Would Adjunct Faculty Fix the High-Cost Problems of Law Schools?
Corporate Counsel
November 23, 2011
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Cornelius Hurley
The high cost of attending law school amidst a belt-tightening economy raises many questions about the value of a tuition dollar—among them, what does one actually learn for $150,000? A recent story in The New York Times takes up the matter of how practical lawyering is—and, more pointedly, isn't—taught by full-time academics, and how those costs weigh on students, firms, and in-house legal departments.
David Segal, who writes often on the economics of law school for the Times, reports that:
The essential how-tos of daily practice are a subject that many in the faculty know nothing about—by design. One 2010 study of hiring at top-tier law schools since 2000 found that the median amount of practical experience was one year, and that nearly half of faculty members had never practiced law for a single day. If medical schools took the same approach, they'd be filled with professors who had never set foot in a hospital.
Students wind up footing the bill for tenure-track faculty to focus on their own academic pursuits rather than their pupils' professional development, Segal reports. Then, as firms bring on (debt-saddled) new hires and train them on practical matters, they pass those costs onto corporate clients in the form of billable rates—not the most popular model among in-house legal departments:
So, for decades, clients have essentially underwritten the training of new lawyers, paying as much as $300 an hour for the time of associates learning on the job. But the downturn in the economy, and long-running efforts to rethink legal fees, have prompted more and more of those clients to send a simple message to law firms: Teach new hires on your own dime.
"The fundamental issue is that law schools are producing people who are not capable of being counselors," says Jeffrey W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, a Houston company that makes oil drilling equipment. "They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren't ready to be a provider of services."
What's on a client's wish list for associate skills? How to draft contracts, how to respond to regulatory inquiries, how to gather facts and settle a case in litigation, and how to perform due diligence, according to the Times.
Boston University law professor Cornelius Hurley has one idea for addressing this: employ more adjuncts, who cost less and brings loads of practical experience to the classroom, he tells CorpCounsel.
Full-time faculty are more expensive to maintain, whereas adjunct faculty at Boston University, for example, make a few thousand dollars to teach a course, says Hurley, director of the school's Center for Finance, Law, and Policy.
Students would also have more access to teachers who spend their days in courtrooms, advising corporate clients, and handling criminal matters. "Adjunct faculty, by definition, are experienced practitioners," Hurley says. "They're in the mix."
The hurdle, however, is the American Bar Association's law school accreditation standards [PDF], which specify allowable ratios of students to full-time faculty. "They affect the degree to which law schools can rely on adjuncts," Hurley says. "It basically requires law schools to rely on full-time faculty." (A ratio of 20:1 indicates that a school is in compliance with ABA standards. A ratio of 30:1 indicates that a school is not).
Unlike J.D. programs, the Master of Laws (LL.M.) program Hurley leads faces no such constraints on adjunct hiring. He says that has benefited both students, who got "some real, practical, day-to-day experience," and adjuncts.
"So many practicing lawyers are dealing with drudgery day to day," says Hurley. The opportunity to "perform in front of 30 eager students" is transformative, he says.
"I'm not being critical of my full-time colleagues," says Hurley. "What I'm calling into question is the business model."
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