Law Schools

What Law Schools Need To Do

Let's turn to the all-powerful Google to find out how law schools can fix themselves.

By  
on

Dear Law Schools,

I’m thinking about starting my own law school.  I’m tired of working for others.  The question is whether I can get enough advice from people to be a good Dean.  I know! I’ll turn to Google for some advice.  Let me just type in “law schools need to.”

Here we go.  Pages of results.  This has to help me:

  1. Law schools need to start using the GRE. It is a tried and true test for every graduate program in the country, except you wacky law schools.  Why not adopt it? It will allow you to compete for high-scoring GREers who you might woo from other graduate programs.
  2. Law schools need to keep using the LSAT. You aren’t Harvard.  What are you thinking attempting to employ a different method of admissions?  Do you want your U.S. News rankings to drop?
  3. Law schools need to teach students business skills. It isn’t enough for you to teach basic law classes.  Modern students need to be savvy in the world of business. They need to be able to read financial statements and follow basic accounting and economic principles.
  4. Law schools need to stop teaching those interdisciplinary courses! What, are you crazy?  Students need to be able to pass the bar.  THE BAR.  That requires singular focus on the bar exam and passing the bar exam.
  5. Law schools need to lower costs to their students. The biggest costs of law school are of course the tenured faculty.  They are so needy, with their salaries, potential travel budgets, and all of that.  If we stop hiring tenured or tenure-track faculty, the costs of education will fall.  So says the ABA.
  6. Law schools need to hire prestigious faculty members. If you don’t hire prestigious law faculty, we’ll plummet in the rankings, which will make it impossible to get quality students.  Do you not see the spiral of doom?
  7. Law schools need to take a closer look at the caliber of their students.
  8. Law schools need to be on the forefront to assure everyone has access to justice.
  9. Law schools need to think about the prospects of employment for their students, particularly at large firms.
  10. Law schools need to recognize that if the large law firm merger wave continues, law students will mostly be employed somewhere else.
  11. Law students need to learn how to write better.  Law schools should spend more time teaching students how to write.
  12. Law students need to be able to answer bar exam questions so they can pass the bar, especially the multiple choice ones.
  13. Law schools need better means of assessment and assuring learning outcomes, per the ABA.
  14. Law schools need to work harder to assure students spend time learning the nuts and bolts of the law, the courts, and the inner workings of the justice system.
  15. Law schools need to be better about teaching students via experiential learning.
  16. Law schools need to stop wasting time on hobby clinics and trying to place students where they can’t afford to work.
  17. Law schools need to get students to study better. Ban laptops in classrooms.
  18. Law schools need to get student to learn through social learning and media.
  19. Law schools need to get their students ready to take and pass the bar.
  20. Law school education should only be two years long.
  21. Law schools need to ensure the health of future lawyers.
  22. Law schools need to stop coddling students who are about to embark on a difficult career full of hard-knocks.
  23. Law schools should teach students about justice, whatever that means.
  24. Law schools should teach students the rule of law and not be biased in that liberal way that all you law professors are biased at every law school except GMU.
  25. Law schools should maximize the scholarly impact of their faculty, whatever that means.
  26. Law schools should focus on teaching students how to be lawyers, whatever that means.

You’ve probably noted there is some tension between 1 and 2, 3 and 4, etc.  It demonstrates that there are many opinions about the direction that law schools should go.  And perhaps it means that, absent regulatory requirements by our friends at the ABA, some competition could appear in a market that wasn’t based entirely on flawed U.S. News rankings.

But, after reflection, there is nothing in there that makes me want to be Dean of a law school, ever.

  1. Law schools need to figure out all of this conflicting advice.

Sponsored

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here.  He is way funnier on social media, he claims.  Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

Sponsored

Topics

, , ,