If there's one thing that's clear, it's that lots of colleges and universities covet a law school. The reasons vary. For research universities, a law school serves to complete a portfolio. For smaller schools, it can place them on the map. And finally, there are a few schools that are simply built to make money. At the moment an institution decides to start down the law school path, it has to face a crucial choice: start-up or merger. For-profits and smaller non-profit schools usually have little choice but to start fresh; few existing law school see a benefit from linking up with these smaller fish. I want to focus a bit on bigger institutions: private research universities and state universities. They can choose to build or merge.
Consider four schools in this category which have recently made the big move. Drexel and UC Irvine decided to start new schools; UMass and UNH have started down the path of merger (with Southern New England and Franklin Pierce, respectively.) What are the pros of each path?
The biggest advantage to a start-up is faculty quality. You can build a great law school when you start from scratch in this market (particularly when you're located in an attractive place). UCI has gone with a senior, and highly productive, startup crew. The reputational payoff has been immediate: based on their prior work, Brian Leiter slates their faculty number 9 in his recent scholarly impact ranking. Drexel has tilted strongly toward junior faculty – but (in all immodesty) it's a superb group in terms of both paper credentials and intellectual and scholarly chops. (While I'm clearly biased, I encourage readers to test my claim.) It would have been near impossible for either UCI or Drexel to have acquired an existing faculty of comparable quality.
Another big plus for a start-up is the ability to create both an agenda and a culture. Consistent with current critiques of legal education, both Drexel and UCI have strongly emphasized the value of skills training. At the same time, both are deeply interdisciplinary in approach and dog-on-the-bone about producing high-end scholarship.
Why might a school choose to merge? The first obvious answer is lower front-end transaction costs. You already have an administration. Starting a new law school is incredibly time consuming for both faculty and administrators, and inevitably involves driving through a lot of potholes. You also already have a faculty, which means you don't need to spend five years in endless job talks. And a merger might even obviate the need for costly real estate development…although UMass and UNH have presunably planned for some significant building costs.
You also acquire an alumni base which could potentially help with both fundraising and job placement. You carry forward your existing reputation with employers. (This could be a plus or minus, of course, depending on the school.) If you merge with an ABA accredited school you may score an additional benefit: avoiding any period where you lack the ABA imprimatur. Even if you have a one year accreditation gap, students are likely to be less anxious knowing that the school once was, and thus likely will be, accredited.
Mergers make sense for schools that want to add a fully grown law school quickly. Start-ups make sense for universities who want greater control over the nature and quality of their law school.
To be sure, there are many, many more considerations. For example, as in the case of UMass Dartmouth, a merger was the only realistic way in which that campus would gain a law school. If UMass were to have considered a start-up, it almost certainly would have been placed at either the Boston or Amherst campus. New Hampshire has a limited capacity to absorb another law school. If UNH had chosen a start-up, it would have been forced into a (costly) battle with Pierce for the best students – which could have produced two losers.
I am in awe of UCI's initial play: free tuition for incoming students. They became the most competitive law school in the country on day 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Irvine_School_of_Law
With only 60 students in the class, a dirt cheap way to build a reputation.
Price competition rocks!
What was the George Mason story? As I recall, they did very well by something like merging with an old low-quality law school and then firing most of the faculty while transforming some of the rest from unknowns into good scholars. But I might be wrong.
It does seem crazy to merge, unless the unviersity cares nothing about quality and just wants to have a law school, sort of like someone who doesn't care what law school he goes to, so long as it has a JD.
The question people wanting to start a new law school, either a start up or a merged one, should be asking, is whether we, as a society, need to produce more lawyers than the current 200+ law schools are producing? The government should require a "certificate of need" before starting a new law school, as they do in most states when building new health care facilities.
Then you have the mess with Texas A&M with South Texas…
UCI is slightly overrated; I say "slightly" because even when tuition remission ends and the applicant pool looks more like that of Davis (the newest UC law school) it will still be a UC. That alone should give it something of a boost over the mid-level privates like Loyola LA, USD and USF. The UC status carries more cachet than somewhat ephemeral faculty composition (as is well known now, AALS Prez Rachel Moran is returning to UC Berkeley). On the other hand, maybe a full or partial ride at Loyola LA, with its huge alumni base would be better than paying the full 40K at UCI, which the tuition there will eventually be (like the other UCs) after the initial promotion funds are exhausted.
I disagree with Joe's assertion that UCI Law School is slightly overrated. Even with Rachel Moran's leaving UCI for Boalt the new faculty in UCI is outstanding, and so are the students. This is an argument that starting a school from scratch makes sense. A longer-term question is whether the students, recruited from outside Orange County, will stay there and work for the developers and law firms that have poured millions into the new law school. If you are from outside the OC, it looks like a decentered series of boring strip malls. Further, the top firms there are hiring graduates of local schools Whittier and Chapman (even top donor Mark Robinson's firm has a Whittier grad) who may be more committed to the area than many UCI students. These local products may be a better investment; only time will tell.
I don't know who Rachel Moran is or why she's leaving UCI. But maybe the UCI Law School isn't such a good thing given the politically tense environment on that campus. As an undergrad at UCSD I am thinking of applying to law school, and was visiting some friends at UCI last month when we ran into a large (maybe 50 or so people) demonstration against Israel. The protesters were waving an Israeli flag covered with blood and shouting "Jews kill civilians," and "Jews are Nazis." I then read in the L.A. Jewish Journal that the Dean of UCI Law School denies that there is any antisemitism on the campus. Maybe he's trying to make a distinction between antisemitism and antizionism (although the demonstrators kept referring to Jews) or maybe he doesn't get out much. At any rate as a Jewish student I don't think I would feel very comfortable there. I want to stay in Southern California, and there are a lot of good law schools in L.A., Orange County, and San Diego. I'm scratching UCI off my list.
universities and state universities. They can choose to build or merge.
Consider four schools in this category which have recently made the big move. Drexel and UC Irvine decided to start new schools; UMass and UNH have started down the path of merger (with Southern New England and Franklin Pierce, respectively.) What are the pros of each path?
The biggest advantage to a start-up is faculty quality. You can build a great
merger (with Southern New England and Franklin Pierce, respectively.) What are the pros of each path?
The biggest advantage to a start-up is faculty quality. You can build a great law school when you start from scratch in this market (particularly when you're located in an attractive place). UCI has gone with a senior, and highly productive, startup crew. The reputational payoff has been immediate: based on their prior work, Brian Leiter slates their faculty number 9 in his recent scholarly impact ranking. Drexel has tilted strongly toward junior faculty – but (in all immodesty) it's a superb group
My friends have time to go look
Live and let live.