Transcripts For CSPAN2 Future Of Law Schools 20170821 : comp

I ended up spending most of my adult life as chief justice of the Infamous Supreme Court and i now doing see scenes of it in or intermediate court and i have an appointment over at the Indiana University Mckinney School of law. To my right is Rebecca Kourlis who spent more than a decade on the colorado supreme court. She left there perhaps ten or 11 years ago to be the founding director of the institute for the advancement of the american legal system which does all sorts of research and programmatic work on the improvement of courts and the improvements of Legal Education and of the legal profession. And then Professor William henderson certainly and that of the circuit if there ever was one. After his Legal Education at the university of chicago became a clerk at the seventh circuit but happily has spent his recent career at the Indiana University Maurer School of law, and i say theres nobody he was done more intriguing work about the future of our profession than bill and becky. Im going to begin with the words of setting the stage. There are many things about modern Legal Education that we as lawyers know a little about but not necessarily know about in detail, and they provide considerable foundation for evaluating the current state of law schools and, both now and in the future. Now, you could actually describe recent developments by using just eight words. The eight words would be rising tuition, massive debt, fewer jobs, and fewer applicants. I will say a few words about each of those to begin laying the foundation for our conversation today. No mystery to anybody that tuition in Higher Education has been rising. Indeed, it has been rising for a lifetime of virtually all of us here at a rate that exceeds twice the Consumer Price index. It is, in fact, been rising at a rate so rapid that the finance officers of the American University systems have created a new measure. It is called the Higher Education price index, designed to give a more accurate reading of how much, what ought now be called really the Sticker Price as opposed to the nominal price. But how fast the Sticker Price has been going up. In the two decades that, say just ended, late in the last century and the first decade of the century, the general rate of inflation for higher ed was 71 real actual adjusted for inflation, cbi, 71 . But the rate in law schools is not 71 over that time, but 317 . It is actually been rising at an average rate of 8 a year in recent decades. That, of course, has led to stories we all read about. The largest amount of debt that students, both undergraduates and, of course, law students, experience, rising to the point where americans now owe more in education debt than they owe on their homes. Really quite a stunning change in the american debt picture. The average law student debt on the way out the door is about 85,000 in the public schools, and about 50 50 higher than th, 122 125,000 for students who have gone to private schools. This continues of course that in general to be easy to read about. Just last week and the wall street journal a new wrinkle on debt. Theres a federal program thats been in place for a while but i think its called parents plus. Its on the front page of the second section about the opportunities that parents have been given to empower their children to borrow more money if the parents would cosign. Very Close Friends over the last two decades is that we have been turning out more jd graduates and turning out more law license holders then there were jobs for lawyers. For a long time. The reason we didnt notice that unless we have somebody directly involved with the is the way in which employment for new lawyers was reported didnt do a very good job of telling us where they were employed, simply told us by and large whether they were employed or what kind of organization they were employed. It was quite ordinary as recently as thingy 2000 three announcements once a year from the national announced nation with the American Bar Association that would say this is a great year. 90 of our graduates have found work within nine months, now 10 months has been measured. That sounded like a very happy results. Well, as youll recall, there were a series of scandals about the way in which this was reported and which of course occurred nextdoor in illinois. Our friends will particularly recall. The changes according to ask tougher questions in particular how many law graduates, license holders find an ongoing job for which you have to have a law license. That is the hardest way of asking the question. In the last half decade or so, the answer to that has been last year was 59 . That is to say about the people who turned out at the school, how many people found ongoing work fulltime of which you have which you had to have a law license and the answer to that is 59 . That number has stabilized. It had been as low as 57 . But that number has stabilized over the last couple of years. A lot of people dont buy alert for Attorney Generals Office as a prosecutor offices or private law firms. The other reason its stabilized of course is the number of new law grads keeps declining. The way in which you calculate the percentage gets altered. The fact is over the last five or six years, the number of jobs fulltime license required jobs has continued to decline. As recently as five years ago, it tended to be Something Like 28,000. Mind you we were graduating 40 to 45,000 or maybe a little bit more. Over five years ago about 20,000 jobs which most people think they are looking for when they go to law school. That number this year has fallen to 23,700. Slower decline perhaps thin earlier in the decade, but still a pretty small number. College seniors and Second Generation in college law advisers can read those numbers. So the result has been a dramatic change in how many people apply to go to law school. Within the last decade, the normal number, and the highest numbers ever seen in the country, the alltime high was 100,600 applicants. Applications is a funnier number so seems to be more important to focus on applicants. That number has been Something Like 100,000 paid 100,600, 98,000 for quite a long time. It dropped dramatically. In 2016 the number was 56,000. So its on the order of a 50 decline in the number of people who come down and put in their applications. As of last week, so far this year there were 50,200. That is down from last year just about 8 . I think that is the number that can say has probably stabilized, but theres something is happening inside that number that are particularly attractive. For instance, of the metric units commend the people who actually can in school, in order to come into school with lsats over 160 are half of what they were five years ago. The number who had 150 to 160 stabilized at the number of people who come in over 150 is up 80 from where it was. So there is a very noticeable shift in the metric to use the easiest word. Others might say talent or suitability for law school. The other thing happening inside the numbers the change in student legal aid as the competition for applicants increases, schools have used more and more of legally chasing the numbers because it helps ratings and of course because you begged to have the smartest possibly in your law school. They resulted that is the amount of merit taste aid over the last decade has gone up 10 . The amount of merit aid has doubled and theres a third category called with merit can be based. I havent spoken yet to an actual Law School Officer who doesnt tell me both men merit. That goes to the people of the best metrics. So it is the folks at the back end of the line who end up with a far greater share of that bad when they walked out the door with their degree. Ive been particularly worried about the effects of this of minority applicants because they are profiled in gpa and lsat isnt as good as asians. The hispanic applicants an africanamerican applicants have lower metrics and its harder for law schools to hand them scholarships or Financial Assistance if you will. As i said earlier, better thought of these days. We had some schools in the circuit by the way who dont charge any tuition at all for a substantial number of students. Indeed, we have a few schools to send students money. They not only dont charge any tuition, they write checks to support living expenses. There are only a few that do that, but its part of this greater trend. And of course, again last week, news that the bar passage rates in the country come in no surprise have likewise been falling. February is not as good a measure as july, but the february rate in this state is the lowest that weve ever experienced. I want to end on an important note, which is that this is not gone unnoticed by our friends at the academy. The number of people in the academy who say this too will pass, wouldve heard this before but the shrinking number. Research done both by various entities with which professor henderson is associated about how we change a little education to adjust to what it looks like the profession will be is really very encouraging and very substantial and the easiest one to see is the change in what is now referred to as experiential learning. How many actual handson experiences has been dramatically changing over the last few decades because schools are determined to do as good a job as they possibly can. We are going to hear some news about all of those trends we will start with just this kourlis. Professor henderson and i have to stand because the monitor is for my peer, not from our seats. I apologize for breaking up our little trio and would refer to be seated. As you know, i am becky kourlis. I have a background thank you, as the trial court and Appellate Court judge, but now am running a Research Institute at the university of denver that we refer to as the sink to tank piles, which is the worst acronym in the world and i apologize, but we were named by a federal judge and he wouldnt let me put just this in the name because he thought justice was a term that was too susceptible to the interpretation of the day. We work in four different areas and i have spoken to this assembly on prior occasions, but usually in the context of our Civil Justice reform. We do work in Legal Education, Civil Justice reform. We work on the family just decide that things in state courts or not we work on judicial selection and performance evaluation. Our process as we identify a problem. We gather research, put together wonderful groups of stakeholders. We create models. Weve been monitor the implementation and measure outcomes. Hence they do tank. To do problem i talk about your current chief Justice Shepard has identified, which is in the context of Legal Education, we are struggling with how to prepare with lawyers for the procession as it is evolving so that we begin to revitalize the numbers and more importantly the role of lawyers in our society. These are the drilled down numbers to which he has also just referred. This is the percentage of 2015 law graduates who did not land fulltime employment regarding bar passage. Bill henderson and i just chatted. We think the 2016 numbers are due out in the next couple of days, so i apologize for the fact these are yearold, but this is the best set of numbers we have at the moment. 30 is the percentage of 2015 law grads who didnt land fulltime employment recognizing their law degree. 25 who didnt land fulltime employment including professional and nonprofessional. This is the buries the number. 71 of thirdyear law students who believe they have sufficient skills to practice. This set of numbers is really interesting. 71 of the thirdyear law students who think they are locked and loaded, ready to go into law practice. However, the law professors who teach them say that is 45 and wait for it, the percentage of practitioners who believe new lawyers have significant skills to assist 23 . There is a problem there and we at iaals develop a project intended to shed some light on ways of addressing this. We created our foundations for pratt this projects. We had support from the foundation from the threephase project. We together an Advisory Committee consisting of practitioners, judges, justices, representatives from the National Association of bar execs from the National Conference of bar president , the National Conference of bar examiners. Representatives from the public defenders office, the aba and even the attorney general of colorado and we developed a plan. The first piece of that plan is to identify the foundations that entrylevel lawyers need to practice. The second phase will be to develop measurable models of Legal Education that support those foundation and the third will be to align market needs with hiring practices in order to incentivize positive improvements. Phase one we developed a survey based on existing research for those of you who are mavens in this area, such research as schultz and vatican with the assistance of our Advisory Council and distributed that survey through Bar Associations across 37 states in the country. Actually, they were individuals who answered, but the Bar Association said 37 states distributed the survey and we had a little bit of crossover of people who practice in two states. We got 24,137 valid responses to the survey. If they are any of you in this who answered the survey, thank you for your time. It was a little bit of a prodigious undertaking because the survey itself was 25 minutes long. We got over 40,000 actual responses and 24,000 valid responses. The responded base mirrors legal professions. Some of the numbers are not wonderful in terms of demographics, but in fact the respondent is representative, both geographic and terms of the size of firms in which lawyers across the country practice, the amount of money they make in the demographics themselves. We asked about 147 different foundations in the survey. We categorize those foundation and and broadly fall into three different categories. Some of the examples are identify relevant fact in legal issues, critically evaluate arguments, conduct and defend depositions, listen attentively and respectfully, make decisions, work as part of a team. The three categories into which we decided those foundations are as follows. Skills, characteristics and competencies. So remember, we have 147 foundations and we are divinely mad into these three categories. 27 of the foundations were skill base. 28 characteristicbased and 45 competencies. We also graduated the questions that we asked of the respondents. We asked what is necessary in the short term. We asked what is advantageous, but not necessary in the short term. We asked what is necessary over time can we asked whats not relevant at all. The screen right here doesnt pick up grace that looks up grace public up grace that looks like im missing a cylinder in the middle. Fortunately not your screen. So here are the results appeared there were 77 foundation identified as necessary in the short term by 50 or more of the respondents. 147 foundations, 77 identified as necessary in the short term by 50 or more of the respondents. What emerged surprised us. We call it the character quotient and here it is. Out of the top 20 of those foundations identified as necessary in the short term, nine are characteristics, 10 are competencies and one is a legal skill. There it is. Research of the law at number 14. The patent competencies, and keep confidentiality, arrive on time. This is a millennial issue, right . Arrive on time. Treat others with courtesy and respect. Listen attentively and was actually, respond promptly. Take individual responsibilities. Emotional regulation, selfcontrol, speak professionally, right professionally, exhibit tact and diplomacy. The characteristics, and the other nine, honor, commitment, integrity, trustworthiness, diligence, strong work ethic, attention to detail, conscientious common sense, intelligence and a strong moral compass. Cumulatively, we refer to this as the whole lawyer. What about legal skills . This is substantively why we go to law school, right . The legal skills show up in them must be acquired over time set of responses. These 20 characteristics are the top 20 or these foundations are the top 20 that must be acquired over time according to our respondent base. Here they are. Develop appropriate Risk Mitigation strategies. Provide quality in court trial advocacy. Cannot didnt offend depositions, case on appeal, prepare for participate in mediation. All of those skills that i suspect all of us would identified either on the transactional or litigation side as being necessary. But the take away here as we expect people to acquire these over time. We dont necessarily expect them to show up at the time that they sign up for work, ready to do these things are qualified to do these things. So now, here is the second part of our survey and heres where it becomes a little more relevant to all of you. In the second part of this survey, we asked respondents to consider the hopefulness of a set of hiring criteria in determining whether a candidate has the foundation they identified as important. So, you have to understand, we took as a given the fact that they had heard the answered the survey and identified what they thought was important. And then they said okay, how would you hire in order to suss out the individuals who have the foundations. We did not ask them how they currently higher. An