Tag Archives: law school

“I AM A DICTATOR.”

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Some people think that law professors are boring. A dean in Cleveland is proving them wrong.

A year ago, Case Western Reserve Law School Dean Lawrence Mitchell burst onto the national scene with a New York Times op-ed selling a law degree as a great deal. Shortly thereafter, he gave a Bloomberg Law interview in which he continued to press his case. For his efforts, Mitchell took center stage in my article, “The Law School Story of the Year – Deans in Denial.”

Well, he-e-e-e-e’s b-a-a-a-a-c-k! Mitchell is now the leading man in what is becoming a tragedy for his school.

The principal antagonists

Raymond S.R. KU, became a tenured professor at Case in 2003, co-director of the Center for Law, Technology & the Arts in 2006, and associate dean for academic affairs in 2010. On Halloween 2013, Ku filed an amended complaint against Lawrence Mitchell and Case Western Reserve University for alleged retaliation because he opposed “Dean Mitchell’s unlawful discriminatory practice of sexually harassing females in the law school community.”

Lawrence Mitchell became dean in 2011. The complaint alleges that he arrived from George Washington University Law School with some personal baggage, including several marriages culminating in divorces, one of which involved a student. If the allegations about his conduct after becoming dean at Case are true, his behavior was both stupid and reprehensible. (Spoiler alert: the details are less titillating than most voyeurs might like — and the juiciest stuff is hearsay. UPDATE: Dean Mitchell has moved to strike many of the allegations as “immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous.)

Hubris revealed?

Buried in the salacious allegations that have generated media attention is paragraph 86 of the amended complaint: “In relation to the performance of his duties as dean of the Case Law School, Dean Mitchell stated vehemently, ‘I am a dictator.'”

Allegations aren’t evidence. Maybe he never said it. But what if he did? Maybe he was joking. Or maybe he believed it. Or, worst of all, maybe it was true.

In many respects — from framing a school’s mission to creating annual budgets to doling out office assignments — deans wield enormous power. But the best deans aren’t dictators; they’re consensus builders. They have line accountability to university provosts, presidents and trustees; however, they also have to deal effectively with students, alumni, and faculty. Any dean who likens his role to that of a dictator eventually becomes a problem for his institution.

Dollars behind the drama?

As the controversy swirls around Mitchell, a very good law school suffers. Case graduated 223 new attorneys in 2010. The entering first-year class of 2013 includes fewer than half that number — 100. Apparently, Mitchell’s year-end sales pitch landed on deaf ears.

In his Bloomberg Law interview last January, Dean Mitchell said, “Of course, we’re running a business at the end of the day.” From that perspective, perhaps Case University’s central administration doesn’t view things as badly as Case’s 1L numbers might suggest.

Specifically, there’s gold in law school LLM students, and Case has 85 of them entering its program this year. For a school with only 100 first-year JD students, that’s a lot. (The University of Chicago has 196 entering JD-students and 70 LLM-students.) In contrast to more extensive financial aid available for JD students, those seeking an LLM at Case are eligible only for “a limited number of merit scholarships…in the form of a partial reduction for tuition.”

What lies ahead?

Perhaps Mitchell’s business plan has been to follow the money, focusing on the lucrative LLM recruits. Maybe that’s his vision for the school as a profit-maximizing venture. Maybe that’s precisely the direction that his bosses want him to take. Maybe Case’s central administration has given Mitchell such latitude to wield power that he feels comfortable boasting about it. Or, as I suggested at the beginning, perhaps there’s no substance to any of the claims against him.

If it turns out that Mitchell’s superiors are rewarding what they regard as “business success” by allowing him to run the school as a dictator, they have forgotten an important truth. Sometimes dictators get deposed — especially if they’re defendants in lawsuits.

THE LAW SCHOOL QUANDARY

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Law school deans are getting conflicting advice. Let’s sort it out.

“Provide more practical training” has become the latest mantra. At the recent annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, Susan Hackett, a legal consultant and former general counsel of the Association of Corporate Counsel, argued for a year of executive-style classes covering business topics and skills. Here’s a better suggestion: students seeking a business school education should attend business school.

Meanwhile, according to the National Law Journal, Peter Kalis, chairman of K&L Gates, said that some current law school criticism is misplaced: “I believe law schools should concentrate on the education of law students from the perspective of acculturating them in the rule of law. Law students should spend that time being immersed in and becoming familiar with common law subjects.” More fee simple, anyone?

Finally, a Northwestern University law professor and a first-year Kirkland & Ellis associate offered a dramatic solution to the shortage of attorneys. You probably didn’t know there was one. Although the U.S. already leads the world in lawyers per capita, the authors concluded that allowing colleges to offer undergraduate law programs would: 1) reduce law school tuition to zero (for such students); 2) produce more lawyers; 3) cause some attorneys to charge lower fees; and 4) assure broader access to legal services for lower- and middle-income Americans. While not prohibiting law schools from offering today’s $150,000 J.D. degree programs, the plan would put most law schools out of business.

Where to begin? One reason the United States has too many lawyers is that law school has long been a default solution for college students. But when youthful expectations clash with the harsh reality that most attorneys endure, career dissatisfaction results. Allowing poorly informed undergraduates to pursue a law degree right out of high school would be exponentially worse — for them and the profession. (Commenters to the on-line version of the article destroyed the authors’ cavalier comparison of their scheme to the UK system. If you’re wondering why The Wall Street Journal editorial board published such a flawed piece, you’re not alone.)

What do students think?

At the same time, today’s law students like the education they’re getting. According to the recently released 2011 Law School Survey of Student Engagement of 33,000 current students at 95 law schools in the U.S. and Canada, 83 percent of respondents said that their experience in law school was “good” or “excellent.” Eighty percent said they definitely or probably would attend the same law school if they could start over again. Maybe most of these students will join the ranks of unhappy scambloggers when they can’t get jobs to repay their loans, but for the moment they’re satisfied.

But the same study revealed that 40 percent of students felt that their legal education had so far contributed only some or very little to their acquisition of job- or work-related knowledge and skills. In other words, some like their law school experience, even if it’s not equipping them in a practical way for positions they hope to obtain.

A final point may resolve this apparent contradiction. When students seek their first law jobs, curriculum makes little difference. Candid big firm interviewers admit that, except insofar as a particular course might give a recruit something interesting to discuss in an interview, subject matter is irrelevant. In fact, dramatic curriculum innovation is underway at many schools and, however worthwhile it otherwise may be, affected students haven’t become more desirable to prospective employers:

“There’s no employer out there right now — not law firms, not the Department of Justice, not the ACLU — that are seeking out these graduates,” Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor William Henderson observed at the AALS meeting. “These programs haven’t affected hiring patterns. It’s still all sorted out with credentials. It’s based on the brand of the law school.”

If the vast majority of students are happy with the law school experience and changing it won’t improve their job prospects, perhaps the legal academy and its critics should consider focusing attention elsewhere. Here’s an idea: Provide prospective law students better information about the real life that most lawyers lead. For too many of them, it comes as an unpleasant surprise. Forewarned is forearmed.