R. Michael Cassidy (Boston College), Strategic Austerity: How Some Law School Affordability Initiatives Could Actually Improve Learning Outcomes, 16 Chapman L. Rev. ___ (2013) (Symposium on The Future of Law, Business, and Legal Education: How to Prepare Students to Meet Corporate Needs):
Legal educators are now engaged in some very difficult and painful conversations about
the financial model of legal education. Schools that take an ostrich-like approach to this
challenge risk becoming obsolete or irrelevant. What follows are seven proposed changes to the
structure of legal education that could simultaneously reduce overall costs to law students, and
improve the quality of their education. Quality is not always synonymous with price. With
vision and lots of hard work, it may be possible to do more with less.
- Varying the Three Year Model
- Allow for Paid Externships
- Vary Teaching Loads
- Short Term Contracts: Creating a “Third Track” for Full-Time Faculty
- Maximize Course Enrollments
- Expand Seats in Clinical Programs through Use of Teaching Fellowships
- Cut Back on Law Reviews
We are now facing a perfect storm of over capacity of seats, shrinking demand for legal
services in several sectors of the legal profession, and a flawed economic model of the
professoriate. Some have likened this crisis to the automotive industry in Detroit in the 1970s
and to the steel industry in Pittsburgh in the 1980s. We ignore these challenges at our peril,
and risk walking backwards over a precipice while pointing blindly to the responsibility of others
in the system. The law schools that are able to react nimbly and decisively to these changing
demographics might state the most convincing case for attracting the precious tuition dollars of
aspiring lawyers.
