The blogosphere is abuzz with the announcement of NWU’s 2-Year JD (Paul Caron collects relevant links ; the W$J Law Blog also has ). There is a lot of reaction to the program, especially in the comments at Above the Law, but not much analysis. So I thought I would fill the void. Moreover, this bold movement by NWU Law illustrates the power of empirical methods for institution building, so it falls nicely within the scope of the ELS Blog.
Consider this background information. A few years ago, Andy Morriss and I wrote an empirical study on the market for high LSAT students. See , 81 Ind. L. J. 163 (2006). Our primary dependent variable was change in median LSAT score between 1993 and 2004. We were looking for factors that influenced this key US News rankings variable. During this twelve year period, Northwestern Law had the largest gain of any school in the sample (164 to 169).
Based on other information we had regarding Northwestern, this gain seemed like a paradox. During this same period, NWU Law implemented a policy that and gave extra weight for . Aggressively pursuing these goals seemed like it would undercut the objective of higher LSAT scores. So how did Northwestern get a larger gain than 190 other schools? We asked this question to several people at NWU Law.
More after the jump.
Conventional Wisdom versus Market Forces
To understand the difference between conventional wisdom and market
forces, a good place to start is the observation of Geoffrey Stone,
professor and former dean at crosstown rival Chicago Law. In a story in the Chicago Tribune, Stone called
the 2-year JD "irresponsible" because it risked producing inferior
lawyers who
haven’t had time to develop intellectual and analytical skills. Stone continued, "My sense is that compressing the educational process is likely to
seriously derogate from the quality. … What is lost is likely
to be much more than anything that is gained by hustling the students
through more quickly."
There are a lot of problems with Stone’s assessment. Foremost, in
terms of "quality", how are we going to measure what is "lost" against
what is "gained"? As a liberal Democrat, it always strikes me as odd
when I am the one who broaches this issue: What about relying on the market to answer this question? Specifically, how will students and employers react–i.e., the
people investing their own time and money? And if we want an accurate
answer to this question, taking a poll in the faculty lounge is the wrong
approach.
Here is a fact that is sure to be overlooked in the blogosphere: The
NWU 2-year program was carefully vetted by focus groups populated by
decisions makers at major legal employers. Most critics of the NWU
program will focus on reduced time to graduation, but the focus groups
evaluated all the moving parts:
- To be admitted, students must have at least two years of
full-time substantive work experience–which, believe it or not, has
value to employers; - Required courses in quantitative reasoning (accounting, finance and statistics) and the dynamics of legal services
behavior (social networks, teamwork, leadership and project
management); - The 24 month program is an acceleration, not a diminution, in
coursework–and a feature with a desirable self-selection effect. See ("By compressing the curriculum for highly motivated students, the law
school could attract people with several years of work experience who
don’t want to lose three years of earnings, [Van Zandt] said. Successful
candidates ‘would be people who are very focused and have great
time-management skills.’").
The Chicago Tribune corroborates that NWU did its homework–and
its footwork. Terri Mascherin, who is NWU alum, a partner at Jenner
& Block, VP at the Chicago Bar Association, and a participant in
the NWU focus groups on the proposed 2-year JD, told the Chicago Tribune
that elite law school graduates too often arrive on the job without the
ability to write a two-page memo, make a presentation, or work with
others. According to Mascherin, "We [i.e. NWU alums] don’t intend to
put out a generation of accountants or business
analysts, but we do hope to put into the workplace alumni who have a
better grounding in the kinds of issues that they will face from their
client’s perspective. … Clients don’t like lawyers who can spout
legal analysis but can’t do
strategic analysis."
So let’s get this straight: NWU Law is going to attract applications
from all the experienced, motivated students who want their elite JD
degrees in two years versus three. Then it is going to give them,
through mandatory coursework, business training that will bridge the
traditional gap between lawyers and their MBA clientèle. Sorting plus
training. Why would an employer prefer a 25 year-old fresh out
of another elite law school? Because the education was stretched over
32 months rather than 24 months–that trumps work experience and
mandatory business training?
At the recent ""
symposium at Georgetown Law, the managing partners from Clifford Chance
and Hale Dorr were imploring law schools to improve their business and
management training. The NWU Law 2-year graduates could be their ideal
candidates–moreover, NWU Law is actively making that case. What is
the strategy of other elite law schools?
Another piece of market evidence: Last year Vault published its list of based on a survey of legal recruiters. (I blogged on it here.)
No Top 15 law school made the list; no surprise, Top 15 schools are,
by definition, highly rated. But one Top 15 school, Northwestern Law, was
included in the recruiter comments, including this observation: "Northwestern–should be Top 5–best prepared graduates, curriculum, business focus, leadership development." Perhaps a coincidence; but maybe not.
Against this background of market forces–students and employers
carefully weighing their options–the opinions of law professors don’t
matter very much. The
actually lays out the research and strategy that produced the proposal. In
my opinion, NWU Law is trying send their message to prospective students and employers, though
other law schools could take note. Quoting Dean Van Zandt:
"We now are in a better position than ever to select students [emphasis added] for
competencies that legal leaders told us are necessary for success and
to develop those traits in ways that will mimic how our graduates will
work throughout their careers."The proposals of “Plan 2008: Preparing Great Leaders for the
Changing World” [which includes the 2-year program] were developed by a working group, consisting of
faculty, students, alumni and staff and assisted by Blaqwell, Inc., a
prominent legal consulting firm, before they were submitted to industry
leaders in focus groups.
The plan builds upon the law school’s 1998 strategic plan to
basically provide students with an understanding of the nature of
today’s global law and business environment and the wherewithal to
manage their careers. The model begins with an admissions process that
seeks substantial post-college work experience and relies on an
interviewing program to recruit mature students whose communication and
interpersonal skills are as excellent as their LSAT scores.“We have been fine-tuning our model for the last 10 years,” said Van
Zandt. “And now following our deep look at industry trends and frank
talks with industry leaders, we are confident that we have a plan to
maximize our graduates’ success in an environment in which law
penetrates businesses and other organizations in unprecedented ways and
law operates like a business as never before.”
Finally, it is pretty clear that Northwestern choreographed today’s
press coverage. The press release, dated today, June 20, 2008,
coincided with stories in the Chicago Tribune, National Law Journal, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
and the Associated Press. And then the blogs took over. And to top it all off, after
months of market research and years of experimenting with the
interview/work experience requirement–i.e., evaluating actual
data–two prominent professors at the other Illinois Tier 1 schools
offer their "sense" and "gut instinct" on the record in the Chicago Tribune that it is all a very bad idea. I am sure that made Dean Van Zandt’s day.
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