Thieves, Monopoly, Law Professors, and Law Schools

In his classic 1967 article on rent-seeking (which does not actually use the term because it had not been coined at that time) Gordon Tullock explained that the cost of theft was not that one person's property was taken by another. In fact, that transaction in isolation may increase welfare. The social costs were the reactions of those attempting to avoid theft and those refining their skills. Richard Posner extended the analysis when he wrote about the costs of monopoly. Again, it was not that some became richer at the expense of others but that enormous sums were invested in bringing about the redistribution. In neither case do the rent seeking, social-cost-producing efforts create new wealth.

Still, in the case of Tullock and Posner the social costs were at least about something. There was a "there" there in the form of a chunk of wealth to bicker over. But now we come to law professors and law schools.

Law professor efforts to self-promote have exploded. Included are repeated visits to the Dean asking for one thing or another, resume padding, massive mailings of reprints, posting SSRN download rankings, or, even better, emailing 200 friends asking them to download a recently posted article, churning out small symposia articles because deans often want to see lines on resumes as opposed to substance, playing the law review placement game, and just plain old smoozing ranging from name dropping to butt kissing. Very little of this seems designed to produce new wealth. If fact, think of the actual welfare-producing activities that could be undertaken with the same levels of energy -- smaller classes, more sections of needed courses, possibly even research into areas that are risky in terms of self promotion but could pay off big if something new or insightful were discovered or said. But this is the part that puzzles me. Whether the thief in Tullock's case or monopolist in Posner's, the prize is clear. What is the prize for law professors? Are these social costs expended to acquire rents that really do not exist or are only imagined? What are the rents law professors seek?

Law schools make the professors look like small potatoes when it comes to social costs. Aside from hiring their own graduates to up the employment level, they all employ squads of people whose jobs are to create social costs (of course, most lawyers do the same thing), produce huge glossy magazines that go straight to the trash, weasel around with who is a first year student as opposed to a transfer student or a part time student, select students with an eye to increasing one rating or another, and obsess over which stone is yet unturned in an effort to move up a notch. I don't need to go through the whole list but the point is that there is no production -- nothing socially beneficial happens. That's fine. The same is true of Tullock's thief and Posner's monopolist. But again, and here is the rub. What is the rent the law schools seek? Where is the pie that they are less interested in making bigger than in just assuring they get the biggest slice possible? What is it made of?

At least thieves and monopolists fight over something that exists. And they often internalize the cost of that effort. Law professors and law schools, on the other hand, may be worse. They do not know what the prize actually is; they just know they should want more; and the costs are internalized by others.

Draft Excerpt From "In the Company of Thieves: The Character of Law Professors (most of them anyway).

 

For most law professors I have known, life is an extended negotiation to advance one’s self interest. They are their own clients. Their constant obsession about where they rank means a complete lack of humility and the use of certain devices. The most common device is to show no weakness. This leads to a number of things. One is to never seen to care very much about something, at least publicly. To show you really want something is to reveal a weakness. For example, when I was chair of the appointments committee, I asked members of the committee who wanted to go to the meat market. This duty is something that is usually coveted by mid or early career professors. No one said he or she wanted to go in the meeting. In a few hours after that, every member of the committee called me privately to say they were “willing to go.”

This leads to the volunteer scam. Law professors never want to demand to do something -- -- they volunteer. When you volunteer it is not like you wanted something but you were willing to help out. Helping out, in this life long negotiation, means you are owed. For example, one of the plums of my teaching career was to be appointed to summer abroad teaching program. One year the person who was set to go could not go at the last minute. I called the person running the program to see if I could go instead. I was informed it would not be necessary because the head of the program had “volunteered” to take on the assignment himself.

Another part of not showing weakness is to try to get others to do work that might expose your own weakness. This means office to office visits and indirection. Let’s say you think someone who has been appointed to chair a committee is an awful choice. You would go office to offices saying something like “what did you think of those committee assignments.” In other words, you throw out the bait and see if anyone bites. Eventually, you might find some people saying they were disappointed and then you roam the halls saying to others “I heard that several people are upset with that committee assignment.” You say "several" even if it is one. Note, you do not say you are upset but that others are. You, of course, just want to be fair.

There are also ways of disagreeing. Suppose Jack at a faculty meeting proposes that teachers have more office hours than currently required. You hate the idea but you do not raise your hand and say so. Instead you say something like “It’s wonderful to be available to students but I have “concerns” about Jack’s proposal or “if gives me pause.” These are ways of saying “that is the dumbest thing I have every heard”

No matter what, you are too busy. You have students, exams to write, phone calls to return, and papers to grade. In reality you may be on Amazon looking for a new toaster or frying pan. You may take a nap. But you never admit to anything other than being overwhelmed with how much work you have.

Being sneaky is important. You do not write down what you could say. If it is written down you have accountability. If you say it, then if it  is passed along you can claim you were misunderstood or taken out of context.

Working the students for high teaching evaluations. You can do this by being funny or radiating your deep concern for their well-being. It does not hurt to bring cookies when their evaluations of you are distributed. One neat ploy a colleague freely admitted was designed to help is evaluations was passing out his own evaluation form before the official. This communicate that you value the opinion of the students and more or less lets them vent if they are inclined to as a way of lowering the chance they will unload on you on the official evaluations.

Information among law faculty is power. If you have it, you can dispense it in the way that best serves your ends. It may be rumor, it maybe something that has very little foundation. Important things are generally bad news about someone else – their article got rejected, they failed an interview at another school, the Provost is angry with the Dean. You can use the information as currency and you spend it to get what you want – usually that is a reaction that advances whatever is in your self interest.

Law professors call what they do “scholarship.” It almost never is. You could count on one had the number of times a law professor actually tries to find the answer to an important question. Instead, consistent with their training they are advocates for their own notions of what should be. Their research skills are limited and the idea of putting anything to an empirical test is frightening to them. You might compare this with seeing a doctor. Usually you tell the doctor the symptoms and he or she tries to match with with a cause, Suppose instead you walked into the doctor and he or she said "you have typhoid fever" and then ignored every thing you said except those things that were consistent with typhoid fever. That's legal scholarship.

Draft Excerpt from "In the Company of Thieves:" Foreign Programs

 

 

Foreign Programs

One way mid and lower level law schools compete with each other is by offering foreign opportunities. In some cases the students can spend a semester studying at a law school in France or Italy or Germany. They get a semester worth of credit for traveling and drinking for 3 months. These are programs for the well to do, of course because there are airfares, apartments to rent, etc. Nevertheless, they can be rewarding and informative.

On the other hand, summer abroad programs are a bit of a scam. These are essentially law schools acting as travel agencies. The idea is that a couple of professors travel to Paris, London, Rome or where ever and take 15 or twenty students with them. Then the students hang out with each other, drink, travel, and spend a modest amount of time in the classroom.  They, of course, pay extra for this and that extra is what covers the housing and expenses of their teachers. In short, the students subsidize the summer vacation of the profs and they, in turn, get academic credit. Their actual emersion in local culture is kept to a minimum as they search out the closest McDonalds.

Now that you know the background, you should know that one of the committees I am chair of is the “Programs Committee”.  A summer program has to be OKed by the programs committee and then voted on by the faculty. Very often it is a fait accompli. For example, one year at a mid summer faculty meeting 17 members of the 60 person faculty voted by 9 to 8 to have a summer program in France. Unusually only 2 faculty can go at a time but most deans also feel it is their duty to stop by, at the school’s expense, for a few days. And sometimes, someone from the Programs Committee is also “obligated to go.” In the case of the France program all 9 yes voters went at some point over the next three years although at times the enrollment dwindled to 12 which was not enough to cover their expenses.

Here is the proposal the Programs Committee considered last October for implementation next summer. I’ve inserted some information in brackets to help you understand:

Re: Summer Program in Italy

Date: February 12, 2007

Supreme Senior Vice President of Foreign Programs, Hugo Valencia and I [Chadsworth Feldman] are happy to propose a new study abroad opportunity for our students. The details are as follows:

A. Location:

Three weeks in Rome, three weeks in Florence.

B. Expected enrollment and student costs.

For the first year, expected enrollment is 30 but the actual enrollment can exceed this. The program has no upper limit on enrollment. The initial tuition is $3,000 per student. This includes all housing and transportation, to the extent those are necessary.

C. Need and Opportunities

This program will complement our other excellent foreign study opportunities. Many of our students have expressed a desire to study in Italy and to learn Italian law. Many of our colleagues have connections with scholars in Italy and would gain a great deal with respect to their work in comparative law. It is critical that we have a presence in Italy.

Several members of our faculty will be invited to travel to Rome or Florence to serve as guest lecturers and to attend graduation ceremonies at the end of the term.

D. Staffing.

Professor Feldman is the Director of the Program and will go each year. In addition to the director, one other full time professor will travel to the site. Two assistants will accompany the professors. These will be the spouses of the professors as long as they accept no salary. Of course, all their expenses will be paid.  After the initial year, it is anticipated that the position of professor will be circulated among the faculty.

E. Students Activities

Students will earn six credit hours. In addition, they will be taken on several tours of important Italian sites.

F. Budget:

Airfare for Professors and assistants: $10,000

Housing: $80,000

G. Impact

This program will put us in the first tier of foreign program offering schools. The net cost to the School, other than trips of guest lecturers, is zero. The two professors involved will be paid the usual stipend for summer teaching.

            Nothing seemed unusual about the program although everyone knew it was the usual faculty boondoggle. The Committee approved it and then then faculty. Then things started to unravel. By December several students had put down their deposits.  Over the next few months some issues came to light. Two stood out. One was that Hugo and Chad, with spouses, had already, with the Dean’s permission and on the law school’s dime, spend 10 days in Italy scouting out, as they put it, suitable restaurants, clubs, spas, and coastal areas for the program. Ok, it’s like what we call in the trade convercationing. That is you are paid for a business trip but you are really taking a vacation while checking off the boxes to make it seem like business.

The second matter had to do with the budget. Usually there is a host institution that provides a  low fee some classroom space.  My curiosity piqued, I asked Chad about this. He seemed a little sheepish but something you never do as a law professor is show weakness or admit wrongdoing. His answer. “That is the beauty of the Program. It will all be conducted by Zoom with the students staying at home. Hugo and I will Zoom not just classroom activities but dining out, clubbing, sight seeing, the works. It will be exactly like they are there.” He went on. “I am sure it will be appealing to the students since they can stay in the comfort of their homes and not worry about finding housing, eating in strange places where no one understands a word they are saying.” Finally, “If there are technological problems we will send them postcards.”

I was reeling from this revelation when I got back to my office. None of this was revealed when the programs committee met or at the faculty meeting. Everyone was too busy, I suppose, booking passage to Italy for some year in the future. When I got back to my office, there was a phone message to call Linda James. I knew I had a student in my class named Tom James but I did not make the connection. I called and she told me that she had tried to reach Professor Feldman but he was not in. The secretary had directed her to me since I was chair of the programs committee and she had a question about the program since her son James was going. She started by saying how excited James was and how she and her husband planned to meet James for the portion of the course in Rome.

Her question was what types of things should James bring – clothing, dressy or not, extra notebooks, computer, and so on. I lied, I told her that I did not know. I did chair the committee that had approved the program but that she needed to talk to Professor Feldman. I assumed she did eventually because I the next day I received the following email from Chad:

Today Tom James’ mother called and asked what sort of things he should bring from his summer in Italy. I told her that the students were not actually going to Italy. She asked what the $3000 is for and I said "expenses." Then she pressed me and asked about the $80,000 for faculty. I told her that was the going rate for appropriate housing for the Professors and any guest lecturers who might join us. She seemed miffed about no students going. Isn't that just perfect!!! You try to do something for the students and you get in hot water for it.

Later the same day:

 

So far two more  sets of parents have contacted me. It seems to have come as a surprise to them that the Summer Program in Italy does not involve their dear children actually traveling to Italy. Hugo and I designed the whole program on the theory that he and I and our spouses would go to Italy and show the lectures and sights by Zoom (or postcard). We would do the heavy lifting and the students would have time to study. Do they not get it.

             In any case the “program” ran for one summer only.  The revenue did not begin to cover the expenses which the law school ended up eating. I suppose it was a success because I received the following email from Chad:

Here is the great news. I am writing from Rome. Yes, the summer program is in tact and Hugo, Marvel, Caroline and I are here working hard for the students. It is true we are down to 5 students and it is true that those five did not actually make the trip to Italy but we are working hard.

As you know, some of the students were upset that the Summer in Italy program did not actually mean they were going to Italy -- only the professors. Some parents were quite rude and the initial enrollment dwindled to 5. Good riddance I say. Those students obviously were not cut out for foreign travel. The Law School decided we had to operate the program anyway because the American Association of Law Schools had already purchased 30 tickets for a team to come and inspect the program.

We are doing our best for the five students. Each week we send a postcard with some interesting fact about Italian law. In the interest of giving the students what they want, we have decided not to administer a final exam.

As for me, being a dedicated teacher of young people is its own reward.

DRAFT Excerpt from "In the Company of Thieves": The Tenure Process

 

Law professors are evaluated to determine if they should be tenured. Supposedly you must excel in scholarship, teaching, and service. You would think that if someone actually excelled at all three, he or she would be hired away by better law schools. Very few are. Why? Because in actuality there are three requirements:

1. write something – anything would do,

2. be politically correct, (or very quiet),

3, be acceptable socially.

(4. I have also heard isolated inane standards like “she is a good mother.” but these usually do not count.)

As noted, decent teaching is supposed to count but I have seen many instances in which awful teaching was explained away as actually an indication of good teaching. To determine  a candidate’s teaching there are class visitations by 2 or 3 professors and the students fill out anonymous evaluation forms at the end of the semester. Not wanting to offend someone who may get life time employment if they meet the above “standards” the visitors uniformly say the teacher was brilliant, engaging, showed respect for the students and so on. One has to keep in mind that the professor knows in advance who is coming and when. Not to be well prepared and energetic those days would mean you are an idiot. Still, there are some who go one step beyond. For example, at one point several students asked me why their professor gave the same lecture day after day. As it turns out these were the days when there were class visitation, and I suppose he had the one lecture down perfectly.

The students fill out evaluations at the end of each semester. These are pretty much ignored whether high or low if one passes the three part test above. On the other hand, if they are low to average, they become the hammer to justify getting rid of the candidate who fails the three part test. But even here, many professors do not want to leave student evaluations to chance. I have seen professors going into classes with the forms the students must fill out in one hand and platters of cookies or boxes of pizza in the other. Sometimes the bribes are so shameful that even the students know what is up but this does not discourage them accepting the bribe. One professor would sponsor a softball game in the afternoon for his class followed by cocktails at a local pub. The tab could run in excess of $1000 dollars. There are far more subtle bribes like not calling on students and appearing to be deeply concerned about their welfare when you could not care less. One very subtle effort involves handing out your own evaluations a day or two before the official ones. A colleague who does this says it takes the sting out of what the students may say on the official evaluations and illustrates how seriously he or she takes teaching.

Faculty who are able to turn evaluations into popularity polls take high evaluations to mean they are good teachers. Yet, the vast majority of studies find that there is no correlation between student evaluations and student learning. In fact, some find students of the highly rated professors actually learn less than those who have professors rated lower. Actually no one knows what student evaluations indicate. One interesting study showed students very short silent movies of teacher and asked them to evaluate them. After the course, they also filled out evaluations and they were about the same as the first set. One interpretation was that the students were responding to body language and facial expressions as much as anything else.

If the whole evaluation of teaching process is a joke it stands right beside the evaluation of scholarship. I am pretty sure if someone wrote nothing, not even doodles in napkins at Starbucks he or she would not get tenure. I am just as sure that a person who writes next to nothing but satisfies the three part test described above will be tenured. There are two things at work here. Letters are sent out to experts in the field. It’s a small honor or form of recognition to be asked to review someone’s scholarship. Like many things in the law professor world, it is something people want to be asked to do but pretend that it is burdensome. And, it is actually burdensome to those who are popular reviewers. Who are the popular reviewers? Typically, they are people who write positive reviews. Who are the unpopular reviewers? Reviewers who are honest. The popular ones use terms like “rising star,” “insightful,” “major contribution,” etc. The unpopular ones are not afraid to say unoriginal, not carefully researched, a repetition of his or her earlier work.

It is not a stretch to say there is something of a market for letters. Tenure and promotion committees want positive reviews for those passing the three part test. If someone fails the three part test they would prefer negative reviews. But negative reviews are hard to come by. Why? Because if you write  negative reviews you may not be asked again and, remember, being asked is a feather in your cap.

There s a second factor in this letter solicitation process. What happens if someone passes the three part test and a negative letter slips through. The negative letter is either ignored or is subject to scrutiny with the result being that is is rejected. Let’s take the case of a professor who I believe had the most expensive education available in American – Exeter, Princeton, Harvard -- a nice enough guy who fits in the category discussed later of law professors who really do not want to be law professors so they change the job. He passed the three part test. In fact, one colleague noted  how upsetting it would be socially if he were denied tenured. His specialty was writing about meditation.  A negative letter came in observing that one of his articles was in large part the same as an earlier article the reviewer had been asked to review for promotion. In this case, the faculty ignored the letter. The recycling of an idea was not addressed. In some cases, the treachery is especially extreme. We call the collection of review letters a “packet.” I have seen packets that included quite negative reviews and the committee making a recommendation to the faculty has said “all the letters were positive” and no one uttered a word because the three part test was passed with flying colors. 

Remember, these are law professors so they will often game the system. They may tell the committee doing the evaluations who not to ask for a letter and who to ask for a letter. It can get pretty extreme. One well know professor/politician was said to have mailed drafts of an article to possible reviewers before hand to make sure when the reviewer received the manuscript to review they would, in effect, be reviewing themselves.

A People’s (with apologies to Zinn) Ranking of Law Schools

 

Actually I cannot give you the rankings other than to say it would look nothing like the elitist, manipulation-prone ranking of US News. These are, however, the factors that would go into a true ranking of  law schools.

1. Percentage of class with less than 160 LSAT score. Why? Dolts can and do teach students with over  160 scores. That does not take any real teaching ability. Those students will get it. Teaching them is like teaching native German speakers how to speak German. 

2. Percentage of students with below 160 who pass the bar. This is the real measure of teaching effectiveness because those students may actually need teaching expertise.

3. Number of citations by courts of scholarly works per faculty member. In a prior study a colleague and I demonstrated that citations by other law professors are irrelevant. They generally do not rely on anything but factual assertions and rarely engage the thoughts of the works they cite. Let's face it. If courts do not cite your work, you are wasting your time and writing for a very small and irrelevant audience.

4. Percentage of students who are first in family college graduates. These people are likely to have a different perspective on virtually everything than the entitled ones, Want to have lively class discussion? Admit these people.

5. Percentage of faculty who did not graduate from top 15 law schools. Quite honestly, in 42 years of law teaching, the most poorly educated and laziest people I have met came from elite undergraduate and law schools. I could name names but that would take 5 blogs. They are the grade grubbers who focused on one thing -- what is on the test. Want some diversity away from the same old name dropping dolts, expand your hiring horizons. 

6. Number of African-American faculty. I know there are all kinds of minorities these days but none come close to this group in terms of having been kicked around, discriminated against, and pushed aside. Want you students to be more well rounded, better able to interact with diverse clients, then hire these people.

7. Percentage of financial aid distributed on the basis of need. Yes, this is different from the School were I taught which engaged in a bidding war for high LSATs.

8. Percentage of graduates who opt for public interest employment. Hopefully, 3 years of exposure to law school and the way law is consistently applied to favor the haves would encourage some students to, at least for some period of time, do the right thing. 

The Bill Barr School of Law School Deaning

 

BOOO Bill Barr, you unprincipled Trump sycophant. You rascal. All of us, (well  not all, there are a couple of numbskulls who admire you ) principled law professors and administrators think you are an awful example of the profession.

But wait Billy Boy! There is a job for you. It's even better than Trump University. You open a school for wannabe Law school administrations. You know, Bill, the number one goal  of any law school dean on the make is to climb the USnews ranking.

So that's what you teach. Some Units of the course would be:

1. Hire your own graduates to do something, anything, so you can report high post graduate employment rates.

2, Lower first year admissions but increase the number of transfers because the transfer LSAT and GPAs will not count against you.

3. Oh, what the hell. Just do what UF Law has perfected, However qualified a student, do not admit him or her unless he or she improves your ranking.

4, If a student is admitted and it looks like he or she, in hindsight, might lower your scores, pay them not to come.

5. Make sure all law school employees are called faculty. This will raise your teacher to student ratio.

6. Throw every cent you can get your grubby hands on to pay high scoring students to come to your school whether they need the money or not. 

7, And Bill, here is what you can bring to the course your specialty.  Just lie. What the fuck, you are not hurting anyone so it's not like a real lie.

But Bill, there is one catch,  All of these things have already been done. Yes by the same people who say that  you are the crook, not them.

So you will have to be imaginative. Your primary mission is to stay one scam ahead of what USnews is onto and cares about. This should be easy, They don't really care if they get it right as long as it sells,  

Law School Stimulus (Reparation) Checks to Come with Rejection Letter

 I've beefed about an obvious misuse of funds to fuel the egos of the privileged so I will try to provide a short version. UF law has the physical plant and faculty to admit 600 qualified students a year. By qualified, I mean those with high enough GPAs and LSAT scores to indicate they can do the work and become attorneys. Currently half that number are admitted each year. The reason is by rejecting highly qualified applicants the school can raise the average LSAT and GPAs of admitted students and rise in the US News Rankings. 

This quest for rankings does nothing for the public but gives something for administrators to crow about. Who pays for this crowing? Rejected students who must go to more expensive schools, less prestigious schools, or farther away schools. And they may have fewer employment opportunities and lower life time incomes which may have implications for their families. Screw them is the attitude of UF and its Law School administration. After all, screwing them is a small price to pay to go from 49th to 25th. No one puts an asterisk by the ranking to note those school who did the equivalent of cheating on a test and then bragging about getting a higher score. 

The qualified rejected students are like the residents close to a polluting factory, They suffer so the fat cats can get fatter. The solution? Stimulus checks equal to  the damage done and it should come with the rejection letter.

Something like this:

Dear Mr. Zinn:

Unfortunately we cannot admit you to the UF College of Law. This not because you would not be  a successful student and lawyer, It it because if we admit people like you our average LSAT would slip to 159 and our USNews ranking would go from 25  to 31. So you see it is simply not possible.

We  know this means attending a lower ranked school, a possibly more expensive school, or one farther from home. Tough Luck! Maybe you should have spent a few thousand dollars like other applicants on preparing for the LSAT or not worked while an undergraduate  so you would have had more time to raise your GPA. 

Rankings mean more to us than anything and we owe our ranking to  your extraordinary (albeit unwilling) contribution to UF LAW. We have, thus, enclosed a check to show our appreciate, to offset the damage done to you, and to atone for our hypocrisy by pretending not to be putting our obsession with rankings ahead your career.

Respectfully,

UF LAW  

UF Becomes the The New Trump University and the Sheep Who Work There

 

In today's Gainesville Sun one of the main stories was about State and University pressure to have full scale in person classes in the Spring. Yes, that is before or shortly after a vaccine. Plus, Governor Deathsantis wants college kids to party because as he puts it "that's what college kids do."  There is less important story about a doctor (well past his prime in terms knowledge and common sense) who refuses to wear a mask. I am not so interested in the idiot doctor but in the University. 

I am truly mystified by what motivates the State and University to want warm bodies in seats when it could mean some get very sick and some (not many I know) could die. And why would a governor encourage students to party like its 1999? The only things I can think of are funding and ranking because its clear when one makes a cost benefit analysis, those two interests trump (pun totally intended) any interest at all in the heath and well-being of the students and townspeople who must interact with them in grocery stores, drug stores, and every other place it is difficult to avoid even if you are being careful. I mean, there must be some cost benefit analysis that goes on and avoiding death or severe illness get zero points  when it comes to the state of Florida.

But there is a bigger problem. It's the administrators who just follow orders. What is wrong with these people? If a dean or two or three just said we are not doing it it would make a big difference. And what would happen to them. They all have tenure so the worst would be returning to teaching and writing (something they call swore they were devoted to before they tired of it and wanted to join management.) This goes for Fuchs  right on down to the lowliest department head. DeathSantis says who cares if a few students get sick or even die or become carriers who then infect the townies. 

DeathSantis says "kill a few" and UF administrators say "how many.'

The Life of Deans and Side Deals: A Theory

 

In my teaching career I have been through 9 law school deans. One thing I think is true is that there is an inverse relationship between the number of side deals a dean makes and how long they last. Lets see in order, 5 years, 8 years,  5 years, 5 years, 3 years, 4 years, 11 years, 1 year, 6 years. Now, in fairness, one was done in by an extramarital affair, one was an acting dean, and one is still running but is showing signs of being on the ropes.

 Side deals are those that are made with individual faculty which could not be offered generally. Things like remote teaching during a pandemic but not because of an illness. Or, a one or two day teaching schedule because you live too far away to commute. Or, a special leave that could not be available to everyone or the doors would close. Or, a job because the University wants to hire your spouse. Some side deals are implicit. Like you can teach in our overseas program and I expect your loyalty Or you can have a program in Poland but that's because we are buds, right.

Before condemning deans for their side deals there are many things to keep in mind at least as a general matter.  First, deans serve as long as a faculty lets them. In fact, some stop being effective deans well before they realize they are finished. Second, deans are generally people who have lost their taste for simply teaching and writing but have no market value as practitioners. Third, no dean I have known has had any training for or experience in a management position. In sum, they need the job. They got into one job and just did not like it. Deaning was the logical move. MOST important and certainly more important than any of these  is that the work force they "manage" (or who manage them) possess the greatest sense of entitlement of any work force with the possible exception of the Trump family. I am talking generally now. There are some good ones and you can spot them -- they are the ones with footprints on their backs.

So what happens? The problem is that people without management training seem to have no concept of  the long term. Sure, when young, vivacious, and perky Daisy asks to teach remotely from Kalamazoo because it would make her life less complicated you say yes. Then grumpy old Victor shows up and wants to teach from Rome because he has heard there are smoking hot chicks there you say no.  Then people decide they really would like to teach remotely too because they do not want to risk dying. How do you say no? You can lie, admit you fucked up, or start putting your books in boxes. I do not mean to imply being caught once would do it. It's the accumulation of favors that cannot be generalized. When you give out favors that cannot be generalized it almost always comes back to bite you in the ass. Deans think that by making side deals, they are buying time but, in fact, they are sowing the seeds of the end of their deanships.  Bye bye. 

Commercial Arbitration Course

Hi,  I am writing here to rising 2 and 3 Ls in order to bring their attention to a course with the mysterious title "ICAM." That stands for International Commercial Law Moot but that does not tell you much.

The first five weeks of the course are devoted the the study of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG),  the New York Convention, and the UNCITRAL Model Law.  The CISG is the actual statutory law of the US and about 90 other countries pertaining to contracts between parties in different countries. You would not believe the number of attorneys who have blundered into attempting to apply the UCC. The CISG is much shorter than Article 2 of the UCC but covers basic contract law questions. At the end of the five weeks there is a short exam.

The first Friday in October the international organization in charge of the Moot issues the CSIG problem for the year. It also includes a procedural issue. At that point the class does not meet on a formal basis. We may gather for brainstorming sessions. During that time, students write Claimant's briefs based on the problem. Those are due in mid November. 

At that point students make a 15 minute oral argument based on their brief to me and a couple of others. There is no final exam or further work.

EXCEPT. Based on the briefs and oral arguments a four-person team will be selected to travel to the international competition in Vienna. The Law School covers all expenses. About 200 teams from 100 countries participate over a five day period in arbitration sessions.  It is hard work and great fun. 

Compensating the Victims of the Ratings Scramble

Most people know that negative externalities are costs of your activities that you impose on others. With the release of the new US News law school rankings it makes sense to think about whether there are negative externalities stemming from law schools competing with each other to rise in the rankings. And a related question, should those who suffer from these externalities be compensated by those causing them.

A complete analysis would focus on each factor US News reports considers and there is no denying that some of the pressures are beneficial. On the other hand, suppose a school tries to raise its perception by others. It publishes all kinds of crap in big glossy magazines that typically find their way into the trash without being read. Externalities? Of course. Probably at every stage from printing, delivery, and disposal.

What concerns me most are the externalities that fall on students. Take my school (I stress only as an example since this practice is evidently widespread) which shot up in the rankings in part due to the decision to lower the number of students from 300 to 180. Applicants now fall into three categories.  Some with high LSATs scores are given generous scholarships. I do not know this but I assume some are admitted but receive less generous or no scholarships and rely on loans. And some applicants who would have been admitted but for the rankings are rejected in the interest of upping the average LSAT.

On top of all this is important to note that LSAT scores are correlated with socioeconomic class meaning that the externalities land disproportionate on those less able to absorb them. Plus, in the case of UF, there is massive excess capacity both with respect to faculty and physical plant. In short the marginal cost of admitting those students is close to zero.

So what happens to those 120  students per year who would have been admitted but for the rankings? (Please note that I am not worried about those who were made offers and did not come. Instead, these are people who would have accepted their offers.)  They will attend another law school, delay admission and go later, or give up on the law schools idea. In all cases they are saddled with a less preferred outcome. In one way or another, the decision to reject them, even though they were acceptable imposes a cost on them. Sure, maybe they would have been admitted and not been subsidized like their privileged high LSAT classmates but Florida was still what they preferred.

The cost of the rankings is imposed on them as they must move to a less preferred choice.  Maybe the other law school is lower ranked, maybe it is more expensive (meaning more student debt), perhaps it is farther from home meaning more expense to travel home over the holidays, perhaps its placement statistics are inferior to Florida, and it is possible that the quality of the teaching is lower than Florida's. Remember, these externalities last beyond three years. If they are at  inferior schools, employment opportunities may be fewer and starting salaries lower.  The implications could last a life time.  And if they postpone law school or not go at all, the externalities are obvious.

Do any people gain? Sure, accepted students are better off because of efforts to raise bar passage rates and placement numbers and lower competition for jobs. Even with no extra effort one would expect these numbers to improve. Students with high LSATs are better off but they are not responsible for imposing the cost on the 120 who find the door shut. The ones responsible for closing the door and gain by doing so are administrators -- primarily, college Presidents, Provosts, and Deans. Their incomes, statuses, and job opportunities are dependent on having the power to bar qualified students from their favored law school in the interest of increased rankings. BTW, there is no known correlation between a law school's ranking and the quality of the education delivered.

I suggest that students that would have been admitted but for the ranking race receive compensation for the burdens that have been thrust upon them. I understand this cannot happen so a redistribution from qualified students applying to a school with excess capacity to barely higher LSAT students  and administrators (the educational version of the top 1%) will continue.

Ironically this denial of opportunity takes place in the context of a profession that undeniably has a liberal (but definitely not leftist) slant. It's important to keep in mind the words of Phil Ochs on liberals: "ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally."

Killing the Messenger

When a dean lasts five years at my law school, he or she is evaluated by the faculty in order to determine whether there should be another five years. I note that this evidently has no impact on the actual decision to retain the dean and it's not even clear that such a review complies with University policy.

In this year's evaluation, there were statements with which you could agree or disagree or anything in between. These questions showed signs of having been drafted by people unaccustomed to writing surveys but I hasten add that his year's committee was pretty much stuck with what prior committees had used. There was also space for comments. The results were mixed.  The dean scored high on fund raising and elevating the reputation of the school. She did OK on issues like fairness in salaries and assignments. The comments were also mixed. Many faculty were quite happy with the dean, understood what she faced when coming here, and admired her energy and vision. Other comments were  negative and not something many faculty, except for one or two of my more candid colleagues,  would have the balls to say directly to anyone unless it was a secretary or grocery bagger.  It was all  public and some faculty quickly distributed the results to Above the Law and to the students. No doubt this was done to further disparage the dean. My estimate was there were 18 to 23 "haters" --  the title some of us attach to people who found fault with virtually everything. The dean scored weakest on style, transparency, and consulting faculty before making decisions.

 I chose "Killing the Messenger" as the title of this blog because over 5 years the dean delivered a message many faculty did not want to hear. That message was basically that the law school, teetering on the edge of the top 50,  was, after being run by the faculty for decades, not such hot shit. The title could have been "You Cannot Handle the Truth." And I could have gone with "Uncapturing the Law School." This was a particular apt title since until the not so new dean arrived, the School was clearly captured and run for the convenience and benefit of the faculty. Some examples are found in a article I wrote several years ago: "Faculty Ethics in Law School: Shirking, Capture, and 'The Matrix'", 83 U. Detroit Mercy L. Rev. 397. You know what I mean: foreign programs that made no sense other than someone wanted to do it; course offerings that were truly vanity courses; voting on tenure and promotion based on friendships or politics; reluctance to review clinical offerings, traveling to conferences on the school's dime when the real purpose was a vacation, starting centers that allowed students to concentrate in a area and receive an unofficial certificate without any proof that these opportunities accrued to the benefit of the students, publicly advertising jobs that did not exist.

Any of these titles would have worked. There was one comment that captured the sense of most negative comments:"Leave, please, please, please leave our College. Go on your way and leave us." Note the use of "our" and "us." The idea is that the law school is owned and operated for the benefit of faculty In reality the law school's stakeholders are students, taxpayers, and donors. Faculty are just hired hands and what makes them happy may have little to do with what makes the stakeholders better off. Generally trusting faculty to do right by stakeholders at a state school is foolhardy.

So, let's go back to style, transparency, and consulting. I personally do not understand the style issue but it seems to have something to do with saying fuck, maybe "pounding the table" (whatever that means), or being abrupt. I cannot address the style issue since I have not personally witnessed any of these activities. More interesting is the transparency matter. As far as I know, the dean has taken no major steps without informing the faculty. There were mutterings in the comments about not getting enough information about budgets. As best I can tell, no prior dean explained much about budget matters unless it was bad news with respect to raises or resources. I think the budget questions could be reduced to "you did not spend the money the way I would have" with the "would have" meaning on my pet project.

Congratulations if you made it this far because if you have followed the gist of this blog, which I assure you is boring me more than you. you may have noted that it comes down to "consulting the faculty." Here it gets tricky. Say the dean makes 4 decisions: a 10% raise for you, no more 7 AM classes, begin having a full range of classes on Friday afternoon, and exams must be anonymously graded.  You like the first 2 and hate the second two. The ones you agreed with will get no complaints about consultation. The one you disagree with will irk you because you were not consulted. So really "I was not consulted" often comes down to "I disagree."

And in this case nearly all the "I was not consulted" versions of saying "I disagree" amount to being unhappy about changing from a sleepy, faculty-run, pet project tolerating, law school effectively "owned' by the faculty to something that is better for actual stakeholders.

I'd Do Anything for Rankings But I Won't Do That

If you are a law professor, take a good look at these shorts and assume USNWR added a new category for ranking -- number of faculty wearing see through shorts.  If that happened, I  promise you that you would be encouraged to wear them. Of course, wearing them would not mean your law school is actually better -- no, but the ranking would be higher and that is infinitely more important than actually being better.

OK, the shorts example is (I hope) not realistic but if it happened wouldn't we all agree that the rankings had become a joke.  This begs the question. Aren't they already a joke? For example, take one of the recent ranking-increasing strategies -- lowering the size of the entering class. At my school the latest move was to lower the entering class from 400 to 300 to 180. And, get this. I am not kidding -- we regard it as a feather in our cap that the percentage of students accepted has gone down. Or to put it more accurately, we take pride in rejecting well-qualified applicants. Yes, we turn more students down not because it makes us a better school or that the public will be better served by fewer students. Naw, it's just to ratchet up our average LSAT scores and GPAs. At UF this is in the context of physical plant that was designed to serve 400 new students each year.

Think about it. Is a school training 200 students with LSATs averaging 158 somehow inferior to one with 100 students with an LSAT average of 159? By what possible definition is the first school worse than the second. In fact, rather than average LSAT why not rank schools based on the number of students times average LSAT score. (My apologies to utilitarians who see that I have adopted the utilitarian dilemma.)

It would be unfair to pick on my school. If you look at the selectivity rates recently published over on the tax prof blog my hunch is that UF is far from alone. This ploy of lowering the entering class is off set at many schools  by admitting transfer students whose scores do not count in the annual law school evaluations. And then there is counting people as faculty who were not previously faculty, rearranging finances so it appears that expenditures per student go up. (In fairness, I do not know whether my school does any of this.)

 Schools go out in the market for students with high LSATs and GPAs and bid against each other to lure the students. The need of students is irrelevant, rich or poor, if you score high you get the dough. (I cannot prove it but I would bet high scores are correlated with higher socioeconomic class.)  Law students are the equivalent of college football players. They are really not wanted because of who they are-- character, experience, probability of doing good deeds upon graduation -- but because of how many games they can win. They are means to an end.

Law schools  now teach to the bar, offer courses on how to pass the bar, and activity discourage students who are at risk when taking the bar. No one knows how many are talked out of taking  the bar exam who would have passed had their confidence and self esteem not been undermined. All in the interest of boosting rankings. If it were for the benefit of the students schools would have done it decades ago.

But is there a limit? I have not seen one yet. I predict that by 2030 the rankings race will tighten as every law school had an enrollment of 1 student with perfect scores, faculty student ratios of 50 to 1, expenditures of 10 million dollars per student, and plastic shorts. There is a good outcome when the rankings are finally regarded as a joke. Maybe law schools will stop spending millions of dollars on personnel, publications, and whatever with the sole purpose of moving up a slot or two.

Sins in Service to Law School Vanity.

                                                                   

       The promotion of legal scholarship and the massive resources invested in the law school ranking race are strikingly similar. They are net drains in resources that rarely if ever produce anything beneficial to society -- dead weight losses. They are expenditures that serve the personal vanity of professors and administrators -- no more important than an institutional swim suit competition. 


 Consider legal scholarship (or what passes for scholarship since most articles are inflated  short pieces with numerous usually irrelevant footnotes). It has been reported that the average law review article costs about $30,000. As a point of reference, you can build a Habitat for Humanity house for about $90,000 or the cost of three articles. Citations of articles are correlated with the rank of the law review publishing the article, the rank of the school at which the author teaches, and the rank of the school from which he or she graduated. Citations, therefore, do not measure impact or anything else other than citations. A survey of the reasons for citing articles reveals that articles very rarely have any influence on the ideas of other scholars, lawyers, or judges. They are often cited for the facts they state without attention to whether the cited article had any authority for those facts. Alternatively, they simply puff up an article that really is not much more than a two page op ed piece.  Unless a judge, a legislator, or an attorney successfully relies on the (rarely) novel ideas found in an article, the article is a waste of an average of $30,000. There is also no known correlation between article writing and teaching effectiveness. Articles exist almost solely so that law professors can compare themselves and compete with respect to promotion and salary.  So what does scholarship do? It makes the professor look good to himself, may impress those delusional enough to think legal scholarship is real scholarship, and gives law schools something to publicize in the shameful ratings race. It is like deciding who wins a swim meet on the basis of a swim suit competition. 


What about the rankings race?  It too is an expensive effort that produces nothing that is socially beneficial. In fact, the law school ranking disaster is probably worse than scholarship. For example, people are hired to scheme ways to advance in the standings with no consideration for whether the result is more effective instruction. The "marketing department's" principal or only responsibility is to promote the image of the law school including inflating the accomplishments of faculty. Students well-qualified for admission are turned away (or asked to delay their admission) in the interest of elevating a school's average LSAT scores and GPAs. 


High LSATs and GPAs are essentially products sold by students to law schools that pay for them through scholarships and other forms of subsidization. Most tragically, these payments do not go to those most in need. In fact, the affluent and high-scoring students will become attorneys anyway. Paying them to go to law school is purely in service to law school vanity.  And, in the meantime, less affluent students who may be well-qualified to be effective attorneys are ignored. The net effect may be an income redistribution from those less well off to those better off.  

 All of this is especially repugnant when it takes place at a public law school. 

How Not to be a Great University: UF Plunges Into Darkness with Invitation to Don Jr.

Recently the University of Florida celebrated becoming a top 10 public university. Then in a effort to undue this accomplishment a student run organization, spending the money of others, agreed to pay Donald Trump Jr. (well-known big game hunter) and a "campaign adviser" $50,000  to spread their special brand of hatred to those willing to listen. What is stunning about this has nothing to do with free speech or intellectual diversity. I value both and have frequently railed about the lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses. And, as far as free speech, I am an absolutist.

But this is wacky. First of all, free speech does not require paying someone $50,000 to speak. Second, if UF wants to have diversity, how about intelligent, intellectual diversity. The University is supposed to be about ideas and even conflicting ideas. If the student organization in charge of this decision cannot contribute to that mission, it should go into receivership.

UF is saying the could not find another more qualified speaker from the conservative world for $50,000. Let's face it, this is nothing more than a direct contribution from a few (frat boys?) UF students, using student funds that are not their own,  to the reelect Donald Trump for President campaign. And with the current Governor and the two current Senators, why should that be a surprise?

It is utterly irresponsible but since we are now inviting speakers from the dark side I have a few suggestions myself. Next up: Mohammed bin Salman

Choke an Orca

My law school, perhaps because it is relatively fortunate financially, has lunches for everything --speakers from inside, speakers from outside, faculty interviews, staff interviews, new babies, high school graduations, acceptance of articles, having had a good class, setting your personal best for beer pong, catching the biggest fish at the annual faculty fishoff, divorces, pet births, speakers at other schools, going up in the rankings, almost going up in the rankings, helping students in trouble but do not know it, surpassing 10,000 steps on your Fitbit. Trust me, this is a partial list and does not count the countless efforts to feed the students or the ubiquitous plastic trays and tops that contain the food much of which is uneaten.

But the main thing we do is choke orca. Yes we eat off of, drink from, and lift our food with plastic. So let's say 40 weeks of 2 lunches a week and 25 people eating. (These are conservative estimates.) I think that adds up to 2000 plastic plates s+ 2000 plastic forks + 2000 plastic spoons + 2000 plastic cups + 2000 plastic knives in just one year. If you are counting that is 10,000 chunks of plastic each year. And since this has gone on as long as I can remember -- let's say 5 years -- we have contributed 50,000 chucks of plastic to the environment that will biodegrade sometime after Trump finishes off the earth. So, I guess in a way it does not matter.

But it could matter! What if not only the Law School but the entire University and not just the University but all Universities decided no more single use plastics. When you get down to it there are climate deniers who say so expressly and there are climate deniers who say it by their actions. Looks like academics fall in the second category or maybe they just do not give a fuck. [And please no comments that I should try to initiate change. I have.]

Toasting Kavanaugh and Thomas

It will come soon if it has not happened already. Justice Kavanaugh will be the esteemed guest at many law schools. All will  be forgiven just as it has been with Justice Thomas. Most liberal law professors will crowd around at the inevitable faculty lounge brunch or afternoon coffee. I've seen how it work at my own law school which has had Justice Thomas in for three extended visits.  I am surprised we have not invited his wife to guest lecture.  I am sure if we could get Donald Trump in to teach negotiations or even ethics we would do it in a heartbeat. I would not let any of the three of them tie my shoe.

It is not just us and it's just not law schools. You might say that people put their convictions aside when a celebrity enters the room.  What is it with that? I can think of two explanations. The first is the "respect for the office." Total BS! It's more like being in awe of the office and being careful not to offend someone who is higher up on the status totem pole than you are. Anyone who kowtows to Kavanaugh or Thomas out of respect for the office misses the point that neither should be in the office.  Respect for the office would mean snubbing those two. If you really respect the office, do not toast the pretenders.

The other one -- which I have heard -- is "he is really a nice guy." Really, really! By that standard everyone is nice. How hard it is to seem to be friendly and impress people with superficial affectations of warmth. Oh, let's just have a beer together. (Or in Kavanaugh's case, make that a keg.) Being a nice guy, which anyone can do, is one way to hide your actual values. Being a nice guy should not be assessed on the basis of a 20 minute talk or a dinner but rather on what you actually do that affects people you do not now.  Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Trump are not nice guys no matter how "nice" they can be in a social setting.

But somehow, after the smoke clears, Kavanaugh will be the toast of many faculty gatherings attended by liberals and conservative alike. Because, we know when you get right down to it, he is a nice guy and we must have respect for the office.

Is it Time for Law Professors to Walk out to Protest Trump

I've always had mixed feelings about the student demonstrations of the 1960s. The cause was a good one but I felt there was also way too much fun involved. Plus, it seemed to be an activity one could participate in only if you could afford it. Too many of my fellow impassioned demonstrations were also planning their family funded back packing trips to Europe. In short, there was definitely a bit of self-indulgence. And, of course, my personal interest in class-based justice was dropped as soon as the war wound down.

My one bit of something akin to civil disobedience since those days was refusing to teach on the day the state of Florida executed someone. I did this once and the only official reaction was my Dean telling me I should make up the day. So, I ended up inconveniencing a class of students and the execution took place and it was all bit foolish.

Over on Facebook on other places people alarmed about Trump (I personally have never felt stronger hatred for a politician except maybe Mitch McConnell)  make a comparison to nazi Germany looking for a way to head off this country's downward spiral. The question that arises is what can anyone do. I have a couple of suggestions. One is to stop legitimizing members of the Trump cult by being anything but civil to them. Do not buy anything from a Trump supporter. Is your doctor a Trump supporter? Get a new one. Is your grocery store manager a Trumps supporter? Go to a different grocery store. Economic boycotts can work if people will make the collective sacrifice.

Here is a touchier suggestion. I think everyone agrees that the vast majority of law professors are liberal leaning. I've always regarded them as limousine liberals because other than talking a good game I see little action. So, liberal law professors, do you want to do something that will show you care? Walk Out. Yes, I propose a day in which every Trump detractor cancel class for the day. Call in sick if necessary. Call it a strike if you like. That may be the most effective teaching you could do and it may give some support to the few souls who are actually willing to put something on the line to get rid of this monster.

Of course this will not happen because, when it comes to really questioning authority, we are a profession well-versed in free-riding.

Volunteering and the Quandary it Presents

One of the more fascination ploys of the upper classes or elites is the volunteer “move.”  It means never asking for something (asking implies the other person has power) but volunteering (which implies you are doing the other person a favor).  This means no matter how much you want something, when you get it, it was a result of your charitable instincts.  For example, I once chaired the committee that was to go to the meat market. Not everyone on the committee needed to go so in a meeting I made the mistake of asking who "wanted" to go.  Not one person “wanted to.” Within days every person on the committee contacted me privately to say he or she was “willing to go.” And then when I announced I had too many people who volunteered to go, no one volunteered  to stay at home.

It is pervasive. I was in a meeting a few months ago when one faculty member described how he did not want to hold an administrative post, a position now held by that person with an iron grip with no signs of change. And, there was a past interim dean who was described as being forced to be interim dean. The problem was it took a crowbar to get him to move on.

My favorite recent one involves the director of a set of programs that involve traveling to interesting places. When I asked to go, I was told that he had already “volunteered” to do it.

And, there are plenty of people who volunteer to teach an extra course, organize a conference, or teach at an inconvenient time. Sometimes volunteers are solicited and sometime people volunteer to do things that really do not need doing. It is the appearance of volunteering that is important.

But here is the quandary. If you volunteer for something and then do it, can you turn around and complain that you have too much on your plate or that you are deserving of a pay raise higher than that of someone who did not volunteer? This gets even stickier when you volunteer to do something that is not really needed -- you kind of made up a project, a program, a course, -- and then you turn around and want to be rewarded for it.

Perhaps those who step forward when volunteers are solicited deserve recognition. On the other hand, volunteers who create work for themselves and then seek a reward are not volunteers at all. They are operators.

Legal Education, Public Goods, and the Ratings Race

Once upon a time the public good rationale might have been  the basis for subsidizing legal education.  Personally, I never bought the rationale. Instead I figured that people with property and money -- the ones needing lawyers -- decided it would be great if everyone could be taxed to help produce lawyers so that legal fees might be lower.  After all, this is America.

You could think of it as income redistribution from the less well off to those better off.  One of the great examples of this, which many people hate to hear about, is the state subsidization of tax LLM. programs.  (Do you think Sally, the single mom down at the 7-11 needs a tax lawyer?) I actually do not know as a factual matter whether state operated tax LLM programs continue to be subsidized but, if so, let's hope we come to our senses.

But let's say I am wrong at least with respect to JD programs (even tax LLMs)  and that there once was a legitimate public good rationale and subsidization was based on that rationale. Or, more cynically, a public good rationale had nothing to do with it  but, as it turns out, there were unexpected positive externalities. Put differently, left to market forces, legal advice and assistance would be produced at inefficiently low levels. (If you know a thing or two about public goods you may be wondering who the free riders would be that would mean that demand for lawyers would be suppressed leading to too few lawyers. But let's say for now that 50 years ago the system made sense if only by accident.)

The fact that many people trained as lawyers cannot find jobs does not necessarily mean the public good rationale does not continue to exist. Maybe the problem is that people still cannot afford to or are unwilling to pay for legal services. Could the subsidization be too low? Perhaps all law school grads should get government stipends so poor people could afford their services or maybe the costs to  those who demand legal services should be reimbursed. All we know is that many people graduating from law school cannot earn a living selling their human capital and have to find other employment. Pumping out even more  publicly subsidized lawyers without determining the extent of a continuing public good rationale makes no sense. If  there remains inefficiently low levels of legal assistance being sold, other avenues of subsidization should be considered.

But let's suspend our disbelief if necessary and say there continues to be a public good rationale. Let's see how law schools are responding in the era of a rankings race (or law school mutually assured destruction). Law Schools cut the size of classes as a way to increase their entering class GPAs and LSAT scores. The compete for and recruit  students for the same reason almost as aggressively as college coaches. They attract students by paying them -- REGARDLESS OF NEED - and, unlike college athletes, there appears to be no limit to what can be offered. Yes, they pay students to attend a specific law school who would attend a law school somewhere without the payment.  Law schools operate  massive "development" offices that seek financial support for their addiction to the rankings racket.

How many of these practices are responsible reactions to a possibly imaginary rationale for public subsidization of legal education?  None. The benefits flow to very very few and certainly not to the public.