Law School Capture
posted by Jeffrey Harrison
My blogging schitk is grousing about legal education. I do this mainly on moneylaw and classsbias and serve as a technical advisor to privilegelaw – a blog that must be read starting earlier and moving to more recent. In many respects I think legal education has been captured by and run for the convenience of faculty who are far more often than not the children of privilege. (If you are already preparing to comment, I ask that you skip it if the comment is about a law professor who is not a child of privilege.) As I blog along this month these themes will become more developed. First, here is a test to examine your own school for its level of capture.
Before taking the test there are some clarifications. There is good and bad capture. I can imagine a law school captured by the faculty and, with or without help from the administration, run for the benefit of stakeholders. This would be faculty that is constantly asking “What should we be doing”? and matching it against what it is doing. On the other hand, capture can mean that a faculty runs the law school for its convenience with only modest limitations imposed by others and even here observing the limits are part of a pattern of self-interested behavior.
Second, from time to time I get an email that carries with it the assumption that all my grousing is about my own School. Wrong! The examples are not all taken from my School, and if you really called my bluff I would not bet that my school is any different than the average. So how does your school stack up on the capture quiz: (you can give your school partial points)
1. Are classes scheduled mid week and mid day even though it means conflicts that limit student choices? (1 point for a yes.)
2. Has you school seriously reviewed any of its foreign programs, centers, institutes or degree programs in the past two years? (1 point for a no.)
3. Does your school depend on adjuncts to teach mainline courses while offering small enrollment specialized courses taught by full time profs? (1 point for a yes)
4. Does your school have a high curve that is sometimes defended by not wanting to hurt the feelings of the students or other justifications that amount to “I do not want to actually have to evaluate someone?” (1 point for a yes)
5. Do colleagues propose programs that are needed even though they will not actually be teaching, traveling, or receiving a reduced teaching load if the program is adopted? (1 point for a no)
6. Can students graduate and take half or more of their classes on a pass/fail basis. (See question 4) (1 point for a yes)
7. Does your school encourage massive, barely supervised, externships that generate tuition dollars, provide free labor and, by the way, mean less teaching ? (1 point for a yes).
8. Does your administration mass mail glossy reports listing every conceivable thing faculty submit as reportable? (1 point for a yes).
9. Does your dean appear to be afraid to suggest that the School should do better and then hold people accountable? (1 point for a yes)
10. Is the norm that just about everyone is gone by 11 AM on Friday? (1 point for a yes)
If you scored a 10, it’s best to go into receivership and start from scratch.
If you are in the 7-9 range you will probably be a 10 soon.
If you are 4-6, I think you are average and a few hires could move you either way.
If you are 3 or less, congratulations.
October 1, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Posted in: Education, Law School, Law School (Rankings), Law School (Teaching)
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