Prof. Derek Muller's study--the asterisk.

Here's the email that I sent to Prof. Derek Muller yesterday, in response to his decision to list Boyd Law as a "top 10 'barista' school":

Hi, Derek--I just saw the result of your "top 10" lists as described in the TaxProf Blog (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/03/the-2014-.html), and I had a couple of thoughts.  My first thought is that, in general, providing information about placement can be very useful to potential applicants, so I applaud the concept of what you're doing.  My qualm about your methodology, though, leads me to write to you today.  I believe that some of your statistics are materially misleading--certainly as they relate to UNLV (Boyd School of Law), and perhaps as they might relate to other schools as well.  Therefore, I'm writing to you today to ask you to please correct the misstatements with respect to Boyd.

Here's why Boyd’s inclusion on the Top 10 list of “Career Baristas” is materially misleading.  The percentage of graduates in non-professional, full-time, long-term positions listed for each of the schools in this “Top 10” is minuscule compared to the graduates employed in other types of jobs.  At Boyd, in a class of 128 graduates, six graduates (4.7%) were employed in non-professional, full-time, long-term positions as of February 15, 2012.  Based on these six graduates, Boyd is listed as the #3 top school in the nation for “Career Baristas.”  Meanwhile, 85 (66.4%) of Boyd’s class of 2011 was employed in full-time, long-term positions for which bar passage is required, and another 6 (4.7%) were employed in full-time, long-term positions where a JD provided an advantage.  A full 75% of the class, 96 students total, was employed in full-time or part-time long term positions that require bar passage or a JD.  Further, none of these positions are funded by the law school. 

The Top 10 list itself creates confusion because it is based on such a small percentage of the overall class.  It is particularly misleading in the case of Boyd because it is based on six graduates, providing an incomplete and distorted view of the employment prospects for Boyd students.

Given that your study is being circulated on at least the TaxProf Blog listserv, and likely others, I would greatly appreciate it if you could correct this mistaken impression about Boyd.  If you think that you're not going to be able to do that by, say, Monday of next week, please let me know.  I'm happy to chat--713-202-1881.
All the best,
N.

Professor Muller, demonstrating that he listens to legitimate criticism, has added an asterisk to the post on TaxProf Blog: 

*Caution is in order for any ordinal ranking, but in a category like this, where the percentages are low, small numbers may appear large. For instance, the University of Akron has just 9 graduates in this category but ranks first; the University of North Dakota, just 5 graduates but ranks second; the University of Nevada—Las Vegas, just 6 graduates, but ranks third.

Thanks, Prof. Muller.

Gotta love this video.

Here.  Hat tip to Scott Bovitz.

Above the Law's "gradenfreude" post....

Is funny as heck and sad at the same time.  Read it here.

Several possible approaches to paying down student loans more quickly.

See here and here.  Hat tip to my buddy Kirk Homeyer for letting me know.

UPDATE:  Kirk gave me three more sites:  here, here, and here.  Thanks, Kirk!

Bloomberg Law's interview with Larry Mitchell

It's here.  I have zero doubt as to Dean Mitchell's sincerity.  He's obviously speaking from the heart.  But I still disagree with him.  There is every reason to avoid the "we're fine--there's nothing wrong with our current model of legal education" mindset--there is a disconnect between the number of law graduates and the number of available law jobs; law graduates are piling on the non-dischargeable debt to get their degrees, and several universities have been caught fudging some important numbers.

After Larry's op-ed came out, there were a lot of "you go!" emails from some of my colleague law deans on the ABA Deans' Listserv, and as I read them,* I got this sinking feeling that decanal groupthink was blocking us from realizing that legal education has serious problems.

Not all of the attacks on legal education are fair, but many of them are.  Read anything that Deborah Jones Merritt has written about legal education, and you'll get a well-reasoned view of the problems that we're facing.  And she's not the only one with an interesting approach to the issue.  Read Legal Whiteboard.  Read Bernie Burk's posts.  Read Bill Henderson's work. And there are others.  There's plenty of information out there to give all of us a feel for the problems that we're facing.

There's no need to scrap all of legal education, of course, but those who continue to maintain that things are "fine as they are" puzzle me.  It's far more interesting to think about how to adapt legal education to the changing world than it is to try to maintain the status quo. 

But bravo to Bloomberg Law for continuing this discussion.  My fantasy?  An open forum (in front of law students and hiring partners) where Lee Pacchia asks a lot of us some very pointed questions.


* I'm sure that, after I step down from being interim dean, some of my decanal colleagues will breathe a sigh of relief--I'll be off that listserv.

Why I'm such a fanatic about exam deadlines and following instructions.

See here.  Hat tip to my buddy Seymour Serebnick for passing along this great object lesson.

Is Dean Lawrence Mitchell right about law schools?

In a New York Times op-ed piece (here), Dean Lawrence Mitchell of Case Western Reserve makes the case that law school is a good investment.  I know that a lot of my colleague deans loved the op-ed, but I found myself very uneasy while (and after) reading it.  And my reasons for my unease are precisely why what I'm about to say will alienate many fellow law deans.*

Sure, law school can give people a great education, even if law graduates find themselves working in non-law jobs.  Any good graduate program that helps students develop their analytical, research, and communication skills will be a plus for all sorts of jobs.

But most legal education is expensive, and students who are borrowing thousands of dollars of non-dischargeable debt need to think clearly about whether they'll be able to pay off that debt upon graduation.  I'm guessing that most law students are not particularly comforted by the idea that they'll find jobs eventually, over a 40-50 year span.  Therefore, Dean Mitchell's suggestion that "[t]he focus on first jobs is misplaced[; because we] educate students for a career likely to span 40 to 50 years" fails to consider the very real fear that many recent graduates have about making ends meet when their loans first kick in.

What this op-ed represents, at least to me, is confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias is a powerful phenomenon.  For those who want to suggest that law school is always a good idea, they can focus on the fact that many law graduates do get good (or at least decent) jobs and that applications to law school haven't dried up yet.  On the other hand, applications to law school have been dropping.  Bad job market + non-dischargeable debt = decline in applications.  That's no coincidence.  Potential law students are starting to do some basic arithmetic.  If you want to work against the natural confirmation bias that law deans probably have, see, e.g., here and here.

We can spend a lot of time congratulating each other on the idea that law school can produce well-educated people, or we could pay attention to some very disturbing trends.  Those trends include the bimodal distribution of law salaries, the changes in law firm economics (see here, here, and here, for starters), and--frankly--the changes in law school economics.  I didn't see Dean Mitchell's op-ed address those issues, but to be fair, an op-ed is likely not the right forum in which to address them.

I believe that legal education can be a wonderful thing, and I believe that law is an honorable profession.  I'm proud of the legal education that Boyd Law provides to its students, of the legal research that our faculty does, and of the service we provide to our community.  But just as the phrase "thinking like a lawyer" grates on my nerves because it implies that no other profession teaches top-notch analytical skills, the idea that legal education is important because it's the best way of teaching how to reason and communicate is dangerously naive.

That's why you won't see me posting Dean Mitchell's op-ed on our law school's website.  Maybe I can now add "and persona non grata" to my Interim Dean title.

* Now that I'm Interim Dean, I need to mention that these views are mine alone, and not those of the law school or of UNLV (even though you probably already figured that out).

UPDATE (11/30/12):  For a more fun way of saying the same thing, see LawProfBlog's post (here).

UPDATE (12/2/12):  And for a way more erudite way of saying it, see The Faculty Lounge's post (here).