So You Want to Go to Law School: The Series

So You Want to Go to Law School, a viral video classic on the foibles of legal education and its relationship vel non to the practice of law, has become a full-blown series. David W. Kazzie, the author of the original video, will trace the adventures of Carrie-Ann Fox, an idealistic would-be lawyer, as she makes her way through law school. The first post-pilot installment introduces Will Graham, battle-hardened 2L, as Carrie-Ann's new friend with a sense of humor and shockingly deep insights into Lost and Grey's Anatomy:

Three Kinds of Diversity

Diversity comes in many flavors. I here compare three types—diversity of skin color and sex, cultural diversity, and ideological diversity—and offer some observations about the distinctive costs and benefits of each. I conclude that, holding all else equal, a group of people having diverse colors and sexes will enjoy modest institutional gains at low cost, while a group touting ideological diversity runs the risk of high transaction costs but wins a shot at great intellectual gains. Groups with high cultural diversity fall in between those two extremes.

Diversity of skin color and sex appears on the face of a group, thus offering ready proof that its selection, such as through hiring and promotion, was not tainted with invidious discrimination. Holding all else equal—assuming, specifically, that the racially and sexually diverse group does not possess above-average cultural and ideological diversity—the costs of intra-group transactions remain low. Thus, for instance, might a facially diverse group of culturally and ideologically similar people get along very smoothly. Think, here, of an elite law school where every professor has absorbed Ivy League norms and all lean moderately left. They might bicker, of course; law professors specialize in that. But such a culturally and ideologically uniform group is not likely to host nasty public fights about ballot initiatives or the like.

Are there downsides to pursuing diversity of skin color and sex in hiring and promotion? Not if you can find enough well-qualified candidates, and not if you avoid discriminating against candidates for blameless having an uninteresting color or sex. Happily, it is not too hard to satisfy both conditions, these days.

Cultural diversity proves harder to document, and runs some risk of increasing intra-group transaction costs. Someone brought up solely within the confines of respectable East Coast institutions will have to work a bit to understand a peer raised Mormon, in Utah's backcountry. So, too, might differences of sexual orientation (which like cultural differences generally do not appear on a person's face) sometimes lead to innocent misunderstandings. Holding equal for other sorts of diversity, however, cultural differences offer many charms and few serious costs. Most of us, and especially those of us in academia, enjoy meeting friendly people with exotic backgrounds. When we share ideologies, moreover, meeting fellow travelers who differ from us suggests that our most heartfelt values transcend race, sex, and culture—a comforting, if somewhat smug, idea.

Ideological diversity, standing alone, proves at least as hard to document as cultural diversity—it does not appear on a person's face nor even, typically, in a person's dress or hairstyle—and much more likely to raise intra-group transaction costs. Religious differences prove largely intractable, though in polite society we tend to keep them private. Political differences, at least in American institutions, threaten to burst out into loud and public disagreements, however. Such frank exchanges can help each side to hone its arguments, of course, and thus offers the prospect of considerable gains both to the disputants and the group that harbors them both. But if local norms do not temper the tone and proper boundaries of ideological debate, transactions costs can easily soar, making it hard for a group to manage even run-of-the-mill functions efficiently.

In sum: diversity of skin color and sex offers few costs and modest benefits; cultural diversity creates slightly higher transaction costs but compensates with intriguing charms; and ideological diversity presents a high risk/high return strategy for institutions devoted to generating new and useful ideas.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, and MoneyLaw.]

Outsourcing Legal Education?

The other day a pile of new course proposals by adjunct and non tenure track employees was delivered to the members of the curriculum committee. It made me wonder: How much of our curriculum is taught by people who did not go through a search process, have no role in faculty governance, or were not hired to be teachers. The number was high and growing. I doubt that makes us different from any other law school.

The one thing that all of these teachers have in common is that they are less expensive to use than tenure track professors. Also, I think it is generally true that they regard being able to say they are "professors" is a big deal to them.

I am not saying this is exploitation since these folks have choices but there a few things that seem amiss. (I do think the adjunct route is better for schools in highly populated areas were the choices are better, being able to say you are a "professor" is less important and the main qualification is not knowing someone on the faculty. )

First, what kind of rational hiring process spends tens of thousands of dollars in search expenses for professors on the one hand and conducts no search for those who will teach even more. I am not saying one is better but it's not a case in which the mix makes everything better.

Second, if the idea of a search is to ensure diversity and fair opportunities, why, if you take one position that involves teaching 3 courses and divide it in thirds, does the need for or desirability for a search disappear?

Third, part time teachers are cheap and seem desperate for the opportunity. Many have no say in governance and little contact with the school other than fitting in after work. Does this mean that power gravitates to the administration. More importantly, is that really a bad thing?

Distance learning, on line courses and degrees, externships, and part time teachers all involve outsourcing of a sort. The problem (or rather, the explanation) is not that it is driven by money grubbing management that hopes to make shareholders happy by cost cutting. In this case of outsourcing, no one gets richer.

I am not sure where this goes or even if I think it is wrong. I do not like it but that is a different matter. Most of this is cross-posted on classbias.

Encouragement For The Less Than Highly Motivated

I'm not as big a fan as Jim of animations, but feel that it's time that some concern be shown for those who might struggle to stare down the cynics.

Remember, not everybody raises their hand in class.

So you want to go to law school?

So you want to go to law school? Watch:



Congratulations to Wahoo Corner, the apparent origin of a video that is sure to become a viral classic for prelaw advisors, law students, lawyers, and even full-time legal academics. Hat tip to Donald Anton, Eric Fink, and Shubha Ghosh via Facebook.

Where Partners Come From: Finding the Brass Ring

The ABA has become increasingly interested in outcome measures. US News uses relative bar pass rates and questionable at-grad and 9-month employment rates. Bill Henderson has looked at per capita NLJ first-year-associate hiring rates.

This post reports preliminary results of a study examining what many law students view as the ultimate outcome measure: partnership in a big firm. Specifically, it attempts to gauge how successful graduates of each US law school have been at obtaining big-firm partnership status over the past 25 years. The study is limited to current partners (October 2010) in US offices of the NLJ 250.

My research assistants have almost completed the task of collecting the relevant information for all 250 firms from Martindale-Hubbell on-line. I have personally quality-checked the spreadsheets for the five largest law firms in the United States, which collectively employ 13,942 US lawyers – 11% of all US lawyers employed by the NLJ 250. This post reports the results for those five firms. The five firms studied (with their two largest US offices, measured by number of partners) are:

Baker & McKenzie (Chicago, New York)
DLA Piper (Chicago, New York)
Jones Day (New York, Washington)
White & Case (New York, Washington)
Skadden Arps (New York, Washington)

Here follow the complete results, by rank and number of partners in those five firms nation-wide who obtained their JD degree within the past 25 years (I apologize for the awkward formatting):

1 Harvard 69
2 Georgetown 61
3 NYU 55
4 Columbia 52
5 Michigan 47
6 Northwestern 44
7 Chicago 42
8 Virginia 41
9 Texas 35
10 Fordham 34
11 UC Berkeley 29
12 UC Hastings 27
13 Duke 25
13 Ohio State 25
13 Pennsylvania 25
16 Notre Dame 23
17 Cornell 21
18 Boston U 20
18 George Wash 20
20 UCLA 19
21 Maryland 18
22 San Diego 16
23 American 15
23 Loyola Chicago 15
23 Loyola LA 15
23 Yale 15
27 Case Western 14
27 SMU 14
27 Stanford 14
30 St. John's 13
31 Chicago-Kent 11
31 San Francisco 11
31 Tulane 11
34 Emory 10
34 Houston 10
34 Illinois 10
34 USC 10
38 Boston College 9
38 Brooklyn 9
38 Georgia 9
38 Minnesota 9
38 Pittsburgh 9
38 Wisconsin 9
44 Cardozo 8
44 Cleveland State 8
44 DePaul 8
44 Indiana 8
44 Miami 8
44 Vanderbilt 8
44 Washington U 8
44 William & Mary 8
52 Catholic 7
52 John Marshall 7
54 UC Davis 6
55 Baylor 5
55 Duquesne 5
55 Pepperdine 5
55 Rutgers 5
59 Albany 4
59 George Mason 4
59 Hofstra 4
59 McGeorge 4
59 New York LS 4
59 SUNY Buffalo 4
59 Syracuse 4
59 Temple 4
59 Texas Tech 4
59 Tulsa 4
59 Washington 4
59 Washington & Lee 4
71 Akron 3
71 Baltimore 3
71 Brigham Young 3
71 Cal. Western 3
71 Drake 3
71 Florida 3
71 Franklin Pierce 3
71 Golden Gate 3
71 Mercer 3
71 Northeastern 3
71 Oregon 3
71 Santa Clara 3
71 South Texas 3
71 Villanova 3
71 Widener 3
86 Alabama 2
86 Arizona 2
86 Capital 2
86 Cincinnati 2
86 Colorado 2
86 Connecticut 2
86 Creighton 2
86 Dayton 2
86 Florida State 2
86 Iowa 2
86 Kansas 2
86 Louisville 2
86 Marquette 2
86 North Carolina 2
86 Ohio Northern 2
86 Pace 2
86 Seton Hall 2
86 Southwestern 2
86 Toledo 2
86 Washburn 2
86 Wayne State 2
107 Arizona State 1
107 Arkansas 1
107 Campbell 1
107 Denver 1
107 Detroit-Mercy 1
107 Howard 1
107 Louisiana State 1
107 Memphis 1
107 Missouri 1
107 New England 1
107 Oklahoma 1
107 Oklahoma City 1
107 Penn State 1
107 Southern Ill. 1
107 St. Louis 1
107 St. Thomas 1
107 Stetson 1
107 Suffolk 1
107 Tennessee 1
107 Thomas M. Cooley 1
107 Valparaiso 1
107 Vermont 1
107 Wake Forest 1
107 Western NE 1
107 Western State 1

Focusing on the top 50 law schools (by top-5-firm partners), 21 law schools outperform their 2010 US News ranking by 10 or more (e.g., San Francisco is ranked 67 places higher on this scale than in the 2010 US News rankings):

San Francisco 67
Loyola Chicago 64
St. John's 57
Loyola Los Angeles 48
Chicago-Kent 46
DePaul 43
San Diego 39
Pittsburgh 33
Case Western 28
UC Hastings 27
Miami 27
Houston 25
Brooklyn 23
Ohio State 22
Maryland 22
American 22
SMU 22
Fordham 20
Tulane 14
Georgetown 12
George Washington 10

Note: Cleveland State is ranked 44th on this measure, although third tier in US News, and therefore clearly belongs on the list of overperforming schools. Indiana is not evaluated for under- or overperformance, because Indiana graduates do not typically list the campus, and the two campuses are ranked differently by US News.

Further work

My next step is going to be to extend the analysis to the full NLJ 250. The fact that the five firms analyzed employ 11% of all lawyers employed nationwide by the NLJ 250 suggests that the results reported here are likely to be somewhat representative, but this needs to be confirmed. In particular, I expect that Harvard is a more likely recruiting target for firms further down the NLJ 250 list than its competitors. (In Los Angeles, for example, Harvard graduates are heavily represented among big-firm partners; Chicago graduates are not.)

I have also collected city-by-city data. Again, I expect it will show that few schools are actually national law schools – in the sense of producing significant numbers of big-firm partners in multiple cities. Here again, I expect Harvard to perform well.

Finally, I intend to compare the percentage that each school's graduates comprise of all entry-level hires with the percentage that that school's graduates comprise of the NLJ 250 partner population. In effect, I intend to compute a success/washout ratio for each school. My intuition is that firms hire very heavily at some schools because of the schools' prestige, notwithstanding the fact that few graduates of those schools ultimately become partners, and that the converse is true as well. This information may be useful to both students and hiring partners.

Point Counter-Point

Since I received this in my email I suppose most other law professors did as well. It's about scholarly impact. I think an excellent and thoughtful reponse is this by Brian Tamanaha. Brian pretty much covers all the bases as far as the problems of counting as a way to assess scholarship.