Law Schools Being Forced to Make Radical Changes // More Lawyers, But Maybe Even Less Justice

WASHINGTON - April 21, 2014 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 21, 2014):  With applications plummeting 40% because of a disastrous job market and unmanageable levels of student debt - a situation likely to get worse because of technology, globalization, and changes in the delivery and pricing of legal services - law schools are being forced to finally begin making revolutionary changes in the way they have taught fledgling attorneys for more than 100 years.

         The result may well be more attorneys, but perhaps even less justice, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who uses his scientific background to assess how both law teaching and law practice are changing with advances in technology, including e-learning, computational linguistics, etc.

        Already many law schools have lowered their admission standards and reduced their faculties - which may result in dimmer and less well-trained grads.  Despite this, some 80% are reportedly operating in the red; something they can't do for much longer.  So a few are making the first real changes in legal education since a Harvard dean introduced the case method around 1890.  Here are some examples:

        As Prof. Banzhaf had predicted, at least one law school is using on-line and hybrid classes so that students can study at their convenience and at a distance, keeping their jobs in their home towns while earning a law degree.  Some U.S. law schools are also using on-line instruction to teach courses from their home schools in foreign countries, at widely-scattered law firm offices, and elsewhere.

        About a dozen law schools already offer two-years programs, not by ditching the questionable third year of law school, but by utilizing summers and other techniques.  Spurred in part by Barack Obama's comments, many are even seriously considering trying to get rid of the dreaded third year entirely, perhaps by having students take some pre-law classes as undergraduates, or even awarding lesser law degrees.

        New bar requirements are forcing law schools to have more law students learn the law, not in the classroom, but by actually participating in bringing real legal actions, something Banzhaf says his own law students have been doing for some 40 years.  Medical students learn to perform operations not by listening to lectures and writing essay exams, but by actually doing some under supervision, he points out.

        Once law schools realize that students can learn on line as well as in the classroom, even bigger revolutions will likely take place.  Instead of having - and paying for - about 1000 different professors delivering opening lectures in Torts classes this fall, many if not most schools could slash their costs by using on-line instruction from a handful of top Torts teachers, he says.

         Even within one school, where it may now employ about a dozen different professors (at about $200,000/yr) to teach different sections of the same course, many of the students could learn on line from one or two without attending regular classes.

        In addition to convenience, on-line and other forms of electronic assisted learning (e-learning) could help law schools slash their costs, particularly those not in top 30 which can’t realistically compete with those which are without offering students a less expensive and perhaps more convenient educational experience.

         If many of the bottom 100 law schools significantly cut their tuition, this could attract even more students into an already over saturated legal market where just about half can get real legal jobs upon graduation.  But more lawyers may not mean more justice, warns Banzhaf, since most law students come from upper class backgrounds, and even those who don't may not be able to afford to work on behalf of the poor and under represented with their own student debt loads which already average close to $150,000.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/ @profbanzhaf