• American Lawyer, The Future of Law as Seen From Silicon Valley
• Chicago Tribune, Northwestern Law to Cut Class Sizes, Hold Tuition in Check:
• Chronicle of Higher Education, Pop Goes the Law
• The Legal Whiteboard, Thoughts on the Future of Law from ReInvent Law – Silicon Valley
• Time, Just How Bad Off Are Law School Graduates?
• Wall Street Journal, Some Grads Face Longer Odds:
  Law Schools Lacking ABA Accreditation Put Students Under a Tough Job Hurdle
• Washington Examiner, GW Law School Pays for Temp Jobs for Unemployed Grads

American Lawyer, The Future of Law as Seen From Silicon Valley:

What does the future of law practice look like?

It will be
user-friendly and accessible via bright and fresh retail shops with the
ambiance of Apple stores. It will be data-driven, with litigators
turning to enormous databases capable of predicting results and guiding
strategy. It will have the charm of an assembly line that parcels work
out across time zones and specialties in structured processes certain to
warm the hearts of project managers. And it will be beautiful. Imagine
strings of case citations rendered as computer-generated graphics as
appealing to the eye as they are to the analytical mind.

These were among the compelling visions that emerged last week from a remarkable conference in Silicon Valley. Called ReinventLaw,
the daylong meeting featured 40 speakers who described a series of
digital, regulatory, and engineering changes that are redefining law as
lawyers and their clients now know it.

Chicago Tribune, Northwestern Law to Cut Class Sizes, Hold Tuition in Check:

Northwestern University's law school said Monday it will reduce class
sizes, keep tuition increases at record lows and broaden financial aid
to account for a decline in applications and help students leave the
program with less debt. 

Starting with the class entering in the
fall, class sizes will be reduced by 10 percent by admitting 20 to 25
fewer students.  That will help reduce a rising number of law school
graduates at a time of waning demand for young attorneys.

Tuition will be raised by 3
percent for the 2013-14 school year, matching last year's bump, the law
school's smallest in more than 40 years.

Northwestern Law also
said it will increase the total funds available for financial aid to new
students and loan repayment assistance programs for graduating students
by at least 25 percent over the next two years.

Chronicle of Higher Education, Pop Goes the Law:

That loud pop you're hearing is the bursting of the law bubble—firms,
schools, and disillusioned lawyers paying for decades of greed and
grandiosity. The bubble grew from a combination of U.S. News-driven
ranking mania, law schools' insatiable hunger for growth, and huge law
firms' obsession with profit above all else. Like the dot-com,
real-estate, and financial bubbles that preceded it, the law bubble is
bursting painfully. But now is the time to consider the causes, take
steps to soften the impact, and figure out how to keep it from happening
again.

The popular explanation for the recent application plummet is that
information about the profession's darker side, including the
recession's exacerbation of the attorney glut, has finally started
reaching prospective law students. Let's hope so. Marginal candidates
and those choosing law school by default might be opting out, and the
law-school market may finally be heading toward self-correction.

Still, the bubble has been huge, and the correction will need to be,
too. There were 68,000 applicants to the fall of 2012 entering class,
while the total number of new, full-time jobs requiring a law degree is
25,000 a year and falling. …

The lawyer bubble began to
form when vital institutions—law schools and the American Bar
Association—abdicated their responsibilities in favor of misguided
metrics and insularity. Law-school deans are supposed to be the
profession's gatekeepers, but far too many have ceded independent
judgment in an effort to satisfy the mindless criteria underlying
law-school rankings, especially U.S. News & World Report's annual list.

Those rankings didn't exist until 1987; now they rule the law-school
world for both students and administrators. Flawed methodology infects
each category—quality assessment, selectivity, placement, and resources.
But with the acquiescence of the ABA, deans inflate their schools'
rankings with incomplete and misleading information and encourage
prospective students to pursue dreams that, for most of them, are
impossible, all in the name of increasing applications, enrollments, and
tuition revenues. …

From law schools to the pinnacle of the profession, greed has taken
key legal institutions to an unfortunate place. As leaders of the bar,
especially law-school deans and many managing partners of the nation's
biggest law firms, focus on the near future, disastrous long-term
consequences have become apparent.

Market forces might help correct the situation. But it was human
decisions, not market forces, that created this mess and that will be
required to clean it up.

The Legal Whiteboard, Thoughts on the Future of Law from ReInvent Law – Silicon Valley:

I had the privilege of attending ReInvent Law—Silicon Valley –
on Friday, March 8.  Special kudos go to Professors Renee Knake and
Daniel Martin Katz from the Michigan State University College of Law and
to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for sponsoring the event and
bringing together a significant number of thought leaders who are
engaged in thinking about how to use technology to improve the access to
and the provision of legal services in the United States and globally.

There were too many presentations to try to summarize everything that
was shared during the day. Nonetheless, there were a few themes that
showed up throughout the course of the day that merit attention as we
think about where the market for legal services might be headed.

First, several people made presentations focused on the increasing
importance of data analytics, knowledge management and process
management.  …

Second, several people emphasized the need for broader access to
legal services at affordable prices and discussed the use of process
management and alternative structures to better meet the need for legal
services for middle class people and small business owners.  …

Third, related to the access question, there was significant
discussion of the constraints of Rule 5.4 and the revolution taking
place in the United Kingdom following the authorization of Alternative
Business Structures for providing legal services.  …

In addition, our own Bill Henderson made a presentation on the
training model that might be necessary to better prepare lawyers to be
effective in the new normal, with greater emphasis on data analytics,
knowledge management and process management in addition to traditional
legal knowledge and relationship skills.

One of the most thought provoking presentations for me was the presentation by Colin Rule of Modria
regarding the growth of Online Dispute Revolution.  …

There was much to think about regarding a legal services market that
is facing the reality of disruptive innovation.  What the conference
highlighted for me is that change is happening and that there are a
number of very bright, very thoughtful people who are trying to invent
the future by taking advantage of data and technology to find better,
more efficient, more affordable ways to provide legal services to a
broader array of clients.  Not all of the innovators in attendance at
the conference are going to have an economically viable model, but some
of them will, and that will mean some of them will be winners, and some
of those who continue to do things the traditional way are going to be
losers.

Time, Just How Bad Off Are Law School Graduates?:

Prospective law students are already responding to the dismal job
market. Applications to law school are expected to hit a 30-year low
this year — down as much as 38% from 2010. Some law schools have
responded by shrinking their class sizes, and there have been
predictions that in the not-too-distant future some lower-ranked law
schools might have to close entirely. Perhaps the job market will
recover and lawyers will make up the ground they lost, but if the slide
continues the result will be a significantly scaled-down profession.
Because the one law even lawyers cannot get around is supply and demand.

Wall Street Journal, Some Grads Face Longer Odds:
Law Schools Lacking ABA Accreditation Put Students Under a Tough Job Hurdle:

As law students get ready to graduate into one of the toughest job markets in decades, some are facing especially long odds.

The 90 students expected to graduate this spring from the inaugural
class of Lincoln Memorial University's Duncan School of Law in
Knoxville, Tenn., may not be able to take some jobs even if they can
find them, because the school still hasn't been accredited by the
American Bar Association.

The students are among the hundreds of graduates-to-be at dozens of
U.S. law schools that are operating without the ABA's seal of approval.

In Duncan's case, that means students are paying $80,000 to $100,000
apiece to earn a degree that so far isn't worth anything outside of
Tennessee. Some students feel they were misled by administrators, who
they say framed accreditation as a mere formality.

This week, Duncan faces a crucial test
when a team from the ABA will arrive on campus to assess the school in a
new attempt to win accreditation after being turned down two years ago. … The ABA rejected Duncan's first bid for accreditation in 2011. It
cited a drop in Law School Admission Test scores and undergraduate
grade-point averages for students who enrolled after the 2009 inaugural
class, as well as falling enrollment and lax readmission policies for
students who had been academically dismissed. Enrollment plummeted. The class that enrolled in 2012 consists of roughly a dozen students. …

Without ABA accreditation, Duncan graduates are largely confined to
practicing law in Tennessee, whose state board of legal examiners has
accredited the school, at least through 2017.

Washington Examiner, GW Law School Pays for Temp Jobs for Unemployed Grads:

The George Washington University Law School
has started paying graduates to work in temporary jobs as more of them
can't find work, but the program is coming under fire as a way to
inflate the school's national ranking.

Created two years ago as the number of
unemployed graduates rose, the school's Pathways to Practice Fellowship
Program gives graduates $15 an hour to work 35 hours a week for
up to 48 weeks — $25,200 total — or until a graduate secures full-time
employment. Meanwhile, the law firms, nonprofits and government
agencies where they work don't pay a cent.

The program and others like it have been
criticized as a way to boost each school's national ranking, in which
the percentage of students who get jobs after graduation is a major
factor.