During thirty years as a law school faculty member, first a faculty fellow at the University of Chicago and then a professor at Santa Clara University, I observed a number of problems with the current state of legal education and came up with possible solutions, none of which I ever persuaded my colleagues to implement.
On your second point, there's always an Overton-esque window of what degree of reform can be suggested before it sounds like lunacy; as such, I'd very humbly suggest you could go rather further based on the fact I'm foreign so am thinking in a different box. England has a split legal profession, and the next paragraph applies only to barristers (exclusive courtroom advocates) which may limit its US applicability.
Until recently, English legal education for someone who already has an undergraduate degree (in any subject) consisted of a one-year graduate diploma in law, followed by a one year professional course. All the substantive law was dealt with in that first year (the GDL), with the procedure being dealt with in the second year (then the BVC/BPTC). There's never been a suggestion that this was under-educating lawyers, and the BPTC has generally been regarded as a bit of a joke.
For solicitors (the other type of English lawyer), it's very recent that they were required to have any classroom education at all, even a university degree; there are still a few barristers kicking about for whom that was the case as well. There are proposals afoot to return to this for solicitors, due to continued questions as whether they really need a post-high school education.
I understand law journals exist in England, but academic law more generally is looked down on as a faintly pointless exercise; there's not much of an equivalent of law clerking either, although that's starting to creep in as "judicial assistants." England is, in spite or because of this, generally regarded as having a very good legal system to the point where it often wins in forum-shopping, and its competitors (eg Dubai) tend to try and compete by copying the English system and luring away English lawyers/judges.
My point is, you could comfortably get away with a one-year law school, if you need law school at all. You could almost certainly remove the requirement for a university degree to attend as well. Legal markets are so broken that some kind of quality control is probably desirable, but this could simply be an open bar exam, as The Contractualist suggests. If students were paying for value-adding tuition, as opposed to accreditation, my guess is that the market rate for legal education would be much much lower and alternative education models would be available. The inevitable phone app could be called Duolexo.
A 2 year law school has been discussed for a while. While rational, it’s continued non-implementation is a testament to the power of entrenched interests in the current system. Professors have defended the 3 year system unapologetically,referring to legal practice as a profession rather than a career (apparently more so than accounting or finance which pretty much only rely on exams as their barrier to entry).
We can get even more barebones and just treat law like accounting and finance, using only standardized exams to determine licensing. Bar prep courses cost about $1000-$5000 and they can be provided at scale. If we had 3 300+ study hour exams like the CFA exams (3 times more than the current bar), the “cost of attendance” could be 3000-15000 (assuming the additional exams increase exam prep costs linearly). Or even free is someone is willing to study without a bar prep program.
Law school is overpriced and it’s pedagogy is outdated. Bar prep programs are a far better substitute and an exam system can protect the profession from truly incompetent lawyers.
High status people and systems that can be openly hypocritical and dysfunctional? Maybe this is what confirms their high status. Sign me up for the most expensive and lowest value-add legacy institution!
(I have high LSAT scores, great connections, and great work ethic)
I remember Judge Easterbrook telling me an idea about judges' pay (i.e., it should be based on reversal rate, with higher pay for beating the reversal over replacement, or something). And every quant scientist type I talk to has independently arrived at some idea of quantitative productivity-based promotions and hiring. Such proposals founder on the fact that the social world is built on signaling.
For example, you say "[t]he law schools are run and staffed by people who favor redistribution from rich to poor," citing to survey data about political attitudes. But as you show, their revealed preference is the opposite, at least insofar as it impacts them. A more accurate statement would be, "law school is run and staffed by people who _say they favor redistribution_ when it doesn't impact them." but act differently. (After all, they are all free to give their own money away.)
Consider law schools that pay for top students, either measured quantitatively or, when breathing rare air (as in YLS), based on connections. What they are really doing is not just maintaining rankings, but also trying to bolster the prestige of the school, and buying the expectancy that some % of the students will reap outsized rewards and then cut a fat donor check. There's a lot of skewness to such checks, but you want to be as far out on the right tale as possible to be in the running. And note, there's no need for the persons implementing this system to be aware of this motivation; it just emerges from the competitive market dynamic.
Likewise, you say, "[b]ar passage and employment rates are more relevant but both depend on quality of students as well as quality of instruction," and propose a system of offering refunds to people who strike out in 1L year based on whether they'll (eventually?) pass the bar, so as to optimize student quality and class size. Two issues. First, the bar is a minimum competency test -- almost anyone who has any business in law can eventually pass, and so the test you propose has low sensitivity. But second, since most people wash out of law, yet can be stuck with fat federally-subsidized loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, law schools have every incentive to keep students dangling on a string, pursuing something like the gambler's ruin.
On your second point, there's always an Overton-esque window of what degree of reform can be suggested before it sounds like lunacy; as such, I'd very humbly suggest you could go rather further based on the fact I'm foreign so am thinking in a different box. England has a split legal profession, and the next paragraph applies only to barristers (exclusive courtroom advocates) which may limit its US applicability.
Until recently, English legal education for someone who already has an undergraduate degree (in any subject) consisted of a one-year graduate diploma in law, followed by a one year professional course. All the substantive law was dealt with in that first year (the GDL), with the procedure being dealt with in the second year (then the BVC/BPTC). There's never been a suggestion that this was under-educating lawyers, and the BPTC has generally been regarded as a bit of a joke.
For solicitors (the other type of English lawyer), it's very recent that they were required to have any classroom education at all, even a university degree; there are still a few barristers kicking about for whom that was the case as well. There are proposals afoot to return to this for solicitors, due to continued questions as whether they really need a post-high school education.
I understand law journals exist in England, but academic law more generally is looked down on as a faintly pointless exercise; there's not much of an equivalent of law clerking either, although that's starting to creep in as "judicial assistants." England is, in spite or because of this, generally regarded as having a very good legal system to the point where it often wins in forum-shopping, and its competitors (eg Dubai) tend to try and compete by copying the English system and luring away English lawyers/judges.
My point is, you could comfortably get away with a one-year law school, if you need law school at all. You could almost certainly remove the requirement for a university degree to attend as well. Legal markets are so broken that some kind of quality control is probably desirable, but this could simply be an open bar exam, as The Contractualist suggests. If students were paying for value-adding tuition, as opposed to accreditation, my guess is that the market rate for legal education would be much much lower and alternative education models would be available. The inevitable phone app could be called Duolexo.
A 2 year law school has been discussed for a while. While rational, it’s continued non-implementation is a testament to the power of entrenched interests in the current system. Professors have defended the 3 year system unapologetically,referring to legal practice as a profession rather than a career (apparently more so than accounting or finance which pretty much only rely on exams as their barrier to entry).
We can get even more barebones and just treat law like accounting and finance, using only standardized exams to determine licensing. Bar prep courses cost about $1000-$5000 and they can be provided at scale. If we had 3 300+ study hour exams like the CFA exams (3 times more than the current bar), the “cost of attendance” could be 3000-15000 (assuming the additional exams increase exam prep costs linearly). Or even free is someone is willing to study without a bar prep program.
Law school is overpriced and it’s pedagogy is outdated. Bar prep programs are a far better substitute and an exam system can protect the profession from truly incompetent lawyers.
High status people and systems that can be openly hypocritical and dysfunctional? Maybe this is what confirms their high status. Sign me up for the most expensive and lowest value-add legacy institution!
(I have high LSAT scores, great connections, and great work ethic)
I remember Judge Easterbrook telling me an idea about judges' pay (i.e., it should be based on reversal rate, with higher pay for beating the reversal over replacement, or something). And every quant scientist type I talk to has independently arrived at some idea of quantitative productivity-based promotions and hiring. Such proposals founder on the fact that the social world is built on signaling.
For example, you say "[t]he law schools are run and staffed by people who favor redistribution from rich to poor," citing to survey data about political attitudes. But as you show, their revealed preference is the opposite, at least insofar as it impacts them. A more accurate statement would be, "law school is run and staffed by people who _say they favor redistribution_ when it doesn't impact them." but act differently. (After all, they are all free to give their own money away.)
Consider law schools that pay for top students, either measured quantitatively or, when breathing rare air (as in YLS), based on connections. What they are really doing is not just maintaining rankings, but also trying to bolster the prestige of the school, and buying the expectancy that some % of the students will reap outsized rewards and then cut a fat donor check. There's a lot of skewness to such checks, but you want to be as far out on the right tale as possible to be in the running. And note, there's no need for the persons implementing this system to be aware of this motivation; it just emerges from the competitive market dynamic.
Likewise, you say, "[b]ar passage and employment rates are more relevant but both depend on quality of students as well as quality of instruction," and propose a system of offering refunds to people who strike out in 1L year based on whether they'll (eventually?) pass the bar, so as to optimize student quality and class size. Two issues. First, the bar is a minimum competency test -- almost anyone who has any business in law can eventually pass, and so the test you propose has low sensitivity. But second, since most people wash out of law, yet can be stuck with fat federally-subsidized loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, law schools have every incentive to keep students dangling on a string, pursuing something like the gambler's ruin.