Is justice more accessible when 2,500 law professors get a free winter vacation? Thoughts about the annual Association of American Law School (AALS) conference and its "Access to Justice" theme.

Who, in these bleak midwinter days, would turn down an employer-paid vacation to someplace warm? Certainly not 2,500 jolly law professors and law school administrators, eagerly preparing for four days of boozing and shmoozing in the San Diego sun. It is time for the AALS (Association of American Law Schools) annual convention, set to run from January 3-6, 2018, at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina and Manchester Grand Hyatt.

With such a turnout, the conference panels will obviously be many, with some devoted to law school pedagogy, some to the intersection of law and this-or-that, and some to current events. I appreciate the hard work that law professors will invest to make them all a success, whether that means droning for several minutes about recent legislation and major appellate court decisions in their area of alleged academic expertise, pretending to be public intellectuals by sharing their so-important opinions about Trump and identity politics, sounding off about whatever trendy issues are getting people furious on Twitter, or discoursing about the best ways to force feed an appreciation of social justice to their drowning-in-debt students. Also there will be "more than 50 networking events and opportunities" because obviously law professor careers matter too.

For instance, there will be a law professor panel on "Fake News" moderated by Lyrissa Lidsky, the newly-appointed and $330,000-a-year-salaried dean of the University of Missouri School of Law. (As an amusing aside: check out the impressive "prior legal experience" section of Lidsky's CV-- six entries based a single one-year judicial clerkship, plus working summers during law school). Only a cynic would note that every annoying pundit and windbag has been yapping about so-called "fake news," for over a year, making it unlikely that the AALS panelists will provide new insights into the phenomenon.

According to William & Mary Law Professor Paul Marcus, the outgoing AALS President, there is a profoundly serious purpose to this vast hodgepodge of blather, as reflected by the theme he has chosen for the conference: "Access to Justice." In his message to attendees (See Program, p. 9), Prof. Marcus states that:

"For a long time many law schools recognized the importance of training students to work for this fundamental ideal [of equal justice]. . . The story of the admirable efforts by law faculty members and students to meet these great needs is not well publicized on the pages of major newspapers and on the Internet. But, our story, as members of the AALS, is all about dedicated students and faculty members across the United States who diligently pursue the goal of equal justice for all by providing sorely needed legal representation. It is an exciting story of the recent explosion, in number and variety, of legal clinics at our member schools . . . This larger story of what we as legal educators can do, and what we and our students are doing, to assure fairness in law for our less fortunate citizens is an exhilarating and uplifting story." 

These are admirable ideals, as one might expect from a public sector employee who draws a $270,500 annual salary. Although I would say that Marcus has slightly diminished his high-minded virtue by grousing that the media has failed to publicize "the larger story" about the socially valuable contributions that law schools make, a 'plaint reminiscent of what is often said by flacks representing organizations whose corrupt practices have elicited critical media coverage. 

I hate to deprecate the uplift, especially because I am a proponent of clinical legal education, but are these do-gooding clinics a fair tradeoff for saddling tens of thousands of young people per year with six-figures of non-dischargeable debt? Furthermore, don’t law school clinical courses often involve, in substantial part, assigning students to do unpaid intake or clerical work for independent or publicly-funded providers of legal services to the poor, such as the Innocence Project or legal aid offices-- a form of pedagogical outsourcing, even if law schools try to hog all the credit?

Take criminal law, which is Paul Marcus’s scholarly focus at William & Mary Law. I believe that each and every one of the 200+ accredited law schools has multiple full-time tenured or tenure-track six-figure-salaried professors who specialize in criminal law. (William & Mary, for instance, has eight). Let us very roughly estimate the collective salaries and benefits (including such perks as summer research stipends and travel and lodging expenses to AALS and SEALS conferences) of criminal law professors nationwide at 200 million dollars per year.

By comparison, how much money do law schools allocate to criminal law clinics? William & Mary Law's website lists only two criminal law clinics, and both draw significantly on non-law-school resources and expertise. One is an "Innocence Project Clinic" in which students assist the staff of the local Innocence Project in selecting viable cases, work that could arguably be done just as well by bright undergraduates or retirees. The other, an appellate clinic, is run by an attorney with the firm of Bailey Glasser LLP, who holds adjunct rank in the law school, meaning that he likely receives little compensation from the school or none at all.

William & Mary Law has no clinic devoted to helping prisoners prepare post-conviction and clemency petitions, a genuine area of drastic unmet need because there is no constitutional right to counsel on collateral filings. Though in a recent interview, Marcus bragged about how he and his students help ensure "a different form of access to justice" by conducting a "Literature and the Law" course at the regional jail. (Podcast, at 24:10-24:50))  So even if William & Mary law students do not provide the incarcerated with very much legal assistance, they at least offer a book club.

The problem is not existing clinics, of course, it is that they are embedded in an institutional structure of exploitation called law school. And law schools touts and apologists rely on these clinics as a source of puffery and self-congratulation beyond what any dignified person would deem appropriate. (See e.g. Marcus’s statement above, and his description of the development of clinical legal education in the U.S. as a "wonderful miracle." (Podcast, 20:34-20:37)) Problematically, law schools showcase their clinics for fundraising, for student recruitment, for media relations, and as the proffered moral basis of shindigs such as the AALS conference, as though the event has anything to do with access to justice. Access to self-indulgence is more like it.

Hey, AALS Conference Fake News panelists, please re-read Marcus's message. Does it signal the nature of the AALS's media relations strategy -- to hype law school clinics "on the pages of major newspapers and on the Internet" as "[t]he story" and "our story" and "the larger story," and "an exhilarating and uplifting story." You know, as opposed to such trivia as the ruination of tens of thousands of young lives per year via obscene admissions practices and tuition levels? Isn't that an especially topical and unexplored form of "fake news" worthy of your discussion?