GOOD PEOPLE, GREAT TECHNOLOGY, DYSFUNCTIONAL SYSTEM

Posted on March 6, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

In my last post, I described my battle against the hospitalist team and the GI Fellow who had decided early on and without hesitation that I needed another colonoscopy — my second one in a week. Once I found and presented the attending GI physician with sufficient evidence to demonstrate that my symptoms were more consistent with an upper GI bleed than a lower one, he responded quickly and unambiguously.

“This is your second hospital stay in a week,” he said. “We have to get this moving and get you out of here.” It was Sunday afternoon.

“I’m ordering another endoscopy, just to make sure the first one didn’t miss anything,” he continued. “We’ll also do a capsule endoscopy. They’ll insert a camera-pill at the same time we perform the endoscopy. I’ll schedule both procedures for early Monday morning and have them place the capsule so that at 5:30 pm someone can pick up the image pack. We should begin to get some results on Tuesday.”

“Will you be performing those procedures?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” he said. “Another attending is on call here after today.”

“So I lose you at…?” I asked.

“Midnight,” he said. “But I’ll still be in the hospital tomorrow. After all, I do have patients here to see.”

What was that supposed to mean? I assume he was referring to people whom he’d seen as outpatients and then admitted to the hospital for specific procedures. But wasn’t I his patient, too?

His remark suggested something about his personal investment — or lack thereof — in those who, at least in my case, enter the hospital by way of the emergency room. Never mind that most of us are in worse shape than those a physician may regard as his “real patients.”

“You’ll be in very capable hands,” he assured me. “You’ll have the doctor who trained me.”

That was good enough for me.

***

The second endoscopy would become the most important step in reaching a diagnosis. I’ll come back to that in my next post. But the story of what happened to the imaging pack for the related camera endoscopy is an example of how a physician’s directives can go unheeded by those whose only job should be to follow them.

As required, I wore the imaging pack for the entire day. At 6:00 pm, I rang for the nurse.

“Can I help you?” came the response over the speaker.

“Yes,” I said. “The attending GI wanted the pack for my capsule endoscopy picked up at 5:30 pm. Can you make sure it gets picked up before everyone in the GI lab goes home?”

“I’ll check on it,” she replied.

At 6:30, I rang for the nurse again.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, can someone tell me why the camera endoscopy pack still hasn’t been picked up?”

“I’ll let your nurse know,” said the anonymous voice.

At 7:00 pm, a hospital transport worker arrived to take me via gurney for a CT scan. The attending GI physician who’d performed my second endoscopy that morning had ordered it after seeing an anomaly. His willingness to entertain the possibility that my case was atypical saved my life.

As I lay on the transport gurney, I asked the nurse what was happening with the camera pack.

“I paged the resident, who said he’d paged the GI resident on call, who said it was no big deal. They would probably pick up the pack tomorrow,” she said.

I was furious.

“Well, despite the views of the various on-call hospitalist and GI residents, the attending GI who ordered the camera endoscopy thought it was a very big deal. Here’s what I want you to do while I’m gone for my CT. Call the attending GI physician who ordered a prompt retrieval of the camera pack so processing of the images could begin. Tell him the pack is still sitting on my shelf and ask him how we get it where it’s supposed to be. Because I’ll tell you where it’s not supposed to be: in my room.”

“I’m not allowed to do that,” the nurse responded. “I have to call the resident on call and then he has to call the GI resident on call.”

As my wife and I headed for my CT scan, I was fuming.

“The CT will be on the same floor as the GI lab,” I suggested. “Maybe we can find someone down there who will pick up the damn pack. I’ll take it to them myself on a gurney, if I have to.”

Once on the CT floor, my wife made a beeline for the GI lab.

“Follow her,” I told the transport guy pushing my gurney down the hall as fast as he could. This is what black humor feels like when you actually experience it, I thought.

We sped behind her as she entered the GI lab and searched for someone who could help.

As I rolled into the empty GI lab on my gurney, a short, stocky, middle-aged woman stood with a mop next to her steel cleaning bucket.

“She can run around here all she wants,” the woman said as she shook her head in disbelief while my wife raced through the entire GI lab. “But ain’t nobody here. They all gone home.”

Indeed, they had.

After the scan, I returned to my room where the dreaded camera pack remained on my shelf. Meanwhile, the nurse to whom I’d barked out orders relating to the problem had benefited from a shift change — she was gone and her replacement was clueless about just about everything, so I gave up for the evening.

***

When I awoke at 7:00 am Tuesday morning, the pack was still there. In walked the only person who had provided anything remotely resembling continuity of care during my first two admissions: a third-year medical student.

“How was your evening?” he smiled.

“You see that camera pack?” I answered coldly. “The attending GI who ordered the camera endoscopy wanted it picked up at 5:30 pm yesterday. Your job is to find out why it’s still there.”

An hour later, he came back. “It looks like you might be going home today,” he said happily.

I pointed to the pack on the shelf.

“I’m sure they’ll pick up the pack soon,” he said.

“What does ‘soon’ mean?” I was fed up.

“I don’t know,” he said meekly. “The GI lab is very busy.”

“And I’m very much bleeding,” I replied.

An hour after that, I wandered into the hall and found the medical student.

“What’s the story on the pack?” I asked.

“I’m waiting to hear back from the GI Fellow,” he said. At that point, the phone rang. “That’s her calling now.”

He was right. I heard only his end of the call, which went like this:

“I’m very sorry to bother you…I know you’re very busy…We have an imaging pack from a camera endoscopy that hasn’t been picked up…Oh, yes…Sorry…Yes…Sorry to bother you….Thanks.”

I was watching the impact of the medical pecking order in action: Attending physicians were at the top, then came their Fellows, followed by residents and finally, interns. Medical students occupied a status somewhere below nurses. He hung up the phone. It was 10:00 am.

“She said they’d pick it up as soon as they could,” he explained. “But they have to be the ones who pick it up. No one else can deliver it to them. And then they’ll send it to wherever it gets processed.”

I glared at him.

“You know, they do these imaging studies on an outpatient basis,” I said slowly and calmly. “So how about if I just have my wife take it down there and tell them that this pack is from an inpatient.”

He seemed puzzled: “I don’t think you can do that. When you’re inpatient, they have to pick it up.”

“Just to warn you,” I said sternly, “I’m going to come out here every 30 minutes and harass you until someone picks up that pack and takes it where it’s supposed to go. I have family members here who will deliver it personally, but you’re telling me that’s not an option. Whatever else is happening here, you and the GI lab have violated the the directive that the attending GI issued when he ordered the camera endoscopy on Sunday. We’ve already lost an entire night because of someone’s ineptitude and bureaucratic absurdity. So every 30 minutes you’ll hear from me — until it’s no longer in my room.”

At 10:30 am, someone from the imaging processing department — not the GI lab — walked into my room and picked up the pack.

“Where are you taking the pack for processing?” I wondered. “The GI Lab?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “We do the processing in a special department across the street.”

Perfect. The GI Lab that apparently insisted on being in the middle of a retrieval process — and messing it up — had nothing to do with processing the pack to get the results.

***

The 17 hours from 5:30 pm Monday night to 10:30 am Tuesday morning may not sound like a long time, but when you have uncontrolled internal bleeding from unknown origins, every minute of delay translates into something real, namely, blood leaving my body. I wonder how some of the players in this vignette would have felt and acted if it was leaving theirs.

In the end, it boils down to three simple issues. One is the set of bureaucratic obstacles that interfere with the effective delivery of health care. Someone — anyone — could have delivered my pack in a timely manner. But for no good reason relating to patient needs, the bureaucratic structure did not allow it.

Second, a patient benefits greatly when a conscientious health care worker is willing to challenge such bureaucratic obstacles. My nurse who went off duty at 7:00 pm on Monday wasn’t one of those people — and it’s not fair to expect any of them to play the role of aggressor-advocate on behalf of a patient. But I had other nurses throughout my subsequent stay who had no reservations about rocking the boat. They didn’t care whose ire they incurred and their efforts made a positive difference in my experience.

The third point may be most important. There should be sufficient continuity of care so that a single attending physician becomes vested in a patient and remains an active participant in the diagnostic and treatment process. In theory, hospitalists are supposed to perform the “PCP-in-the-hospital” function. In my case, the reality is that they failed miserably in my first two admissions.

The attending GI who ordered the camera endoscopy understood the gravity of my condition, as well as the need for speedy action to deal with it. But he went off duty at midnight and I never saw him again.

PENETRATING THE HOSPITALIST WALL

Posted on March 3, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Two days into my second hospital admission in a week, the GI doctors were still pointing me in the direction of a second colonoscopy. At least, that’s what the internal medicine team — hospitalists, they’re often called — was telling me.

“Let me talk to the GI attending,” I told the gang of six as they made their morning rounds. The group included an intern, a resident, a hospitalist Fellow, the attending hospitalist, and two medical students.

Penetrating the hospitalist wall to communicate directly with the specialists who are actually making the key diagnostic and treatment decisions would become a daunting challenge. This was especially true on the “general medicine” floor where I spent my first two hospital stays.

“We’ll try to reach him,” said the team resident. “But don’t worry. We’re in consultation with his Fellow regularly about what should happen.”

“That’s not particularly reassuring,” I said. “I don’t know what’s being lost in translation between you and the GI Fellow and her attending physician.”

In the ER, the GI Fellow’s tunnel vision caused her conclude without any corroborating evidence that my problems required another colonoscopy. I’d encountered such personalities before: she was accustomed success, but rarely faced the kind of tough questioning that I’d posed. (My 30 years as a Kirkland & Ellis litigator had made me a pretty effective interrogator.) In fact, when she couldn’t answer in a consistent way that made sense, she was threatened and became defensive. She wasn’t going to change course. Oh, for the comfortable — and sorely misplaced — certainty of youth.

At that point, I took a page from a former client’s playbook. He was the best negotiator I’d ever met. When he didn’t like the way things were going, he walked away from the table.

“I don’t like this plan,” I said. “The last time I had a colonoscopy here, the preparation process to clear me out caused my hemoglobin to crash and required a blood transfusion. I’m not going to do that again. I’ll sign whatever releases you want me to sign. But I’m not doing it.”

I showed the young resident a printout of my blood levels during my previous admission.

“That drop in hemoglobin was probably a coincidence,” she ventured.

Her reaction was a vivid example of confirmation bias. Facts didn’t matter to her conclusion. “Coincidence” explained away anything at odds with what she wanted to see.

“Are you kidding?” I was incredulous and becoming angry. “When you have to rely on the concept of coincidence to explain away correlations that seem pretty obvious to anyone else, you need rethink what you’re doing.”

I wasn’t finished.

“Let me put it to you this way,” I said pointedly as I framed my closing argument. “Are you willing to bet two units of your own blood that my crash during the last colonoscopy prep was a coincidence? Because I’m not.”

“So here’s what I want you to do,” I continued. “Take a look at the stool sample I left in the bathroom this morning. It’s called a melena — a classic symptom of what usually is an upper GI bleed, not a lower one that a colonoscopy will find. I understand how the hospitalist system is structured. You have your turf to protect. Like most doctors, you think in protocols based on typical cases. I need you to think outside the boxes you’ve created for yourselves. You need to talk to the attending GI — not his Fellow or whoever your contact person is for the GI team on this particular shift. Tell him that I want to talk to him personally so he can come up with a new plan because I’m not having another colonoscopy. We ran the preparation process experiment on me once. I’m not repeating it. Period. Not negotiable.”

A few hours later, I’d heard nothing in response to my demands. I ventured into the hall and, fortuitously, encountered the attending GI physician and his Fellow — the same one who had decided on another colonoscopy when she saw me in the ER.

“I assume you’re on the way to see me soon?” I asked the GI attending.

“No,” he seemed puzzled.

“No one has talked to you about my problems with the current colonoscopy plan?” I wondered.

“No,” he said. “Why?

“Can you walk with me for a minute? I want to show you something.”

We returned to my room where I showed him the stool sample.

“Melena,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“So tell me how another colonoscopy will identify the source of that bleed?” I asked.

“I can’t,” he replied. “It’s an indicator of a probable upper GI bleed. It’s could also be the result of a lower GI bleed, but that’s less likely.”

I then showed him the time series printout of my blood draws — including the critical crash period during the colonoscopy prep that the hospitalist resident had dismissed as coincidence.

At that point, his Fellow walked in. I invited her to take a look at the stool sample I’d left in the bathroom. She refused. I invited her to look at the printout of blood results during my previous colonoscopy prep. She didn’t want to see that, either.

“I need to rethink this whole thing,” the attending GI physician continued. “This looks more like an upper GI bleeding problem.”

“Precisely,” I said. “Thank you.”

At last, I’d found a doctor willing to reconsider his own assumptions about what was happening to me. It took physical evidence — a bowel movement that I’d saved for hours and my printout of blood results associated with my prior admission — to persuade him. Without that hard evidence to show him, I think that my words would have continued to fall on deaf ears.

About 30 minutes later, the GI attending returned to my room — without his Fellow. He said that he’d canceled the colonoscopy, ordered another endoscopy because the first one might have missed something important (he said there were statistics on that), and wanted to see the results of a capsule endoscopy — a pill that transmitted images to a battery pack that I would wear for eight hours.

“We have to get this going,” he said. “I’ll schedule the endoscopy for the morning and have them place the capsule so that at 5:30 pm, someone can pick up the image pack. We should get those results by Tuesday.”

(Despite his desire for a prompt retrieval of the capsule endoscopy imaging pack, it didn’t get picked up as quickly as he wanted. We’ll come back to that not-so-funny comedy of errors in an upcoming post.)

“Thanks for being willing to reconsider your own conclusions,” I said. “Only a confident professional is willing to do that.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Not at all. It’s good that you acted as you did. And it’s good that you are so informed about your situation. It seems that you have become an expert in this area yourself.”

Whenever we get a new case, that’s what litigators do, I thought.

***

Hospitalists purport to function as a liaison between the patient and the specialists who are really calling the shots. In fact, if you ask the hospitalists whether some procedure will happen — in my case, a second colonoscopy — they’ll tell you that they defer to the specialists.

“Who, exactly, ordered another colonoscopy?” I asked.

“The GI team,” came the response.

“Give me a name,” I persisted.

“It’s a team that includes the GI Fellow who saw you in the ER,” the resident hospitalist replied. “The attending GI rotates. But they all have access to all of the notes that all of us leave in the computer.”

How reassuring — computer notes that someone may or may not read have become the primary conduits for continuity of care.

***

Years ago, primary care physicians (“PCPs”) actually visited patients in the hospital. It was part of the professional service that they rendered. Two doctors coined the term “hospitalist” in a 1996 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. In some respects, it’s a good idea that, all too often, has gone terribly bad.

According to one of the co-authors of the 1996 article, the hospitalist movement grew from a desire to move away from a procedure-oriented billing and revenue system to one that emphasized coordination of patient care. He described the key challenge to expanding the hospitalist program: “We recognized from the start that hospital support payments were crucial, and would hinge on hospitals’ perception of a positive return-on-investment.”

Lost in the search for this positive investment return is continuity and advocacy that a PCP is uniquely suited to provide on behalf of his or her patient. By 1996, maybe the PCP had already become a marginal player, but once upon a time, having hospital privileges meant something to a patient and his primary doctor. Among other things, it meant that the patient could expect his PCP to quarterback hospital care.

Today, the hospitalist embodies ways in which the core mission of modern medicine has become muddled, if not lost. All too often, they are an obstacle to direct doctor-patient interaction that is essential to effective care. Experts should be basing their decisions on accurate information that they receive directly from the patient, rather than from the medical system’s version of the “telephone game” whereby a patent’s initial reports to a young medical student or intern eventually make their way to the real doctors who matter.

With his or her PCP absent from the hospital picture, the patient alone must do what is necessary to get direct access periodically to the specialists who are making the most important decisions about diagnosis and treatment. That means piercing the hospitalist wall.

I didn’t go into the hospital expecting to fight with doctors. The system left me with no other option.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

Posted on February 25, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

After grounding me, my primary care physician (“PCP”) explained that my next trip anywhere would be to a hospital emergency room. I called my wife, Kit, to let her know what was happening and that I would be waiting near our front door where she should pick me up and drive to the ER. As she arrived, I received another call from my PCP, telling me that the sugar level in my blood was highly elevated, but he wasn’t sure how that related to my likely internal bleeding.

My wife knew the answer to that one. “Pancreas,” she said when I relayed the information to her in the car. It would be another two weeks before any doctor made the connection.

As I relate my story, I won’t name any individuals involved in my care. That’s because every medical person whom I encountered has been caring and conscientious. They are truly trying to help patients.

But the constraints within which those individuals operate — and the manner in which those constraints inhibit the delivery of patient care — are not unique. Rather, they are pervasive throughout America’s medical system. I know this, in part, because I’ve been researching that system. In many of the same ways that an undue emphasis on short-term metrics has become a central contributor to the legal profession’s most unfortunate trends (as I describe at length in The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis), similar short-termism infects the medical profession, too.

Stated simply, behavior follows incentive structures. If you sense problems with what happens as I make my way through the very top tier of our medical system at one of the finest facilities in the world, remember that those problems are endemic. That’s a good reason to consider them carefully.

My first hospital admission ever happened on January 28, 2015. Everyone assumed that I had a lower GI bleed. For that, you get a colonoscopy, locate the bleed, and cauterize it. In my case, they didn’t find any bleed. So they did an endoscopy, too. Again, no sign of a source of the bleeding.

All of that was okay. Often, tiny blood vessels in the bowel seal themselves. One other noteworthy item would become important later: during the preparation process for the colonoscopy — and there’s definitely no reason to go into details about that — my hemoglobin level (a proxy for the volume of blood in the body) dropped dramatically. I required an infusion of two units of blood.

Three nights after walking into the ER, I went home. Things returned to normal for a few days as I watched the Super Bowl in my living room. On the following Tuesday and Thursday, I taught my undergraduate course. But by the end of my Thursday class, I was noticeably fatigued, again.

By Saturday morning, I decided on another trip to the ER to check my blood levels. I contacted my PCP; he agreed. I also contacted the GI physician who had done my colonoscopy. His “Fellow” — a kind of junior specialist in her late 20s or early 30s — returned my call and said she’d meet me in the ER. Blood tests revealed that the GI bleed persisted.

Meanwhile, my PCP remained active in his efforts to monitor my situation. But the days of his involvement in my care were numbered. To be sure, specialists with expertise in diagnosing and treating problems like mine are vital. It’s appropriate for PCP’s to defer to them. But once you’re in the hospital, the PCP has little or no influence over what happens to you.

The resulting lack of continuity in medical care would become a central theme of my hospital experiences. Anyone who does not actively manage whatever doctors in a hospital want to do — and fails to make sure that the physicians at the top of the food chain are intimately involved in diagnostic and treatment decisions — risks poor outcomes.

The attending ER physician said my low blood levels required hospital admission. Later, the GI Fellow saw me in the ER. After asking questions about symptoms, she voiced her conclusion:

“We’ll give you another colonoscopy.”

Confirmation bias had clouded her judgment. She had locked into a particular version of what was happening to me. I watched her recharacterize my description of symptoms — which suggested an upper GI bleed — to fit her minds’s model of a lower GI bleed.

Aware that the colonoscopy preparation process had caused my blood levels to crash during my previous hospital stay, I was pretty sure that another such procedure would not solve my problems. But now was not the time or place to start that discussion. The GI Fellow would be unwilling to hear whatever I had to say on the subject anyway.

On a gurney, I returned to the same inpatient floor that I had left a week earlier. Except for a third-year medical student, there would be no continuity in my care there.

WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG…

Posted on February 20, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Men make plans; God laughs.

This post isn’t about law schools, big law firms, or even the legal profession. Rather, it begins a new series that will end — well, I’m not sure when it will end — but I have a pretty good idea how it will end. A few days ago, I received an unfortunate diagnosis: pancreatic cancer.

For my entire life, I’ve been a healthy person. Never overweight (5’6″, 140-145 lbs.); never smoked; one or two glasses of wine per week; annual physical exams; regular exercise regimen for the past 20 years. The diagnosis is the culmination of a startling turn of events that began shortly after my January 24 keynote address at the DuPage County Bar Association’s Annual Mega-Meeting. The following day, I was still tired. Ten minutes into my usual 30-minute workout on my elliptical trainer, I was totally out of gas. For the remainder of the day, I rested.

On Monday, I felt better as I prepared for my Tuesday morning undergraduate course – “American Lawyers – Demystifying the Profession” – at Northwestern University’s undergraduate campus in Evanston. The next day, I made it through the 90-minute session, but fatigue persisted.

By Wednesday morning, I felt bad enough to contact my doctor (“primary care physician” or “PCP”. We’ll be taking a deeper look into medical system as I proceed, so defined terms will become important). I told him that I had a major appearance scheduled for Friday in San Francisco. After describing my symptoms (including bowel movements that were, shall we say, indicative of a potential problem), he suggested blood tests.

I drove to downtown Chicago and began the half-mile walk from the Millennium Park garage to his office. One block into the trek, I knew I was in trouble — light-headed, weak, unsteady. (If I had disclosed my condition to my wife, she would have driven me. But I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy.) I made it to the doctor’s waiting room, provided enough blood to perform complete tests, and then, after sitting for several minutes back in the lobby as I regained strength, walked back to my car.

Once home, I packed for San Francisco. My wife and I were looking forward to the brief trip involving my USF symposium appearance and a visit with our daughter living in the Bay Area.

At 4:30 pm on Wednesday, January 28, the phone rang. At the other end of the line was my doctor.

“You have to cancel your trip,” he said. “The only place you’re going is to the emergency room. I just received your blood tests.”

My life would never be the same.

ASIA: ONE FIRM GOES BIG WHILE ANOTHER GOES HOME

Posted on February 4, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

The contrasting headlines are striking. Two days after Fried Frank announced that it was pulling out of Asia, Dentons revealed that its partners had voted to jump in — big time. A week later, a ceremony that looked like a treaty-signing marked the combination of Dentons with Asia’s largest law firm, Dacheng Law Offices. The result is now a 6,600-lawyer behemoth.

A Big Bet

Dacheng and Dentons share some things in common. Both firms are themselves products of rapid inorganic growth. Dacheng was founded in 1992. Its website now boasts more than 4,000 lawyers worldwide.

Dentons resulted from transactions that combined four law firms — Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, Denton Wilde Sapte (UK), Salans (France), and Fraser Milner Casgrain (Canada) — into an organizational form known as a Swiss verein. Each firm maintains its own profit pool but shares strategy, branding, IT and other core functions. According to its website at the time of the Dacheng deal, 2,600 lawyers carried the “Dentons” brand.

But a brand is not a business, and any brand is only as good as its underlying product. Law firms have a single product to sell: the talent of their personnel. The most important challenge that comes with inorganic growth is maintaining consistent quality. In that regard and perhaps more than any other business, law firms have precious little margin for error.

In responding to anticipated questions on that subject, Dentons global CEO Elliott Portnoy framed the issue, but never really responded to it: “We know our competition will suggest that this dilutes profitability and will raise questions about quality control. But the simple truth is that we’re going to be able to generate more revenue, increase our profitability and position ourselves as a truly multicultural firm.”

The Big Question

Apart from failing to address the quality question, sound bites about multiculturalism don’t answer a central question: What will the culture of the combined organization become?

The practical differences between Dentons and Dacheng are enormous. According to The American Lawyer, average revenue per Dacheng lawyer is $78,000. In the October 2014 America Lawyer Global 100 listing, Dentons’ RPL was $505,000. Even with separate revenue and profits pools, integrating these two giants will still be something to behold.

For example, the leadership structure of the new entity reads like the fine print on securities filing. The American Lawyer reports:

“The combined firm will also have a Chinese chair, and none of the five vereins will have a majority of board seats. Any single verein can also block a policy it doesn’t agree with. In the combined firm, the global board will be increased from 15 to 19, with five seats for the Chinese verein and the same number for the U.S. verein. Andrew says the future number of Chinese seats will be adjusted according to the verein’s revenue growth. The chair of the global board, which includes all five vereins, will be Peng; Portnoy will remain the firm’s global CEO, and Andrew will continue to be the firm’s outward face as global chair of the combined firm.”

The Big Risk

The principal question that any leader embarking on a merger of equals should ask is: What happens if it fails? Among other things, leadership requires risk management. Anticipating worst-case scenarios might lead to decisions that outsiders view as too conservative. But the downside consequence of failing to consider those scenarios can be fatal. Just ask the former partners of Dewey & LeBoeuf.

In that respect, the nearly simultaneous decision of Fried Frank to exit Asia after a nearly decade-long effort to gain traction there is interesting. That firm’s China entry began in 2006 with lateral hires from Hong Kong. A year later, it opened an office in Shanghai. But it began deliberating the fate of its Asia presence in 2009 before reaching its recent decision to leave.

According to firm chairman David Greenwald “discipline and good business judgment” led the firm to close its China offices. He deserves credit for a tough decision and forceful action. Calling the time of death on any failed effort is never easy.

In commenting to the American Lawyer about Fried Frank’s departure, law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser said, ““Nobody wants to admit defeat, but Fried Frank might be the canary in the mineshaft. China has always been a hard market, and with the local firms getting much stronger and starting to capture the lion’s share, it’s not getting any easier. Some firms will view it as a necessary investment for the future, but for others, it’s just not worth it.”

Different Approaches; Different Outcomes?

Published reports suggest that Fried Frank initially went into China hoping to capitalize on its existing relationships with U.S. clients — including Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Dentons appears to have a dramatically different strategy: joining forces with the largest of the China-based firms that Zeughauser identified as getting stronger.

Whatever else happens, the leaders of Dacheng-Dentons can say that they once presided over the largest ever lawyer branding experiment. Especially for Dentons, it involves a big bet. For the sake of everyone involved, let’s hope it’s on the right horse.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

Posted on January 22, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2015, 8:30 am to 9:30 am
DuPage County Bar Ass’n Mega Meeting
Keynote address
Sheraton Lisle
3000 Warrenville Road
Lisle, IL

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2015 (12:30 pm)
University of San Francisco School of Law
Law Review Symposium
2130 Fullerton St.
San Francisco, CA

2015: THE YEAR THAT THE LAW SCHOOL CRISIS ENDED (OR NOT) — CONCLUSION

Posted on January 21, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

My prior two installments in this series predicted that in 2015 many deans and law professors would declare the crisis in legal education over. In particular, two changes that have nothing to do with the actual demand for lawyers — one from the ABA and one from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — could fuel false optimism about the job environment for new law graduates.

Realistic projections about the future should start with a clear-eyed vision of the present. To assist in that endeavor, the Georgetown Law Center for the Study of the Legal Profession and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor recently released their always useful annual “Report on the State of the Legal Market.”

The Importance of the Report

The Report does not reach every segment of the profession. For example, government lawyers, legal aid societies, in-house legal staffs, and sole practitioners are among several groups that the Georgetown/Peer Monitor survey does not include. But it samples a sufficiently broad range of firms to capture important overall trends. In particular, it compiles results from 149 law firms, including 51 from the Am Law 100, 46 from the Am Law 2nd 100, and 52 others. It includes Big Law, but it also includes a slice of not-so-big law.

The principal audience for the Georgetown/Peer Monitor Report is law firm leaders. The Report’s advice is sound and, to my regular readers, familiar. Rethink business models away from reliance on internally destructive short-term metrics (billable hours, fee growth, leverage). Focus on the client’s return on investment rather than the law firm’s. Don’t expect a reprise of equity partner profit increases that occurred from 2004 through 2007 (cumulative rate of 25.6 percent). Beware of disrupters threatening the market power that many firms have enjoyed over some legal services.

For years, law firm leaders have heard these and similar cautions. For years, most leaders have been ignoring them. For example, last year at this time, the Georgetown/Peer Monitor Report urged law firm leaders to shun a “growth for growth’s sake” strategy. Given the frenzy of big firm merger and lateral partner acquisition activity that dominated 2014, that message fell on deaf ears.

The Demand for Lawyers

The 2015 Report’s analysis of business demand for law firm services is relevant to any new law graduate seeking to enter that job market. Some law schools might prefer the magical thought that aggregate population studies (or dubious changes in BLS methodology projecting future lawyer employment) should assure all graduates from all law schools of a rewarding JD-required career. But that’s a big mistake for the schools and their students.

For legal jobs that are still the most difficult to obtain — employment in law firms — the news is sobering. While demand growth for the year ending in November 2014 was “a clear improvement over last year (when demand growth was negative), it does not represent a significant improvement in the overall pattern for the past five years.”

In other words, the economy has recovered, but the law firm job market remains challenging. “Indeed,” the Report continues, “since the collapse in demand in 2009 (when growth hit a negative 5.1 percent level), demand growth in the market has remained essentially flat to slightly negative.”

Past As Prologue?

The Report notes that business spending on legal services from 2004 to 2014 grew from about $159.4 billion to $168.7 billion — “a modest improvement over a ten-year period. But if expressed in inflation-adjusted dollars, the same spending fell from $159.4 to $118.3 billion, a precipitous drop of 25.8 percent.”

What does that mean for future law graduates? The Report resists taking sides in the ongoing debate over whether the demand for law firm services generally will rebound to anything approaching pre-recession levels. It doesn’t have to because, the Report concludes, “it is increasingly clear that the buying habits of business clients have shifted in a couple of significant ways that have adversely impacted the demand for law firm services.”

One of the two shifts that the Report identifies doesn’t necessarily mean less employment for lawyers generally. Specifically, companies are moving work from outside counsel to in-house legal staffs. That should not produce a net reduction in lawyer jobs, unless in-house lawyers become more productive than their outside law firm counterparts.

The second trend is bad news for law graduates: “[T]here has also been a clear — though still somewhat modest — shift of work by business clients to non-law firm vendors.” In 2012, non-law firm vendors accounted for 3.9 percent of legal department budgets; it grew to 7.1 percent in 2014.

Beware of Optimistic Projections

The Georgetown/Peer Monitor Report is a reminder that the recent past can provide important clues about what lies ahead. For lawyers seeking to work in firms serving corporate clients, it sure doesn’t look like a lawyer shortage is imminent.

So what will be the real-life source of added demand sufficient to create market equilibrium, much less a true lawyer shortage? Anyone predicting such a surge has an obligation to answer that question. As the Report suggests, general claims about population growth or the “ebb and flow” of the business cycle won’t cut it. Along with the rest of the economy, the profession has suffered through the 2008-2009 “ebb.” The economy has returned to “flow” — but the overall demand for lawyers hasn’t.

Here are two more suggestions for those predicting a big upswing from recent trends in the demand for attorneys. Limit yourselves to the segment of the population that can actually afford to hire a lawyer and is likely to do so. Then take a close look at individual law school employment results to identify the graduates whom clients actually want to hire.

2015: THE YEAR THAT THE LAW SCHOOL CRISIS ENDED (OR NOT) — PART II

Posted on January 14, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Part I of this series addressed the ABA rule change that will allow 2014 law graduates until March 15 — an extra month from prior years — to find jobs before their schools have to report those graduates’ employment results to the ABA (and U.S. News). That change will almost certainly produce higher overall employment rates. But relying on any alleged trend that results solely from an underlying change in the rules of the game — such as extending the reporting period from nine months to ten — would be a mistake.

This post considers a second rule change. It comes from the U.S. Department of Labor, and it’s a whopper.

The Government Makes Things Worse

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently adopted a new statistical methodology for projecting the nation’s legal employment needs. Just about everyone agrees that, by any measure and for many years, the economy has been producing far more new lawyers than JD-required jobs. But the new BLS methodology declares that any oversupply of attorneys has evaporated. In fact, applying the new methodology retroactively to previous years would lead to the conclusion that the obvious glut of new lawyers never existed at all!

Using its earlier methodology, the Bureau has been revising downward its predictions of new lawyer jobs. In 2008, it projected a net additional 98,500 legal jobs through 2018. In 2012, it dropped that number to 73,600 through 2022. Taking into account retirements, deaths, and other attrition, the BLS separately projected that the profession could absorb about 20,000 new graduates annually for the next ten years. Most knowledgeable observers of the changing market for new lawyers have concurred with that ballpark assessment. Unfortunately, schools have been producing about twice that number (40,000).

Remarkably, the BLS’s new approach more than doubles the number of anticipated new legal jobs over the next 10 years. Rather than annual absorption of about 20,000 new lawyers through 2022, the Bureau now projects room for more than 41,000 a year. Overnight, demand caught up with what had been a chronic oversupply of attorneys.

In Defiance Of Sound Statistical Analysis And Common Sense

There are numerous technical and analytical flaws in the BLS’s new methodology. (See, e.g., Matt Leichter’s recent post, “2016 Grads Shouldn’t Take Comfort in New Jobs Projection Approach.”) Beyond those are common sense tests that the new methodology fails. For example, since 2011 the ABA-required data have revealed a persistent FTLT JD-required employment rate of 55 percent for new graduates. That’s not far from the projections that the BLS’s old methodology produced for a long time.

The BLS’s new approach amounts to saying that, somehow, all of those unemployed graduates must have been finding law jobs after all. As the old joke goes, endless digging in a roomful of manure was worth the effort; there was indeed a pony to be found – with the help of a little regression analysis.

Another common sense test considers actual employment numbers. For example, legal sector employment (including non-lawyers) through December 2014 was 1.133 million — about the same as a year ago and down more than 40,000 from 2006. Although the economy generally has recovered from the Great Recession, total employment in the legal sector is still far below pre-recession levels. If the BLS’s proposed approach were valid, it would suggest a remarkable attrition rate, raise serious questions about the state of the profession, and cause many prelaw students to wonder whether law school was the right choice.

The Bad Beat Goes On

Meanwhile, weak law schools that will benefit most from the ABA and BLS changes remain unaccountable for their graduates’ poor employment outcomes as they lower admission standards to fill classrooms. Median law school debt at graduation currently exceeds $120,000, and some of the schools with the worst employment outcomes burden students with the highest levels of debt. But there’s no financial risk to those schools because the federal government backs the loans and they’re not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

The escape hatch is small. If income-based repayment programs survive austerity demands of the Republican-controlled Congress – a big if – then students who persevere through 20 years of IBR will get a large tax bill because forgiven debt will count as income to them in the year it’s forgiven. The shortfall between the amount IBR students actually pay and the amount they owe will come from the federal purse.

Voila! The Crisis Is Over

Sometime in 2015, the synergy between the new ABA-rules allowing law schools to report 10-month employment data (discussed in Part I of this series) and the new BLS methodology projecting 41,000 new lawyer jobs annually will produce a law school chorus declaring that the crisis in legal education is over, at least in a macroeconomic sense. Indeed, the hype has already begun. Discussing the new BLS approach, Loyola University – Los Angeles School of Law professor Ted Seto observed: “If the new BLS projections are accurate, we should see demand and supply in relative equilibrium in 2015 and a significant excess of demand over supply beginning in 2016.”

The operative word is “if.” As noted in Part I, Seto’s similarly conditional prediction in 2013 didn’t come to pass. Meanwhile, only about half of his school’s 2013 graduating class secured full-time long-term JD-required employment within nine months of receiving their degrees. Average law school debt for the 82 percent of Loyola-LA law graduates who incurred debt was $141,765 — placing it 22nd (of 183) among schools whose students graduate with the most law school debt.

Here’s the real kicker. The vast disparity in individual law school employment outcomes makes broad macroeconomic declarations about opportunities for law graduates disingenuous anyway. It’s no surprise that the loudest voices come from schools where many graduates have great difficulty find any JD-required job.

But even at the macro level, anyone concerned about the fate of marginal law students, exploding student debt, or the future of a noble profession should look beyond any distracting noise about the supposed end of the legal education crisis. At least for now, the real question should be whether anything has really changed — other than the rules of the game.

2015: THE YEAR THAT THE LAW SCHOOL CRISIS ENDED (OR NOT) — PART I

Posted on January 7, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Remember that you read it here first: In 2015, many law school deans and professors will declare that the law school crisis is over. After five years of handwringing, relatively minor curriculum changes at most schools, and no improvement whatsoever in the mechanism for funding legal education, the storm has passed. All is well. What a relief.

The building blocks for this house of cards start with first-year law school enrollment that is now below 38,000 – a level not seen since the mid-1970s when there were 53 fewer law schools. The recent drop in the absolute number of future attorneys seems impressive, but without the context of the demand for lawyers, it’s meaningless in assessing proximity to market equilibrium, which remains far away.

The Search for Demand

To boost the projected demand side of the equation, the rhetoric of illusory equilibrium often turns to the “degrees-awarded-per-capita” argument that Professor Ted Seto of Loyola Law School – Los Angeles floated in June 2013. His premise: “Demand for legal services…probably increases as population increases.”

“Unless something truly extraordinary has happened to non-cyclical demand,” Seto continued, “a degrees-awarded-per-capita analysis suggests that beginning in fall 2015 and intensifying into 2016 employers are likely to experience an undersupply of law grads, provided that the economic recovery continues.”

If only wishing could make it so. The economic recovery did, indeed, continue, but the hoped for increase in attorney demand was nowhere to be found. When Seto posted his analysis, total legal services employment (including non-lawyers) at the end of May 2013 was 1,133,800. At the end of November 2014, it was 1,133,700.

Follow That Dream

Professor Rene Reich-Graefe of Western New England University School of Law relied on a similar per capita approach (among other dubious arguments) to assert that today’s students are about to enter “the most robust legal market that ever existed in this country.” His students sure hope he’s right. Only 49 out of 133 members of the Western New England Law class of 2013 — 37 percent — obtained full-time long-term JD-required jobs within nine months of graduation.

It’s easy to hypothesize that population growth should increase the demand for everything, including attorneys. But it’s more precise to say that population growth is relevant to the demand for attorneys only insofar as such growth occurs among those who can actually afford a lawyer. (The degrees-per-capita argument also ignores the profound ways that technological change has reduced the demand for lawyers across many segments of the profession.)

The ABA and the U. S. Department of Labor’s Bureau Labor Statistics have added two new factors that will feed false optimism in 2015. This post considers the ABA’s unfortunate action. Part II will cover the BLS’s contribution to continuing confusion.

The ABA Misfires Again

Since it began requiring law schools to report detailed employment outcomes for their most recent graduates, the overall full-time long-term JD-required employment rate has hovered around 55 percent (excluding law school-funded jobs). For a long time, the cutoff date for schools to report their most recent graduates’ employment status to the ABA (and U.S. News) has been February 15 following the year of graduation.

Starting with the class of 2014, law schools will get an additional month during which their graduates can try to find jobs before schools have to report class-wide employment results. When the employment status cutoff date moves from February 15 to March 15, the reported FTLT JD-required employment rate will go up. Comparisons with prior year outcomes (nine months after graduation) will be disingenuous, but law deans and professors touting an upswing in the legal job market will make them. Market equilibrium, they will proclaim, has made its way to legal education.

The stated reason for the ABA change was that the February 15 cutoff had an unfair impact on schools whose graduates took the bar exam in states reporting results late in the fall, especially New York and California. Schools in those states, the argument went, suffered lower employment rates solely because their graduates couldn’t secure jobs until they had passed the bar. Another month would help their job numbers.

In July 2013, Professor Deborah Merritt offered powerful objections to the ABA’s proposed change: The evidence does not support the principal reason for the change; moving the cutoff date would impair the ability to make yearly comparisons at a time when the profession is undergoing dramatic transformation; prospective students would not have the most recent employment information as they decide where to send their tuition deposits in April; the change would further diminish public trust in law schools and the ABA. The new March 15 cutoff passed by a 10-to-9 vote.

Watch For Obfuscation

In a few months when the new 10-month employment figures for the class of 2014 show “improvement” over the prior year’s nine-month results, think apples-to-oranges as you contemplate whose interests the ABA is really serving. Consider, too, whether any macroeconomic projections of attorney demand are even probative when there is a huge variation in employment opportunities across law schools.

At 33 law schools (including Western New England School of Law), fewer than 40 percent of 2013 graduates found full-time long-term employment requiring a JD. At most of those schools, the vast majority of students incurred staggering six-figure debt for their degrees. (At Western New England, it was $120,677 for the class of 2013.)

In the some corners of the profession, federal student loan dollars are subsidizing an ugly business.

THE BINGHAM CASE STUDY: PART II

Posted on December 10, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Starting with the introduction, Harvard Law Professor Ashish Nanda’s case study on Bingham McCutchen depicts Jay Zimmerman as the architect of the firm’s evolution “from a ‘middle-of-the-road-downtown-pack’ Boston law firm in the early 1990s to a preeminent international law firm by 2010”:

“Zimmerman was elected chairman in 1994. Over the next 15 years, he shepherded the firm through 10 mergers, or ‘combinations’ in the Bingham lexicon, the establishment of 11 new offices, and a ten-fold increase in the firm’s revenues to $800 million… Given its impressive expansion, [journalist Jeffrey] Klineman said, ‘Bingham McCutchen has shown it could probably open an office on the moon.'” (p. 1)

Harvard published the study in September 2011.

Another Case Study

Ten months later, Nanda released another case study, “The Demise of Howrey” — a firm that was dying as he considered Bingham. Interestingly, several footnotes in the Howrey study refer to articles explaining how aggressive inorganic growth compromised that firm’s cohesiveness and hastened its collapse. (E.g., “Howrey’s Lessons” by me, ““Why Howrey Law Firm Could Not Hold It Together”, by the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein, and “The Fall of Howrey,” by the American Lawyer’s Julie Triedman) But Nanda’s 15-page narrative of Howrey barely mentions that topic.

Instead, he invites consideration of “the alternative paths Howrey, and managing partner Robert Ruyak, might have taken to avoid dissolution of the firm” after that growth had occurred. The abstract concludes with these suggested discussion points:

“What could Howrey have done differently as clients demanded contingency payment plans and deep discounts? Should Ruyak have been more transparent about the financial difficulties the firm faced? Should he have consulted with a group of senior partners instead of relying on the counsel of outside consultants? Is a litigation-focused firm at a disadvantage when it comes to leadership, as compared to a corporate practice? Participants will reflect on the leadership structure of Howrey while discussing issues related to crisis management.”

With all due respect, those inquiries don’t reach a key lesson of Howrey’s (and now Bingham’s) collapse. The following sentence in the study does, but it goes unexplored:

“Howrey continued to add laterals over the concerns of some partners that increased lateral expansion might detract from the firm’s strategic focus and weaken its cultural glue.” (p. 6)

The Metrics Trap

Nanda’s case studies report that at Howrey. as at Bingham, a few key metrics suggested short-term success: revenues soared, equity partner profits increased, and Am Law rankings went up. But beneath those superficially appealing trends was a long-term danger that such metrics didn’t capture: institutional instability. When Howrey’s projected average partner profits dipped to $850,000 in 2009, many ran for the exits and the death spiral accelerated.

Likewise, Bingham’s record high equity partner profits in 2012 of $1.7 million dropped by 13 percent — far less than Howrey’s 2009 decline of 35 percent — to $1.5 million in 2013. But a steady stream of partner departures led to destabilization and a speedy end.

Balancing the Presentation

According to the final sentence of the Bingham case study abstract, “The case allows participants to explore the positives and negatives of following a strategy of inorganic growth in professional service firms….”

The negatives now dwarf the positives. No one should fault Nanda for failing to predict Bingham’s collapse two years later. The most spectacular law firm failures have come as surprises, even to many insiders at such firms. But the Bingham study emphasizes how Zimmerman conquered the challenges of an aggressive growth strategy, with little consideration to whether the overall strategy itself was wise over the long run.

For example:

— The study notes that after Bingham’s 2002 merger with 300-attorney McCutchen Doyle, “Cultural differences…loomed over the combined organization….” But the study goes on to observe, “[T]hese issues did not slow the firm’s growth on the West Coast.” (p. 11) By 2006, “Bingham had achieved remarkable success and unprecedented growth.” (p. 14)

— The study reports that the firm’s American Lawyer associate satisfaction ranking improved from 107 in 2007 to 79 in 2008, which Bingham’s chief human resources officer attributed to “an appreciation for the leadership of the firm. People have confidence in Jay’s competence.” (p. 17). The study doesn’t mention that the firm’s associate satisfaction ranking dropped to 100 in 2009 and to 106 (out of 137) in 2010. (American Lawyer, Sept. 2010, p. 78)

— “Our management committee has people from all over,” the study quotes Zimmerman. “You don’t have to have been at Bingham Dana forever to lead at the firm.” (p. 15) But the study doesn’t consider how too many laterals parachuting into the top of a firm can produce a concentration of power and a problematic distribution of partner compensation. When Bingham began to unravel, the spread between its highest and lowest paid partners was 12:1.

— Bingham’s final acquisition — McKee Nelson — was the largest law firm combination of 2009. The study doesn’t discuss the destructive impact of accompanying multi-year compensation guarantees that put some McKee Nelson partners at the very top of the Bingham McCutchen pay scale. To be fair, Nanda probably didn’t know about the guarantees, but the omission reveals the limitations of his investigation. The guarantees came to light publicly when the American Lawyer spoke recently with former partners who said that “the size and scope of the McKee Nelson guarantees led to internal fissures…that caused at least some partners to leave the firm.”

No Regrets

Looking to the future, Zimmerman told the Harvard researchers, “[W]e’re competing with the best every day. We know we are among the best.” (p. 19)

I wonder if he would now offer the same self-assessment of his leadership that Robert Ruyak provided to the American Lawyer at the time of Howrey’s bankruptcy, namely, “I don’t have any regrets.” Nanda’s case study on Howrey’s demise concludes with “Ruyak’s Reflections.” The “no regrets” line could lead to interesting classroom discussions about accepting responsibility, but it doesn’t appear in the Howrey study. Ruyak’s explanations for the firm’s failure do.

One explanation that receives no serious attention in the case study is Ruyak’s observation that the partnership lacked patience and loyalty to the firm: “The longer-term Howrey people realized that our profitability jumped around a bit,” he said. “The people who were laterals, maybe, did not.” (p. 15)

Perhaps the potential for institutional instability that can accompany aggressive inorganic law firm growth receives greater emphasis in classroom discussions of Howrey and Bingham than it does in Nanda’s written materials. In that respect, both firms are case studies in management failure that is regrettably pervasive: a wrongheaded vision of success and a reliance on misguided metrics by which to measure it.

THE BINGHAM CASE STUDY — PART I

Posted on December 3, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

“For the first time since I’ve been in this job, we have all the pieces we need to do our job.”

That was former Bingham McCutchen chairman Jay Zimmerman’s penultimate line in the September 2011 Harvard Law School Case Study of his firm.

Oops.

Harvard Law School Professor Ashish Nanda and a research fellow developed the study for classroom use. According to the abstract, it’s a textbook example of successful management. It demonstrates how a firm could evolve “from a ‘middle-of-the-downtown pack’ Boston law firm in the early 1990s to a preeminent international law firm by 2010.”

Oops, again.

Familiar Plaudits

At the time of Nanda’s study, the profession had already witnessed a string of recent big firm failures. He should have taken a closer look at them. In fact, only seven months before publication of the Harvard Study, Howrey LLP was in the highly publicized death throes of what was a preview Bingham’s unfortunate fate.

Bingham’s Zimmerman and Howrey’s last chairman, Robert Ruyak, had several things in common, including accolades for their leadership. Just as Nanda highlighted Zimmerman’s tenure in his study, two years before Howrey’s collapse, Legal Times honored Ruyak as one of the profession’s Visionaries. Along similar lines, less than a month after publication of the Harvard study, Dewey & LeBeouf’s unraveling began as partners learned in October 2011 that the firm was not meeting its revenue projections for the year. But Dewey chairman Steven Davis continued to receive leadership awards.

Perhaps such public acclaim for a senior partner is the big firm equivalent of the Sports Illustrated curse. Being on the cover of that magazine seems to assure disaster down the road. (According to one analyst, the SI curse isn’t the worst in sports history. That distinction belongs to the Chicago Cubs and the Billy Goat hex. But hey, anyone can have a bad century.)

Underlying Behavior

The Lawyer Bubble investigates Howrey, Dewey, and other recent failures of large law firms. The purpose is not to identify what distinguishes them from each other, but to expose common themes that contributed to their demise. With the next printing of the book, I’m going to add an afterword that includes Bingham.

If Nanda had considered those larger themes, he might have viewed Bingham’s evolution much differently from the conclusions set forth in his study. He certainly would have backed away from what he thought was the key development proving Bingham’s success, namely, aggressive growth through law firm mergers and lateral hiring. He might even have considered that such a strategy could contribute to Bingham’s subsequent failure — which it did.

To find those recent precedents, he need not have looked very far. Similar trends undermined Howrey, Dewey, and others dating back to Finley Kumble in 1988. As a profession, we don’t seem to learn much from our mistakes.

The MBA Mentality Strikes Again

What caused Professor Nanda to line up with those who had missed the fault lines that had undone similar firms embracing the “bigger is always better” approach? One answer could be that he’s not a lawyer.

Nanda has a Ph.D in economics from Harvard Business School, where he taught for 13 years before becoming a professor of practice, faculty director of executive education, and research director at the program on the legal profession at Harvard Law School. Before getting his doctorate, he spent five years at the Tata group of companies as an administrative services officer. He co-authored a case book on “Professional Services” and advises law firms and corporate inside counsel.

It’s obvious that Nanda is intelligent. But it seems equally clear that his business orientation focused him on the enticing short-term metrics that have become ubiquitous measures of success. They can also be traps for the unwary.

In Part II of this series, I’ll review some of those traps. Nanda fell into them. As a consequence, he missed clues that should have led him to pause before joining the Bingham cheerleading squad.

Meanwhile, through December 6, Amazon is offering a special deal on my novel, The Partnership: It’s FREE as an ebook download. I’m currently negotiating a sale of the film rights to the book.

SPECIAL SALE

Posted on December 2, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Through Saturday, December 6, you can download my novel, The Partnership — FREE on Amazon.

The timing is fortuitous: I’m currently in negotiations for sale of the film rights to the book.

LAW & FOOTBALL: RANKINGS DOUBLETHINK

Posted on November 19, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

For many people, the holiday season means an intense focus on college football. This year, a 12-person committee develops weekly team rankings. They will culminate in playoffs that produce head-to-head competition for the national championship in January.

A recent comment from the chairman of that committee, Jeff Long, is reminiscent of something U.S. News rankings czar Robert Morse said about his ranking system last year. Both remarks reveal how those responsible for rankings methodology rationalize distance between themselves and the behavior they incentivize.

Nobody Wants Credit?

Explaining why undefeated Florida State dropped from second to third in the November 11 rankings, Long told ESPN that making distinctions among the top teams was difficult. He explained that the relevant factors include a team’s “body of work, their strength of schedule.” Teams that defeat other strong teams get a higher rank than those beating weaker opponents. So even though Oregon has suffered a loss this year, its three victories against top-25 opponents jumped it ahead of undefeated FSU, which had only two such wins. Long repeated his explanation on November 19: “Strength of schedule is an important factor….”

Whether Oregon should be ahead of FSU isn’t the point. Long’s response to a follow-up question on November 11 is the eye-catcher: Was the committee sending a message to teams that they should schedule games against tougher opponents?

“We don’t think it’s our job to send messages,” he said. “We believe the rankings will do that.”

But who develops the criteria underlying the rankings? Long’s committee. The logic circle is complete.

Agency Moment Lost: Students

In his November 14 column for the New York Times, David Brooks writes more broadly about “The Agency Moment.” It occurs when an individual accepts complete responsibility for his or her decisions. Some people never experience it.

Rankings can provide opportunities for agency moments. For example, some prelaw students avoid serious inquiry into an important question: which law school might be the best fit for their individual circumstances? Instead, I’ve heard undergraduates say they’ll attend the best law school that accepts them, and U.S. News rankings will make that determination.

If they were talking about choosing from law schools in different groups, that would make some sense. There’s a reason that Harvard doesn’t lose students to Boston University. But too many students take the rankings too far. If the choice is between school number 22 and the one ranked number 23, they’re picking number 22, period. That’s idiotic.

In abandoning independent judgment, such students (and their parents) cede one of life’s most important decisions to Robert Morse, the non-lawyer master of the rankings methodology. It’s also an agency moment lost.

Agency Moment Lost: Deans, Administrators, and Alumni

Likewise, deans who let U.S. News dictate their management decisions say they’re just responding to incentives. As long as university administrators, alumni, and prospective students view the rankings as meaningful, they have to act accordingly. Any complaint — and there are many — should go to the person who develops the rankings methodology.

All roads of responsibility lead back to U.S. News’ Robert Morse, they say. But following that trail leads to another lost agency moment. In March 2013, Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg asked Morse if he took any responsibility for what’s ailing legal education today:

“No…U.S. News isn’t the ABA. U.S. News doesn’t regulate the reporting requirements. No….”

Agency Moment Lost: Methodology Masters

Morse went on to say that U.S. News was not responsible for the cost of law school, either. Pacchia didn’t ask him why the methodology rewards a school that increases expenditures without regard to the beneficial impact on student experiences or employment outcomes. Or how schools game the system by aggressively recruiting transfer students whose tuition adds revenue at minimal cost and whose lower LSAT scores don’t count in the school’s ranking methodology. (Vivia Chen recently reported on the dramatic increase in incoming transfer students at some schools.)

Cassius was only half-right. The fault lies not in our stars; but it doesn’t lie anywhere else, either!

The many ways that U.S. News rankings methodology has distorted law school deans’ decision-making is the subject of Part I of my book, The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis. Part II investigates the analogous behavior of law firm leaders who rely on metrics that maximize short-term Am Law rankings in running their businesses (e.g., billings, billable hours, hourly rates, and leverage ratios).

Aggregate Rankings v. Individual Outcomes

In the end, “sending a message” through a rankings methodology is only one part of an agency equation. The message itself doesn’t require the recipient to engage in any particular behavior. That’s still a choice, although incentive structures can limit perceived options and create first-mover dilemmas.

Importantly, individual outcomes don’t always conform to rankings-based predictions. Successful participants still have to play — and win — each game. That doesn’t always happen. Just ask Mississippi State — ranked number one in the college football playoff sweepstakes after week 12, but then losing to Alabama on November 15. Or even better, look at number 18 ranked Notre Dame, losing on the same day to unranked Northwestern.

Maybe that’s the real lesson for college coaches, prelaw students, law school deans, and law firm leaders. Rather than rely on rankings and pander to the methodology behind them, focus on winning the game.

INFILAW AND THE ABA

Posted on November 12, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

After a setback last summer, Inflilaw has flown under the radar in its quest to acquire the Charleston School of Law. Since July 2013, the private equity owners of Infilaw — a consortium of three for-profit law schools (Florida Coastal, Charlotte, and Arizona Summit (formerly the Phoenix School of Law)) — have been trying to add Charleston to their portfolio. (For more on Infilaw, see Paul Campos’ recent article in The Atlantic.)

The persistence of Infilaw’s effort alone says something about the situation: There’s money to be made in legal education. Venture capitalists specialize in finding opportunities for above average investment returns. It doesn’t matter to them that the main source of that money is federal student loans. Nor do they care if the vast majority of students who obtain those loans to attend marginal schools are unable find JD-required employment. If there’s a market failure to exploit for profit, they’re on it.

On November 6, 2014, the ABA Accreditation Committee issued its recommendation of acquiescence — yes, that’s what it’s called — in connection with Infilaw’s proposed acquisition. It found that the desired change in control “will not detract from [Charleston School of Law’s] ability to remain in compliance” with ABA accreditation standards.

The Deal

The ABA recommendation identifies key aspects of the proposed acquisition, but then ignores their implications. For example, under the Asset Purchase Agreement, Infilaw would acquire most of the school’s assets, but it makes no promise of post-acquisition employment for any existing employees. None. Only on the “eve of closing” will Infilaw disclose the faculty members it wants to keep. Nevertheless, the ABA is willing to accept on faith that this pig in a poke — whatever it turns out to be — won’t “detract from the school’s ability” to retain its accreditation.

Under a separate Administrative and Consulting Services Agreement, Infilaw will receive “substantial consideration” to provide “non-academic, administrative, and consulting services” to the law school. Those services probably account for these troubling lines in the ABA committee’s recommendation:

“Infilaw contemplates that…the legal market permitting, it will increase the size of entering classes to approximately 250, or ‘pre-downturn levels.’…The law school will have access to and benefit from the collective knowledge of Infilaw and its three existing law schools with respect to student recruiting and enrollment.”

The Market?

What does “the legal market permitting” mean? Charleston enrolled 145 full-time students for its expected graduating class of 2017. Returning to “pre-downturn” levels would increase that number by 75 percent. Such near-term growth in demand for the school’s new lawyers is a pipe dream. The recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report on legal sector employment confirms painful reality: Over the past year, the number of all legal jobs — not just lawyers — is actually 1,300 lower than a year ago.

But “access to and benefit from” Infilaw’s existing three schools “with respect to student recruiting and enrollment” means law school behavior that has little to do with actual “legal market” employment conditions for new graduates. Rather, as I’ve discussed previously, the current operation of the Inflilaw business model makes the future of Charleston as an Infilaw holding apparent.

A Race To…The Bottom?

The Infilaw model depends on federal student loans to produce revenue streams that create profits for investors. As the demand for lawyers languished during the Great Recession, Infilaw schools increased enrollment and tuition.

Meanwhile, North Carolina bar passage rates for first-time takers graduating from Infilaw’s Charlotte School of Law dropped from 87 percent in July 2010 to 58 percent in July 2013. The school placed seventh (out of seven NC schools) in its July 2014 bar passage rate: 56 percent. Florida Coastal’s first-time rate dropped from 75 percent in July 2012 to 67 percent in July 2013. Its first-time Florida bar passage rate in July 2014 was 58 percent (10th out of 11 Florida schools). Arizona Summit’s first-time bar pass rate in its home state for July 2014 was 55 percent (third out of three Arizona schools).

Overall, only 35 percent of 2013 graduates from Infilaw schools found full-time long-term JD-required employment. By comparison, 53 percent of Charleston School of Law graduates from the class of 2013 secured full-time long-term JD-required jobs — just below the national average for all law schools.

A Statistic On The Rise

At Florida Coastal, average student loan debt for 2014 graduates was $175,274. The other two Infilaw schools haven’t updated their websites to provide 2014 information. For 2013 graduates of Arizona Summit, average student law school debt was $184,825. At Charlotte, it was $155,697, plus another $20,000 in private student loans. (Average law school debt for Charleston graduates in 2013 was also too high ($146,595). But its 2013 employment outcomes were much better than any Infilaw school.)

Infliaw isn’t home free in its quest. After a closed session of the Accreditation Committee on December 5 in Puerto Rico, the recommendation will go to the ABA’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions. Then the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education has to approve the deal. Last summer, a committee of that commission voted 3-to-1 against, prompting Infilaw to withdraw its application while promising a return bout that will probably occur in early 2015.

The ABA

People sometimes ask where the ABA has been in the ongoing search for solutions to the current crisis involving law schools whose graduates are incurring staggering debt for JD degrees of dubious value. The answer is becoming clearer.

It’s “acquiescing.”

But wait. The ABA has done one more thing. It has convened a special Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education to recommend fixes for a dysfunctional legal education market. Former Detroit Mayor Dennis W. Archer, the chairman of Infilaw’s National Policy Board, is still chairman of that Task Force. In 2003-2004, he was president of the ABA.

BULLET DODGED? OR REDIRECTED TOWARD YOU?

Posted on November 5, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

For the past six months, Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego seemed poised to become the first ABA-accredited law school to fail since the Great Recession began. For anyone paying attention to employment trends in the legal sector, the passage of six years without a law school closing somewhere is itself remarkable. It also says much about market dysfunction in legal education.

In his November 5 column in the New York Times, University of California-Berkeley law professor Steven Davidoff Solomon has a different view. Solomon argues that recent enrollment declines prove that a functioning market has corrected itself: “[T]he bottom is almost here for law schools. This is how economics works: Markets tend to overshoot on the way up, and down.”

Solomon urges that the proper course is to keep marginal law schools such as Thomas Jefferson alive for a while “and see what happens.” I disagree.

Take Thomas Jefferson, Please

As I’ve discussed previously, in 2008 the school issued bonds for a new building. When the specter of default loomed large in early 2014, the question was whether some accommodation with bondholders would keep the school alive. Solomon suggests that creditors made the only deal possible and the school is the ultimate winner. He gives little attention to the real losers in this latest example of a legal education market that is not working: Thomas Jefferson’s students, the legal profession, and taxpayers.

In retrospect, the restructuring agreement between the school and its bondholders reveals that a deal was always likely. That’s because both sides could use other people’s money to make it, as they have since 2008.

According to published reports, interest on the taxable portion of the 2008 bond issuance was 11 percent. Tax-exempt bondholders earned more than 7 percent interest. Thanks to federally-backed student tuition loans, taxpayers then subsidized the school’s revenue streams that provided quarterly interest and principal payments to those bondholders.

Outcomes? Irrelevant In This Market

Last year, Thomas Jefferson accepted 80 percent of applicants. According to its latest required ABA disclosures, first-year attrition was over 30 percent. The school’s California bar passage rate for first-time takers in February and July 2012 was 54 percent, compared to the state average of 71 percent.

Solomon cites the school’s other dismal statistics, but ignores their implications. For example, Thomas Jefferson’s low bar passage rate made no difference to most of its graduates because the full-time long-term bar passage-employment rate for the class of 2013 was 29 percent, as it was for the class of 2012.

Meanwhile, its perennially high tuition (currently $44,900 a year) put Thomas Jefferson #1 on the U.S. News list of schools whose students incurred the greatest law school indebtedness: $180,665 for the class of 2013. According to National Jurist, the school generates 95 percent of its income from tuition.

It’s Alive

This invites an obvious question: How did the school survive so long and what is prolonging its life?

First, owing to unemployed recent graduates with massive student loans, bondholders received handsome quarterly payments for more than five years — much of it tax-exempt interest. The disconnect between student outcomes and the easy availability for federal loans blocked a true market response to a deteriorating situation. Bondholders should also give an appreciative nod to federal taxpayers who are guaranteeing those loans and will foot the bill for graduates entering income-based loan forgiveness programs.

Second, headlines touted Thomas Jefferson’s new deal as “slashing debt” by $87 million, but bondholders now own the law school building and will reportedly receive a market rate rent from the school — $5 million a year. Future student loans unrelated to student outcomes will provide those funds.

Third, the school issued $40 million in new bonds that will pay the current bondholders two percent interest. Student loan debt will make those payments possible.

Net-net, win-win, lose-lose

The bottom line benefit for Thomas Jefferson is immediate relief from its current cash crunch. Instead of $12 million in principal and interest payments annually, the school will pay $6 million in rent and bond interest — funded by students who borrow to obtain a Thomas Jefferson law degree of dubious value.

“I think the whole deal is a reflection of the fact that the bondholders were very desirous for us to succeed,” [Thomas Jefferson Dean Thomas] Guernsey said.

Actually, it reflects the bondholders’ ability to tap into the proceeds of future federal student loans as they cut a deal with a wounded adversary. Instead of cash flow corresponding to bond interest rates of 7 and 11 percent, bondholders will receive about half that amount, along with an office building and the tax advantages that come with ownership (e.g., depreciation deductions). Think of it as refinancing your home mortgage, except the bank gets to keep your house.

Erroneous Assumptions Produce Dubious Strategies

“This restructuring is a major step toward achieving our goals,” said Thomas Guernsey, dean of Thomas Jefferson. “It puts the school on a solid financial footing.”

Throwing furniture into the fireplace to keep the house warm is not a viable long-run survival strategy. Consider future students and their willingness to borrow as the “furniture” and you have a picture of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s business plan.

Meanwhile, Solomon echoes the hopes of law school faculty and administrators everywhere when he says, “[T]he decline in enrollment could lead to a shortage of lawyers five years from now.”

In assuming a unitary market demand for lawyers, he conflates the separate and distinct submarkets for law school graduates. His resulting leap of faith is that a rising tide — even if it arrives — will lift Thomas Jefferson’s boat and the debt-ridden graduates adrift in it. It won’t.

RECENT APPEARANCES

Posted on October 21, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2014, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
“The Lawyer Bubble – Barriers Facing Minorities”
Pennsylvania Bar Institute Diversity Summit
Wanamaker Building
100 Penn Square East – 10th floor
Philadelphia, PA

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 9:15 am to 11:00 am
“Bankruptcy & Education”
American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review Symposium
St. John’s University School of Law
8000 Utopia Parkway
Jamaica, NY

My next post will be in November.

ELON’S “GROUNDBREAKING NEW MODEL”

Posted on October 15, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

On October 9, the Elon University School of Law issued a press release announcing its “groundbreaking new model” of legal education. That’s an overstatement, but the plan has some distinctly positive elements. Unfortunately, it also continues to rely on the prevailing law school business model that has produced the profession’s current crisis.

Elon’s Brief History

Located in Greensboro, North Carolina, Elon was founded in 2006 and received ABA accreditation in 2008 — as the Great Recession began. In one sense, the timing was good because many undergraduates thought law school was a safe place to spend three years waiting for the economy to improve. At the time, that option looked especially attractive because the ABA didn’t require schools to disclose whether recent graduates were obtaining meaningful JD-required jobs. By 2010 , Elon achieved a record-high first-year enrollment of 132 students. Tuition for 2009-2010 was $30,750/year.

As ABA-mandated disclosures began to reveal that almost half of all law graduates nationwide were not getting full-time long-term jobs requiring a JD, the overall number of applicants to all law schools plummeted — from 87,500 in 2010 to 59,400 in 2013. Some deans at less competitive schools lowered admissions standards and raised acceptance rates. Even in a collapsing market for new lawyers, the effort to fill classrooms was a rational response to financial incentives. Federally-backed non-dischargeable student loans for tuition generated revenues for law schools, but schools had no accountability for their graduates’ poor job prospects.

Lowering the Bar

According to U.S. News , Elon accepted 68.4 percent of applicants for fall 2013 and enrolled 107 first-year students — almost 20 percent fewer than in 2010. From 2010 to 2013, the median LSAT for its first-year class dropped from 155 to 150; the median GPA declined from 3.12 to 3.01. At the 25th percentile, from 2010 to 2013, Elon’s LSAT/GPA combination went from 153/2.80 to 146/2.75.

Even as first-year enrollment declined at Elon, tuition increased to almost $38,000/year. Average student debt for 2013 graduates exceeded $108,000. Meanwhile, Elon’s full-time long-term JD-required employment rate for 2013 graduates was 32.8 percent. The school was one of only 13 (out of 201) ABA-accredited schools that placed less than one-third of their graduates in such jobs.

Groundbreaking?

When the school’s new dean, Luke Bierman, joined Elon on June 1 of this year, the school was already more than two years into developing a strategic plan that now includes added experiential learning, residencies with practicing attorneys, faculty-supervised development, and a JD program of seven trimesters replacing three academic years.

Practical training, residencies, and student development efforts that give otherwise unemployed lawyers a few tools to help them scratch out a living with their JDs is a good thing. Everyone should applaud those initiatives. But especially with Duke, UNC, and Wake Forest nearby, such changes are not likely to create more JD-required jobs for Elon graduates.

Pushing students out the door more quickly is not particularly novel. Many schools, including the University of Dayton, Drexel, Pepperdine, Northwestern, Southwestern, and others, have two-year programs. But the really big reform — eliminating the third year altogether — isn’t happening because accreditation rules prevent it. Existing accelerated programs merely cram the requisite workload into a shorter time period.

Money-saving?

Elon claims that its new plan offers two economic benefits to students: they can enter the job market sooner and save money on tuition. Whether becoming eligible for JD-required employment is a benefit for Elon graduates in the current environment (or even a few years from now) isn’t clear. As for the tuition discount, it’s true that an Elon JD will now cost $100,000 for seven trimesters compared to the $114,000 for three years (at $38,000/year) — a nominal student savings of $14,000.

But Elon’s strategic plan probably includes a pro forma projection showing that its new pricing policy benefits the school at least as much. Take the total current cost of $114,000, divide it by nine trimesters (three years), and the result is a per-trimester cost of $12,666.67. If students were paying for seven trimesters at Elon’s current annual tuition rate, the total cost for the degree would be $88,666.67. They’ll now pay $100,000 (or $14,285.71 per trimester). Elon promises to freeze a student’s total cost for the program, but on a price-per-trimester basis the $100,000 fixed cost already includes a tuition increase.

The Real Problem

The short-term economic impact of Elon’s new program is less troubling than the school’s long-term business plan. Because the seven-trimester program will generate less gross revenue per student than its current three-year course of study, the school plans to recover those losses by adding — you guessed it — more students.

The Triad Business Journal reports: “From a business standpoint, Elon Law anticipates offsetting the loss of revenue from tuition reduction by gradually increasing the number of students joining the school each year, up from 112 this fall to about 130 within a number of years.”

Imagine the consequences if every law school that currently places fewer than one-third of its graduates in full-time long-term JD-required jobs were to increase enrollment by 20 to 30 percent “within a number of years.” For the profession, that would be like accelerating in reverse gear toward a brick wall.

The Quest for Meaningful Reform

Elon’s understandable approach to the economics of this situation is important for one more reason. After accepting the deanship in January 2014, Bierman became a member of the ABA’s Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education. If that task force develops a “groundbreaking” plan to supplement a glutted market with more new lawyers from schools where two-thirds of current graduates can’t find full-time long-term JD-required employment, perhaps the ground would be better left unbroken.

More about possible solutions in my address at the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review Symposium at St. John’s University on October 24.

A MYTH THAT MOTIVATES MERGERS

Posted on October 8, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

In a recent interview with The American Lawyer, the chairman of Edwards Wildman, Alan Levin, explained the process that led his firm to combine with Locke Lord. It began with a commissioned study that separated potential merger partners into “tier 1” and “tier 2” firms. The goal was to get bigger.

“Size matters,” he said, “and to be successful today, you really have to be in that Am Law 50.”

When lawyers deal with clients and courts, they focus on evidence. Somehow, that tendency often disappears when they’re evaluating the strategic direction of their own institutions.

Bigger Is…?

There’s no empirical support for the proposition that economies of scale accompany the growth of a law firm. Back in 2003, Altman Weil concluded that 30 years of survey research proved it: “Larger firms almost always spend more per lawyer on staffing, occupancy, equipment, promotion, malpractice and other non-personnel insurance coverages, office supplies and other expenses than do smaller firms.” As firms get bigger, the Altman Weil report continued, maintaining the infrastructure to support continued growth becomes more expensive.

Since 2003, law firms have utilized even more costly ways to grow: multi-year compensation guarantees to overpaid lateral partners. Recently, Ed Newberry, chairman of Patton Boggs, told Forbes, “[L]ateral acquisitions, which many firms are aggressively pursuing now…is a very dangerous strategy because laterals are extremely expensive and have a very low success rate — by some studies lower than 50 percent across firms.”

The Magic of the Am Law 50?

Does success require a place in the Am Law 50? If size is the only measuring stick, then the tautology holds. Big = successful = big. But if something else counts, such as profitability or stability, then the answer is no.

The varied financial performance of firms within the Am Law 50 disproves the “bigger is always better” hypothesis. The profit margins of those firms range from a high of 62 percent (Gibson Dunn) to a low of 14 percent (Squire Sanders — which is in the process of merging with Patton Boggs).

Wachtell has the highest profit margin in the Am Law 100 (64 percent), and it’s not even in the Am Law 50. But that firm’s equity partners aren’t complaining about its 2013 average profits per partner: $4.7 million — good enough for first place on the PPP list. Among the 50 largest firms in gross revenues, 17 have profit margins placing them in the bottom half of the Am Law 100.

Buzzwords Without Meaning

A cottage industry of law firm management consultants has developed special language to reinforce a mindless “size matters” mentality. According to The Legal Intelligencer, Kent Zimmermann of the Zeughauser Group said recently that Morgan Lewis’s contemplated merger with Bingham McCutchen “may be part of a growing crop of law firms that feel they need to be ‘materially larger’ in order to increase brand awareness, [which is] viewed by many of these firms as what it takes to get on the short list for big matters.”

Not so fast. In the Am Law rankings, Morgan Lewis is already 12th in gross revenues and 24th in profit margin (44 percent). It doesn’t need to “increase brand awareness.” That concept might help sell toothpaste; it doesn’t describe the way corporate clients actually select their outside lawyers.

In a recent article, Casey Sullivan and David Ingram at Reuters suggest that Bingham’s twelve-year effort to increase “brand awareness” through an aggressive program of mergers contributed mightily to its current plight. The authors observe that In the early 1990s “[c]onsultants were warning leaders of mid-sized firms that their partnerships would have to merge or die, and [Bingham’s chairman] proved to be a pioneer of the strategy.”

Consultants have given big firms plenty of other bad advice, but that’s a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that Bingham’s subsequent mergers got it into the Am Law 50. However, that didn’t protect the firm from double-digit declines in 2013 revenue and profits, or from a plethora of partner departures in 2014.

In his Legal Intelligencer interview, Kent Zimmermann of Zeughauser also said that he has “seen firms with new leadership in place look to undertake a transformative endeavor like this [Morgan Lewis-Bingham] merger would be.” If Zimmermann’s overall observation about firms with new leadership is true, such leaders should be asking themselves: transform to what? Acting on empty buzzwords risks a “transformative endeavor” to institutional instability.

Soundbites

In contrast to Alan Levin’s “size matters” sound bite, here’s another. A year ago, IBM’s general counsel, Robert Weber, told the Wall Street Journal, “I’m pretty skeptical about the value these big mergers give to clients…I don’t know why it’s better to use a bigger firm.”

Weber should know because he spent 30 years at Jones Day before joining IBM. But is anyone listening? IBM’s long-time outside counsel Cravath, Swaine & Moore probably is. Based on size and gross revenues, Cravath doesn’t qualify for the Am Law 50, but its clients and partners don’t care.

Uncertain Outcomes

Does becoming a legal behemoth add client value? Does it increase institutional nimbleness in a changing environment? Does it enhance morale, collegiality, and long-run firm stability? Do profit margins improve or worsen? Why are many big firm corporate clients — H-P, eBay, Abbott Labs, ConocoPhilllips, Time Warner, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble, among a long list — moving in the opposite direction, namely, toward disaggregation that increases flexibility?

Wearing their “size alone matters” blinders, some firm leaders aren’t even asking those questions. If they don’t, fellow partners should. After all, their skin is in this game, too.

STUDENT LOANS, MORAL HAZARD, AND LAW SCHOOL LOANS – CONCLUSION

Posted on October 1, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

My most recent post in this series discussed manifestations of law school moral hazard at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and Quinnipiac Law School. Both institutions have spent millions of dollars on flashy new buildings where attentive students will have a tough time getting jobs requiring the expensive JDs they are pursuing.

The series now concludes with two more schools that illustrate another dimension of the dysfunctional law school market. Recent graduates of Golden Gate University School of Law and Florida Coastal School of Law live in the worst of two worlds: Their schools have unusually low full-time long-term JD-required employment rates and unusually high average law student debt.

Muddy Disclosure

The recent decline in the number of law school applicants has resulted in many schools struggling to fill their classrooms. When a school depends on the continuing flow of student loan-funded revenues, the pressure to bring in bodies can be formidable. One consequence is especially unseemly for a noble profession: dubious marketing tactics.

By now, most people are aware of ABA rule changes that require each school to disclose in some detail its recent graduates’ employment results, specifically, whether jobs are full-time, part-time, short-term, long-term, or JD-required. But those requirements don’t prevent Golden Gate University School of Law’s “Employment Statistics Snapshot” page from touting this aggregate statistic for its 2013 graduates “85.4 percent were employed in jobs that required bar passage…or where a JD provided an advantage.”

The school’s “ABA employment summary” link appears on the same page. But Golden Gate has supposedly made things easier for prospective students by showing its 2013 graduates’ employment results in a large pie chart. According to that chart, nine months after graduation, 38.2 percent of the school’s 2013 graduates had JD-required jobs.

Here’s what the chart doesn’t reveal: Even that unimpressive total (38.2 percent) includes part-time and short-term positions. Golden Gate’s full-time long-term JD-required employment rate for 2013 graduates was 23 percent.

Money to be Made

I’ve written previously about Florida Coastal, one of the InfiLaw system of private, for-profit law schools. Florida Coastal’s website includes all employment outcomes — legal, non-legal, full-time, part-time, long-term, short-term, and a large number of law school-funded jobs — to arrive at its “job placement rate” of 74.3 percent for its 2012 graduates. That number appears on the program overview pages of the school’s website. But you have to dig deeper — and move into the “Professional Development” section — to learn the more recent and relevant data: The overall employment rate dropped to 62 percent for the class of 2013.

However, those overall rates aren’t even the numbers that matter. Anyone persevering to the school’s ABA-mandated employment disclosure summary finds that the full-time long-term JD-required employment rate for Florida Coastal’s 2013 graduates was 31 percent.

The Cost of Market Dysfunction

At Golden Gate, tuition and fees have increased from $26,000 in 2006 to more than $43,000 today. During the same period, Florida Coastal increased its tuition and fees from $23,000 to more than $40,000. That’s why Florida Coastal and Golden Gate rank so high in average law school loan debt for 2013 graduates, with $150,360 and $144,269, respectively.

To its credit, Florida Coastal eliminates any doubt about the trajectory of law school debt for its future students. The median debt for its 2014 graduates rose to more than $175,000 — all of it consisting of federal student loans.

Searching for Solutions

My criticisms of current market failures should not be construed as an argument for eliminating the government-backed student loan program for law students. Were it not for federal educational loans, I could not have attended college, much less law school. The program was a good idea when Milton Friedman promoted it in the early 1950s, and it is still a good idea today.

But the core of this good idea has gone bad in its implementation. Shining a light on resulting market dysfunction should generate constructive approaches to a remedy. At the October 24 American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review Symposium at St. John’s University (and my related law review article appearing thereafter), I’ll outline my ideas.

Here’s a preview: Viewing the law school market in the aggregate — as a single market — obfuscates a reasoned analysis of the problem. It protects the weakest law schools from the consequences of their failures. They should pay an immediate price for exploiting the moral hazard resulting from the current system of financing legal education. At a minimum, the government should not be subsidizing their bad behavior.

The profession would be wise to lead itself out of this mess. The financial incentives of the current structure, along with its pervasive vested interests, make that a daunting task. Even so, human decisions created the problem. Better human decisions can fix them.

STUDENT LOANS, MORAL HAZARD, AND A LAW SCHOOL MESS: PART 2

Posted on September 24, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Sometimes law school moral hazard assumes a concrete form — literally.

A School Making Unwanted News

For example, Thomas Jefferson School of Law is now coping with a widely publicized credit downgrade of its bonds to junk status and related concerns about its future. But those financial difficulties date back to late 2008. The deepening recession was decimating the employment market for lawyers generally and hitting Thomas Jefferson graduates especially hard.

That didn’t stop the school from breaking ground in October 2008 on a new building that opened in January 2011. California tax-exempt bonds financed the $90 million project. Government-backed student borrowing for ever-increasing tuition — currently almost $45,000 a year — would provide a revenue stream from which to pay bondholders.

In 2012, new ABA-required disclosures allowed the world to see the school’s dismal employment record for graduates seeking full-time, long-term jobs requiring a JD (63 out of 236, or 27 percent, for the class of 2011). As enrollment declined, so did revenue from student loans. Unfortunately, the building and the bonds issued to pay for it remain, as does the stunning debt that students incurred for their degrees.

Quinnipiac’s New Digs

Recently, Quinnipiac University School of Law celebrated the opening of a new $50 million building in North Haven, Connecticut. Its website boasts that the new facility “is 154,749 square feet and will include a 180-seat two-tiered courtroom with Judge’s Chambers and Jury Room.” The Law Center is one of three interconnected buildings on a graduate school campus that is “expansive and architecturally distinctive, with an array of shared amenities, a beautiful full-service dining commons, bookstore, ample parking, and convenient highway access.”

Quinnipiac’s students — including all 92 entrants to the fall 2014 one-L class — will have luxurious accommodations in which to contemplate their uncertain futures. According to the school’s ABA required disclosures, nine months after graduation only 51 of 148 students in the class of 2013 — 34 percent — had found full-time long-term employment requiring a JD. And a Quinnipiac law degree has become increasingly expensive as tuition and fees alone have risen from $30,280 in 2006 to more than $47,000 today.

Tough Numbers

Such dismal employment outcomes for Quinnipiac are not new. Only 41 percent of its 2012 graduates found full-time long-term employment that required a JD. The rate for the class of 2011 was 35%.

Both Thomas Jefferson and Quinnipiac are among many law schools that must yearn for the good ole’ days — three years ago — when deans didn’t have to disclose whether their most recent graduates held jobs that were short-term, part-time, or had no connection whatsoever to the legal training they had received. ABA-sanctioned opacity allowed law schools as a group to claim — without qualification — that the overall employment rate for current graduating classes exceeded 90 percent.

Back to the Future

At Quinnipiac, the culture of that bygone era apparently endures. The link to its ABA-required disclosures page takes prospective students to “Employment Outcomes” and this:

“82% of the graduating class was employed as of Feb. 15, 2014 in the categories listed below…Bar passage is required, JD is an advantage, other professional jobs, and non-professional jobs.”

But if prospective students want to know the whole truth, they have to click again, go to the school’s ABA questionnaire, and perform a calculation from the raw data that reveals the 34 percent employment rate for the most important job category — full-time, long-term, JD-required jobs.

Law School Marketing

Similarly, the “Career Development” section of Quinnipiac’s current prospective student “Viewbook” leads with the banner headline that its “Employment Rate” for the class of 2012 was a remarkable 84% — “127 of 151 graduates employed.” An asterisk adds this tiny note: “Comprehensive employment outcomes for the class of 2012, including all employment categories as defined by the ABA (full-time/part-time/short term/long term) can be found at emplyomentsummary.abaquestionnare.org.”

Can prospective law students discover the truth? Sure. Should they take the time to do so? You bet. Do all of them make the effort? Not a chance. If they did, the 80+ percent, big-font employment statistics wouldn’t be in Quinnipiac’s recruiting materials. For careful readers, those big numbers are a waste of space.

What, me worry?

Undeterred by its recent graduates’ employment track record, Quinnipiac wants to grow. “There’s a decline in the demand for lawyers,” university president John Lahey said. “Even with the decline, we’re the only school in the country to spend $50 million for a new law school.”

That peculiar boast reflects an “if you build it, they will come” mentality determined to maximize tuition revenues. Unfortunately, that attitude can lead to short-term mischief and long-run calamity. Just ask anyone associated with the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Market dysfunction

Law schools remain unaccountable for the poor employment outcomes of their graduates. As most schools raise tuition, many students incur increasing amounts of debt for a degree that won’t get them a JD-required job. Because the federal government backs the vast majority of those loans, you could say that the system is your tax dollar at work.

Quinnipiac didn’t raise tuition for 2014-2015, but 86 percent of its 2013 graduates incurred law school debt averaging $102,000. Down the road at New Haven, 80 percent of Yale’s 2013 graduates with far superior job prospects incurred debt averaging $112,000.

The More Things Change…

The perverse law school response to market forces is a predictable business strategy, especially for law schools whose graduates are having the greatest difficulty finding law jobs. In an interview with the New Haven Register, Quinnipiac University President Lahey said that he hopes enrollment will grow from the current total of 292 students to 500 — the design capacity for the school’s new building.

Now that they’ve built it, will students come? If they value a “beautiful full-service dining commons,” perhaps. If they consider footnotes, read the fine print, and assess realistically their JD-required employment prospects as they peruse recruiting materials touting a Quinnipiac law degree, perhaps not.

STUDENT LOANS, MORAL HAZARD, AND A LAW SCHOOL MESS

Posted on September 10, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Throughout the summer, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has been promoting legislation that would provide relief to students with educational debt. As the Senate concludes its work — and I use that word loosely — before the November elections, she is taking another run at the issue. Most recently, Senator Warren made her case in an article that appeared in the September 9, 2014 edition of the Huffington Post: “The Vote That Could Cut Your Student Loan Bills.”

Her point is simple: Students who took out educational loans prior to July 1, 2013 are locked into an interest rate of nearly 7 percent. “Older loans run 8-9% and even higher,” she writes. She’d like to bring that rate down by allowing graduates (and parents who co-signed their loans) to refinance them.

Politics, You Say?

Election year politics have rendered her proposal dead on arrival. That became clear in June when Senate Republicans filibustered the bill, even though three of them — Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine — were among the 56-38 majority that was insufficient to bring it to the floor.

But the gridlock in Washington and resulting inaction may focus attention on a more important underlying problem: How does a system anchored in noble intentions evolve to produce such enormous and unsustainable levels of educational debt in the first place? Some law schools have become poster children for the unfortunate answer to that question.

Blame Professor Friedman

In the 1960’s, Milton Friedman argued that America would benefit if individuals had a way to borrow against future incomes and invest in becoming more valuable workers. In those days, a college education was the surest path to the middle class. To a large extent, it still is.

From Friedman’s idea came the federal student loan program. But over time, Congress and several presidents added features that became problematic. Imagined and unfounded fears of moral hazard — specifically, that students on the cusp of lucrative careers would declare bankruptcy to avoid paying their student loans — resulted in the rule that educational debt survives bankruptcy, except in extreme circumstances that courts rarely find.

Coupled with federal guarantees, the loans eliminated lender risk. That created a new moral hazard: Educational institutions themselves were at least two steps away from any financial accountability for their graduates’ outcomes.

Law School Misbehavior

For law schools, all of this has assumed special significance. Unlike undergraduate colleges that can claim to be creating well-rounded and better informed citizens entering a variety of careers, law schools exist to train people who want to become lawyers. Some law graduates may take rewarding non-legal paths, but undergraduates aspiring to careers in business, for example, typically attend business school. At least, they should.

If the ability of a school’s graduates to use their legal training initially in a JD-required job is an appropriate way to measure a law school’s success, then many are unambiguous failures. For the class of 2013, 33 of 201 ABA-accredited schools placed fewer than 40 percent of their graduates in long-term full-time JD-required employment (excluding law school-funded jobs).

But here’s the kicker. Thanks to the moral hazard that the federally-backed loan program creates, some schools with the worst employment records for recent graduates have students with the highest levels of law school loan debt.

For the class of 2013, three of the top ten schools with the highest average student loan debt at graduation placed less than one-third of their graduates in full-time long-term JD-required jobs (again, excluding law school-funded positions). They were: Thomas Jefferson ($180,000 average student debt; 29 percent employment rate), Whittier ($154,000 average student debt; 27 percent employment rate), and Florida Coastal ($150,000 average student debt; 31 percent employment rate).

Defying the Market

How do these schools and others like them accomplish this economically perverse feat? Large doses of prospective student confirmation bias combine with federally-backed student loans to create a dysfunctional market.

Marginal law schools seek to fill their classrooms to maximize revenues. Next week, I’ll examine a few schools pursuing this goal through recruiting materials that seem to obfuscate ABA-required employment disclosures. For now, the important point is that what happens to those students after they graduate becomes someone else’s problem. Once students pay their tuition bills, law schools have no financial stake in their graduates’ employment outcomes.

Searching for Solutions

This takes us back to Senator Warren’s bill aimed at giving past students a break. In the current low-interest rate environment, it’s reasonable to provide former students with the kind of refinancing opportunities available to homeowners, business proprietors, and other debtors. But that won’t begin to solve the real problem. The current system of financing legal education creates moral hazard that has produced — and will continue to produce — law school misbehavior at great expense, not only to affected students, but also to all of us.

In the coming weeks prior to my October 24 presentation to the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review Symposium at St. John’s University School of Law, I’ll offer some ideas for dealing with that larger problem. Some people won’t like them.

FEED YOUR BRAIN

Posted on August 13, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

It’s August. Vacation time. But how many people — especially hard-driving attorneys — are taking real vacations? Distressingly few, I suspect.

Many people who think they’re taking time off are kidding themselves. They are simply moving their work venues to a sandy beach or resort swimming pool. In a recent New York Times article, “Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain,” research scientist Daniel J. Levitin observes that essential revitalization of the brain comes only when a person enjoys a complete break from the daily demands of a job.

Previously, I’ve written about the myth of multitasking — the fallacy that the human mind can perform several tasks simultaneously. I’ve also discussed scientific studies proving that we underestimate the extent to which distractions — moving back and forth between tasks — undermine our productivity. Today we add another insight into how brains work and the implications for everyday life.

Two Roads; Different Destinations

Levitin’s research shows that our minds switch between two dominant “modes of attention.” One is a task-positive network, which engages when we focus on a specific activity, undistracted by anything else. In contrast, the brain’s task-negative network is akin to daydreaming. The mind wanders but, in doing so, achieves its greatest moments of insight.

Importantly, when one network is working, the other is not. Likewise, constantly moving back and forth between networks — as multi-taskers mistakenly think they can — is inefficient. It wastes mental energy.

Lawyers and Vacations

The relationship of the two networks to most attorneys’ lives is obvious. The billable hour regime that dominates today’s delivery of legal services rewards task-positive behavior. More time spent on an activity means more revenue for the law firm. Devising ways to keep attorneys engaged so that the hourly meter is always running — day, night, weekends, and during so-called vacations — becomes a key institutional objective unto itself.

Meanwhile, every minute that the brain spends in the task-positive mode is a minute that can never be available to the task-negative network. Vacations are supposed to be a task-negative period. But engaging in task-positive behavior during such times makes that impossible. It also interferes with the brain’s ability to recharge itself.

Levitin concludes, “If we can train ourselves to take regular vacations — true vacations without work…we will be in a more powerful position to start solving some of the world’s big problems. And to be happier and well rested while we’re doing it.”

Another Reason to Make Vacations Real

When I was 14 years old, we took our first family vacation. With my three younger siblings and me in the back seat of the first new car my father ever owned — a 1968 Oldsmobile 98 sedan — we drove from our hometown of Minneapolis to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In those days, the things that keep the brain’s task-positive network engaged outside the office didn’t exist. No cellphones, laptops, or internet. With our task-negative networks free to roam, a simple road trip to see Mt. Rushmore became an unforgettable experience that remains a cherished memory.

My dad wasn’t a lawyer. He was a trucker — an over-the-road driver who had an interesting run-in with Jimmy Hoffa in the early 1960s and eventually moved himself up to a desk job. Except for the South Dakota trip, we didn’t take two-week vacations because he’d convinced his employer to pay him double for staying on the job instead. It was an understandable decision. Even with my mother working full-time, making ends meet was a continuing challenge.

How to Measure Costs and Benefits

In the end, the financial boost from two weeks of “double-pay” each year made only a temporary difference to our family. Most of today’s lawyers are working for a more subtle form of “double pay”: more billable hours usually translate into higher compensation. But is the marginal return worth the sacrifice? What’s a person’s leisure time worth?

My father’s calculation was incomplete. He failed to consider his own need for time off and the benefits accruing to an entire family as it spent task-negative time together. Attorneys are especially prone to making the same mistake. Technology conspires with institutional incentives to make it easy. If you want to become a better thinker and a more productive lawyer, take a vacation — a real one.

My next post will be in September.

DEWEY & LEBOEUF: CONNECTING MORE DOTS

Posted on July 23, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

[NOTE: August 8, 2014 at 5:00 pm EDT is the deadline for nominations to the ABA’s annual list of the “100 best websites by lawyers, for lawyers.” To nominate The Belly of the Beast, please click here.]

Two years ago, Dewey & LeBeouf filed for bankruptcy. Intriguing aspects of the firm’s unraveling are still emerging.

Recently, three of the firm’s former leaders, chairman Steven Davis, executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and chief financial officer Joel Sanders, filed an omnibus motion to dismiss the criminal charges against them. Such filings are not unusual. But their joint memorandum in support, along with DiCarmine’s separate supplemental brief, contain fascinating insights into the firm’s collapse. As the dots get added, it’s becoming easier to connect some of them.

Beyond the Scapegoats

Back in November 2012, former Dewey chairman Steven Davis hinted at the flaws in any narrative suggesting that he alone took the firm down. His filing in the Dewey bankruptcy proceeding promised another perspective:

“While ‘greed’ is a theme…, the litigation that eventually ensues will address the question of whose greed.” (Docket #654; emphasis in original)

The three co-defendants’ joint memorandum returns to that theme. It argues that the firm’s distress resulted from, among other things, “the voracious greed of some of the firm’s partners.” DiCarmine’s supplemental brief describes the greed of some former partners as “insatiable.”

The 2010 Bond Offering and 2012 Partner Contribution Plan

Some former Dewey partners might find the defendants’ recent filings uncomfortable. For example, much of the government’s case turns on the firm’s 2010 bond offering that brought in $150 million from outside investors. DiCarmine’s supplemental brief asks why, except for Davis, “the Executive Committee members who approved and authorized it have not been charged with any wrongdoing.”

Later, as the firm collapsed during the first five months of 2012, it drew down millions from bank credit lines while simultaneously distributing millions to Dewey partners. As I’ve reported previously, from January to May 2012, 25 Dewey partners received a combined $21 million.

The joint memorandum suggests that “if the grand jury presentation was fair and thorough, it demonstrates that drawdowns the firm made in 2012, prior to filing for bankruptcy, were made at the direction of several partners on the firm’s Operations Committee, and against the advice of Mr. Sanders, and despite the concerns of Mr. Davis and objections raised by Mr. DiCarmine.”

Shortly after those 2012 distributions occurred, Wall Street Journal reporters asked former Dewey partner Martin Bienenstock whether the firm used those bank credit lines to fund partner distributions. Bienenstock replied, “Look, money is fungible.”

He’s right. But that raises another question: Did some partners then use those eleventh-hour distributions of fungible dollars for their subsequent payments to the bankruptcy court-approved Partner Contribution Plan? The answer matters because the PCP capped each participating partner’s potential financial obligation to the Dewey estate. Unsecured creditors will recover an estimated 15 cents for every dollar the firm owed them.

There’s another twist. Dewey made its way through the bankruptcy proceeding without disclosing how partners shared those 2010 bond proceeds. In calculating each partner’s required contribution to the PCP, only partner distributions after January 1, 2011 counted. The PCP excluded consideration of any amounts that partners received in 2010.

Remember Zachary Warren?

The joint memorandum also counters the Manhattan District Attorney’s characterization of the accounting issues in the case as open and shut: “lf the grand jury had been properly instructed on these [accounting] standards, it would have concluded that the accounting methods were permissible,….”

Which takes us back to the curious case against Zachary Warren, a subject of several earlier posts. The charges against the former low-level Dewey staffer are predicated on an underlying violation of those accounting standards, too.

Warren has sought to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants, Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders. Warren argues that plea agreements from witnesses who are cooperating with the government, notably Frank Canellas, demonstrate how thin the case against him is.

The Manhattan District Attorney responds that statements in the plea agreements are just the beginning: “[T]he purpose of the allocutions was to set forth facts implicating the witnesses in the crimes they committed; any part of them that inculpates the defendant is merely incidental.” (District Attorney’s letter to Hon. Robert Stolz, July 3, 2014) (App. I of Defendants Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders Omnibus Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss))

Really? Some career prosecutors might find it surprising to learn that when they get a defendant to “flip” and provide statements fingering a different target, the flipper’s statements are “merely incidental” insofar as they inculpate that target.

But the best line in the District Attorney’s surreply tries to connect Warren’s alleged December 2008 activities to Dewey’s collapse more than three years later: “[H]e was there to light the spark that fueled the scheme until its implosion in 2012.” (p. 6)

At least with respect to Zachary Warren, methinks the government doth protest too much. Meanwhile, his co-defendants are focusing on questions that cry out for answers.

FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT

Posted on July 22, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

My daughter’s most recent short story appears today in Blunderbuss Magazine. You can read it here: “Rrrramona,” by Emma Harper.

ARE YOU A SMOKIN’ BUCKETFUL OF AWESOME?

Posted on July 16, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

[NOTE: For a limited time, the ABA Journal is soliciting nominations for its annual list of the “100 best websites by lawyers, for lawyers, as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal.” To nominate The Belly of the Beast, please click here.]

Some of my previous posts challenged law school deans, admissions officers, and faculty members who live in denial about the crisis in legal education. This time, I celebrate a law professor who sees things as they are and isn’t afraid to speak truth to power.

Before joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina, Professor Bernard Burk was an academic fellow at Stanford. Prior to that, he spent 25 years in private practice at a firm that eventually merged with Arnold & Porter. We don’t agree on everything, but Burk’s three-part series at the Faculty Lounge culminates in a June 30, 2014 post that earns him my latest “Commendable Comment Award.”

Questioning The “Versatility” Sales Pitch

Burk analyzes the “versatility of a legal degree” argument. It’s often cited to counter some law schools’ dismal employment outcomes for graduates seeking jobs that actually require a JD. More specifically, the ABA allows schools to soften their self-reported employment results with a loosey-goosey category: “JD-Advantage” positions. To be sure, some are good jobs; but many aren’t. The problem is that schools don’t have to disclose any information about them.

The ABA’s definition of JD-Advantage includes a range of examples so broad that it demonstrates the potential for gaming the numbers: corporate contracts administrator, alternative dispute resolution specialist, government regulatory analyst, FBI agent, risk manager, accountant, journalist, human resources employee, law firm professional development worker, and almost anyone working at a law school in any capacity — from admissions to career services. And even that list isn’t exclusive.

Schools following the ABA’s honor system of reporting don’t need much imagination to dump lots of graduates into the JD-Advantage category. Perhaps that’s one reason that the category has been growing so dramatically. For the class of 2013, more than 6,300 graduates had what their schools called JD-Advantage jobs, a significant increase from 5,200 for the class of 2011.

Admissions Deans as Used Car Salesmen

Professor Burk compares law schools relying on undifferentiated JD-Advantage jobs to used car salesmen. Both assure you that what they have is what you need. But used car salesman never say, “No worries, pal. You should buy this car because, even if the engine implodes the minute you drive off the lot, the smoking pile of scrap that’s left will have measurable salvage value.”

“We generally don’t buy cars for their salvage value,” Burk notes, “especially when any car you buy will have salvage value if it can’t serve the purpose you actually bought it for.”

But some — not all — JD-Advantage jobs look more like the realization of a legal degree’s salvage value for those who have them. That doesn’t mean a legal education lacks intrinsic value. As Burk observes, some prospective students might view what they learn in law school as valuable for its own sake, regardless of whether it leads to a career in the law or enhances their earning power. But three years and $150,000 in tuition is more than most people are willing to spend on such a personal enrichment exercise alone.

A more thoughtful approach is what Burk calls the “Practical Justification Test.” Like the prospective used car purchaser, the prelaw student asks (or should ask), will a law degree actually take me where I want to go? For this group, full-time long-term JD-required employment upon graduation is the most meaningful outcome because law schools exist to produce lawyers. Distinctions based on that criterion should be critical in deciding whether and where to attend law school.

Hope v. Reality

A third rationale for law school involves magical thinking. That’s where some deans, faculty, and admissions officers have now staked their claims. Burk describes the premise of this argument as follows: “[T]he course of study transforms you into such a Smokin’ Bucketful of Awesome that the degree alone routinely opens doors to countless jobs unrelated to the course of study that would otherwise be closed to you or that you will be so much better at whatever you do that the degree is a Rocket to Success at almost anything.”

In response to Burk’s categories, University of Kansas Assistant Dean for Admissions Steven Freedman (the subject of one of my earlier posts) offers a fourth category: “[M]any students see the versatility of a law degree as form of risk insurance.”

Freedman’s comment generated lines from Burk earn him my latest “Commendable Comment Award”:

“[T]outing the salvage value of a law degree as ‘a form of risk insurance’ without offering a clear-eyed assessment of how likely it is that the risk insurance will be needed, what its coverage limits are, and how cheaply you could get the same benefit another way is inexcusably incomplete. It’s a failure to accept the difference between a Smokin’ Bucketful of Awesome and smoking pile of scrap.”

There’s an easy fix. The ABA could require law schools to disclose in detail what their graduates are actually doing in JD-Advantage jobs or, at a minimum, how much they’re earning in such positions. Until that happens, prospective students would be wise to assume that, for most schools, the category includes a lot of scrap.

THE ROBERTS COURT — PLAYING THE LONG GAME

Posted on July 9, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

It seems that everyone is trying to divine insights into how Chief Justice John Roberts is shaping the United States Supreme Court’s legacy. On July 2, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal devoted front-page stories to that subject. On July 7, the Times published a review of Uncertain Justice, a book about the Roberts Court by pre-eminent constitutional scholar and Harvard Law Professor, Laurence Tribe, an unapologetic liberal.

While reading the review of Professor Tribe’s book, I recalled a January 2012 interview during which Stephen Colbert asked him about Roberts, who had taken his constitutional law course.

Tribe quipped, “I’m not sure how much of what I taught actually made a difference.”

All this is of special interest to me because Chief Justice Roberts was my law school classmate, and because I was in Professor Tribe’s course, too.

Activism v. Restraint

The Times story offers the Court’s unanimous rulings as a sign that the Chief Justice is sensitive to accusations that it has become an extension of the country’s paralyzing political polarization. The WSJ made a similar point in quoting from Roberts’ 2005 confirmation hearings on the subject of “judicial modesty”: “You don’t obviously compromise strongly held views, but you do have to be open to the considered views of your colleagues.”

Neither newspaper mentions other things that Roberts said during his confirmation hearings, including this: “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.”

Conservatives bemoaning “activist judges” loved that analogy. For trial judges ruling on the admissibility of evidence, it may be reasonable. For a Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, it bears little resemblance to reality, as Roberts’ own actions on the Court have proven.

Tactics v. Strategy

In assessing Chief Justice Roberts’ approach, it’s worth distinguishing strategy from tactics. He is playing a long game. Although already on the Court for nine years, he could serve for twenty more. Tactically, he can move slowly in his desired direction. Over time, his strategic vision becomes more evident.

Jeff Shesol, the Times reviewer of Professor Tribe’s book, suggests that some elements of that vision are already in place, including the elimination of meaningful campaign finance limits, reduced regulation of economic activity, and erosion of long-established protections in civil rights, consumer rights, and criminal procedure.

The Journal quotes Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf’s example of the interplay between tactics and strategy. In 2009, the Chief Justice issued an opinion “that upheld the toughest parts of the Voting RIghts Act of 1965, while opening new exemptions from federal oversight…. Four years later, Chief Justice Roberts, joined by his fellow four conservatives, built on the groundwork he had laid in 2009 by sweeping aside Voting Rights Act oversight that had been in place since 1965. All four liberals dissented.” (Professor Dorf chides the liberal justices as “naive” in lending Roberts their votes periodically, but what’s their second choice?)

More to Come

The Roberts Court has laid other foundational elements that could have a dramatic impact on American society. For example, most liberals were relieved when Chief Justice Roberts provided the deciding fifth vote upholding the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). He found common ground with the majority in the federal government’s taxing power.

But on a key issue, he joined the dissent, which resurrected a moribund position on another critical constitutional source of the federal government’s power. As Jeff Shesol observes in his review of Uncertain Justice, Roberts joined a dissent that “took the most constrictive view of federal power under the commerce clause in 75 years, since the New Deal-era court got out of the business of overseeing economic policy.” In other words, the stage is set for a five-man Supreme Court majority to reverse a longstanding jurisprudential justification for federal legislation.

Professor Tribe Was Wrong

Whether the Roberts Court produces positive or negative outcomes for the country depends, of course, on an individual’s political views. The incontrovertible point is that, notwithstanding Professor Tribe’s offhand comment to Stephen Colbert, Chief Justice Roberts learned quite a bit from the course that we took.

Here are a few of the lessons: characterizing an issue can be critical in determining its outcome; one person’s judicial activism is another’s judicial restraint; one person’s liberty can compromise another’s freedom; a tactical loss today can lead to a strategic victory tomorrow.

The Justices of the United States Supreme Court are not merely umpires. They set the rules by which everyone else plays. Chief Justice Roberts is playing a very long game.

A DEWEY “FOOT SOLDIER”?

Posted on June 18, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Back in March, I wrote about Zachary Warren. In 2007, his first job out of college was client relations coordinator at Dewey & LeBoeuf. In July 2009, he left the firm to attend law school. Unfortunately, his brief tenure was sufficient, years later, for the Manhattan District Attorney to name him as one of four undifferentiated “Schemers” in a 106-count criminal indictment.

When he joined the firm, Warren was a generation younger than his fellow alleged “Schemers”: former chairman Steven Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders. Understandably, Warren would prefer not to be tried with his co-defendants, so he has moved to sever his trial.

Timing is Everything

In its latest filing, the Manhattan District Attorney acknowledges that Warren “was not the mastermind of the Dewey fraud scheme.” However, the government’s objection to Warren’s motion adds, “[H]e certainly was a willing foot soldier.” We learn some other things from the filing, too.

For example, it turns out that Warren was the first “Schemer” to be indicted. In December 2013, the grand jury charged him alone with six counts of “Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.” But Warren first learned of the charges two months later, when a broader indictment named him along with Davis, DiCarmine, and Sanders.

Presumably, the timing of Warren’s indictment related to the five-year statute of limitations governing the claims against him. The government relies heavily on a handful of December 2008 events to make the case.

December 2008

According to the District Attorney, on December 30, 2008, Warren had dinner with two of his superiors, Joel Sanders and then-Dewey finance director Frank Canellas. To satisfy its year-end bank loan covenants, Dewey needed another $50 million by the end of the following day. Allegedly, Sanders and Canellas had developed a contingency plan of potential financial adjustments that Warren helped to implement.

The District Attorney emphasizes Warren’s supposed sophistication regarding accounting issues. But that’s a far cry from proving his competence to challenge directives from superiors holding CPAs and MBAs. In fact, the propriety of whatever transpired on December 31, 2008 with respect to Dewey & LeBoeuf’s financial statements is likely to become the subject of battling expert accounting witnesses at trial. Dive into those weeds at your peril.

Motive?

As for the aftermath of the alleged New Year’s Eve scheme, the Manhattan District Attorney cites Warren’s “$115,000 in bonus compensation in 2009” as evidence of something sinister. The government claims that the amount exceeded bonuses paid to all but five other Dewey employees. At best, that argument is disingenuous.

Warren received his $75,000 bonus for 2008 in early 2009, as expected. When he left Dewey in July 2009, Sanders promised Warren a $40,000 bonus for his half-year of service, payable in the fall.

Three months later, Warren was at Georgetown Law and still waiting for his final bonus. He left messages for Sanders, who eventually wrote, “If you’re wondering about your bonus, I have you down to receive $40k right after our year end close.”

Warren replied, “I didn’t take out any student loans this semester because I was anticipating the bonus to be paid in the fall as we discussed before I left.” (For unknown reasons, the District Attorney’s brief italicizes for emphasis the last phrase — “as we discussed before I left.”) When Warren still hadn’t received the bonus In November, he tried again and, shortly thereafter, the firm sent him $20,000 — almost the entire net amount. He received the final installment of $1,400 in April 2010.

For the District Attorney, Warren’s requests of his former employer are proof of his ongoing involvement in the original scheme: “In September 2009, he began chasing down the additional bonus that defendant Sanders had promised him.”

Seriously?

The Continuing Mystery

A fundamental question still begs for an answer: How does whatever happened in the presence of Zach Warren during December 2008 relate to the demise of a storied law firm in May 2012?

So far, it doesn’t. Unless the prosecution develops that connection, something will remain terribly wrong with this picture — and with the effort to put Zachary Warren in prison.

UPDATE ON THE BATTLE FOR CHARLESTON

Posted on June 9, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Call it an eleventh-hour reprieve. Or maybe it’s just a break before the executioner arrives. On Thursday, June 5, the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education was going to decide on InfiLaw’s application for a license to own and operate the for-profit Charleston School of Law. But a day before the scheduled vote, InfiLaw suspended its application.

As I wrote last week, InfiLaw owns and operates three for-profit law schools (Arizona Summit, Charlotte, and Florida Coastal). Its owner is Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm that lists InfiLaw as a holding in its “education portfolio.” In July 2013, InfiLaw agreed to buy the Charleston School of Law. On May 19, the Committee on Academic Affairs and Licensing voted 3-to-1 against recommending InfiLaw’s license request. Then things got interesting.

On May 23 — four days after the Committee’s rejection and just before the Memorial Day weekend — state representative John Richard C. King wrote to the South Carolina Attorney General’s office. He sought an advisory opinion that, if provided, would essentially require the Commission on Higher Education to approve InfiLaw’s application, notwithstanding the earlier Committee rejection. Representative King is also a first-year student at the InfiLaw school in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Only a week after King’s request, the AG’s office issued a detailed 10-page single-spaced legal opinion that gave InfiLaw what it wanted. The final sentence warns: “Any licensing decision based upon criteria outside the law would, of course, be subject to judicial review and possible reversal.”

State senator John Courson immediately suggested that InfiLaw suspend its request temporarily because the AG’s opinion “needs to be vetted” and Governor Nikki Haley needs to fill vacant seats on the Commission before it discusses the issue.

Senator Courson hasn’t revealed publicly where he stands on the merits of InfiLaw’s proposed acquisition. But when legislators want a governor to fill vacant committee seats before taking a final vote on a matter of interest to them, there’s usually a reason. As InfliLaw’s statement accompanying the suspension of its application declares: “We are committed to this acquisition and intend to renew our application in due course.” Close observers might get the uneasy feeling that they’re watching sausage being made.

Meanwhile, no one is discussing the more important point that transcends the Charleston situation. Typically, private equity investors seek opportunities that will provide them with above average returns. That’s not a criticism; it’s their business. However, if for-profit legal education generates returns that are appealing to private equity investors, non-dischargeable federal student loans are the reason. In a glutted market for lawyers, that’s a remarkably unfortunate outcome.

THE BATTLE FOR CHARLESTON

Posted on June 4, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

On the heels of my post about two struggling law schools, the New York Times published Professor Steven R. Davidoff’s discussion about one of them. Davidoff argues that critics of InfiLaw’s proposed acquisition of for-profit Charleston Law School are missing a key point: Why is it any worse for the private equity firm that owns InfiLaw to operate Charleston School of Law than, say, the current owners who have already taken millions of dollars out of the school?

In fact, he implies, if the school winds up affiliating with the state-run College of Charleston, why would that be preferable? Profit is profit; what difference does it make who gets it?

Here’s Davidoff’s money quote: “Lost among the dispute is the fact that a lower-tier law school like Charleston — whoever owns it — can not only produce capable graduates but help students start careers they couldn’t have without a law degree.”

Really?

As I’ve reported previously, even the dismal market for new attorneys hasn’t slowed the growth of InfliLaw’s three law schools (Arizona Summit, Charlotte, and Florida Coastal) — from a combined 679 graduates in 2011 to 1,191 in 2013. According to the ABA, only 36 percent of the InfiLaw classes of 2013 (including all three of its law schools) obtained full-time, long term JD-required employment.

Disaggregation doesn’t make things look any better for the company, unless you’re one of its private equity owners. For example, Davidoff cites Florida Coastal’s improvement in the percentage of graduates who pass the bar — from 58.2 percent to 76.4 percent as evidence of InfiLaw’s “track record of improving schools.” He’s responding to a “fear about the acquisition — that a private equity firm will lower standards.”

Davidoff doesn’t cite a source for his 76.4 percent number. According to Florida Coastal’s website, only 67.4 percent of first-time takers passed the bar in July 2013 — down from 75.2 percent for the July 2012 test. For February 2014, 72.9 percent of first-time takers passed — down from 79.3 percent in February 2013.

But that’s a minor issue compared to the overriding problem: only 35 percent of 2013 graduates obtained full-time, long-term jobs requiring that degree. The rest are not starting “careers that they wouldn’t have without a law degree.”

Debt

Maybe most InfiLaw graduates aren’t getting full-time, long-term law jobs, but they’re acquiring a lot of educational debt. Annual tuition and fees at all three InfiLaw schools exceed $40,000. At Arizona Summit, median federal law student debt between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013 was $184,825. At Florida Coastal, it was $162,549. The Charlotte Law School median was $155,697, plus another $20,018 in private loans.

Davidoff’s defense of InfiLaw ignores the combination of big debt and poor employment outcomes that afflict most of its recent graduates.

His concluding thoughts make a valid point: “Instead of arguing about who will profit from them, Charleston’s students may instead want to ask who will give South Carolina’s residents the best opportunity to succeed as lawyers at an acceptable price.”

Based on its track record to date, the answer isn’t InfiLaw. And I would reframe the question: Why should anyone profit at all when non-dischargeable student loans are the source of those profits?

The new ABA Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education has an unprecedented opportunity to straighten out this mess and take the profession to a better place. But with the chairman of InfiLaw’s National Policy Board (Dennis Archer) chairing that committee, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

A TALE OF TWO LAW SCHOOLS

Posted on May 28, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Two law schools in the news probably wish that they weren’t. They exemplify market dysfunction in the current system of financing legal education.

Indiana Tech

More than a year ago, I wrote about Indiana Tech Law School, one of several law schools founded after 2010. As proponents completed a feasibility study, newly required ABA disclosures demonstrated that only half of all recent law school graduates were finding full-time, long-term JD-required jobs. But some people thought that Indiana really needed a fifth law school.

Indiana Tech Law School opened its doors in 2013. It enrolled only 28 first-year students, far below the original target of 100. On May 21, 2014, its first dean and university provost Peter Alexander resigned both positions. According to the university press release, “Alexander cited the achievement of the goals he had established for the law school to that point in time and a desire to pursue other employment opportunities as the reasons for his decision to resign.”

An uncertain future?

In addition to promoting Indiana Tech as unique, the school’s website introduces prospective students to the doctrine of caveat emptor:

“Like any new law school, Indiana Tech must be in operation for one year prior to seeking ABA accreditation…The Law School makes no representation to any applicant that it will be approved by the American Bar Association prior to the graduation of any matriculating student.”

In early May, the school stated its intent to seek provisional accreditation. Perhaps ABA Accreditation Standard 201 will be relevant to that determination: “The present and anticipated financial resources of a law school shall be adequate to sustain a sound program of legal education and accomplish its mission.”

At Indiana Tech, tuition is $30,360; estimated living and other expenses and add another $17,800. No data exist on the extent to which the 28 students in the school’s inaugural class borrowed funds for their first year. But it seems likely that federal student loan dollars were central to the following prediction in 2011 — when projected enrollment for the class entering in 2013 was 100 and expected to grow thereafter: “The school [will be] breaking even in 2017, according to the feasibility study. By the fifth year, the law school is projected to start operating at a surplus.”

Without assumptions about growing student loan debt to fund operations, would anyone have thought Indiana Tech Law School was “feasible” in 2011? How about 2014?

Charleston School of Law

Charleston, a for-profit law school, reveals a different kind of market dysfunction. InfiLaw, a for-profit law school group, has been trying to acquire it since last summer. (Recently, I wrote about InfiLaw and one of its national board members who chairs the new ABA Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education.) On May 19, a committee of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education voted to reject a recommendation that InfiLaw receive a license to operate Charleston Law School.

InfiLaw’s attorney, Kevin Hall, renewed the company’s effort in a public hearing before the full Commission. He described the school as “in a financial tailspin.” According to the Charleston Post and Courier, “The five judges and lawyers who started Charleston School of Law a decade ago with the lofty goal of training attorneys committed to public service… began draining money from the school [in 2010], withdrawing $25 million in profits by 2013 that they split among themselves.”

The three remaining owners “confirmed Hall’s description of the school’s financial situation, and they all agreed that it got that way because owners for years had been pulling profits from the institution.”

Follow the money

What was the source of Charleston’s now-distributed profits? The answer appears on the school’s website:

“Most students will depend on federal student loans to pay for tuition, books and living expenses while in law school. During the 2012-2013 academic year, 88% of our students borrowed student loans to finance their legal education. At graduation, the average student loan debt incurred for those borrowers while attending the Charleston School of Law was $146,595.”

Nine months after graduation, 53 percent of the school’s class of 2013 had found full-time long-term jobs requiring a JD. More than half of those were working in firms of 10 or fewer attorneys.

So at Charleston, student debtors finance profit distributions to law school owners who have no accountability for poor graduate outcomes. When the school later hits the financial skids, only InfiLaw, another for-profit organization, can rescue it.

Wealth redistribution takes many forms, but none produces results more perverse than the current system for financing — and profiting from — legal education.

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