New Directions in Law Faculty Signatures

Dear Phillip:

Please find enclosed a reprint of my latest article, "Special Pasta Recipes: Law, Culture, and Subordination: Is There A Way Out of Here." 34 Oklahoma State City Law School Just a Few Yards South of the McDonand's Law, Policy and Cooking Review, 345 (2013). I though you might be interested  in it because I cited an article that cited yours.

Best Wishes. Hope to see you at the annual meeting.


Chad

Chadworths Osbourn
Professor of Law and Associate Director of Foreign Program, Associate Director of Family Law Institute, Designated Decanal Ass Kisser, Soon to Be (STB) Associate Director of Muffins
Ben and Jerry's Law School
University of Western New Hampshire
Freemont, New Hampshire
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Led Pledge of Allegiance in Fifth Grade Ms. Stoney's Class
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The Venns of Faculty Governance

I see that Professor Campos is finished with his effort to expose the Law School Scam.  I read his blog once or twice but felt like I knew and agreed with most of what he was saying so I did not keep up.  Judging by some of his enemies, how wrong could he be?

Frankly, I am pretty much out of gas on my far more modest Classbias blog too. It has always had a goal that was a bit different than that of Professor Campos. Its goal was to reveal the persistent and destructive effects of institutions run by elites for their own ends.

Here is one more effort to explain the problem.  The people I know can be placed along a continuum. At one end are the "demanders." These are the folks who feel entitled to virtually everything and "demand" that their desires be met. Slipping along the continuum we come to the "askers." What ever they can think of, they ask for. At the far end are the people who do not demand or ask. If you know anything about relative deprivation, you know that to demand or ask you have to be in a context in which things are perceived as possible for people like you. For example, I remember a few years ago when two new faculty hires were told they would be given a certain sum for moving expenses. The reaction of one way, "What? They will actually pay for me to move. What a great surprise." The reaction of the other was "I cannot possible move for such a small amount." The important thing to note is that there is no correlation between need, merit, productivity, student welfare or institutional success and a person's position on that continuum.

In addition, administrators say yes to these requests and demands for a host of reasons other than student or institutional welfare. For example, an administrator may say yes just to avoid the harassment or to make sure he or she is not accused of 'insensitivity" to one political group or another. Or, the administrator may be concerned that the asker/demander is capable influencing others to believe he or she has been unreasonable.

Here is my best try at using Venn diagrams to illustrate the problem. The larger two circles are things people ask for or demand and reasons administrators say yes. The smaller circles within each one show things asked for or demanded that are consistent with student or institutional welfare and the times administrators say yes for reasons related to student or institutional welfare. That tiny overlap in the middle shows how much these interest coincide. A much larger area indicates when requests and demands that have nothing to do with student or institutional welfare get a yes answer.


Cross-posted at Classbias

Measuring the downside risk of law school attendance

I am very grateful for the opportunity to present comments to the American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education, in a session at at the midyear meeting of the ABA in Dallas, Texas, on February 9, 2013. The task force has been "charged with making recommendations to the American Bar Association on how law schools, the ABA, and other groups and organizations can take concrete steps to address issues concerning the economics of legal education and its delivery." The following paper, Measuring the Downside Risk of Law School Attendance, provides the technical background for my comments:

Legal education has come under severe political pressure, both external and internal, for its perceived failure to deliver tangible economic benefits to law students. In fairness, legal education is not alone. The financial crisis of 2008 and the economic recession triggered by it have forced many other industries, including the private practice of law, to reevaluate their balance of costs and benefits. Many institutions, even entire industries. must now endure stress-testing in the form of debt-to-income or debt-to-capital ratios. In this document, I shall focus on student welfare, especially the core economic question of whether law school attendance delivers a valuable return on students’ investment. I shall also describe the tools, drawn from quantitative finance and econometrics, that I would use to evaluate downside risk and inequality within any cohort of law school graduates.

Formal citation: Jim Chen, Measuring the Downside Risk of Law School Attendance, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2214337 or http://bit.ly/DownsideRiskLawSchool.