Earlier this week, at the PLI Law Firm Leadership and Management Institute — which was excellent, by the way (and not just because we presented there) — Dean David Van Zandt, of Northwestern University School of Law, offered some reflections on the future of legal education. (We used one of his comments as a recent quote of the day.)
Dean Van Zandt’s presentation was thoughtful and thought-provoking. He analyzed a number of recent reforms made by leading law schools. He also explained the changes that Northwestern Law School has made to its academic program.
One of his most interesting tidbits was the starting salary that would constitute a “break-even point” for going to law school. In other words, what salary would you have to earn upon graduation in order to make going to law school an economically rational decision?
Van Zandt and some of his Northwestern colleagues did a study to determine the added value of a J.D. degree. They concluded that the break-even starting salary for a law school graduate is $65,000. Put another way, going to a law school with a median salary upon graduation that’s below $65,000 is not a wise investment.
Schools with median starting salaries under $65,000, which generally land somewhere in the 70s in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, are not good values. They need to either lower their cost to students and/or improve job opportunities for their graduates, according to Van Zandt.
(A break-even point of $65K seems low to us, given high law school tuition, the borrowing costs associated with student loans, and the opportunity cost of going to law school when you could be earning a salary in some other industry. We’ve reached out to Dean Van Zandt to ask for more detail about the data he utilized and the assumptions he made in reaching his conclusion. Another academic, Herwig Schlunk of Vanderbilt Law, believes that the break-even point is much higher.)
Van Zandt described the law school business model as follows (which reflects his quote of the day, noting how the fortunes of law schools and law firms are inextricably linked):
Clients—fees—->Law Firms—salaries—->Law School Graduates—–tuition—->Law Schools
This is the historical model, but it’s under stress. The legal economy is changing. For example, a 33% decline in summer associate offers is projected for 2010. Clients are balking at paying for junior associates, which raises a question: If clients will no longer pay for the training of junior associates, who will?
One possibility raised by Van Zandt: partners. In many businesses, owners pay for the training of their employees.
Another possibility: law schools can improve their training of future lawyers. But this is easier said than done. It will require significant changes, and some law schools have been resistant. Van Zandt enumerated some impediments to change:
- Law schools tend to be inward-looking rather than outward-looking.
- Law school governance: they operate like clubs (rather than corporations).
- ABA regulation of law schools is overly focused on inputs rather than outputs.
Van Zandt then reviewed some recent changes made by law schools:
1. Harvard: changes in curriculum, announced in 2006.
For first years: Required courses in legislation, international law, and problem solving. For second and third years: more well-developed plans of study in specific specialty areas.
2. Stanford: changes in second and third year programs, announced in 2006.
Greater emphasis on interdisciplinary study, including joint degree programs.
3. Washington & Lee: greater practical training, announced in 2008.
Students required to complete at least one live client experience and to obtain a Virginia practice certificate. Year-long professionalism program with individual faculty members.
4. Dayton: two-year law degree, announced in 2005.
Elimination of third year; 2-year JD (5 semesters); additional mandatory classes added.
Van Zandt noted that these changes were largely generated internally by law schools, not based on feedback from practicing lawyers — in contrast to the changes made at Northwestern.
The Northwestern Plan – 2008
Northwestern Law developed a market-based plan for revamping the education it offers its students. The changes were developed based on (1) empirical studies of Northwestern alumni, (2) reviews of the development frameworks of U.S. and U.K. law firms, and (3) focus groups with lawyers from leading law firms, corporate general counsels, and government and nonprofit leaders.
Northwestern concluded that law schools should develop and inculcate in their students:
- general legal knowledge;
- communication skills, especially writing skills;
- contract drafting;
- business exposition (how to explain a legal recommendation to a client in a business-relevant way);
- strategic thinking;
- basic quantitative skills (accounting / finance / statistics); and
- an understanding of globalization / international exposure.
To achieve these goals, Northwestern implemented the following changes:
- starting a accelerated JD program (two years), for a select group of students;
- for the regular three-year J.D. program, making the third year more “experiential” and practical;
- changes to admissions: interviews (required), work experience (required for almost all students; three years of post-college work experience is ideal, according to Van Zandt); seeking applicants with global exposure / international experience; greater emphasis on references and essays (to evaluate project management and communication skills); and
- curricular changes: greater emphasis on teamwork in classes, as well as specific courses in business strategy, quantitative analysis, and problem solving.
Van Zandt took the opportunity to make a Northwestern pitch to the conference (which was smart, given that the place was crawling with Biglaw partners, including many managing partners — we met a half-dozen or so). As a result of the changes it has made, Northwestern’s “brand” as a law school is going to focus on superior training. An employer who hires a Northwestern Law graduate will know that he or she is ready to hit the ground running.
Of course, training is not the exclusive province of law schools. Van Zandt stated that law firms are still superior to law schools in certain areas of attorney development, such as cultivating the most practical / technical skills or acquiring specialized, substantive legal knowledge (in a way that can be applied to solving the problems of clients).
Van Zandt concluded by advising law firm leaders to do the following:
- identify the traits you seek in new lawyers;
- adopt recruiting processes that focus on and sort for these traits; and
- train your attorneys in the competencies you seek.
And hire Northwestern Law graduates, early and often. Go Wildcats!
Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be…Lawyers [SSRN]
ATL could we please limit our coverage of non-Peer schools to 2 or 3 posts per day? It gets boring to read about these shithole places when you are
HYS SECURE
first
First, Corsair!
First, Corsair!
I suppose I should know the answer to this, but is Northwestern University Law School fully accredited by the American Bestiality Association and a member in good standing of the Association of American Chicken Fuckers?
First, Corsair!
As long as rankings are based on exclusivity and not quality of education, none of this will matter.
How are kids supposed to know what the “break even” salary is when the law schools are so underhanded in how they report career statistics? Time for a perp walk.
I suppose that I should know the answer, but is the Northwestern University School of Law fully accredited by the American Bar Association and a member in good standing of the Association of American Law Schools?
These changes are not fundamental at all. Real fundamental change will come when the profession realizes it produces nothing, charges too much, has been held to high esteem for too long and rates are lowered to appropriate levels. Then, everyone takes a money hit. These proposals still operate under the assumption that a lawyer with 0.00 years of lawyer experience is worth more than 100k. The lawyer is not. I say this as a Chinese-American who understands both Chinese and US business cultures. There are no exceptions, folks. Outsourcing will solve most of these problems anyways. We are approaching a new normal. There are no exceptions, folks.
So my government job that pays around $40k won’t help me break even on my law school loans that total over $100k? FML.
Ahh yes Northwestern Law School. There was a time when I actually respected this school enough to staff my projects with its graduates. Then, in 1991, the firm was preparing for a trial and we were short staffed. I asked an associate, who was a Northwestern Law grad, if he could handle tabbing and bates stamping a volume of exhibits. The next day I came in and saw that the nimrod had used too much ink on the stamp and the numbers were deeply imprinted on several sheets so that the sequence was lost. That associate was let go within 5 months. Since then, I refused to work with or staff my projects with graduates from Northwestern law. Perhaps too many of them inhaled the noxious fumes emanating from Lake Shore Drive. In the final analysis, NW law is not a peer legal institute despite what some worthless publication, that is akin to SuperLawyers, says.
LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINSSSSSS
PE, that was actually a pretty funny fake anecdote.
~£®¥€™
PE, that was actually a pretty funny fake anecdote.
~£®¥€™
NU LAW is the da bomb. T6 territory in 10 yrs. HTH.
NU LAW is the da bomb. T6 territory in 10 yrs. HTH.
The 65k figure is so vague as to be useless given that it doesn’t specify government/public interest. We all know that 10 year loan forgiveness changes the loan debt picture DRAMATICALLY.
65k also doesn’t say anything about the rate of salary increase, which is crucial.
The other suggestions proposed by Van Zandt make a lot of sense… and are the types of things that TTTs do and the elite don’t. Funny how that works out.
So many bitter, angry people. I’m a proud and successful NU law school grad. It’s a great school and it is always trying to look forward in producing the best lawyers.
So many bitter, angry people. I’m a proud and successful NU law school grad. It’s a great school and it is always trying to look forward in producing the best lawyers.
The 65k figure is so vague as to be useless given that it doesn’t specify government/public interest. We all know that 10 year loan forgiveness changes the loan debt picture DRAMATICALLY.
65k also doesn’t say anything about the rate of salary increase, which is crucial.
The other suggestions proposed by Van Zandt make a lot of sense… and are the types of things that TTTs do and the elite don’t. Funny how that works out.
The biggest problem with law school is the fact that it is three years long. It should be a maximum two years long, and could be even shorter than that. You need to learn how to do legal research and writing, and you need the key foundational courses (contracts, torts, property,…) but after that law school is a waste. Law schools and law professors keep thinking that if they tweak the curriculum or make some changes here or there they’ll churn out better lawyers. But no amount of training from a law professor will compare to the experience people gain in the real world actually practicing law with other more experienced lawyers. I learned more in six months actually working at a firm practicing then I learned in three years of law school. The biggest problem with law professors is the fact that many have never practiced law for an extended period of time, and many didn’t like the actual practice of law. Yet we expect these individuals to train lawyers who can hit the ground running? Give me a break.
Cornell sucks.
“sort for these trains”
I hope Elie goes apeshit about this error on facebook.
“Another possibility: law schools can improve their training of future lawyers. But this is easier said than done. It will require significant changes, and some law schools have been resistant. Van Zandt enumerated some impediments to change”
I agree! Thanks for the post!
http://tastingsonoma.com/
HYS secure is a poor man’s version of PE. Give it up the lame schtick dood.
I rarely read blogs such as this, but my daughter sent me this post. It seems that NW Law School has in mind a very narrow definition of practicing law. Do they only turn out corporate lawyers? What about evidence, trial advocacy, etc. My law firm tries civil law suits. I need people who can take depositions, argue motions, etc. Business strategy, accounting, statistics, etc. is all but useless. (A working knowledge of medicine and anatomy, or of class action jurisprudence might be useful, however.) A very narrow view legal practice that would seem to make their graduates less marketable, not more marketable.
And to those who might reply that associates at a Plaintiff’s firm don’t make break even salaries, a third year associate at my firm — the youngest we have — makes $110k.
If you rely on your passion to become a lawyer then salary should never be a consideration in studying law.
27,
NU Law has one of the best trial advocacy programs out there, you ignorant slut.
27,
NU Law has a civil litigation concentration that offers everyone classes in evidence, trial ad, advanced trial ad, pretrial litigation, civil discovery, complex litigation, high tech exhibits. The list goes on.
I love how the Dean’s break-even calculation — swallowed whole by Lat — just *assumes* that all schools charge ~$40k/yr; as though there weren’t a large number of affordable and high-quality state schools in the top 70 schools.
the employment and salary data are bogus
The law school model is broken, pure and simple. There are too many lawyers, too many law schools, and the costs are too much. There needs to be a correction in the number of lawyers. The schools have too much infrastructure and aren’t going to drop their costs. That means that there will continue to be too many lawyers getting cranked out which will have a deflationary effect on the incomes of all lawyers. In the end, perhaps this is good for clients who won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for legal services. It’ll just suck for new lawyers like me who have a boatload of debt to payoff (and who were promised riches when we enrolled in law school less than four years ago).
10,
First, Is it right that you’ve based a sweeping statement about the future of the legal profession and the substitutability of American educated lawyers on your ethnic heritage and knowledge of “the business cultures” in both China and the US? Compelling stuff.
Second, just because you aren’t worth 100k as a first year associate doesn’t mean that nobody is — those salaries are an investment in human capital made by firms that expect to receive a return on investment in the long term. Any firm that “outsources” all of its work (and I can only believe you mean to India, because the English is China, while admirable, is more or less abysmal) will find its human and social capital running thin in short order.
Third, what sane American corporation would outsource its sensitive legal work to a third party in China when it is becoming more and more clear that the Chinese government is tacitly sanctioning hacking of & stealing from American corporations?
I guess the thrust of this comment is: I know you feel bad because you aren’t worth 100k to any employer, but that doesn’t mean you should run around making baseless & broad claims about the death of the legal profession at the hands of the outsourcing boogeyman — fucktard.
19,
Did awkward, almost articulate phrases like “trying to look forward in producing the best lawyers” pass for writing at NU? Maybe NU should be careful not to stray too far from the traditional curriculum; NU already has a business school, no?
19,
Did awkward, almost articulate phrases like “trying to look forward in producing the best lawyers” pass for writing at NU? Maybe NU should be careful not to stray too far from the traditional curriculum; NU already has a business school, no?
I am offended that his comments are so gay and are raping me
Stop raping my asshole with your words and tawdry images.
Wonder bread
I go to what people on here would refer to as a TTT law school. I’m a 2L. I chose this school because they offered me a full tuition scholarship. I’m ranked in the top 5 of my class, I have a job as a summer associate this summer, and I am getting a high quality legal education for far less than most (my only debt will be loans needed for living expenses). A great deal of those changes that Northwestern and schools like Harvard and Stanford are instituting have been instituted at my law school for years (emphasis on legal writing–U.S. News ranked #1 or #2 legal writing program in the country, for the last 5 years at least, emphasis on practical skills, and required courses in professionalism and counseling). People should stop looking down on law schools that are not in the very top of the U.S. News rankings. So far, my choice to reject top ranked law schools in favor of less debt from a lower ranked law school is certainly paying off so far. People who want to go to law school should seriously think about that route.
I would just like to point out that the “65K” break even point has to assume some kind of average job that law students would have gotten had they not attended law school. As the quality of students increases as you get into better schools that break even has to increase, as students in higher ranked schools would have had better alternatives to law school. In other words, someone who goes to Northwestern presumably did well in undergrad and could have gotten a decent job absent going to law school and the “65K” break even is meaningless.
This guy is a clown
What does “HYS SECURE” mean?
Haven’t Yet Scored?
Half Your Salary?
Haven’t gotten into Yale so i Suck?
16/17 is right. NU is “the da bomb.”
It won’t be long before NU invents its own rankings again and, this time, puts itself in the top 6. After all, that’s how Cooley did it.
22 = pwn3r of n00bz.
His/her comment is the only comment that makes any fucking sense.
The HYS in “HYS Secure” means Hofstra, Yeshiva, St. Thomas. It referes to the tier of law school he attended.
Query: Someone should do a study by law school of the number of course hours taught by unpaid adjuncts relative to course hours taught by paid faculty to show how the school benefits from the effectively higher hourly rate charged the student.
Query: Someone should do a study by law school of the number of course hours taught by unpaid adjuncts relative to course hours taught by paid faculty to show how the school benefits from the effectively higher hourly rate charged the student.
Query: Someone should do a study by law school of the number of course hours taught by unpaid adjuncts relative to course hours taught by paid faculty to show how the school benefits from the effectively higher hourly rate charged the student.
37 – FTW
38 – FAIL
“I learned more in six months actually working at a firm practicing then I learned in three years of law school. ”
22 = Elie
I’m awaiting a comment from David St. Hubbins before this posting qualifies as legit.
$65k is far too low. But Schlunk’s study is also questionable–he uses discount rates that go as high as 28% to find that the “break even point” is >= 160k. That’s probably an appropriate discount rate for people dying of cancer and four year olds (I WANT IT NOW!) but it’s far too high for most prospective law students. Even his lowest discount rate of 12%, which far exceeds the interest paid on student loans, seems a bit high.
Boost your career
Taking courses online is also a great way to be able to do the class work on your own time rather than have time obligations and requirements for each course. It is now possible to have a fully booked life and go to school with ease. Also, you will want to consider all the money in gas you would be saving by not having to commute to school on a daily basis………….
special courses
Opportunity to Learn
Just as I can point to lack on joy and motivation, I can point to adult learners that preferred to be guided. I can also point to situations where the instruction did not meet the initial needs articulated by the learners because the instruction itself changed the learner's and their stated needs………….
legal education