Category Archives: Law School

SKINNING CATS – continued

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Sometimes timing is everything.

Last week, in “Skinning Cats in Different Ways,” I wrote about the efforts of the state legislature to undermine the University of Maryland’s law school clinic. The clinic’s environmental lawsuit against Perdue Farms and some of its chicken suppliers prompted Jim Perdue himself to visit Annapolis and plead the case for preserving important state financial interests.

Now, as a gigantic oil slick oozes its way toward the nation’s Gulf coast, the National Law Journal reports that a Louisiana legislator has offered a suggestion even more draconian than the one eventually abandoned in Maryland.(http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202457607971&Battleground_over_law_school_clinics_moves_to_Louisiana)

Senator Robert Adley (R-Benton — a 3,000-member community in a remote corner of northwestern Louisiana and far from the Gulf of Mexico) wants the state to prohibit law clinics at public and private colleges receiving state money from suing government agencies, individuals, and businesses for financial damages.

Apparently, Tulane is the target of this legislative attack that would include LSU. When a Baton Rouge reporter sought comment last month, the president of the Louisiana Chemical Association said that hurting LSU was not the bill’s intent:

“I know of no beefs with any of the other schools and we are not trying to impede their use of law clinics to give law students broad practical experience prior to graduation…Tulane’s environmental law clinic has consistently brought suits against industries and Louisiana state agencies and takes credit on its Web site for preventing hundreds of millions of dollars from coming to Louisiana.” ((http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/90065107.html?showAll=y&c=y)

A third-year LSU law student quoted in the article made the point with elegant simplicity:

“At first blush, it seems like a way for corporations to prevent themselves from getting sued. If you’re not doing something wrong, then why are you worried?”

She’s right. Law clinics aren’t roving bands of policymakers in search of causes they can use to remake the world. They pursue legal claims that might not otherwise see the light of day. They succeed because judges and juries determine that the defendants against whom they prevail have violated the law.

Here’s a better suggestion for Senator Adley: Just identify every current law or regulation that your corporate constituents don’t like and propose repealing all of them. It’s far more transparent. After all, what’s the point of enacting rules to pursue policies and protect rights if you’re simultaneously barring law clinics from enforcing them on behalf of those who lack the means, independence, or fortitude to do so?

SKINNING CATS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

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For those who think that important lawsuits are won only in courtrooms, look at what’s happening in Maryland.

In March, the University of Maryland’s law clinic filed suit on behalf of an evironmental group against Perdue Farms — one of the state’s largest employers — and an 80,000 poultry farm. The complaint alleges illegal discharge of pollution into rivers feeding the Chesapeake Bay. So far, it sounds like just another case, right?

Wrong. Two weeks later, the Maryland Senate passed a budget amendment that would have required the university’s law clinic to disclose its clients, expenditures, and other information about its cases for the past two years — including pending matters. If it refused, the university would lose $500,000 in state funding.

Any lawyer in private practice will confirm the chilling effect that such inroads into sacred confidentiality obligations would have on them and their clients. One can imagine the uproar that would follow if someone asked a corporate client to disclose how it was spending its money to prosecute a claim or defend itself.

After considering even stricter measures and bigger monetary penalties, the Maryland House of Delegates approved the Senate bill’s disclosure requirement, but removed the funding cut.

According to the NYTimes, a Perdue spokesman said that the company had done no lobbying in support of the legislation, but its chairman, Jim Perdue, went to Annapolis in early March to tell lawmakers that cases like the clinic’s posed “one of the largest threats to the family farm in the last 50 years.” (http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/04/08/08greenwire-law-students-role-in-farm-pollution-suit-anger-96381.html). 

Apparently, legal aid clinics face similar challenges to their independence in Louisiana, Michigan, and elsewhere.

Those supporting the requirements argued that state tax dollars shouldn’t be used to undermine important economic interests, one of which is a big employer.

If the issue is a state’s financial interests, I suppose similar objections could apply to legal aid clinics that defend the accused.  After all, the state is paying to convict them, right?

Maybe we should go beyond law school clinics and eliminate state-subsidized public defender programs. too.

Or maybe the real problem is the ability of private players to control an entire state’s legislative process.

28 DAYS – The Big Squeeze Continues

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While we’re waiting for NALP to reveal what it decided on April 26 — when it was supposed to grapple with the problem of getting biglaw firms to provide career tracking information on their non-equity partners (see my April 21 post: “Will Anyone Notice on April 27?”) — consider another recent NALP move…

Twenty-eight days sounds like a lot of time, doesn’t it?

On February 26, 2010, NALP announced a new provisional guideline. Beginning in August 2010, students receiving summer or permanent job offers from new prospective employers will have 28 days to respond. Yea or nay…up or down…fish or cut bait…

You get the idea.

NALP ignored the elephants in the room: law firms follow no uniform timetable in extending offers and, even worse, an accepted offer can turn out to be bogus when the employer later withdraws or defers it. When that happens, the victim is without recourse.

In other words, the ongoing capitulation to biglaw’s demands continues. In 2008, NALP adopted the prior rule giving students 45 days to ponder the decision that could shape their futures. Most big firms thought that was too long. Before that, students had until December 1. Before NALP existed, they had as much time as an individual firm gave them — which was usually a lot.

Do you detect a one-sidedness to the trend? Law firms have always retained flexibility to make rolling offers at their pleasure and to revoke them at will. Who’s looking out for the students?

Not NALP:

“Member feedback…has indicated that a shorter period will still allow students sufficient time to choose among competing offers.”  (http://www.nalp.org/provisionaltimingguidelines2010)

Ah, “member feedback.” Who provides that? Not students or anyone committed to their best interests, that’s for sure.

NALP’s board consists of biglaw representatives and law school career development officers seeking to maximize their graduates’ placements in large law firms. That means the big firms wield commanding voices.

The new guideline is an example. Biglaw scuttled NALP’s recommendation to move “the current recruiting model away from rolling response deadlines to a model based on ‘offer kickoff dates,’ the specific dates before which offers could not be made,” followed by a universal 14-day response period. That wasn’t perfect, but at least it would have allowed students to know all of their options before locking in their final answers.

Under the new rule, they’ll never know what might have been. Then again, based on biglaw’s associate attrition rates immediately preceding the Great Recession, the vast majority of new hires won’t remain with their first employers for more than three years anyway.

Whether students should rush like lemmings to the sea toward biglaw opportunities is a question that most students don’t consider, but they should. Shortening the response time won’t help them or the profession’s growing problem of attorney career dissatisfaction.

After piling up enormous law school debts as new job offers dwindle, are any of you prospective biglaw associates feeling squeezed again?

“AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD…”

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It was a great Star Trek episode, and not just because one of the most famous trial lawyers of his time, Melvin Belli, played a villain who tried to take control of every child on planet Triacus. The episode reveals the potency of two great powers: youth and truth.

The moral of the story endures, as I realized while reading an article in the National Law Journal earlier this week. (http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/04/20/law-students-push-schools-for-better-employment-numbers/)

The best prospects for improving the profession will come from new entrants who refuse to settle for answers that others would like them to accept. So it’s gratifying when youth seeks truth as law students start asking the right questions.

Two Vanderbilt students have realized that most law school information about graduates’ employment and compensation is incomplete — and sometimes misleading. Law schools tend to mask reality in aggregate statistical compilations that make them look good. (See Mark Twain on the three kinds of lies: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”)

For example, when a school reports to US News that 95% of a recent class was employed at graduation, what does that mean? For jobs that involved temporary research for a professor because nothing else was available, not much.

Likewise, when the median salary at a first-tier school is also the top of the range because many graduates went to big firms, isn’t the overall distribution meaningful? And two or three years later, what happens to the young attorneys in those firms? For too many, nothing good, according to NALP’s associate attrition data.

So two Vanderbilt students are trying to build and publish their own database of detailed information about individual students. The most encouraging aspect of the initiative has less to do with trying to collect what the law schools probably won’t divulge. Rather, it’s the fact that these students — and hopefully many others — are thinking in concrete terms about what their legal careers will actually be like.

Moving away from statistical aggregations and abstract images that don’t educate anyone about life as a real lawyer, they want specific information about their options and prospects (or lack thereof). This initial inquiry — how much individual graduates earn and what happens to them — should lead immediately to a second: what type of work are young attorneys performing and do they enjoy their jobs?

If undergraduates started this deliberative process before they took the LSAT, the profession could begin curing its worst problem: growing attorney unhappiness.

How? The profession is filled with too many lawyers who never should have gone to law school in the first place. If only they had known the truth…and then thought about it…

THE US NEWS RANKINGS ARE OUT!

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[UPDATE: This post first appeared on April 16, 2010. On January 1, 2011, Northwestern’s former dean, David Van Zandt, became president of The New School in New York.]

Earlier this week, I spoke with one of my former Northwestern undergraduate students. Headed for a top law school this fall, he surprised me with this remark:

“A lot of my classmates are waiting to send in their law school deposits until the latest US News rankings come out this week.”

Seriously?

Virtually every law school dean has condemned US News’ annual effort to do for law schools what the Am Law 100 has been doing for big firms. Those of you reading my “PUZZLE PIECES” installments know that annual profits-per-partner rankings haven’t brought out the best in us. It’s all part of a larger contemporary phenomenon: the MBA mentality of misguided metrics.

Unfortunately, students aren’t listening to the unanimous chorus of skeptical law school deans. It’s easier to follow the simplistic approach of a lonely outlier, Northwestern’s David Van Zandt: however wrongheaded, metrics matter.

For a decade, he has refused to join colleagues criticizing US News’ fatally flawed methodology. (See, e.g., Brian Leiter’s analysis) A self-styled maverick, Van Zandt insists that ratings are relevant consumer information.

His position proves too much. Not all misinformation should be allowed to pollute decision-makers’ minds. That’s why fraud and misrepresentation causes of action exist. There’s another problem: pandering to the US News criteria distorts law school administrators’ decisions. Once misguided metrics become governing principles, thoughtful reflection disappears. Teaching to the test is easier than creating imaginative lesson plans.

Lately, metrics seem to be foresaking the maverick. In 2009, Northwestern dropped from 9 to 10 in the US News overall standings; this year, it fell to 11.

Rationalizing the decline, Van Zandt says that his innovative programs haven’t gained traction because of “resistance within a conservative profession.” He argues from aneccdotal evidence that the future will vindicate him. Apart from his inconsistency in crediting a positive rating that suits his purposes but discounting it when things breaks badly, some might accuse him of magical thinking.

Is it time for Van Zandt to back away from his isolated defense of the US News listings? Sure, but it won’t happen. In an April 13 Above the Law post, he urges even more rankings, however dubious their value.

In the end, he’s a misguided metrics kind of guy — at least until Northwestern drops again next year. [UPDATE: It did — to 12th, but by the time the news hit, Van Zandt had already left to become president of The New School in New York.]