Article. Paul Caron has been looking at the economics of law school and thinking about how to reform legal edcuation. Here he focuses on the cost of legal education. Abstract:
Several
years ago, I co-wrote an article on applying the principles from
Michael Lewis’s Moneyball book to legal education. What Law Schools Can
Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483
(2004). The article asked what Billy Beane would do as the dean of a law
school to capitalize on the inefficiencies in legal education.
Perhaps
a better model for the crisis facing legal education today is Jimmy
McMillan, who ran for New York Governor in 2010 with the slogan “the
rent is too damn high.” Law school tuition is simply too damn high.
Administrators and faculty need to ruthlessly examine law school budgets
and cut areas that are not essential to the school’s mission. Law
school is twice as expensive as it was twenty years ago (in
inflation-adjusted dollars), yet no one would argue that legal education
is twice as good today.
Law schools need to take immediate
action to confront today’s crisis. The current model – convincing 45,000
people each year to assume six-figure debt loads to chase 20,000 legal
jobs (most of which do not pay enough to service the debt) – is simply
unsustainable. Market and political forces are gathering steam. Law
schools that embrace change will emerge stronger from the current storm.