Ed Bubble, law school edition than Glenn. And he has been right on the money. Main street lawyers have seen their incomes flatten or shrink since the 1980s. Over the same period roughly 1 in 3 law graduates has not been able to find work as a lawyer. Surely law schools reacted by lowering tuition or shrinking class sizes? Everyone knew that not every American law graduate could make a fortune on Wall Street, right?
Hahahahahaha. No. From the 1980s forward law schools relentlessly raised tuition, accepted more students, and opened more schools. Between 1987 and 2010, the number of ABA accredited law schools increased from 175 to 200 and total JD enrollment rose from 117,997 to 147,525. Law school tuition rose over 1000 percent for in-state residents at public institutions and 400 percent at private institutions since 1985. Student debt loads skyrocketed as well. The higher ed bubble indeed.
In 2008 hard times for corporate law firms finally brought public attention to the employment numbers for law graduates, and applications and attendance at law schools have fallen steeply since 2010. The downward trend is so marked that in 2015-16 fewer students may apply to law school than enrolled in 2010-11.
There have been predictions of mass law school closures (including from my inestimable host), and we have seen our first merger of two ABA accredited law schools, Hamline and William Mitchell in Minneapolis. Charleston Law School, a relatively new, for-profit law school, suggested that they might not enroll a new class in Fall, 2015, before announcing the “good news” that seven professors would be fired and the school would attempt to survive with smaller classes and a slimmed down faculty.
Nevertheless, mass closures are unlikely. Instead, troubled law schools will risk dis-accreditation by admitting anyone they can and radically cutting costs rather than actually closing the doors. This may mean closing the law library altogether or replacing the bulk of the tenured faculty with adjuncts. It is inexpensive to run a skeleton law school that has few administrators and is taught by adjunct faculty. The question then shifts to what the American Bar Association (the law school accrediting body) would do. The ABA has never dis-accredited a fully accredited American law school, and the legal and public relations ramifications of such a move are unclear. And even if the ABA did try to dis-accredit a school there would be years of appeals, warnings, and legal wrangling. These are law schools we are talking about!
Things sound grim, no? Most analysis of these trends has been negative, but it has also been written by the parties most likely to suffer, law professors and lawyers. By contrast, my book is entitled Glass Half Full: The Decline and Rebirth of the Legal Profession, and argues that after some rough sledding, the public, the profession, and the professoriate will all benefit. More on that later.