What I Saw at the Counter-Revolution

Snowbound in Chapel Hill over the weekend, I had a moment’s leisure to contemplate the many excellent programs and panels I attended at the AALS Conference last month.  There were so many that were so thoughtful they defy mention, but one in particular was exceptionally informative and (in the best possible way) provocative.  That was the presentation from Bryant Garth, Joyce Sterling and Ronit Dinovitzer of the preliminary results of their “Third Wave” of data from the “After the JD” (AJD) project.

Many people missed this master class, principally because it was held early Friday morning (the first session on the first day of the Conference), when a combination of weather delays and late arrivals (it was snowing then too) prevented numerous well-intentioned observers from attending.  You missed something important.

For those not familiar with the AJD study, Profs. Garth, Sterling, Dinovitzer and others undertook shortly after the turn of the century to address the paucity of longitudinal data regarding lawyer-career trajectories by tracking the progress of the law school class of 2000.  They created a large random sample of those graduates, and surveyed them on a variety of subjects regarding their lives, careers and career satisfaction in 2003, 2007 and again most recently in 2012—the so-called “Third Wave” inquiry that was the subject of their presentation at AALS.  The presentation was preliminary, as they are still testing and truing their findings; thus very little of the data is published right now.  As a result, I’ll need to report to you as my memory serves, and if I bobble some of the numbers, you have my apologies.  (You can read a limited summary of some of the preliminary data here.)

First and foremost, deep admiration for the investigators.  This is first-rate social science, conducted so far as I can tell carefully, thoroughly, thoughtfully and rigorously; and intelligently braced against all the competing winds of expedience eager to co-opt the implications.  Everyone should be looking forward to the publication of the entire dataset, which I understand to be a condition of the American Bar Foundation/NALP Foundation grant that funded the work. 

There was a great deal of information presented in that short hour at AALS, most of the details of which I can’t repeat with confidence.  But one observation that emerges from the preliminary Third Wave data is that the Law School Class of 2000 is, by and large, OK.  As I recall, twelve years out the overwhelming majority were employed, with less than 25% of them in jobs not practicing law.  Most of them were making a decent or better living (median salary as best I can recall in the low six figures).  And substantial majorities were satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, and with their decision a dozen years before to attend law school.  That’s a big deal:  Broader workplace studies generally find that on the order of 70% of American workers are not satisfied with their jobs.  See, e.g., here and here. 

So this is good news, and from the apparent rigor of the study I am inclined to believe (contrary to some Pandemoniasts, a word I used in a post last year to describe those who are inclined to confuse hard times with end times) that it is a fair portrayal of the cohort studied.

What happened in the session’s Q&A, however, was rather disconcerting.  The overwhelming response of those in the audience who commented amounted to a public sigh of relief that here at last was the proof that everything had always been, as they had always really known, just fine.  One senior administrator at a major university announced that the AJD data refuted the “hysteria” about JD-Advantaged jobs.  More than one prominent faculty member from respected law schools asserted that the study proved that the academy needed to reform its curriculum to prepare for these JD-Advantaged positions.  Several attendees insisted that the AALS immediately deploy the study as a “countermessage” to the “sharpshooters and assassins” (in the actual and apparently widely approved words of one audience member) who, we now had proof, had been misrepresenting the prospects of recent law graduates.  (None of this, I should add, was endorsed—or for that matter rejected—by the principal investigators of the study or most of the other panelists, who addressed all comments from the audience with carefully appropriate neutrality.)

Personally, I’m skeptical.  In a forthcoming paper I have up on SSRN (here), I try to create a normalized measure of the strength of the employment market for new lawyers since the early 1980s.  What the study unsurprisingly shows (see the graph on page 24) is that, even with the tech-bubble recession of the early 2000s, the law school class of 2000 graduated into the most robust entry-level legal job market in decades.  The classes of 2008-2013, by contrast, graduated into pretty much the worst job market we know of.  (Those who scrutinize my graph and are tempted to argue that the measure of employment-market strength depicted is comparably poor in the 1980s need to know that the employment data from the 1980s were skewed very low by low levels of reporting during that time; see pages 25-28.)   

Importantly, the AJD investigators also reported that the typical member of the Class of 2000 had changed jobs 3 times in the twelve years since graduating.  One fair reading of the data is that the Class of 2000 was fortunate to graduate into a market rich with a range of job opportunities; when they found themselves dissatisfied with their jobs, they were able to try new and different legal work until they found a comfortable fit.  Small wonder large numbers of them are satisfied with their careers today.  By contrast, recent law graduates were cast adrift in an employment market that presented many of them with limited or no legal job opportunities—remember that not many more than half of the law students who graduated in 2011 and 2012 were able to get a job practicing law within nine months of graduation.  And with no or limited entry-level legal experience, it is not unreasonable to infer that it becomes increasingly difficult later to explore other or different law jobs that require some measure of practice experience.  Not to mention the fact that the last fifteen years has seen an unprecedented run-up in tuition levels at law schools nationwide far in excess of any increases in average salaries—tuition has more than doubled during this period, while average salaries have increased only about 20% (a characteristically detailed and thoughtful exploration of these trends by my friend Jerry Organ can be found here).   Recent law graduates thus face economic constraints both more widespread and more limiting than most of the Class of 2000 ever had to cope with.

As for JD Advantaged jobs, I’ll have more to say about them in a future post.  For now, I’ll just express my puzzlement at the joy some observers seem to be taking in the AJD Third-Wave data on that account.  What curricular reforms should be implemented to “prepare” people for a job not practicing law twelve years after they graduate?  And how much attention should that choice command given that less than 25% of the class had chosen such jobs by that point—especially given that less than 10% were not practicing law three years out of school (see here)?  How do we reconcile the chorus of demands for “practice-ready” graduates with the chorus advocating law school as preparation not to practice?

Bernie

Comments

[Ben Barros]

Bernie, thanks for this characteristically thoughtful post. I agree that the After the JD panel was a real highlight of the conference. Your question about reconciling preparing students for law practice and JD advantaged jobs is an important one. I don't have any ready answer, but here are some possible solutions to the dilemma. One possibility answer, which I don't like very much, is that they can't really be reconciled. If JD advantaged jobs value the more generalized, and less practice-focused, legal education that we have today, then moving towards more of a practice focus in legal education would make JD holders less desirable for JD advantaged jobs. A second possibility is that many of the skills that make lawyers attractive for JD advantaged jobs are the same as are needed in law practice. If this is true, then the way to prepare people for JD advantaged jobs is to prepare them for law practice. A third possibility is that by preparing students for JD advantaged jobs, we would better prepare them for law practice as well. If, for example, we trained our students in project management, they might be even better prepared for both types of jobs.

I look forward to your post on JD advantaged jobs. One thing I've been thinking about lately is whether there is any qualitative difference between JD advantaged jobs that people get right out of law school and JD advantaged jobs that people get later. I'm not sure one way or the other. Some JD advantaged jobs are fantastic, and some are mediocre. I suppose that if someone is moving later from a bar pass required job to a JD advantaged job, we might be more confident that the JD advantaged is a good one.

[anon]

The referenced article in the ABA Journal notes many important facts that render this study sort of less meaningful, perhaps meaningless, as a predictive tool (unless the study is taken as the high water mark by which sinking is measured).
As noted above by Prof Burk, the giddy nature of the response by some to this preliminary report ("All is well!") is an embarrassment.
For example:
"Four members of the AJD research team presented [the] study findings [at the ABA Midyear Meeting ... ]. 'These are the golden age graduates,' said American Bar Foundation faculty fellow Ronit Dinovitzer after the presentation, 'and even among the golden age graduates, 24 percent are not practicing law.'
"Entry-level jobs have declined since the survey, [Panelist Daniel] Rodriguez [the law dean of Northwestern] said, raising questions about the value of law schools for positions in which a law degree is merely preferred or not required at all. The value proposition may well depend on the level of educational debt, he said. He noted that the lawyers in the After the JD study likely had lower debt than grads that followed because of tuition hikes that accelerated from 1999 to 2006."
And, there is much much more.
The question arises: does the hiring of late by law faculty members seemingly interested in any subject BUT the law (Ph.D. in any subject, but please no person with affinity for the practice of law!) match the trend toward the employment of law grads in jobs other than as lawyers? Or, is it simply the failure of the academy to recognize and adapt to a changing market for legal services that has rendered grads incapable of the practice of law in too many instances?
Consider this:
"The findings show a movement from private practice to business since the first wave of the study. The percentage of respondents working in the business sector was 27.7 percent in 2012, compared to only 8.4 percent in 2003. At the same time, the percentage of respondents in private practice was 44.1 percent in 2012, compared to 68.6 percent in 2003."
"Among graduates of the top 10 law schools, only 16.8 percent were working in large firms of more than 250 lawyers in 2012, compared to 55.3 percent in 2003 and 28.7 percent in 2007."
Unfortunately, the law academy has lost its way.
The answer is so clear that one wonders how long it can be refused: the principal purpose of a law school is to prepare lawyers to meet the needs of this society for legal services. Period.
Will some folks benefit from a legal education but choose to do something else with it? Sure. So what? Shall we remake the entire law academy to resemble a university of departments all under one roof, led by JDs and now PhDs, trained in and(have mercy!) teaching subjects other than law?
Leadership out of the present crisis, and it is a crisis, will come only when the law academy recognizes its true function and stops listening to persons with no affinity for or meaningful experience with the practice of law, and starts incorporating persons with such experience, able to discern trends and impart the knowledge sought and needed by those who choose to expend a small fortune to attend law school.

[Jojo]

"What happened in the session’s Q&A, however, was rather disconcerting. The overwhelming response of those in the audience who commented amounted to a public sigh of relief that here at last was the proof that everything had always been, as they had always really known, just fine. One senior administrator at a major university announced that the AJD data refuted the “hysteria” about JD-Advantaged jobs. More than one prominent faculty member from respected law schools asserted that the study proved that the academy needed to reform its curriculum to prepare for these JD-Advantaged positions. Several attendees insisted that the AALS immediately deploy the study as a “countermessage” to the “sharpshooters and assassins” (in the actual and apparently widely approved words of one audience member) who, we now had proof, had been misrepresenting the prospects of recent law graduates."

Bernie, you made the mistake of assuming that the audience (ie law faculty), on the whole, care about students. They do not. They care about themselves, and law students are a necessary nuisance tolerated to the extent they bring a comfortable life. The "sigh of relief" you heard was the recognition not that there was "proof that everything had always been . . . just fine." Rather, it was the recognition that they could spin this study in a way that kept the music playing for another year or two.

[and discuss...]

Come on, everyone. This thread is ripe for spirited discussion and perhaps some vitriol, and I'm having a pretty slow day. Let's have some entertainment, team!

[Barry]

"...especially given that less than 10% were not practicing law three years out of school (see here)? ..."

I'm sorry - when 50% were not practicing law at nine months (i.e., when the recruiting for the next year's class was well underway, if not complete), 40% managed to pick up legal jobs?

[Bernie Burk]

Barry, you misread the post. The statistics to which you refer concern the class of 2000, not the class of 2009. Very few class of 2000 law graduates took JD-Advantaged kinds of jobs early in their careers--fewer than 10% three years out, and fewer than 25% 12 years out. And un- and under-employment was much lower shortly after graduation for the Class of 2000 than it is for classes graduating in the last few years. Today, law schools are reporting much higher levels of what they categorize as JD-Advantaged employment for their recent graduates. Unfortunately, there are very good reasons to doubt that many of those jobs fairly live up to true "JD Advantaged" status. But that's a subject for another day.

Bernie

[Milan]

Bernie,

Great post. I agree with you that the After the JD Study is not especially helpful in analyzing the employment prospects of recent graduates. It does seem to challenge some of the conventional wisdom of the "Pandemoniasts," however, such as that lawyers struggle to find lucrative employment outside of large law firms and that lawyers are chronically unhappy with their careers. This is not to say that the study is conclusive on either of these points.

I also don't believe the findings are diminished by the strong employment market from 2000-2008 unless one assumes that the economic recession had a disproportionate effect on lawyers.

[anon]

"Very few class of 2000 law graduates took JD-Advantaged kinds of jobs early in their careers--fewer than 10% three years out, and fewer than 25% 12 years out. And un- and under-employment was much lower shortly after graduation for the Class of 2000 than it is for classes graduating in the last few years."
This picture had changed! Again, we need to consider the reasons for such changes!
To be sure the financial crises affected BigLaw. But is that the only reason?
Could it possibly be that policies of law faculties of late have affected the prospect that their students will find employment practicing law? Is it even POSSIBLE? or, is anyone who even asks the question by definition engaged in vitriol? Perhaps, we should just cherry pick the positive attributes of this "golden age" of grads, ignore all the other findings in this report, and pat ourselves on the back.
The stats show that BigLaw plays a far less important role in the overall stats than folks completely oblivious to the realities of practice as experienced by the vast majority of their graduates might have otherwise believed. It is the status of the majority that counts here, because BigLaw will no longer pull the averages in misleading directions.
It is a working theory - subject to proof otherwise - that the crowding of law faculty ranks with persons who have no affinity for or meaningful connection to practice has created not only cadres of law grads not prepared to meet the dynamic needs for legal services, but also grads predisposed to discount and disparage the value of lawyering and lawyers in general. How could it be otherwise when the modeling on law faculties is to load the faculty with folks who wish to focus on anything but law and lawyering, while delegating the "practice" related aspects of the curriculum to persons singled out by rank and title as inferior and mainly unnecessary.

[ML]

But the schools that hire people least connected to practice (the tier 1 schools who hire PhDs) are the schools whose students are still able to get jobs. How can that be?

[anon]

By and large, the reputation of the HLS-type schools buoys their approach, and, BigLaw relies heavily on these schools. Of course, given that we are discussing in this context the "NBA" or the "NFL" of law schools, it is sort of misleading to use stats so limited to make any larger points.
We all know the old joke: "He didn't go to law school, he went to Yale."
But, the stats belie that all is well in the sense of employment for graduates of law school even from the top tier AS ATTORNEYS.
Note that, even for the "golden age" grads, the percentage of respondents working in the business sector was 27.7 percent in 2012, compared to only 8.4 percent in 2003. At the same time, the percentage of respondents in private practice was 44.1 percent in 2012, compared to 68.6 percent in 2003.
And, the BigLaw contraction has clearly affected grads at the top tier. Among golden age graduates of the top 10 law schools, only 16.8 percent were working in large firms of more than 250 lawyers in 2012, compared to 55.3 percent in 2003 and 28.7 percent in 2007.
As stated above, "The stats show that BigLaw plays a less important role in the overall stats than folks completely oblivious to the realities of practice as experienced by the vast majority of their graduates might have otherwise believed."
Unfortunately, for schools other than in the Top Tier representing the majority of law grads, it is a shame and sort of pitiful exercise to emulate the top tier in hiring practices, etc. In these schools, too, JDs pretend to be economists, social scientists, etc., and try at all costs to avoid to the greatest extent possible being seen as a "trade school" (i.e., a law school fulfilling its mission to train those persons whose goal remains, in the vast majority of cases, the practice of law).
"At all costs" is the key here. THe crisis will reach the top tier eventually, and there, change will come as well. It will just take a little longer.
I ask again:
It is a working theory - subject to proof otherwise - that the crowding of law faculty ranks with persons who have no affinity for or meaningful connection to practice has created not only cadres of law grads not prepared to meet the dynamic needs for legal services, but also grads predisposed to discount and disparage the value of lawyering and lawyers in general. How could it be otherwise when the modeling on law faculties is to load the faculty with folks who wish to focus on anything but law and lawyering, while delegating the "practice" related aspects of the curriculum to persons singled out by rank and title as inferior and mainly unnecessary.

[Bernie Burk]

ML and anon:

ML makes a very fair point. And the converse is also true: Lower-ranked law schools are more likely to have more faculty with substantial practice experience, and yet tend to have worse placement outcomes in recent years. So anon, I can't say whether you're "engaged in vitriol," but your crankiness is not well supported by a lot of hard data. Most importantly, the law school staffing policies of which you complain (preferring Ph.Ds and others with little or no practice exposure) are not, as you have now repeatedly suggested, recent innovations; that's been going on for twenty years or more, and was certainly going on from 2000-2007 during the most robust legal job market in history. That's not to say that I endorse this approach to picking law professors; it's simply to observe that the academy as a whole has done a pretty mediocre job of preparing law students for practice for decades now, and the job market only tanked recently. That makes it doubtful (to say the least) that the former is the cause of the latter.

Bernie

[Bernie Burk]

Anon, I'm going to try one more time. You are articulating a number of widely held misconceptions that are simply not consistent with substantial amounts of hard data. Yes, the job market is terrible right now, and has been since roughly 2008. Yes, things are awful for many of the people who graduated during that time. Yes, there is a great deal wrong with the legal academy, and pathetically high levels of resistance to the new realities, and the changes necessary to cope with them.

But no, there is no coherent evidence that the academy's shortcomings in practice-preparation have had any significant effect on the job market. The causes of the deterioration of the job market have to do with demand (how clients want their legal work staffed and priced), not supply.

And no, it is not correct to say "The stats show that BigLaw plays a less important role in the overall stats than folks completely oblivious to the realities of practice as experienced by the vast majority of their graduates might have otherwise believed." In the detailed empirical study cited in my post, I show that although BigLaw has employed only 10%-20% of new law graduates in recent years, it is responsible for more than half of the contraction in the entry-level job market as a whole. New-lawyer hiring in other sectors of the bar has contracted much more modestly, only a fraction as much as BigLaw.

So with all respect, your "working theory" really doesn't work at all.

Bernie

[anon]

Bernie:
Thanks. I'm not sure about "crankiness" being a valid point, though. That is sort of an emotional characterization and changes the discussion to something else entirely. You don't really need to engage in name-calling, right?
Let's take your first point at face value. Let's assume you are correct that for the past twenty or so years hiring on law faculties has steered toward "preferring Ph.Ds and others with little or no practice exposure" and away from those with affinity for and experience in the practice of law.
This would explain quite perfectly the inability of the law academy to anticipate and respond to the changing dynamics of the profession generally, and to the financial collapse in 2008 specifically. You miss the point if you limit my remarks to a contention that "the academy's shortcomings in practice-preparation have had ... a ... significant effect on the job market." I believe that it is clearly the case that the need for legal services has actually increased, but that misguided law faculty governance has failed to recognize and adapt to the changing dynamics of the legal market. And the reason for this misguided governance, in my view, is a determined effort to pack law faculties with those who lack of experience in and affinity for the practice of law.
There are two related issues being discussed, so let’s separate them for analytical purposes. One is the market for legal services, which is of course influenced by the economy, changing corporate structures and governance styles, etc. The other is declining law school enrollment, influenced by job prospects, but also by other intangible factors, such as tuition levels and the desire of some to practice law for reasons unrelated solely to pecuniary gain.
As for job prospects, doesn’t the "hard data" show, as demonstrated above, a move away from the practice of law, even for the "golden age" grads? Surely, you wouldn't argue that there have been no prior recessions and no prior financial contractions? Could law faculty governance of law schools have ANY POSSIBLE CONNECTION to the responses of the law academy to current changes in the dynamics of the legal job market and the ability of law grads to respond to those changes, Bernie? (Supposedly, we are now in a “recovery” by the way.)
A related issue is enrollment. That is the driver of the present crisis. This issue is related to job prospects (and misrepresentations about same) but the issue of law school enrollment is not entirely identical to the issue of job prospects for law grads.
In fact, I have read many on these blogs claim the economy is nearly exclusively responsible in the main for the present crisis in enrollment. For example, some have argued that downturns in the economy account for increases in law school enrollment. Some have argued that the economy is so good now that folks are choosing to forego law school. Do you agree with this thesis?
As for BigLaw, your point is that "BigLaw has employed only 10%-20% of new law graduates in recent years, [but] it is responsible for more than half of the contraction in the entry-level job market as a whole." In other words, 80-90% of law grads will seek work in jobs other than in BigLaw. That was my point. But, I'll check out your assertion that half of the contraction in the entry level job market is attributable to BigLaw hiring. Elsewhere, above, it was contended that all is well as far as placement at the Top Tier, and it is from this tier that BigLaw hires, so I’m not sure how your point correlates with that observation, which appeared to be valid.
In any event, since you repeatedly refer to "hard data" please remind when a dip in enrollment has been as dramatic as it is at present, and the reasons therefor.
As for "hard data," it is too often the case that folks taking a position simply claim that anyone in dispute is completely "fact free." This is a political tactic, not an argument.
Facts from the very report to which you linked, cited above, show many correlations with my point and were obviously cited in support of that point. Just claiming otherwise doesn't prove much or prove anything. Of course, causation is a very tricky enterprise. Correlation is not causation, to be sure.
Accordingly, I was careful to label my main point as either a question or "a working theory - subject to proof otherwise."
Perhaps then, rather than assessing whether my comments in these regards have been too "cranky," to which I respectfully object, you might instead point to the "hard data" to prove some of your assertions, stated as facts.
For example, what "hard data" show that "2000-2007 [was] the most robust legal job market in history"? And, you claim that by "repeatedly suggest[ing] that recent innovations [in hiring]" have contributed to present crisis, I referred only to some period other than to the past twenty or so years. Based on what?
In general, still wondering: shall we remake the entire law academy to resemble a university of departments all under one roof, led by JDs and now PhDs, trained in, writing about and teaching subjects other than law? Should we continue the modeling on law faculties by loading these faculty with folks who wish to focus on anything but law and lawyering, while delegating the "practice" related aspects of the curriculum to persons singled out by rank and title as inferior and mainly unnecessary?
Surely, you don't contend that the debate about these issues is not ongoing. These questions relate directly to the points raised by my comments above.
Finally, I would hardly label packing law faculties with persons lacking any meaningful connection to or experience practicing law an "innovation." I would label this as pure folly.

[MacK]

I have to say that I am a practice preparation sceptic. My reasoning is simple - I do not think that a 4-6 credit period in a law school clinic is comparable to say 3-6 months doing serious legal work post-graduation. I think it may be worth about 3 weeks real experience. So as a practical matter, I have doubts that law schools can actually do much in the way of training students for practice - and that is before one considers the ludicrous lack of real experience of many law professors.

The bigger problem is that all better practice training by a law school would do is potentially enable its graduates to compete better for what jobs are out there - it will not solve the 50,000 JD for 22,000 jobs or the more recent 42,000 JDs for 18,000 jobs problem, just move it around.

The AJD study is interesting - but suffers from some issues. The biggest one is that it looks at the class of 2000 - a peak year for hiring, a year that followed on 1998 and 1999 boom years for many law firms when they were unusually willing to hire (and made very many summer associate offers.) It was the peak of the "greedy associates" phenomenon. The reason this is important is the first jobs on graduation in any profession are crucial, and this was a very fortunate class in that regard - they got hired in droves. Thus the fact that only 25% of one of the most fortunate classes in two decades are still working as lawyers is not necessarily that good a statistic. A key question also is what proportion of the 25% wanted to stay in the profession.

I am pretty sure the results for say 1991-94 are pretty abysmal, as are the numbers for say 2001-2012. One should also note that the number of law schools and the size of law school classes grew significantly between 2000 and 2010-11 when numbers peaked.

[MacK]

Sorry I meant to say only 25% had left the profession

[anon]

MacK
I couldn't agree more about "clinical education." And, the wave of chatter about "experiential" education, combined with a sort of risible push back by the "elites," is all basically a distraction and sort of a shame, really.
That is not to say, however, that the tenor of a law school and an antagonistic stance toward the practice of law adopted by so many of its faculty members become irrelevant. Nor is it true to say that those with affinity for and experience in the practice of law convey no more to their students than the strictly sterile and textbook sort of information conveyed by those who lack such experience and affinity. A good law prof knows about the effects in the lives of people outside the academy brought about the principles and approaches the prof is teaching. In too many cases, law profs who are pretending to be economists, social scientists, etc. are not only unqualified in their "chosen" non-legal fields of study, but completely unaware of the realities of law practice about which their students came to law school to learn.
Ask any law student. They know the difference.
The AJD study seemed to show a drift away from legal practice just when we should be doubling down on restoring and renewing it.

[anon]

Bernie states above:
"BigLaw has employed only 10%-20% of new law graduates in recent years, [but] it is responsible for more than half of the contraction in the entry-level job market as a whole."
What is the remedy to the current crisis in law school placement and enrollment?
Breaking news!
An online survey, conducted on behalf of Harvard Law School, of 124 practicing attorneys at major law firms, found out the number one skill that these attorneys want students to learn in law school. That skill is ... wait for it ....
"The most salient result is that students were strongly advised to study accounting and financial statement analysis, as well as corporate finance."
Yes, indeed. Rome is, well, ... you know.
Let the music play!

[MacK]

Anon @ 6:00pm

I should perhaps amend my point. I worked most of my way through law school - working as a clerk in a major litigation department my last year, doing a mix of white-collar crime and oddly OSHA - i think I wrote a motion in limine a week at one point. This was very beneficial when I started practice.

I also had law professors who were very experienced practitioners - Ken Feinberg, Mike Gottesman, Bill Patry, etc. and even senior professors who had practiced for 10+ years before becoming professors. And I had the archetypal former judicial clerk, Yale, zero experience types (Judy Areen favoured this type over experienced lawyers) My view then, and my view now, it that the more experienced as practitioner professors were vastly superior to the legal neophytes pretending to be lawyers.

Many of the best professors then were adjuncts - but these adjuncts were among the top practitioners in their fields - and they were good teachers. What has happened more recently is that adjunct has become a version of "cheap," a way to get courses taught that the tenured faculty are either not qualified to teach, or not inclined to cut into their scholarship time to teach. They are regarded as cheap labor.

Worse still, the evident contempt which so many tenure track professors hold for adjuncts and practitioners in general cannot make it easy to get top practitioners to teach. What experienced and successful lawyer would want to have anything to do with a school where junior pissants whho have done nothing of substance in their legal careers look down on them, see them as peons who don't have the scholarship of the tenured? Who would want to make the arrangements in their personal and professional life to devote a semester to teaching a class for a small honorarium (a fraction of their earnings) and condescending contempt from tenured professors.

If a law school wants to offer more practice orientated practitioners, it has to recruit top practitioners to its adjunct faculty and take very substantial measures to make that role attractive. One simple way, reverse the status between tenure track and adjuncts - make the tenure track act as the assistants, have them facilitate the adjuncts, not the other way around. Recognise that the time an top-practitioner adjunct spends say teaching evidence, grading papers, over a semester would sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars - while any practice work by most tenure track professors might literally have to be given away at a free clinic.

[BoredJD]

I agree that the talk about practice ready and experiential education is a red herring. Short of running "teaching law firms" there's really nothing a law school can do to make graduates more practice ready than would be done by a year of working, and that would not substantially raise the cost of a legal education, as if it's not high enough already.

What strikes me as interesting is the fact some attendees simply haven't considered whether the substance of the education they provide may be worth much less than the simple signaling value of the credential on the job market. It may be impossible to separate those things, but I'd say that the "value" of the legal education people got in the 80s, 90s, early-00s, is not significantly less than it is now. If Harvard ran a third-year program that was just a one-year vacation employers would not hire 1/3 fewer Harvard grads or pay them 1/3 less than Stanford grads.

Traditional law school curriculum served students well when tuition was a fraction of what it is now. Traditional law school curriculum does not work well when it costs multiples of what it used to. The solution is simple.

[anon]

MacK:
Again, couldn't agree more that adjuncts are often among the top practitioners in their fields - and good teachers. I disagree slightly that this has changed dramatically at the top tier. Yet, it is in that tier that the attitudes toward adjuncts you identify are the most evident.
Your comment harkens back to a discussion about "charging less for adjuncts" a few threads back. A prof at SLU took the position that adjuncts are often "struggling with poverty" and therefore devoting "less than full efforts" to teaching. A glance at the adjuncts on this prof's faculty, however, gave the lie to his risible assertion. He insulted and demeaned his colleagues on the adjunct faculty in an inexcusable manner.
The fact that when called on this, this prof wouldn't concede error validates your observations about the truly amazing arrogance and hubris of law faculties at times.