Can a Law School Get Too Small?

One of the advantages of the ongoing law school crisis is that student body sizes have decreased at many if not most U.S. law schools.  This is advantageous for students’ job prospects (as difficult as they continue to be) and, in some respects, for their legal education as well.  When I first started teaching back in 2008, it was not entirely unusual (or usual) for my colleagues at SLU and elsewhere to be teaching lecture classes of 100+ students.  There are cost efficiencies to such classes, but I don’t imagine there are many people who would enthusiastically return to those days.

Yet, I wonder if we are starting to see the problems of ‘too smallness’ at U.S. law schools.  I’m not talking about seminars and other writing intensive courses, where smallness is almost always a virtue for everyone involved (putting aside bean-counting administrators), but other aspects of the law school experience—including the faculty experience.  As I see it, the following three pedagogical and cultural issues can arise in a law school that is ‘too small’—both with respects to student body numbers and law faculty numbers.

1)  Diversity in the curriculum.  There are many ways to approach a body of law, and students benefit from diverse perspectives.  As a student, you wouldn’t want to learn all of your international law from one perspective, or all of your employment law or intellectual property either.  Yet, with law schools cutting back on faculty size, it’s entirely possible that a previously robust curriculum in an area of law not only starts to get whittled away, but also that there are fewer faculty to teach whatever remains.

2)  Diversity in the student body.  When I went to law school, my school had—at that time—a small student body (about 180 students/class).  I was one of a few LGBTQ folk in the school.  At that time, gay marriage wasn’t really discussed, and I can only imagine how difficult it can be these days to be ‘the only gay in the village’ when same-sex marriage comes up in constitutional law, and then family law, and then tax law, etc., etc.  Is one expected to speak up for the clan in every class?  Similar issues arise for students who belong to racial, religious, and other minorities, as well as students with visible disabilities.

3)  Faculty governance.  There are many signs that the law school crisis is creating governance problems in U.S. law schools.  The Charleston School of Law implosion is rich in this respect, but so is the rise of the Quasi-Permanent Interim Dean, or the number of dean searches which result in an internal dean candidate being ‘selected.’  With faculty sizes decreasing, one can only wonder whether existing fault lines in faculties will get exacerbated as law schools become ‘less institutional’ and ‘more personal.’  In short, when votes on law school policy routinely become tests of friendship (or clan loyalty), something in the governance experience has changed.

Comments

[Matthew Bruckner]

Derek, such a degree already exists: https://www.law.csuohio.edu/academics/mls

[Steven Freedman]

@ Deborah

Through 3+3 programs like the one we offer here at KU, many law schools already offer a similar opportunity for law students. Our expectation is that 3+3 will be an increasingly popular path for students seeking a legal education.

Personally (and not speaking on behalf of anyone here at KU), I'd prefer if the ABA lowered the number of required credits to 72-75 allowing law schools to fit JDs into a two year schedule. That would directly address the cost and time issues that seem to be discouraging so many folks from pursuing a JD.

[twbb]

Steven, would it really address the cost issue, though? At this point tuition has been driven up so high so quickly that even 2 years would still leave a lot of students with enormous debt. Plus I suspect a lot of schools would either pump up tuition more, or slash their admissions standards even more to pull in more tuition revenue to offset the loss of an entire class. Both would push people (rightfully, I think) into avoiding law school.