While I was racking my brain about the optimal car purchase, the rest of the blogosphere was debating whether Northwestern's new two-year plan was the best thing since sliced bread or the stupidest fad since socks with toes. Our own Gordon Smith gave his thumbs up, as well as Bill Henderson, but the plan has had its detractors. Josh Wright, who joins the gang who say that the market will eventually decide the question, thinks the answer may already may be revealed by the reaction of faculty at U. of Chicago and U. of Illinois. Josh thinks that NW must be on to something or Geoffrey Stone (Chicago) and Larry Solum (Illinois) wouldn't hate it so much.
Well, to be honest, Larry seems merely skeptical, and Larry Ribstein (also Illinois) likes the idea. And really, the competitive stance that the 2-year program gives NW over Illinois that it didn't already have is that it might make NW cheaper than it is right now. (NW may charge the same amount as an aggregate 3-year degree, but students would reap back the opportunity costs of the lost third year.) However, Illinois is already substantially cheaper than NW and we are very aggressive on the scholarship front with competitive applicants with many attractive options, so I'm not sure that even if the program proves wildly successful that the marginal difference for us will be much.
So, do I like the idea? (Does anyone still care?) I do not think that there is any problem with the program as far as quality of education. That is a red herring. We have a cousin who is applying to law school, and I would offer him this caution. The potential problem with accelerated law school programs is the same issue that arises with night programs for those in the workforce. Without two free summers, when will students clerk? (Larry Solum was quoted as mentioning this in the Tribune article, so I thought I would expand.)
Clerking is a valuable experience in many ways. First, can be lucrative (and six months of foregone summer pay in the accelerated program is not much less than the nine month opportunity cost of the third year of law school). Second, it is used by many law firms as the most important, if not sole, recruiting and hiring method. Yes, many students are hired in their third year by a firm for which they did not clerk (including me), but this is not the norm among most schools of NW's caliber. Third, clerking is a great way for law students to find out about firms, practice areas, and cities before committing to them. Although an in-school practical experience can teach many skills that would be gained by real-world clerking experience, experiential learning cannot fill these voids.
Having taught at two schools with night programs, I noticed that many of the top students in those programs eventually quit their jobs and transferred to the day program because they quickly saw that the opportunity to get a law firm clerkship through the on-campus interviews was worth more in the long run than their opportunity cost of working full-time during their second and third years. On the other hand, the students who got the most out of the night program were students whose employers were paying for their law school education and who had promised them a legal job upon graduation. And for these students, the 2-year plan would be ideal. The accelerated degree would also be ideal for those who don't particularly plan to practice but perhaps gain another academic degree and enter academia. However, if someone with no connections to a legal job wants to go to law school with an eye toward getting a high-paying job at a large law firm, I'm not sure that the accelerated plan is the way to go. Perhaps NW is working with employers to overcome this glitch -- they seem to be pretty bright people there, so I wouldn't put it past them. Stay tuned.
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1. Posted by Dave! on June 24, 2008 @ 11:29 | Permalink
I don't buy the clerking/summer associate arguments.
First, as you already pointed out, this is an issue faced by students in an evening program (read: me) and no one is arguing we should kill those. (Okay, maybe some are, but those people can e-mail me for a few choice words.)
Second, the two-year program is geared towards more focused, returning students. It requires some work experience--which is potentially valuable to employers and addresses the concern of employers about students who go straight from college to law school with no actual employment experience.
The fact is, there are many different type of students and many different reasons they may choose to go to law school. Businesses schools have already figured this out *long* ago, offering full-time MBAs, evening/weekend programs, and Executive MBAs. There is no reason law schools shouldn't do the same. In fact, I think they should also expand the *other* way and offer more PhD programs. Let people who want to be legal scholars *be* scholars, and let the people who want to practice law get *professional* degrees.
This looks like a solid step in the right direction to me.
2. Posted by NonVoxPop on June 24, 2008 @ 12:17 | Permalink
If the goal is to create more functionaries to achieve the goals set by business school grads, a two year law school is a great idea. If our goal is to create thoughtful leaders (be it in the local or national community, through politics or in practice), we need to go longer, not shorter.
3. Posted by Fred Tung on June 25, 2008 @ 6:48 | Permalink
Christine captures the trade-offs nicely. Older students with families will generally have clearer ideas, better background, and possibly less flexibility with respect to choosing practice area and cities. The summer associate experience may therefore matter less to them than simply being done with law school. Moreover, the mobility of junior associates at big firms these days suggests that the summer clerking "test drive" may not be all that important in the long run. Few associates truly "commit" to firms.
Which all suggests that students will sort themselves based on their perceived needs. I say give 'em a choice. It's hard to say that NW's proposal is wildly irresponsible. I think it's a nice experiment. Let a hundred flowers bloom.
4. Posted by Josh on June 25, 2008 @ 10:30 | Permalink
Christine is right to point out that the Illinois response has been mixed and certainly less aggressive than Chicago's, though I'm pretty comfortable with my actual description of Solum's comments as "critical." Perhaps Chicago-NW are closer substitutes than NW-Illinois, which might explain the different intensity of the responses?
There are obviously important tradeoffs for consumers of legal education to consider. The NW 2 Year program won't be for everyone. And it is certainly fair game and quite useful to highlight the tradeoffs. But when competitors emphasize the costs of the tradeoffs without highlighting the other side, in public forums like the Tribune with words like "irresponsible," its probably not too wild of an inference that they believe the program makes their competitor stronger, not weaker. Of course, maybe thats wrong.
One alternative hypothesis is the rival schools simple care a great deal about legal education and think this is the wrong model and want to do something about it. Or at least talk about it. Thats reasonable. Blogs contain all sorts of chatting about the right and wrong model. But this hypothesis has some testable implications too, e.g. what did the rivals say when other, perhaps less competitive but geographically close, law schools offered educational reforms?
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