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Blog Post
Several months ago, my wife and I drove past a big hole in the ground, not far from where we live. “What’s the sign say?” I asked. “Don’t go off on a jag,” she said with a slight giggle, “It says ‘Future New Home of American University Law School.” “Why now?” I blurted out with some salty language that followed. The next morning I did a bit of research and learned that AU was by no means the only law school to sink huge dollars into a new facility. How could this be? Curious Timing The law school building boom...
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Blog Post
Last month I wrote an article, When the Numbers Don't Add Up: Vermont Law School's Tenured Faculty Purge and What It Portends. It cast a harsh light on the economics of Vermont Law School (VLS), noting the all-in $70K annual cost of attendance, $122K national average law grad debt; 2.71 times adjusted-for-inflation cost of law school over the past 3 decades; lack of practice readiness or augmented skills possessed by most law grads; a harsh job market; and the folly that all law schools should cost the same or prepare students for identical careers. The dire straits of Vermont Law...
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Blog Post
Vermont Law School (Vermont) recently announced it had issued pink slips to 14 of its 19 tenured faculty members. This is not the first time a law school has terminated tenured professors for something other than sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Albany Law School, Charleston Law, and others have traveled that road, and several other law schools have shuttered. Vermont’s wholesale decimation of its tenured faculty is something different-- a clarion call to the legal Academy that its economic model is unsustainable for all but a handful of elite institutions. Students have borne the brunt of the model’s economic pain; now...
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Blog Post
Legal education has received a great deal of criticism in recent years–cost, student debt burden, declining enrollment and selectivity, a baffling building boom, graduates that are neither practice nor market ready, dismal job statistics, etc. What has been largely overlooked in the legal education discussion is the plight of a far larger segment of the legal ecosystem-- practicing lawyers. It's A Whole New Ballgame Lawyers are toiling in an industry that has been overhauled by a perfect storm of change agents-- the global financial crisis of 2008 and its fallout; client dissatisfaction with existing delivery models; the escalating role of...
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Blog Post
The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is attacking the health, financial welfare, social order and political stability of nations across the globe. At a time when millions are fighting to survive illness, financial hardship, political upheaval, and other existential threats, it is difficult to look beyond the moment. The scourge of COVID-19 will pass. When, at what cost, and what its lasting impact will be are open questions. One thing is certain: when the immediate crisis of the pandemic abates, life will be different. Tom Friedman’s recent New York Times op-ed suggests the coronavirus will create a new historical divide: before-Corona...
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