Death of "Big Law School'?

From the Conglomerate

Death of "Big Law School'? Posted by Erik Gerding

Larry Ribstein has been writing and blogging up a storm about the "Death of Big Law." Larry makes a convincing case that the current economic crisis is not just a blip for law firms with everything returning to normal soon. Assuming that large law frims cannot deal with the structural problems Larry outlines and that the decline of big law is long term, what would that mean for legal education?

It would likely mean the end of the law school boom - with its expanding law faculties and the bumper crop of new law schools. Like it or not, the business model (I hate applying that term to legal education, but can't think of another one) of many law schools is heavily dependent on students getting high paying law firm jobs to pay off high law school tuition. Law firms are also prime benefactors of law school endowments. Without corporate law consuming law school graduates by the dozens, law school will face massive economic pressure.

On the one hand, these pressures will push law schools to improve the training of law graduates so that they are ready on "day one." Helping students in a tougher economic market supports the Carnegie/ABA best practices reforms that have been discussed so much.

But the changing economics of legal education will also cut the other way. The Best Practices model is expensive, and with tighter budgets law schools will also face pressures to move in the direction of the traditional "stack-em and pack-em" model of large classes. (Creative law professors may find ways to balance these pressures - for example many trial advocacy classes involve both a law professor and a roster of practitioner adjucts. Therese Maynard and Dana Warren have adapted this model to teaching transactional law to classes of 60+ at Loyola-LA.)

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Comments

[Ken Gallant]

The statistics suggest that the "business model" of most law schools (especially private start ups) is not dependent on "big law" jobs to pay off loans. Once you get out of the so-called "top thirty" or so law schools, only a small percentage of students ever got "big law" jobs.
The only start-ups that might be attempting to get in on that economy are the very few well-funded state law school start ups that are connected with a major research university (e.g., the new one in the U.Cal. system that is giving free tuition to its first class) that want to immediately jump into the "top tier".

So, I guess my view is this article is a bit wrong-headed. The real issue for new law schools is the market for small law firm lawyers, state prosecutors and state and local agencies, local public defenders and legal aid, etc.--i.e., the classic "non-big law" jobs.

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