Vic Fleischer On The Unseen Costs Of Cutting Faculty

It seems pretty clear that Fleischer is interested only in protecting tenure-line faculty, as he proposes "closing clinics" as an alternative to laying off untenured assistant professors.

Of course, this contradicts his main line of argument — which is that employment security is necessary to allow faculty to take positions on "polarizing political issues" that might antagonize donors or other important people.

Clinical faculty, however, are the most likely to antagonize the powers that be. In fact, political attacks on clinics are well documented, and they dwarf the sort of nasty comments that Fleischer complains about.

It would be good to hear Fleischer explain why he deems academic freedom crucial for junior tenure-line professors, but completely expendable for clinicians. Or is the answer obvious?

Steven – you draw a lot of inferences from the four words "Clinics can be closed."

Academic freedom also protects clinicians and legal writing faculty and librarians.

But, unlike with research faculty, I would not extend tenure as a wholesale matter to all teaching staff. My view, and it is a minority view I suppose, is that legal education would be better off, and more easily scaled for non-elite schools, with practical training through simulations and team-teaching with adjunct faculty, not full-time clinicians.

For those institutions where there is an implicit contract with permanent, nontenured faculty, the implicit contract should be honored. But I think it is neither unreasonable nor a violation of academic freedom to close a 6 student clinic and ask those instructors to teach 75 student podium classes instead.

Reasonable minds can differ, and for many law schools having tenured clinicians and legal writing faculty might make sense. But tenured faculty of any sort is expensive, and I think the future for law schools in the age of austerity is with smaller tenured faculties and larger adjunct, part-time faculty.

My counterpoint to Vic's position http://spiveyconsulting.com/blog/this-time-around-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised/

Hi Mike – thoughtful post. If it is really that bad — i.e., it would be financial suicide not to fire some tenure-stream faculty along with other cuts — then the school should declare financial exigency, which puts everyone's job on the line, tenured or not.

Or they could admit a few more students with lower LSATs.

I doubt it is really that bad at Seton Hall. There are probably some schools down in the fourth tier where it is that bad.

I am sure there are people who will not like this critique of Vic Fleischer's paper but, when he says:

In a seminal 1974 case in New Jersey, for example, when Bloomfield College was facing severe liquidity problems, the court required it to consider selling off a golf course before firing faculty. Seton Hall’s law school may be in a tough spot, but there is no reason to think that its problems threaten the survival of the university as a whole. The university may need to subsidize the law school until, over time, the full-time faculty of about 75 professors shrinks by attrition.

He misses a key detail. He is correct in saying that it can be very tough to fire tenured faculty – and the same thing applies to enforced across the board salary cuts. There is a "get out" for Universities though – the closing of the entire academic department. It is the extraordinary difficulty in cutting academic costs that leads me to conclude that in some instances parent Universities may simply take the easy option and close the law school.

Vic — You're somehow forgetting that law schools exist within a larger university context. "Declaring financial exigency" results in a front-page story in the Chronicle. Placing tenured faculty in fear of their jobs does the same.

Your other option, admitting lower-than-last-year-LSATs, results in your Dean getting called to the Chancellor's office, asking why you're taking a hit in the rankings.

The pressure to maintain LSATs (and GPAs) is STRONGER in the middle tiers (where Seton Hall resides) than it is in the lower tiers, because US News actually *ranks* in the middle tiers. A fourth-tier law school that decides to lower its standards from 145 to 140 is under no pressure in the rankings. A Seton Hall that decides to drop its LSAT criteria five points is committing rankings suicide.

Mike Spivey's blog post – linked above – hits the key issue. For most law schools the current situation is not one of simply "hunkering down" until the recession is over – this is about their existence. It is also not going to be solved by trimming some administration costs, which has taken on the totemic status of eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" in fixing government budgets – or for that matter foreign aid.

Similarly, criticism of law school teaching is something that will be eternal – no matter what reforms law schools adopt, new law graduates will always be unprepared for practice – and it is that way the world over. I for one cannot see what law schools can do that will make the typical newly minted JD ever actually worth $160k per annum, when experienced lawyers are averaging around $100k.

There are two hard facts that govern the situation – the cost of becoming a qualified lawyer in the US must fall to about half its current level, without a reduction in the quality of the training law schools provide, and the legal profession can only absorb about half the number of graduates that law schools have the capacity to train. This adjustment will happen – it may go slow, it may go fast. I suspect it will happen faster than anyone thinks.

Recently I was commenting to a very pissed off Republican apparatchik that the alacrity with which his colleagues in North Carolina had acted following the Shelby County decision to initiate legislation attacking minority voting was in bad taste and would also not impress the broader public – born out by an ABC/Washington Post poll which shows the vast majority of voters disagree with Shelby County (I think my response to "what's wrong with asking for IDs" of "will you stop making me shake your urine out of my trouser cuffs on a sunny day" probably was a little incendiary, or maybe too complex.) In any event, the same analysis could apply to the speed with which law schools latched onto IBR as a panacea for the huge debt law students may take on – before long the Federal Government will complain about law deans claims that the situation of law graduates is just a little rain that will pass over soon.

Vic, I think perhaps it may be worse for some schools than we think, because I have at the very least heard anecdotal talk that central universities are keeping a good number of law schools solvent. Seton Hall seems to be on risk management step 3 or 4 but granted I have no idea how bad or not bad it is there. I just wanted to get a Public Enemy reference in a blog article. Thanks for reading! -Mike

MacK is right that there is relatively little that schools can do in terms of efficiency, cutting non-teaching staff, etc. The truth is there just aren't that many staff at the schools that really need to shed expenses. But there is more that schools can do to get more from their faculty. Vic mentioned the elimination of centers. That's going to happen at a lot of schools. Centers are a big expense and a luxury most schools cannot afford. Look for those to close very soon and for those faculty to start teaching more.

I don't understand the idea that "teaching more" saves money for a law school. Teaching more means fewer adjuncts, who often teach as much as a third of law school courses. In essence, adjuncts are free (well, maybe as little as 5K per course). Another chunk of teaching is done by local area visitors (someone from Hofstra guest teaching at Rutgers). That's cheap, too.

So cut all that out and add courses taught by existing faculty but you won't save much money. What you will do is reduce research, damage faculty morale, discourage recruiting of new faculty and, perhaps most important presumably to the reformers' cause, have more of the kind of faculty teaching whom the reformers say are not good teachers because they are too "intellectual" and not practice or, to use the current buzz word, "experiential" enough.

Anon:

If salaried tenured professors teach "more" as part of the mix of their paid activities the cost to the school falls as their teaching productivity rises. Thus the school can for example reduce its use of adjuncts at say 5K per course. Right now law schools are pricing courses at $1200-1700 per credit hour per student (which would be pretty astronomical rates in even a Wall Street firm (15-80 students, 12-13 hours of face time (per hour), another maybe 24-36 of preparation, exams and grading.)

Yes, teaching more will be at the expense of "research" (have you read many of the journal articles that produces) – and as for recruiting new faculty – somehow I think the number of new faculty recruited will be small and their recruitment a tiny priority in a cost cutting environment.

It is correct to say that cost-cutting will, at many law schools, have "negative" impacts. The internal politics will be very painful. To take some possibilities, many deserving non-tenured teachers will be cut, while other better positioned and some politically adroit faculty members will survive untouched, despite their utter lack of merit as teachers; that will sow resentment. Pay cuts will be proposed across the board, but some special pleaders will avoid a cut. Some early movers will take generous buyouts, while later forced out faculty will get much less generous deals. I have seen downsizing, "right-sizing" and cost cutting in my career several times in multiple countries – but I have never seen a situation as bad as that of the typical US law school right now – a situation where the cost cuts needed are so high, the demand shortfall so precipitous, the repurposing of employees so difficult.

By the way there is one thing I did not mention that I should have when discussing cost cutting – because for a number of law schools it may be a big opportunity – and that is "cutting the dividend," i.e., the rakeoff that the parent college or university takes. I have known a few law school deans (surprise) and one issue that they quietly complain about is the amount of tuition that parent institutions "milk" out of the law school "cash cow." ABA rules limit in principle the amount that the parent school can take to 20%, while USNWR per student spending also has an impact – but parent institutions have circumvented those limits by massive over-charging for shared-services, facilities and overhead. It was this in part that led the late Dick Gordon and Paul Dean to move Georgetown law school to a separate campus – allowing for better segregation of finances. How big the rakeoff is seems to vary from school to school – but in at least some cases rumour has it as reaching into the high 30s in percentage terms, maybe even 40% This is a very large potential area for effective cost cutting. A sense of how much money is being taken can be found in the recent story about Catholic University's non-law school cost cuts driven by falling revenue at the Law School:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/04/catholic-university-of-america-to-slash-overall-budget-by-20-plunging-law-schools-apps-to-blame

MacK — I am having a hard time following your math that an adjunct paid $1200-$1700 per credit hour (which you describe as 36-49 hours of work per credit hour) would be "pretty astronimical rates, even for a Wall Street firm." Don't Wall Street firms charge in the neighborhood or $400 per hour, and thus can make that much money in 3-4 hours of work?

@Anon, 2:14 — adjuncts aren't fungible with full time faculty. Think you'll get a decent first year contracts course that meets 4 times a week during regular business hours, has 80 students, and involves at least some drafting exercises? Maybe, but not likely. Full time faculty will have to bear more of the teaching burden and as they do, that will reduce the need to hire more full time faculty. Adjuncts can only do so much, though reliance on them will increase, too, probably.

Returning to Fleischer's article. It's terrible that Seton Hall is laying off the most vulnerable and lowest paid faculty. Look at their tenured faculty and see who has not published anything since Obama came to office. (Even if you think scholarship is worthless, it's a marker of who's retired but is still drawing a salary.) 4+ years and no writing. Those faculty should be fired first.

Let’s take for example Georgetown law. It has a price per credit hour of $1,730 – so that is per concurrent-classroom-semester hour per student. A semester is 12-13 weeks so a semester is 13 weeks. Allow say 3 or 4 hours per class contact hour for preparation – is another say 48 hours of prep-time (and an hour or two per credit hour for grading. Thus over a semester a credit hour involves for the professor some 60 hours or so (a 2-credit class would be say 120 hours, 3 credit 180 hours.)

But if there are say 30 students in the class, the total revenue per credit hour is $51,900 and the actual revenue per hour worked by the professor comes to $865 per hour – that is a pretty high price per hour, even for BigLaw (I’m not saying a professor gets paid this.) The bigger the class and/or the lower the total prep-time, the higher the revenue per hour. This does lead to the little detail that where some of the law school revenue goes is quite mysterious.

MacK – Professors who care spend much more time than that – including meeting with students (my school requires 8 office hours per week and many frequently meet with students outside of those hours). We also advise various student organizations and serve on many committees that make the school run. We also write many recs, and I spend a fair amount of time calling my contacts to get students jobs. Sure, there are professors who have mailed it in and do not work much, but there are also many professors who devote their lives to their school and students for relatively little money.

MacK,

I gather you have never been a faculty member so you are really just guessing about what it really takes for faculty to do their jobs and for law schools as institutions to survive and prosper.

One important question is why would you do that? Do you think it fair for law professors who have never practiced law to do that to your profession? Presumably you would dismiss those interventions as irrelevant and likely they would be, largely, irrelevant. Perhaps you are a trustee or major donor to your former law school and so have spent time trying to figure out how academia works. I feel fairly confident though based on my own experience with both worlds that you have not since your (constant harping stream of) interventions come out of left field.

The bottom line is that serious productive faculty work the same hours as practicing lawyers, although those can be somewhat more flexibly structured and there is the ability to take weekends off now and again. In return for that apparent flexibility – more mythical than it seems (e.g., I took off one week for vacation this year) – we get salaries that pale in comparison to what we could get or, in many cases including my own, left behind in the private sector. At larger schools there are significant administrative responsibilities as well as inter-departmental work such as supervising graduate students. Anyone engaged in serious research has publishing, conferences, seminars, co-authors, research assistants, grant writing and a myriad of activities to manage. The actual amount of "down time" is limited and when it occurs, it is time to come up with new ideas for teaching and research.

As someone who spends a fair amount of time interacting still with the outside world I hear frequently the teasing dismissals of the life of a professor. But these are stereotypes that build up somewhat akin to lawyer jokes and they bear as little resemblance to my life as those jokes did when I was a full time lawyer.

if you are serious about these issues, then get involved directly with a law school as a donor or advisory board member and see if you can learn a thing or two. In other words, take on some actual responsibility for these issues. Come back and report to use in five years.

If you assume that all practicing attorneys in the US work as partners in AmLaw 100 firms and therefore have a mean wage of 1.47 million, which I believe to be the average PPP, then you will quickly see that members of law faculty are grossly underpaid. In these uncertain times, law schools should be increasing faculty compensation, because stagnant wages will serve to push faculty members into much more lucrative fields available in private practice. I'm assuming that any number of AmLaw 100 firms would be quite eager to bring in a faculty member as a lateral hire to co-chair the firm's law & European social thought in fin de siecle Vienna practice group.

T. Roll: Out of your naive hostility to law schools you jest, but this is exactly what ambitious major law schools have been doing. If you look at the CV's of top tier high salaried new faculty they clearly have skill sets that could land them in appellate practices in D.C. or hedge funds in Greenwich. Law schools have realized that the Stanford model makes sense – you recruit people whose skills will generate long term cash flow for the school through their IP and tenure and time off from teaching will more than pay for themselves. It's all about positive NPV. These "law and….." candidates tend to be in law and finance or economics but other can fit the model, too. Smaller and lower ranked schools should do more of this (some did, like USD and Alabama, and it appears to have paid off) and we would all be better off because law schools would be generating more valuable contributions to society.

Anon has to be a certain Santa Clara professor. He is the only one who is still has the stones to claim that law prof's are underpaid in this economy.

As a 2011 grad, I would love nothing more than to see these "underpaid" profs enter the jungle called private practice.

As the ivory tower is starting to realize, it's been a cold winter for a long time for law students. At least professors have the advantage of not having massive loans around their neck.

If the issue were simply a matter of hours put in equates seamlessly to pay and job security, I would be all for categorical faculty job security and pay increases. At the three law schools I have been lucky enough to work at, the overwhelming majority of faculty put in long hours, not just towards research but on behalf on students and even in support of my administrative efforts. From my vantage point this is no different than the hours BigLaw partners dedicate toward their jobs.

But that isn't the issue. During the Great Recession law firms were laying off partners and associates at a blinding pace, for the simple reason that they were not bringing in new clients. Similarly, for almost all law schools, faculty pay is a function of tuition-driven income. Put another way, very few law school (unlike some of their the central university counterparts) have the security of sizable endowments. That income base is drying up rapidly (and seems to be down yet again for a 4th year in a row)so the point that some seem to be entirely missing is "who is going to foot the salary?" This is going to sound harsher than I mean it to, as again I respect the world out almost all of the faculty I have worked with, but to this notion that there might not be a surreal bubble of security any longer I would simply say "welcome to the real world — we've missed your presence"

I don't see any claim from any of the Anons that law faculty are underpaid. Another example of the misleading claims of the law school critics. In fact, if you paid attention to the argument you will see that the point was that law schools are impacted by market forces, too, and that the smart law schools recruit very talented people and pay them appropriately.

By the way, I would stack up the private practice backgrounds of Santa Clara faculty against any faculty in the country. There is plenty of exposure, past and present, to what you call the jungle.

You are also mistaken about law faculty and student loans. Many law faculty have outstanding loan debt, including me. My interest rate is 9%. What is yours?

"Faculty accept lower salaries and the other perks of taking on the risks of the private marketplace in return for their commitment to pursue knowledge and train future lawyers."

6th paragraph down.

http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=4918

Lower salaries does not mean the same thing as being underpaid.

In any case the claim was that Anons here had claimed that faculty are underpaid not what was said elsewhere. (Do law students no longer take basic economics courses?)

That is clearly wrong and it is also wrong to claim that lower salaries means being underpaid.

Faculty accept lower salaries than are available in the private sector in a fair bargain – they get job security and the ability to pursue research and teaching interests as well as a certain level (not clearly not absolute) of job security.

Some law schools pay more than other law schools in efforts to recruit faculty with certain skill sets that will generate revenue for their schools. This is smart.

Semantics aside, I reject the argument that law professors accept lower salaries than they would otherwise have in the private sector.

I graduated with a class of 300 students. Six got jobs paying more than $100k. I was not one of the six. I currently make under $50k, without benefits. I am squarely in the median of my friends. Many make slightly more. Many make slightly less.

Outside the six mentioned above, the highest is around $60k (with benefits). The lowest is unemployed. All have debt.

To be generous, if you are currently making more than $60k, you are not "underpaid." Rather, according to the market that you seem to love, youre grossly overpaid.

I believe that, deep down, professors know this. I would imagine that this knowledge is a scary thought. As such, I would likely need something to justify my salary. Sacrifice to the altar of scholarship seems like it might work nicely.

The argument for scholarship in order to maintain the status quo is smart. Paying professors on the backs of their students is not.

Stan, I think you should pay a little more attention to the CV's of many faculty members, particularly those hired in the last decade. You will see there a significant number who graduated from HYSC and many who practiced at top tier law firms for several years before joining a faculty and many who were federal appellate or Supreme Court clerks. Certainly those who left private practice took on lower salaries unless they left immediately after their first year of practice and then went to a top ten law school. I am fairly confident that those who left did not do so because they were not succeeding in private practice. They also quite likely did not leave because they did not like private practice. They left because of a relative preference for academic work. They quite likely work now nearly as many hours as they did in private practice but without the all nighters and with the flexibility to take a weekend off now and again.

All of this suggests that many law faculty could have stayed in private practice and made much more money. That does not, I repeat, does not mean they are underpaid as faculty. No one has suggested that and it is a canard to continue to suggest that. Faculty are paid a market rate. It is a very competitive market and a fairly efficient one. Salaries are higher at higher ranked law schools because those faculty train law students who will be paid more in the market. Smart law schools will try to compete for smarter students and that requires faculty with certain skill sets and thus those faculty can command and should get higher salaries.

Now, all that said, at some point many faculty who have been out of the so-called "real world" or "jungle" if you prefer, will have little interest in returning to it and that world may have little interest in them returning. Keep in mind, however, that today many law school faculty no longer live solely in the cocoon that academia seems to many. They are of counsel, they are serving as board members, they are consultants, they are expert witnesses, and some have their own legal practices (surely you have seen Reversal of Fortune?). A return is not necessarily as difficult as you think because often many never quite left, they just restructured their work.

In any case, the inability of a 60 year old faculty member who has not seen the inside of a courtroom for 40 years – even if not an inaccurate stereotype – to return to private practice will have little impact on faculty salaries. Why? Because those salaries are set by what law schools need to pay in order to recruit today. And despite the new normal recruiting will continue as the older generation (and many law schools are top heavy) retire. In fact, even with the downturn – now on the mend by the way – I predict increased hiring of faculty in the future because of the baby boom retirements combined with a growing global demand for US style legal training.

I'm not sure how it is "smart" to pay higher salaries to attract better professors. Unless you make cuts elsewhere, that is going to lead to higher tuition, which is going to lead to fewer students applying.

As long as students believed law schools were getting them jobs that allowed them to pay back their debt, they continued to pay tuition at levels exceeding the cost of education. Now, they are increasingly not willing to do that, and it has nothing to do with the credentials of professors or the content or quality of education. It has everything to do with the cost and the job prospects.

What those lower ranked law schools should do is double-down on what Seton Hall has done- they should drastically cut tuition to attract cost-conscious applicants, and then restructure as best they can.

The fact that you can even have a discussion on these terms is amazing. Universities should not be run like businesses.

BoringJD, we're seeing a significant segmentation in legal education. The very top schools (think T12 or so, Georgetown isn't quite making the cut these days) are continuing to fill their classes without taking much cut in quality. Plus the very good public schools (Minnesota, Illinois, UCLA, Alabama, and a few others) are able to continue to fill their classes. That these schools have chosen this path is making life difficult for everyone else. Even pretty good privates (American, Tulane, Wake Forest) are struggling to fill their classes. Washington University's recent full ride scholarships shows they're feeling the heat. Probably places like BU and BC are in the same or slightly worse situations. For those outside the top 50 and certainly top 100, life is difficult. Unranked schools are finding they are falling far short of their enrollment goals/needs. Pain is significant for some; limited or non-existent for others. The pain is not being felt anywhere near equally.

How does Seton Hall's model of cutting tuition help them? We're getting close to where they won't be able to give away their product.

The elite schools and major publics — the only ones that are maintaining their class size — are going to continue to compete for excellent faculty. Those faculty are in pretty good shape. For everyone else, pay and working conditions will be getting worse. This may come in the form of pay cuts, as at Seton Hall. It will also include more teaching and administrative work.

BoredJD: the model of recruiting stronger faculty and paying them more can actually help manage tuition levels because it is aimed at increasing revenue coming into the school. it is an entrepreneurial approach. that is why I labeled it the Stanford Model above. Not Stanford Law School (although they engage in this too) but Stanford – which hires faculty (particularly in the sciences) based in part on the market value of their ideas. venture capital plays a significant role in the process. and in fact the law school itself is jointly engaged in efforts with computer science to incubate startups that are applying technology to law. these efforts will pay off financially for Stanford over the long term in numerous ways – licensing revenue, equity ownership, and donors. that helps the endowment and helps Stanford Law keep tuition (relatively) low (at schools like HYSCh, tuition is only a fraction of the cost of educating students).

Anon, perhaps you are right. I'm persuaded that past SCOTUS clerks will likely be just fine. As will those who have their own white-shoe books of business.

However, the minority of SCOTUS clerks and professors teaching at HSY aside, it is the T2 & below professors who spent a few years in private practice nearly 15 years ago – say from 1995-1999 for example – that will have a hard, if not impossible, time finding a private legal occupation paying the same salary that their professorship currently provides.

In fact, I would say that the odds of released faculty finding such financially rewarding legal work in the private sector are fittingly similar to the odds of their students. Grim.

This gives me no pleasure to say. Most of my past professors fall into this category and I wish no ill will upon them. But I see the realities of the marketplace first hand every day. And sir, I have to tell you that, HSY included, these realities are unkind.

Cassandra, let me take exception to a few of your assumptions because, unlike areas of tenure and tenure track accessibility, this is something I know a great deal about.

(1) T12 schools are suffering too, albeit not as much as the masses behind them. That said, most T12 schools are having to either reduce class size or vastly expand remission amounts (scholarship is layman's terms). This is because along with the drop in applications, the highest decrease has come in the bandwidths about an LSAT of 170. So the same schools are basically offering a diminished number of applicants and thus losing on yield and/or having to compensate for this extra competition. For certain no T12 will dissvolve, but I would not exactly say they are gliding along the same path that they did in the go-go years.

(2) Wash U Law in not "feeling the heat" any more than their peer schools. Indeed I am pretty sure (having worked there and for their dean at two schools) that they are in the black, a huge rarity these days for law schools. Rather, they got a strategically negotiated 1 time money dump from their central university which they decided to employ this year, largely due to what I discussed in (1). It was, in other words, an opportune time to use this previously negotiated lump sum.

(3) Every school outside of Yale is cutting tuition on a merit-base, they are just calling is "scholarships." They are doing so for the same reason a hotel might offer you a 50% discount at the last minute — it is better to fill a seat (or room) than have it entirely empty. This is not idiosyncratic to Seton Hall by any stretch.

"How does Seton Hall's model of cutting tuition help them? We're getting close to where they won't be able to give away their product."

When a product has no value (or is perceived to have no value), then you have to give it away. That is how the "market" works. But the price point for Seton Hall is nowhere near zero. Probably around 15K. Once it reaches this point, students will look at their debt and at their job prospects and make the decision to go.

The reason that those public schools are doing so well is because (1) they are cheap, (2) they own their job market, (3) they have the other significant revenue source that universities have relied on – alumni support.

Take Alabama. At $18,030 in-state, it is relatively cheap, and a student debt financing most of the cost can afford to pay back loans on a likely starting salary in the region (about 60K). It has a much employment score (70%) than other similarly situated (and even higher ranked) schools in more competitive job markets. And if the stories about the departing dean are to be believed, he was good at raising money- that plus the state subsidy gave them revenue streams that less established schools without state support have.

In order to make any expensive private school a good deal for students, it needs to lower prices. It is not a good deal at $150,000. At $60,000, it might very well be. How the law school reorganizes itself is their problem.

"BoringJD, we're seeing a significant segmentation in legal education. The very top schools (think T12 or so, Georgetown isn't quite making the cut these days) are continuing to fill their classes without taking much cut in quality."

There is, and there will always been as "significant segmentation" in legal education, because there is and will always be a "significant segmentation" in the entry-level legal market. There are law schools that send almost all of their graduates into PSLF-qualifying employment, federal clerkships, or biglaw jobs and then there are schools that do not. That is not something any conceivable form of legal education can change.

Unfortunately, faculty and deans at those second-tier schools have priced tuition way above the entry level salaries their graduates can expect.

"BoredJD: the model of recruiting stronger faculty and paying them more can actually help manage tuition levels because it is aimed at increasing revenue coming into the school. it is an entrepreneurial approach. that is why I labeled it the Stanford Model above. Not Stanford Law School (although they engage in this too) but Stanford – which hires faculty (particularly in the sciences) based in part on the market value of their ideas. venture capital plays a significant role in the process. and in fact the law school itself is jointly engaged in efforts with computer science to incubate startups that are applying technology to law. these efforts will pay off financially for Stanford over the long term in numerous ways – licensing revenue, equity ownership, and donors. that helps the endowment and helps Stanford Law keep tuition (relatively) low (at schools like HYSCh, tuition is only a fraction of the cost of educating students)."

I want some of whatever you are on. YHSChi's can do give massive discounts because they have massive endowments and lots of alumni support. That's because it was a selective institution, that admitted smart people, who went on to succeed in their careers (which they got because they went to a selective institution), and who donated a ton of money.

I'm not quite sure how law professors will ever become a significant source of revenue, especially when there are fewer law professors. Will they represent clients? If that's the case, then clinical faculty and clinics would seem to be the best investment, because they can concentrate in areas where the prevailing party gets fees. Will they kick back consulting fees to the school? If they are consulting, won't that take a lot of time away from scholarship and teaching?

The other thing you need to address is whether there is a large enough market for whatever it is law professors produce to support professors at 200+ institutions. And then what about colleagues not in demand by organizations that can afford to pay fees? Are the IP and corporate professors going to be the equivalent of rainmakers at large firms, while professors in social justice take a back seat?

BoringJD,

I'm glad you're recognizing the reality of the market. The issue that separates us is whether Seton Hall has something they can sell — or whether they have to essentially give it away. I'm not so sure that Seton Hall can fill its classes at $15K/year tuition. I'm skeptical of this. I'd be interested in the thoughts of others — perhaps prospective students?

What's your evidence that people will continue to pay $15K/year for a Seton Hall degree? I don't have specific knowledge of Seton Hall, but I'm hearing reliable information about admissions at a similarly ranked school. That school is having trouble getting people to accept full rides.

Bored, How do you create what you call a "selective institution"?

At all universities, smarter students want smarter faculty. Smarter faculty can therefore command higher salaries. The school pays those salaries – and students are willing to borrow against future earnings – because smarter faculty can improve the human capital of those students who then are more likely to be successful and capable of paying off their student expenses.

Smarter entrepreneurial faculty also produce research that impacts the real world and brings in more money in grants, donors willing to invest, more students, etc.

This is called a "business model."

While the model is most obviously applicable at law schools in fields like IP or business it can translate elsewhere and, yes, I think it reasonable to think that there is an argument for cross subsidization. Universities have been creating and managing this model for decades.

If law schools are businesses with business models, and businesses do not provide tenure, why should law schools should provide tenure?

Surely the fact that faculty are improving the human capital of their students is sufficient enough to protect their jobs, right?

Is Anon arguing against tenure?

Cassandra: I'm a law school graduate, not a prospective student, but I think you touch on something important. The cost of attending law school is significantly greater than whatever tuition a law school may charge. A student still has to finance their living costs for at least three years (possibly significantly longer), as well as books, travel, bar and bar study fees, etc., etc.

In addition, a prospective student has to consider the opportunity cost of spending at least three years out of the workforce, or not attending some alternative form of education. And, of course, a prospective student has to weigh the risk involved–some graduates do well out of law school, some eind up unemployed. So, it's quite possible for law school's return on investment to be negative, even at %240 tuition.

Stan, did you miss the part of the model where smart faculty leave the private sector for more secure jobs in return for less pay? try to keep up.

btw, some private sector models do offer something akin to tenure. Perhaps you are familiar with partnership in a law firm? or places like Bell Labs?

Again, Anon, Prof's are not accepting less pay. They are accepting more pay. In today's terms, literally double. Plus they have security. This is not to mention the avoidance of the 3000 billable hour year.

For a smart prof like you that provides a ton of value for his students, tenure seems like an unnecessary and burdensome mechanism that only protects those professors who are not, in fact, providing any value.

Surely, in the interest of your students, you would advocate for the removal of protections that only serve to protect the weakest of the professorial herd?

After all, tenure does nothing to prevent the (distorted) market from paying you more. It only appears to protect you from being paid less.

Well, Stan, I have to admit that I'd like to see Campos fired, which he would be without tenure. Then again, if he doesn't start writing some articles he may be fired anyway, because tenure doesn't offer much of a protection. Just ask the faculty at Vermont and Widener who have been "offered" "buyouts" how much tenure was worth to them.

Is it just me, or is the reaction of a lot of law professors to Paul Campos rather similar to police officers attempting to maintain the code of silence after one of them engages in misconduct, or the Mafia reacting to a snitch? It seems really rather unseemly.

Tenure protects the ability of faculty to pursue ideas the market may not like yet needs to hear.

Vic made this point well in his Times piece, and it is a point that has been made numerous times here and elsewhere yet one that you ignore, did not see, do not understand, what?

Should we conclude you are doing that on purpose? To obfuscate, confuse? Aren't those the very crimes you accuse law schools of committing?

Tin Man, I don't like Campos' ideas, such as they are, either. But tenure protects him too. He is no worse than Ward Churchill, after all, and even though Churchill is an idiot he should not have been fired.

Stan, not to miss the salary point, again, I thought it pretty clear that you are wrong about this, too.

Most faculty hires today – and at least for the past decade – have backgrounds that allow them easily to pursue BigLaw backgrounds. Their salaries as academics are far below those salaries and certainly the NPV's very different. The hours are similar but perhaps subject to greater flexibility in academia. The job security is relatively stronger.

I will grant that this is based on my anecdotal review of the job market and two decades or so of personal experience in both worlds. If you can point me to research which shows that in fact most faculty candidates today come from much lower ranked schools with weaker credentials, credentials that would in fact only allow them to earn far less in the "real world" I would like to see it.

BoringJD,

"I'm glad you're recognizing the reality of the market. The issue that separates us is whether Seton Hall has something they can sell — or whether they have to essentially give it away. I'm not so sure that Seton Hall can fill its classes at $15K/year tuition. I'm skeptical of this. I'd be interested in the thoughts of others — perhaps prospective students?"

Of course Seton Hall has something to sell. They have (1) a JD degree, which will allow the student to take the bar exam, (2) a general range of employment prospects and salaries, as demonstrated by the LST employment statistics. These stats are very interesting for New Jersey schools.

A quick look at the Seton Hall employment number will show that the majority of graduates are getting legal jobs within a salary range of 40-60K, including a large number of state court clerkships. Now, what amount of debt would a student take out to get a job paying 40-60K? I don't know, but I'd certainly expect much less than the sticker cost of attendance.

"What's your evidence that people will continue to pay $15K/year for a Seton Hall degree? I don't have specific knowledge of Seton Hall, but I'm hearing reliable information about admissions at a similarly ranked school. That school is having trouble getting people to accept full rides."

That is not surprising. A student with a full-ride at one school would likely have a half-ride at a higher ranked school, or an admission with no ride to a significantly higher-ranked school. At that point, what does the student want to do? Where do they want to work? Perhaps your school is giving too many full-rides to students who don't want to work in that market. Perhaps your school is just outside the cusp of the truly national schools that offer significantly better biglaw and PSLF job prospects, and so the full-ride students would rather bet 250K to get biglaw than 60K to get a different type of job.

But for a student who wants to work in New Jersey or the surrounding region, and does not want to work biglaw, and wants a relatively cheap education then Seton Hall at 15K is good value. Seton Hall's other problem may be that it is competing with two much cheaper state schools, RUC and RUN, for a share of that market.

For a man that seems to love the wisdom of the market, why would you want to protect ideas that market itself deems unpopular?

My point is not that tenure is good or bad. Quite frankly, I dont care either way. I really dont. I dont even care about scholarship. Good ideas, bad ideas, novel ideas, unpopular ideas, whatever. Write your heart out. No doubt the world needs a few deep thinkers.

What I do care about is the fact that law school is clearly and in a mind numbingly obvious way causing very real and irreparable harm to its students. This debate is not taking place in a vacuum.

I am under an enormous, life wrecking amount of debt. I cannot get married. I cannot afford a house. I cannot afford a car. I cannot afford health insurance. And despite – or maybe because of – my credentials, I have no job prospects.

I have no hope. And I am not alone.

This is not your problem, but it is infuriating to hear professors lecture about the entry level economic wisdom behind why they deserve their salaries because its really just law schools operating under a solid business model, and in the same breath decry the importance of tenure protection from that very same market which would gut your job prospects just like it did for your students.

"Bored, How do you create what you call a "selective institution"?"

The premier example is NYU. By a confluence of factors out of the institution's control, formerly blue collar NYU found itself with a lot of successful alumni donors, with a great willingness to invest in that institution, that was able to provide it with a revenue stream exceeding its peers. Most law schools do not have those factors.

"At all universities, smarter students want smarter faculty. Smarter faculty can therefore command higher salaries. The school pays those salaries – and students are willing to borrow against future earnings – because smarter faculty can improve the human capital of those students who then are more likely to be successful and capable of paying off their student expenses."

At law schools, smarter students want better job prospects. How the law school produces those job prospects is irrelevant. What they teach is irrelevant. As Scalia said of hiring clerks from Yale and Harvard "you can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse." That Yale and Harvard guarantee exceptional job prospects is not causally related to spending a lot of money on faculty. This is a correlation-causation fallacy.

"Smarter entrepreneurial faculty also produce research that impacts the real world and brings in more money in grants, donors willing to invest, more students, etc."

This is not the business model of law school. The business model of law school is tuition + donations > cost of education. Since "donations" is likely to be larger at schools that are already highly regarded, and since students are exerting downward pressure on "tuition", the natural response would be to reduce "cost of education."

Stan,

All I can suggest at this point is that you revisit the argument made by Vic Fleischer. He received severe pressure when he made his arguments about taxation of carried interest. He credits tenure for enabling him to pursue his analysis. That is only one example. We, as a society, have made a tradeoff of protections of this kind in return for a commitment to research and teaching. There is lots of material available on this issue.

I know that your situation is shared by many thousands of law school graduates. It is also faced by millions of people who lost their houses, jobs, cars and savings, and that is just in the U.S. Some of those people are faculty. I think the economy is improving slowly and hopefully soon it will offer new opportunities to recent law graduates.

In the meantime law schools will no doubt continue to adjust their models to try to offer alternatives as needed that are consistent with their obligations as educational institutions. That limits them in certain ways. They are not like widget factories that can easily shut down and restart as needed, even though to non-academics the value of what universities do may not be clear.

In any case, it remains the case – as you have still not adduced any evidence for an alternative – that faculty hired over the past few years earn substantially less than what is available to them in the outside world. If it seems still too much to you or other casual observers I think I can understand why you feel that way given your lack of experience as an academic. Faculty have long been easy targets for verbal and other abuse and now law faculty are taking their turn. Lawyers face similar problems from their clients who complain about bills.

But it still takes real evidence to demonstrate that faculty salaries have much of anything to do with the problems facing law students and I don't see it. If BoredJD and Scalia think that replacing Harvard Law School faculty with the faculty at Thomas Jefferson is "irrelevant" and if what they teach is "irrelevant" that's fine. That's why we are lucky this is a big country where whacky ideas can float around and harm no one.

I hope your situation improves soon.

Anon, I agree with half of what you posit. Not all faculty salaries are the problem. Only half. To state it another way, the problem is over supply on every level. Too many lawyers, too many law students, too many law schools, too many administrators, and, yes, even too many professors.

Half of the schools should not exist. And the remaining ones that do exist should cost half as much. Period. This would begin right the balance of oversupply and ease the downward pressure on the legal market.

On the bright side, you have persuaded me that this course of action shouldn't affect the professoriate all too much. The exceedingly bright and accomplished half that no longer teach can just go back to private practice (apparently for a nice increase in salary too).

Everybody wins.

I keep reading that Biglaw associates today have an increasingly hard time transitioning from young biglaw associate into whatever traditionally would follow. Fewer are making partner, fewer are finding good jobs in government or elsewhere to transition to. Fewer are able to start successful solos. Many are simply being spit out, where they end up doing doc review or are otherwise unemployed.

If this is true (and I don't know that it is), then it weakens the argument that faculty make a financial sacrifice when they transition from biglaw to academia. Biglaw might provide a high salary for a few years, but there is nothing like the tenure system to protect that income for the rest of their career. It seems to me like the worse the economy gets, the more academia stands out as the career with the greatest lifetime earning potential.

"In any case, it remains the case – as you have still not adduced any evidence for an alternative – that faculty hired over the past few years earn substantially less than what is available to them in the outside world."

This is what 30 seconds of Googling "biglaw contraction" will get you.

Ribstein (Deceased), Larry E., "The Death of Big Law" (August 1, 2010). Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 2010, No. 3, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1467730 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1467730

Burk, Bernard A. and McGowan, David, "Big But Brittle: Economic Perspectives on the Future of the Law Firm in the New Economy" (October 6, 2010). Columbia Business Law Review, 2011; Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working Paper No. 87. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1680624

Bloomberg Law, "MacEwen: Weil Gotshal Layoffs Start of Wave" (June 27, 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watchv=c_shW3LFW5E&feature=youtu.be

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/03/nationwide-layoff-watch-patton-boggs-blows-folks-out-the-door/

Maybe Ken Randall can leave to make more money at InfiLaw than he could as the dean at Alabama, but is his situation typical of the options possessed by most legal academics? If an average legal academic leaves to make substantially more in the "outside world," he or she is probably returning to BigLaw or a similar practice setting. Well, BigLaw is sweating off its excess attorneys, most of whom have credentials comparable to those of legal academics besides more recent practice experience. Why don't you provide some evidence of the higher-paying options available to faculty hired in the last few years?