Paul Campos, a friend of this blog, gives great interview. He’s talking here about his new e-book, Don’t Go to Law School.
In order for things to change, “legal academia has to get its collective head out of the sand and stop being so piggish (I am mixing my metaphors).” He compares wildly overcompensated law school professors to French aristocrats: “[L]egal academia right now is France in 1780, and my lord doesn’t care to hear about the supposed troubles of the peasantry.” He quotes Upton Sinclair (“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”). He does all he can to make absolutely clear that people shouldn’t make $250,000 a year for graduating hundreds of unemployable people with $200,000 of debt.
But he also recognizes that law school professors themselves will do nothing about their culture of entitlement. They will have to be tossed and replaced by reasonable people if the schools are to survive.
The most straightforward short term solution is to return to the faculty student ratios and faculty compensation structures of three decades ago. This can be done through not replacing people who leave and buying out others. The alternative for universities is to simply close schools altogether…
Among the schools Campos considers to be in existential trouble: American University, down the street from UD‘s GW.
September 26th, 2012 at 6:29AM
While this situation is morally unsustainable, it’s not yet clear to me that it’s financially unsustainable. Sure, law professors might get more mouth-breathers and knuckle-draggers in their classrooms. But if there are 45,000 seats in the incoming classes of American law schools, I don’t see where the pressure to change the model comes from until the number of applicants hits 44,999. Even with the recent drop in applicants, I don’t think we’re close to that yet.
Is it politically likely we would see controls on student loans for law school? As is mentioned in the interview, the people really hurt by law school loans are law students who dropped out and lawyers who failed to get good jobs. By definition, that’s a diffuse group of people not eager to embrace their status and form a pressure group.
September 26th, 2012 at 7:34AM
The total demand for lawyers is of course not fixed…Mark Twain observed that two lawyers can thrive in a town where one would starve. Law-school-graduate glut probably feeds further litigation-glut.
See my post about sticky governors:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/18204.html
September 26th, 2012 at 12:43PM
I enjoy this blog, and the Campos blog; I also agree that legal education and its financing badly need reform.
However, interested readers should be aware that the salary of law school faculty is routinely overstated and routinely (and fruitlessly) corrected — 250K is something typically reserved for senior chaired professors or not given out at all, and medians are considerably lower (see CHE or http://www.saltlaw.org/userfiles/SALT%20salary%20survey%202012.pdf). Faculty salaries at professional schools have been decried on campuses for equity-related reasons that have much less to do with student interests or prospects.
I do await similar stories about the debt/unemployment crisis confronting many undergrads and their families, and whether the return on investment for a four-year degree in English justifies its cost — putting aside intellectual benefits and social value, which should not be ignored for any form of education.
September 26th, 2012 at 1:09PM
Ani: I appreciate the link to that article, which shows somewhat of a range among schools and regions, but seems -just from scanning this – to even out at around 180,000 or so. Feel free to correct me downward or upward. I’m including summer stipends.
I also think it’s important to know what course loads are like — my admittedly anecdotal sense is that at quite a few schools they are remarkably low, as in 2 or 3 courses per year. Elizabeth Warren took a hit during her debate about this. Here’s what her campaign released about the matter – it traces a pretty obvious career trajectory:
And this in the context of big lecture courses and deteriorating job placements. And Ani – please note – your comment suggests that 250,000 is rare and reserved only for the biggest of big shots; but Warren makes far more than that, and she can’t be alone. Please also note that for reasons not clear to me, the survey you cite lumps associates and fulls together. That’s very unhelpful.
I’ve contributed to Warren’s campaign, am a fervent supporter, and regret I can’t vote for her, since I live in Maryland. But really.
And yes, of course, this is Harvard; but Harvard sets the standard.
I also think you need to consider, when thinking seriously about law professor compensation, the opportunities and time for consulting that low course loads offer law faculty (as Warren’s trajectory indicates).
There’s quite a lot to throw into the mix in this matter.
September 26th, 2012 at 1:52PM
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
1. With respect to the 180K figure, it may depend on what you mean by “even out” and for what position. The figures reported are medians; I don’t think the average of those medians, even for tenured professors, even including stipends, is 180K. My very very very rough sense is that the average for these and other schools is more like 160K for tenured professors, but I am just making that up, really.
That seems high for a campus salary. It has historically been based on other career options for lawyers (as with, e.g., the sciences), the fact that lawyers typically carry more debt from their education than PhD students (see Campos), etc. As I said, this is part of a larger problem of sticky and inequitable campus salaries.
2. Teaching loads have in recent years gone to a mix of 3/year or, at less well-off schools, 4/year. I am unaware of *any* that are at 2, save perhaps for the equivalent of university professors or those doing administration or on sabbatical. Courses also don’t mean the same thing across campus: there is a material difference between evaluating 80-150 exams personally (TAs are rarely used, and even more rarely for any grading function) and, say, running an undergrad survey course with TAs and multiple choice or teaching small seminars. I don’t read you, of all people, to be endorsing teaching on the cheap, but it’s often not as light a load as it may appear.
3. Harvard is different from all but a few schools. One might as well look at English salaries at Princeton or teaching loads at the Institute for Advanced Studies.
4. Consulting is highly, highly variable. I would guess most law faculty make a negligible amount. They are also subject to university rules concerning the use of their time. Warren is, again, unrepresentative; to exaggerate a bit, one may as well look at Niall Ferguson or Joyce Carol Oates as typical social science or liberal arts faculty.
By the way, I am interested in your endorsement of the Campos interview, since at the bottom he seems to endorse a very unflattering analysis of liberal arts degrees, at least when they don’t immediately pay off in the market: “The answer I give in the book is: don’t make a bad situation worse by doubling down on useless degrees. As I argue, going to the average law school at full price because you can’t get a job with your English degree is like having a baby to try to salvage a crumbling relationship.” Too glib by half, in my view.
September 26th, 2012 at 2:14PM
Ani: A quick search seems to suggest that TAs are quite common in law schools, especially in the first-year courses. I’m happy to be corrected.
It’s not the inequity of law salaries about which I’m complaining. I don’t really care about that. It’s what these universities are doing with their tuition money. Students are handing it over in large quantities (tuition being typically really high at law schools) to professors, some of whom aren’t teaching that much. And they’re handing this money over in the context of a stinky job market.
Speaking of that market: The obvious difference between English and the law (beyond more rational faculty salaries) is one of disclosure. As you know, there have been quite a few instances of law schools lying about their placement rates (some people argue that gaming these results – as in hiring your unemployables at your university… sometimes as TAs – is systemic); the conceit at many schools remains that you’ll get a prestigious high-paying job when you finish law school.
As for the glibness in the interview: I’ve never read anything that’s too glib for me.
September 26th, 2012 at 2:52PM
As to TAs, I think it’s pretty uncommon — save at some schools for legal writing (I know, I know) — and does not entail anything like sectional responsibilities seen elsewhere at the university. Interested in contrary examples. RAs (research assistants), who help with research or writing scholarship, are on the other hand extremely common, if not ubiquitous.
As to salaries — putting aside the 250K depiction, and 2-course teaching load — I think it’s fair to say that no part of higher education has adapted its salaries to changing market conditions (this is what I meant by sticky wages). And anyone tenured at GW can just be thanking the heavens for their good fortune relative to adjuncts or those at community colleges, regardless of value conferred.
As to the disclosure issue, I don’t think anyone does a good job, and I would include law schools near the top of the list. Having observed the matter closely, and for a longer period than Campos, I would say that the present mismatch between expectations and performance has at least partly been a function of two factors beyond the comparison you make: first, that law students in the 1990s fixated to an absurd degree on forcing an increase in upper echelon starting salaries, and then persuaded themselves collectively that this was the new normal, with little attempt by schools to gainsay that; second, that placement and salary data has long been overtly a basis for ranking schools and securing students, whereas other forms of higher education have not troubled to “game” or strategize about data on which they are rarely measured.
Although I hope it doesn’t come to this, I would be very interested to see what happens when anthropology departments at particular schools, for example, have to report starting salaries and employment rates. Perhaps their results and methods will be universally applauded and above reproach.
September 26th, 2012 at 3:29PM
Ani: I’ll defer to you on TAs. You’re much better informed than I. RAs are another perk for law professors; in the humanities, far as I can tell, RAs are pretty rare at many schools. Certainly nothing you can count on from semester to semester.
One more point worth making in this exchange: Law school is grad school. Professional school. It’s designed to make you employable in a very specific field. I think maybe we’ve been fudging a bit on the undergraduate/graduate school distinction here.
Also, as you know, the trend in the humanities is toward smaller and smaller graduate departments (some departments have of course folded) in response to the job situation for people with humanities degrees. On the other hand, new law schools are opening all the time — a surreal, unconscionable trend for which the accreditation-happy ABA can take credit.
September 28th, 2012 at 1:33PM
Ani: I wanted to add this snippet from Paul Campos:
Note that [Steven] Davidoff cooks his numbers quite a bit:
The average senior law professor who is not at a top-ranked school makes $130,000 to $150,000 according to a survey by the Society of American Law Teachers. It’s a nice salary, but certainly not comparable to what a law firm partner earns.
This assertion plays very fast and loose with the definition of both “top ranked law school” and (especially) “law firm partner.” Unless “top ranked law school” is a category that includes half the law schools in the country, the assertion about average compensation levels for senior professors is seriously understated, as a glance at the salaries of the senior faculty at his own school reveals. Indeed $130,000, or something fairly close to that, is now the starting salary for tenure track professors at many law schools that nobody would consider particularly elite. (Starting salaries at top schools are quite a bit higher).
October 1st, 2012 at 3:31PM
UD, you may not see this, but respond briefly . . .
1. I intended mainly to submit that 250K struck me as quite unrepresentative.
2. I don’t know the basis for the Davidoff stat that the “average senior law professor who is not at a top-ranked school makes $130,000 to $150,000.” Obviously it does turn on what you mean by “senior” and “top-ranked.”
3. I can’t disagree that “$130,000, or something fairly close to that, is now the starting salary for tenure track professors at many law schools that nobody would consider particularly elite” — but note how hedged and unverifiable that assertion really is.
4. As to whether “Starting salaries at top schools are quite a bit higher,” perhaps, but again the claim is so vague as to be hard to evaluate. The salaries for entry-level faculty at schools like Michigan, Texas, and UVA (which are privately subsidized) are regularly published, one could check them — but these are not representative of schools in general.
October 1st, 2012 at 3:44PM
Ani: Yes, I see your comment; and I think that, as often happens as people go back and forth, we turn out to be closer to one another’s position than it might seem at first. I think we agree that the numbers picture – whether salary or placement – is more difficult to assess than Campos sometimes suggests, for instance. And I hope we agree that there are too many law schools (and more new ones by the minute) doing not a particularly good job (maybe even doing a scandalously bad job) of preparing their students – and that some of those same law schools are top-heavy with tenured, highly-paid people.
October 1st, 2012 at 5:56PM
I agree that there are too many law schools, in the sense that a number of students are being graduated in debt and without good prospects of making at living as lawyers; I’d further say it’s irresponsible (and costly) to open any at this point, and that I would be well pleased if a number of existing schools chose to close.
I am not sure I agree that there are too many law schools “doing not a particularly good job (maybe even doing a scandalously bad job) of preparing their students,” save in the sense that they are not being prepared for their present poor prospects. Actually, I think that many schools give a good education to students who are not very promising and have been poorly served by their undergraduate education, arriving at law school innumerate and with poor writing and analytical skills. The fact that these schools graduate students who should not have matriculated at law school in the first place, given their abilities and their realistic prospects, is not the same thing as indicting the quality of their education. The best and most damning appraisals of law schools are much more nuanced as to the quality question.
As to being top-heavy with tenured, highly-paid people, we have discussed pay . . . and I am not at all sure that the rate of seniority or tenuring is different at law schools than elsewhere. The problem, in any event, may be universal.