The Virtues of Legal Academia

I want to sincerely thank the entire Faculty Lounge crew for letting me hang out here for the month, but it's time for me to sign off. I have weddings to attend, courses to prepare, and doctoral work to attend to, and maintaining a posting schedule on two blogs (I have my own blog, The Debate Link, where you can find me year round) is more of a fun decision than a wise decision. That said, it's always worthwhile to step outside my own little corner to interact with new people and make new friends, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so here.

I'll be teaching undergraduates for the first time in the Fall, and I've taken to reflecting on what makes law and law students distinct from those in other academic disciplines. In the media there are plenty of horror stories about Students These Days, none of which I've had any experience with while teaching law school classes. In part, that's because I think more than a bit of the hysterics over Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings and what have you are nothing more than today's moral panic. And of course law students are older, more mature, and self-select to a particular type that may be less keen on the sort of performative activism associated with certain undergraduates.

But I do think there is something to be said for the particular deliberative virtues that are inculcated in law schools. Whatever can be said about the legal job market or the challenges of being a lawyer (and there is much to be said about these things), purely as an academic discipline I think law very much can be proud of our niche in the scholarly community. Things as basic as the importance of letting all sides say their piece, of taking opposing arguments seriously, of grappling with dissenting opinions, and of keeping an open and impartial mind, are fundamental in our discipline. Developing these skills is part and parcel of what it means to be a member of the legal community. It's not that we're perfect or close to it, but I've yet to met a law professor of any persuasion who does not truly and honestly value these virtues. This is something we can be proud of. And if we are concerned that the rest of academia does not always embrace these values, then I think it is incumbent upon ourselves to export them.

It is perhaps because of the prevalence of these virtues that I've always found the legal academic community to be by and large a great place to "grow up" as a scholar. I don't think it is any accident that it was legal academia that came up with an idea like JOTWELL, for instance. In my experience, the blawgosphere has served both as an incubator of good scholarly ideas and as a community that can help bring scholars of a variety of interests, backgrounds, and career-statuses together. In a world where people usually don't have to listen and so frequently will elect not to listen, the diversity and vibrancy of this community is something we should not take for granted, but can also be very proud to have sustained for so long.

Thanks again.

Comments

[Barry]

David: "Things as basic as the importance of letting all sides say their piece, of taking opposing arguments seriously, of grappling with dissenting opinions, and of keeping an open and impartial mind, are fundamental in our discipline. "

David, in what academic discipline are those *not* fundamental?

[Barry]

"In a world where people usually don't have to listen and so frequently will elect not to listen, ..."

The people saying that everything is just fine in law schools are guilty of just that, and are certainly more dominant in the profession than those who have seen the simple facts.

[Anon Anon Anon]

"It's not that we're perfect or close to it, but I've yet to met a law professor of any persuasion who does not truly and honestly value these virtues."

To be fair, though, according to your resume you're a graduate student who isn't yet on the tenure track. ;)

[SPOC]

"Things as basic as the importance of letting all sides say their piece, of taking opposing arguments seriously, of grappling with dissenting opinions, and of keeping an open and impartial mind, are fundamental in our discipline. . . . I've yet to met a law professor of any persuasion who does not truly and honestly value these virtues.”

Give it time. As a tenured law professor, I’ve met a number of people who don’t value these virtues because they believe that classical liberal notions of responsible truth-seeking are passé at best and a subterfuge for hierarchical ideology at worst. And these people are neither new nor extremely few in number; so, like I wrote, give it time and keep your eyes open.

[anon]

Barry, there is still room for improvement but law schools have implemented substantial reforms over the past 4-5 years.

[twbb]

anon, serious question: what reforms are those? The law school crisis is driven by unreasonably high tuition and extremely limited job prospects. Schools have not really done much about the first, and they really can't do much about the second. While there has been more of a push towards clinical education, I don't think any rational observer could think that mitigates the tuition/jobs problem -- it's simply an attempt to solve an unrelated problem.

As for legal academia, I have mixed views. There are certainly some first-rate scholars in legal academia; but there are also a lot of marginal ones, probably more than in other academic fields. There does seem to be a (negative) synergy created by the JD, which is granted almost exclusively on completing law school credits through lectures and graded exams rather than developing scholarship, and a lack of peer review in law journals. Early-career law professors especially are therefore publishing articles without really developing scholarly research and writing skills, and then having their work judged by law students who are even less qualified than they are.

[Orin Kerr]

Twbb, when you say law schools haven't done much about unreasonably high tuition, are you factoring in the tuition discounts that schools are offering as "scholarships"? At Washington University in St Louis, for example, 82% of students are receiving a tuition discount, and the median tuition discount is $30K, as per their 2015 ABA 509 disclosure form. I can't find Wash U's 509 from several years ago, but my guess is that this amount of discounting is new. My sense is that this trend is resulting in substantial decreases in actual paid tuition among students.

[terry malloy]

@ Orin Kerr: Someone pays sticker. That person is getting cheated.

But. . . but highly qualified students don't pay sticker.

Yeah, everyone knows that.

The lower qualified kids, the ones with the lower likelihood of having a meaningful legal career, are paying sticker. That's what is morally repugnant about how low-ranked law schools keep the lights on and the administrative salaries paid.

[twbb]

Good point, Orin, though we'd need data on the subidies vs tuition increases over the years to determine whether it's reached the level of "substantial reform." Of course, the main problem with the tuition discounts is that it inevitably results in students more at risk for not finding jobs subsidizing those at less risk. While I guess that counts as a "reform," generally reforms shouldn't make the problem worse...

[Orin Kerr]

twbb, I think we would need the data on employment outcomes versus scholarships to know if that subsidy is happening. If schools are offering scholarships based on LSATs, and the differences boil down to a few LSAT questions, it may be that the schools are awarding scholarships based on random variations in LSAT scores rather than based on who is at risk.

Terry, are you only criticizing the low-ranked schools, or are you criticizing all schools? From what I understand, the difference between the 80% that get major discounts and the 20% that don't at a school like Wash U is probably more a matter of a few LSAT questions than differentiating between those who are "highly qualified" to be lawyers and those who aren't. And if the 20% who don't get the discount at Wash U could go to a different school and be among the high percentage there that do, but choose to be in the 20% at the higher ranked school, I'm not sure I see that as "morally repugnant." But then I'm not sure if you mean to be criticizing the Wash U-type schools.

[terry malloy]

@ Orin Kerr: "the 20% who don't get the discount at Wash U could go to a different school and be among the high percentage there that do, but choose to be in the 20% at the higher ranked school, I'm not sure I see that as 'morally repugnant.'"

I like how the agency of the 20% who pay sticker price absolves you of any moral analysis of what your school is charging them.

GW is less morally repugnant, and more rank opportunism. 9.7% of your 2015 class (465*.097= 45) was unemployed 10 months after graduation. How many of those 45 do you think paid the sticker price of (47,353 + 49,840 + 52,033) 149,226$? Do you think they paid a fair price for an education?

Below, say, Cardozo/Brooklyn is where things get really immoral. Those folks should feel ashamed. What the administrators at such schools are doing to young people in the form of crippling debt makes me wish for a just and vengeful god.

[Orin Kerr]

Terry, you misunderstand my comment. I don't think agency absolves anyone of moral analysis. I'm just trying to understand where you draw the line on moral repugnance.

[terry malloy]

rough guide:

USN
1-14 Legal Academy
14-25 Still mostly academy, but costs way too much.
25-50 Used Car Salesman | top end is a Aston martin dealership; bottom end is joe's used cars (no credit, no problem! we finance!)
50-100 Grifters - they know that they're taking money from rubes, but square it with some kind of free-market / opportunity! rationalization.
100+ Madoff-style Criminals. Deserve the wrath of a vengeful god.

[Derek Tokaz]

Orin,

The 2011 509 report for WUSTL shows 69% of the class getting a scholarship, with a median amount of $20,000. However, from 2011 to 2015, tuition has also increased by about $5,600, eating away more than half the increase in median scholarships.

Doing some admittedly not very precise and woefully under-caffeinated back of the envelop math here, about 13% of the class is paying $4,400 less, while 17% of the class is paying $5,600 more.

[Orin Kerr]

Thanks, Derek. Looking at the 2012 509 for Wash U, when they started to include the 25th and 75th percentile grants (I don't see them for the 2011 report), it looks like the 25th percentile, 50th percentile, and 75th percentile grants in 2012 were $11K/$20K/$30K, with 71% getting something and a sticker tuition of $47.5k in 2012 dollars, while for 2015 the amounts at those percentiles are $17K/$30K/$48K, with 82% getting something and a sticker tuition of $51K in 2015 dollars.

[justme]

Why offer discounted tuition at all? Why not just charge what it costs? Why does academia need to engage in pricing tactics? Is it perhaps that they have gone all in for the corporate model of education?