The W$J ranking of business schools earlier this week -- in which BYU ranked #1 among "regional business schools" as measured by recruiting interest -- prompted a discussion in the faculty lounge today: if we classified law schools in this way, which law schools would be in the "national" group? Also, are some law schools sub-regional, that is, local?

In the W$J ranking, schools were divided into National and Regional groups "according to the recruiters they share, which is based on where recruiters say they tend to recruit." In creating these groups, the W$J "conducted a multivariate analysis known as hierarchical clustering based on the schools that recruiters said they had had contact with since September 2005." My hunch is that this sort of analysis would yield less than 20 "national" law schools, though I don't know of anyone who has tried it.

In looking for attempts to categorize law schools along these lines, I stumbled across an interesting new paper entitled Take Back the Night: Why an Association of Regional Law Schools Will Return Core Values to Legal Education and Provide an Alternative to Tiered Rankings by John Garon of Hamline University School of Law, in which he argues that our current system of legal education is broken because "students have too few price choices and far too much debt while the public has legal services that are too expensive to provide meaningful representation for a significant portion of the population." Part of his argument rests on the notion that law schools are insufficiently attentive to their regions, a development that was caused by various external pressures on law schools, including accreditation and rankings.

Garon proposes the creation of a National Association of Regional Law Schools, and the purpose of this association would be to "build consensus around a set of appropriate educational goals that will address the growing economic barriers to justice." He suggests the following principles:

• Diversity: Promote diversity to diversify and broaden the profession to the greatest extent permitted by law.

• Price Sensitivity: Control costs to financially enable graduates to better serve the profession.

• Student Learning: Focus on student learning and competency upon completion of law school, including a strong emphasis on experiential learning.

• Applicable Scholarship: Emphasize meaningful scholarship tied to the needs of the profession and society.

• Regional Engagement: Promote ties to regional institutions including state and regional bar associations and state supreme courts.

If you would have asked me in advance of reading the article, I would have said that we already have a collection of law schools that pursue (most of) these goals and that this real-world phenomenon was the basis for conventional references to "national" and "regional" law schools.

Garon has an interesting discussion of night law schools (thus the title of the article), and it is the disappearance of these schools that most concerns him:

The night schools accomplished certain aspects of legal education that we continue to struggle with today. Most notably, the night schools led the way in creating access to the profession for those of modest income and those from traditionally underserved communities. The part-time schedule allowed working adults to attend law school. Many were open to women, minorities, and different religions. Most had a more liberal academic admissions policy as well. All were much less expensive than their elite counterparts.

The night schools emphasized developing a faculty with strong practice experience, ties to the local profession, demonstrated commitment to legal service, and thoughtful writing highly relevant to the community. In effect, students were mentored into the profession by the same professionals they would see every day. To be successful, the schools heavily emphasized legal service in addition to student education and scholarship. The faculty members were selected from the bar associations and community organizations--judges and attorneys who were part of the community and working to make a difference. Though some were working for the income, the part-time faculty members at these schools were often like the adjunct faculty today, earning a token amount so that they could engage in the joy of teaching and mentoring.

The close tie to the practice has another strong benefit. Regional law schools have encouraged their students to pursue a broad range of professional opportunities after law school, often serving as the key institutions supporting public prosecutors' offices, public defenders' offices, public sector employment, and small law firms.

Garon's emphasis on access reminds me of a discussion with my former dean at Lewis & Clark (Jim Huffman) in which he described the benefits of the old "opportunity law schools." These law schools, of which L&C was one, operated on a community college model, with few admission standards. They provided, first and foremost, an opportunity to prove oneself capable of handling the study and practice of law. But they were also the genesis of the "look to your left and to your right" culture, which most (all?) modern law schools reject.

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