Chronicle of Higher Education:  Law Deans Confront a 'New Normal' as Schools Adjust to Job-Market Changes:

With applications to law schools in free fall and many of their
graduates struggling to find jobs to pay off staggering debts, about
3,000 legal educators gathered here over the weekend to discuss what a
panel of law deans referred to as "the new normal." It's a world where unemployed graduates take to the courts to sue
their schools and where structural changes in the job market are forcing
schools to revamp their curricula and slash spending.

Participants at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law
Schools described the hard choices they're making and the tough
messages they're delivering as they seek to reinvent their schools.

"Whether or not it's true, there's a perception of absolute crisis
and chaos in legal education," said Frank H. Wu, dean of the University
of California's Hastings College of the Law. He described how the
freestanding Hastings school had shrunk its class size this year, from 425 to 320; increased the teaching load of faculty members; and cut staff positions.

"I've been so candid with my faculty that I worry about faculty morale,
but without that understanding, they're still going to come in with
unrealistic demands," he said. "The question is, Is this a blip or is it
permanent? I happen to believe we're dealing with a profound,
permanent, structural change" in the legal job market, and by extension,
in legal education, he said.