VLS is a beautiful law school, in a beautiful place, and it isn't owned by the state of Vermont.  So why did it commission a study establishing its economic importance for the Vermont economy?  I would guess that it is either an effort to lay the groundwork for a bailout, or a pitch that the law school should be made a part of the state university system.  The study's bottom line:

VLS is shown be a very strong contributor to the local economy. By virtue of the unusually high proportion of operating expenditures made in Vermont, itself a product of relatively high salaries of its professional staff, VLS is responsible for a high level of job and income creation. VLS generates not only strong payroll-related spending, but when combined with student and visitor expenditures, resulting employment growth is very strong. The 2.9 employment multiplier for VLS, discussed in the section on total economic impact, is dramatic evidence that VLS produces a highly localized impact in a small state that normally sees a high proportion of expenditures flow from the State for goods and services produced elsewhere.

It's hard to know what the future holds, of course, but the school has been engaged in some serious downsizing - the sort of downsizing that would suggest that hiring a consultant to defend the value of the school is an expense worth foregoing.  And there have long been mutters about a takeover, either by Dartmouth or UVM - the law school is located almost exactly between them.  Could the law school be making a case for a merger?  There's also all of this previously.

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