This post focuses solely on how some restructuring of law faculty may assist in improving legal education.  (Earlier posts in this series are here and here.)

Unlike many undergraduate institutions, law schools have not lessened their faculty costs by moving in the direction of increasing non-tenure-track faculty. While law schools have always hired judges and practitioners to teach classes in the law school curriculum (My law school, St. Mary’s, is lucky to have a current federal district judge teach Federal Courts to its evening division students, and employs a retired federal circuit court judge to teach several courses each year), law schools remain heavily dependent on full-time faculty to teach most of the curriculum. In the main, this division of labor has benefitted law students. It has forced law schools to take seriously the mission of teaching law. Law professors are not only expected to teach large introductory classes without teaching assistants to share the load, many positively relish the challenge. Students can take much from a faculty member who demonstrates both a mastery of the material and an ability to communicate that material, as well as an affinity for legal scholarship. A passion for both the theory and practice of law can infect students, though an ability to explain how students should learn to enjoy the drudgery of law may be even more important. One or more faculty members of the “Mr. Chips” type (ancient popular culture reference) are useful for any school, but schools do well with some lopsided faculty (that is, faculty who are strong teachers and weak scholars or vice-versa). 

The problem with law faculties today is one of stasis, resulting from a combination of early tenure, modest lateral movement, the end of mandatory retirement, and the pay structure, exacerbated by the Great Recession of 2008. 

This post argues that recent changes in legal education have harmed rather than helped most students and that legal education needs to change significantly, and predicts that no change will occur until it’s too late.

One significant change in law schools over the past twenty-five years is the bureaucratization of the institution. What were once fairly lean organizations have become bloated, and the increase in administrators is one cause of the greater-than-inflation increases in law school tuition. This increase in administrators, with the concomitant rise in tuition, has created a kind of chicken-and-egg problem.

The high cost of tuition has made many law schools leery of academic attrition (in part because if those former students don’t pay back their loans, the institution may find itself in trouble). You rarely see exclusion of one-third of the student body (I can think of just one school). But especially where bar exam passing rates have ranged considerably, because such rates can readily be compared, academic attrition has increased among a number of law schools in the past decade in order to pump up bar exam results.  One consequence has been the creation and rapid expansion of academic support programs for those students who are struggling. The theory behind such programs is sound. But though such programs can offer students tips on how to organize their study, and offer some study skills, I don’t think they can actually provide “academic” support in practice.