Everything Will Be All Right
In the end.
“Everything in Between” is about the systems, institutions, and practices that people build, “things” of a sort that sit in between us, between groups of us, between “us” and “them,” and between us and other systems and institutions that seem terribly far away: “the market,” “the state,” the universe, and so on. Once a week, usually on a Monday, I’ll have something new.
This is the final installment of my essay on the past, present, and future of law schools. I began with a big picture summary: law schools on the whole, like universities on the whole, confront giant structural challenges. I introduced some details. How did we get here, historically speaking? I hit the heights, describing the law school that thrives in the imaginations of many professionals today. Then the edifice crashed against contemporary reality. And I looked under the hood, describing the key elements of the financial motor that powers law schools and their parent universities. Where does the money go, and where does the money come from?
Today, and finally, some concluding thoughts. Is the cavalry going to come to the rescue, whether on horses or in tanks? My own law school happens to be in the middle of a dean search right now - law deans typically serve for three or four years, so Pitt is right on schedule, in practical terms - so I am more acutely aware than ever that both academic administrators, wannabe academic administrators, and “regular” faculty imagine that salvation from austerity is only a phone-call-to-generous-alums away. That’s the fantasy, anyway. What’s the reality?
Fundraising
1. Good deans like to raise money; great deans positively enjoy it. Raising money goes hand in glove with institution-building and manifesting a vision of impact on the world. Good, great, or otherwise, however, deans are expected to raise money, and in meeting their goals deans almost always prefer “annual giving” or “unrestricted giving,” especially modest unrestricted gifts, rather than endowment-building gifts. Endowment-building helps to secure the school’s future, but (i) annual giving helps the school’s near-term bottom line; deans are usually evaluated based on short-term metrics, and (ii) both large unrestricted gifts and endowment-building require long-term donor cultivation. Most law deans don’t have the expertise, support, or time to engage in long-term donor cultivation. That’s why universities – with, in principle, teams of professional fundraisers – organize capital campaigns; deans – without teams – usually don’t.
2. “Fundraising” isn’t what it seems to be. Higher education fundraising is all about having a compelling vision to share. Donors want to invest in a bright future, and the brighter the better. There is no such thing as a “fundraising personality” for a dean (or a president, or any other non-profit or higher education leader). There is only the power to communicate underlying quality, and “game knows game” in development as in sports. For a donor or prospective donor, there is no substitute for a law school’s demonstrating an effective record of success and impact. Even with a great vision, law school fundraising has a limited upside. Large law firms rarely have discretionary income to spend. Law firm partners and other law school alumni are notoriously stingy when it comes to supporting their law school alma maters vs supporting their colleges. Law schools with significant recent gifts, particularly in the so-called “lower tiers” of regional law schools – such as Thomas Kline’s gifts to law schools at both Drexel University and Duquesne University – are rare.
Forecast – thriving or death spiral?
What does this account add up to?
1. Over the longer term, vision matters, because only vision will attract the resources that will help legal education find its path forward.
That statement assumes that legal education as a sector has the power to strategize over the longer term. If so, the sector should be asking whether legal education has a future, in its current form; if it doesn’t, what does a new form (or forms) look like? That’s where vision matters, and only vision matters. There are constraints of several sorts:
On the revenue side of the ledger, discounting and diminished student demand impose structural deficits. Aggregate student demand is unlikely to rebound.
The cost side of the ledger (especially faculty compensation) has little flexibility.
In terms of demand for legal education’s products, law firm hiring is unlikely to rebound.
Economics and technology (now including Generative AI, which is rapidly changing law practice in Big Law and corporate law settings already) will continue to press legal educators to change their training modalities (meaning both technology as an educational tool and technology as part of a lawyer’s skill set).
Legal employment will grow in competitiveness between graduates of different law schools and also between graduates of law schools and graduates of other, non-law programs (undergraduate, other professional schools, nothing).
The considerations push in multiple directions at once. Simply staying the course will not resolve them and may exacerbate them.
Vision is a matter for single law school as well as for the sector. At the school level, the question is: does the law school have a vision for thriving other than “we are a law school”? Can a law school shrink without hollowing itself out? Can a death spiral be avoided? But the range of answers is limited by the sector’s vision of what defines “law” and “legal education.” That’s where a sector-defining vision is key.
2. In the shorter, nearer term, competition matters. This is largely a matter for specific schools. Thriving, even surviving, means competing; competing requires choosing. Choosing requires thoughtful expression of what criteria for choice matter, and when, and how. A school can compete with its peers – for students, for faculty, and for reputation/prestige – via money (some law schools have been stockpiling faculty: Virginia, Michigan, Penn, UCLA). It can compete via its reputation (Harvard’s reputation for eliteness is long-standing and global; Chicago’s reputation for quality is newer but particularly distinctive). It can compete via strategic focus (Duquesne is becoming more practice-focused and more Pittsburgh-focused; Santa Clara has invested deeply in “high tech law” for student training and faculty scholarship, dovetailing with its Silicon Valley location). The questions remain. What should any particular law school do? What can any particular law school do?
Is the future bleak, or bright?
Next week, I’ll step out a bit, going beyond the essay that I’ve been drawing on and putting in place the pieces of what will happen and what could or should happen in law, building toward the promised look at universities as a whole. A hint to coming attractions, a metaphor for higher education visionaries and reformers to chew on: Billy Butcher on the Spice Girls.
Sources
My essay draws on readings, conversations, and practices in and about legal education and higher education going back nearly 20 years. Particularly salient and persuasive sources are listed below.
On the state of legal education and the legal profession
Report of the American Bar Association Commission on the Future of Legal Education, “Principles for Legal Education and Licensure in the 21st Century” [summarized here]
The Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, “2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market” and the “2024 Report on the State of the Legal Market”
On universities and fundraising
On what law deans do, and what they do not (or cannot) do