Tenure for law professors is in danger. This week, news came out that the ABA might loosen the tenure requirements for law school faculty. This potential development has many professors up in arms. Through their lobbying group, the Society of American Law Teachers, professors argue that “changing the accreditation standards to weaken the requirements regarding tenure would have enormous and unfortunate implications for the quality of legal education." Is this really the case though? As we all know, law professors are interested only in preserving a privileged lifestyle, regardless of law graduates plunging into a financial hell as a result.
In his brilliant book, Failing Law Schools, Brian Tamanaha detailed the ABA’s historical role as a lobbying group that fixed law faculty salaries at an artificially inflated level. This was accomplished through the requirement that a majority of law faculty be tenure track positions, as well as bald price fixing through the release of salary information among professors to aid faculty negotiations. “In 1995, those accusations were leveled by the Department of Justice in an antitrust suit that charged that A.B.A. standards had artificially inflated faculty salaries. The A.B.A. signed a consent decree, agreeing to a number of strictures intended to pry the process out of the hands of legal academics and end the fixing of salaries.”
The Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) has taken up the ABA’s mantle. Today, with the intense competition created by law schools’ obsession with prestige, law faculty salaries are higher than ever. These high salaries drive the runaway inflation in the cost of a legal education. Yet, whenever a proposal is made to reduce professor salaries, SALT rides to the rescue and vociferously fights on the professors’ behalf. SALT has also taken up the annual salary survey that the ABA was forced to discontinue due to the aforementioned 1995 Department of Justice consent decree.
Tenure allows law professors to maintain the best part time job in America. Law professors claim that tenure is necessary to help maintain scholarly output. But does tenure really encourage scholarly output? Witness the case of Barbara Holden-Smith, law professor at Cornell. According to a post on Ramblings on Appeal, Holden-Smith has not published any scholarship since 1996; at least none that was published in a law review or journal. As of 2005, the teaching load at Cornell is 3 courses per year. So, for the last 17 years, Holden-Smith has worked 20 hours or less during the school year while collecting a handsome salary for the privilege.
Failing Law Schools touches on the depths of law professor laziness in much more depth. As dean at St. John’s, Brian Tamanaha was tasked with finding a way to motivate tenured professors to either publish more or increase their teaching load. The annual salaries and summer research grants were not enough. Certain professors operated like Holden-Smith, content to coast. Others fattened their wallets as partners at law firms or consultants. If gratuitous financial motivation is not enough to motivate professors into actually working because they already make so much money, the only option is a mechanism for revoking tenure.
In his extremely self-serving and offensive article on the Huffington Post, Lawrence M. Solan proposes that law firms reduce first year associate salaries. How about your own salary, Mr. Solan? Might Mr. Solan forgo his summer research stipend so that students at Brooklyn Law School can avoid Income Based Repayment program?
In an upcoming article in Stanford Law & Policy Review, Brian Tamanaha pulls back the curtain: ““Tuition increases meant yearly salary raises, research budgets to buy books and laptops, additional time off from teaching to write (or to do whatever we like), traveling to conferences domestically and abroad, rooms in fine hotels, and dining out with old friends,” Tamanaha writes. “A sweet ride it has been.” Further, “SALT’s major initiative on the challenges facing legal education was to sponsor a conference in Honolulu in December 2010,” Tamanaha writes. Though the rising cost of legal education was on the agenda, “the greatest urgency [was] placed on perceived attacks against the law professoriate.”
Until we change the current tenure system, the cost of legal education will continue to rise unabated. If the law schools themselves are unwilling to do so, then the market will make the changes for them, as prospective law students see that law school holds little promise of a secure future. Like American car manufacturers in the 1980s, law professors refuse to change while the world is passing them by. Perhaps a few of them will soon join their former students in the bread line.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Unpainted Haiku
A boring "law school is bad for you" campaign will not work. It has been tried and failed many times over. But what does work are posts that take jabs, make fun of the system, overstep boundaries, and appeal to the younger readers. —Awesome comment
Coincidentally to the above comment, (what movie was it that the detective says, "I don't believe in coincidences?" Was that Brad Pitt in Seven?) at a recent inter-school faculty conference several big shot law professors submitted Haiku's for poetry readings. A sympathizer to our cause there—actually it was the custodian, who has $100,000 of debt for his own "J.D." (that is, Janitorial Doctorate) managed to wrangle me a copy from the dumpster and I thought we should post it here. I was actually surprised by the heartfelt confessions and self-awareness that these academics were able to express. If only they had been so honest with their feelings in class, we could at least have built up the psychological immunity to the resulting legal career disappointments. Some highlights of the collection:
Sunday, May 5, 2013
A Brief History of So-Called Scamblogging: Where We Are and Where It's Going
I've decided to break character to address some recently made comments, particularly those that accused this blog of not being Campos/losing it/etc. back when the blog was dealing with a troll attack.
What follows is a brief history of the so-called "scamblog" movement for anyone who came aboard after Campos started and thinks the world began then.
This is not to suggest that at any particular time that information was "out" there for 0Ls. Most of this stuff was obscure in internet terms, and it's clear that law schools remained the authority figures on the law school scene, and it's difficult to recreate the scene for 0Ls.
Anyway, I wanted to write this to show where we've collectively been and where we're hopefully going, and why it's important to keep pounding the message through whatever means possible until the deans have lost all credibility when they spout nonsense and newly-licensed attorneys aren't stocking shelves at Piggly Wiggly.
What follows is a brief history of the so-called "scamblog" movement for anyone who came aboard after Campos started and thinks the world began then.
This is not to suggest that at any particular time that information was "out" there for 0Ls. Most of this stuff was obscure in internet terms, and it's clear that law schools remained the authority figures on the law school scene, and it's difficult to recreate the scene for 0Ls.
Anyway, I wanted to write this to show where we've collectively been and where we're hopefully going, and why it's important to keep pounding the message through whatever means possible until the deans have lost all credibility when they spout nonsense and newly-licensed attorneys aren't stocking shelves at Piggly Wiggly.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Only One Per Life Raft, Please
"Dickson Law Association appeals to Penn State trustees for delay on split of University's Law School," by Charles Thompson (The Patriot-News)
[Penn State Dickinson School of Law Dean Philip J.] McConnaughay proposed the step as a way to help Penn State's law school navigate through a prolonged period of declining applications for admission to law schools nationally.
In an effort to help the school maintain its academic reputation during the slump, the dean initially proposed lowering enrollment and consolidating all first-year legal instruction at the University Park campus.
After that plan ran into fierce opposition from Carlislers, many of whom saw it as a slow death sentence for the school here, McConnaughay came up with the separate accreditation plan.
It will, he believes, give both campuses a chance to develop individual missions and rise or fall on their own merits.
But the DLA board members - a vestige of the formerly independent Dickinson School of Law with rights to enforce the dual-campus agreement negotiated in 2005 - say they believe the proposed split violates the terms of that pact.
Death By A Thousand Cuts
The younger generations face death by a thousand
cuts. Two articles yesterday in The New York Times, included below, describe
opposing viewpoints of the value of education in America. The first article paints a rosy picture of
college graduates having a less than 5% unemployment rate even though the
article also admits that many of these young people are working far below their
educational skill level. Tellingly, the
article fails to take into account the crushing burden of debt (big
surprise). The other article reveals
what most of us know from personal experiences or experiences with friends—that
a greater number of young people must live at home into their late 20s and
sometimes beyond. America continues to
slide to the bottom of the list of developed countries that produce young
people with the ability to support themselves.
The legal field provides an exaggerated version
of the indebtedness and joblessness caused by the academic industrial complex. It is disheartening to see newspapers try to
paint a rosier picture of the numbers by suggesting that a college degree is
much more valuable than it actually is. Most
of us know the reality: most young people work at retail and food service jobs
to pay crushing debt, often an exercise in futility.
100,000 page views!
By the time you read this, we should be past (or very close to) 100,000 page views - certainly, May 4 is the day we'll have reached that milestone.
That's kind of a big deal.
Thanks to everyone for supporting this blog as it got off the ground. I've said before that the writers here are just a fraction of the force behind the movement, and the comments and those who visit and support the site are equally important. We set up the topics, you knock them down. Without the commenters, this blog would be just another one of the anonymous blogs out there that people can happily ignore. The power behind blogs like this are the comments - the scamming deans, professors, and student loan lenders need to hear voices.
And major thanks to the other writers - you've provided daily (often more than daily), high-quality, timely posts from diverse perspectives. Without that fresh content, this project would have died long ago.
We've instituted some common-sense changes recently, and I've personally been extremely impressed with the continued contributions from the readers. In my experience, making comments 100% moderated drives people away, but here the opposite has occurred - you're more focused, refreshed, and you've got more of a bite.
Please, keep the contributions up. I read every comment. The other writers are also very active here and read all the comments. We're listening to what you're saying.
You feed us, and we'll feed you. (Symbiosis, if I remember my biology from high school correctly.)
In my first post, I said that this was a communal blog, that it belonged to nobody, and that it's a tool we can all use. And that remains true - you may not have seen but half the writers here are approving your comments, and have 100% control over every feature of this blog if they need to edit, make changes, etc. Ownership of this blog is out there. If you want to join and write, please email - new voices are always welcome. If you don't want to write, that's cool; the comments section is open to all and is where the feet hit the ground. If you can keep reading and commenting regularly, then that's fine with us! Suggestions are welcome, via email or via the comments section.
This really is a place where we can all get the message out - law school is a scam. Whatever we can do to help you get that message out, we'll do our best to accommodate.
Next milestone - 250,000 page views!
That's kind of a big deal.
Thanks to everyone for supporting this blog as it got off the ground. I've said before that the writers here are just a fraction of the force behind the movement, and the comments and those who visit and support the site are equally important. We set up the topics, you knock them down. Without the commenters, this blog would be just another one of the anonymous blogs out there that people can happily ignore. The power behind blogs like this are the comments - the scamming deans, professors, and student loan lenders need to hear voices.
And major thanks to the other writers - you've provided daily (often more than daily), high-quality, timely posts from diverse perspectives. Without that fresh content, this project would have died long ago.
We've instituted some common-sense changes recently, and I've personally been extremely impressed with the continued contributions from the readers. In my experience, making comments 100% moderated drives people away, but here the opposite has occurred - you're more focused, refreshed, and you've got more of a bite.
Please, keep the contributions up. I read every comment. The other writers are also very active here and read all the comments. We're listening to what you're saying.
You feed us, and we'll feed you. (Symbiosis, if I remember my biology from high school correctly.)
In my first post, I said that this was a communal blog, that it belonged to nobody, and that it's a tool we can all use. And that remains true - you may not have seen but half the writers here are approving your comments, and have 100% control over every feature of this blog if they need to edit, make changes, etc. Ownership of this blog is out there. If you want to join and write, please email - new voices are always welcome. If you don't want to write, that's cool; the comments section is open to all and is where the feet hit the ground. If you can keep reading and commenting regularly, then that's fine with us! Suggestions are welcome, via email or via the comments section.
This really is a place where we can all get the message out - law school is a scam. Whatever we can do to help you get that message out, we'll do our best to accommodate.
Next milestone - 250,000 page views!
Friday, May 3, 2013
What are you going to do for the rest of your life?
"Howrey's Bankruptcy and Big Law Firms' Small Future" by Paul M. Barrett (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)
Bloomberg BusinessWeek has done many, many stories about the crisis in law and legal education. This week the cover story is Big Law's impending collapse. The accompanying video report also discusses the plight of law students and young lawyers. It places a chunk of blame at the door of law schools for "puffing" those employment stats.
There are numerous links contained within the online article linking back to their prior coverage.
Consider the reported plight of Ben Davidson, a Howrey alum:
Consider the reported plight of Ben Davidson, a Howrey alum:
“When Howrey imploded, it was kind of a shock,” says Ben Davidson, who joined the firm in 1997 and assumed he’d spend the rest of his career there. He attended law school at night at George Washington University while working as a patent examiner for the federal government. He had climbed the ladder to “income partner,” a designation in between associate and full equity partner. “An event like that,” Davidson adds, “forces you to ask, what are you doing as a lawyer and what are you going to do for the rest of your life?”
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