In search of a new funding formula

Four months after releasing the findings of a task force studying legal education, the American Bar Association has formed a new group to take a closer look at the financing of legal education.

The new 14-member team, the Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education, will “conduct a comprehensive study of the complex economic and political issues involved and produce sound recommendations to inform policymakers throughout the legal community,” ABA President James R. Silkenat said in a statement.

It’s an idea that is being met with mixed reviews from Illinois law school deans.

“The problems of costs and financing of legal education are very serious, but I am doubtful that a task force like this is going to come up with anything meaningfully new,” said David N. Yellen, dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Yellen cited an ever-evolving legal education landscape as a cause for his skepticism, changes that make studying the financing problem as tricky as catching a chicken in an alley.

“There’s 200 law schools,” Yellen said. “There’s 50 trends happening at any moment. Schools are experimenting and reacting to changes. Most task forces have neither the time, resources or expertise, frankly, to do much more than some brainstorming. There’s some value to that, but it’s limited.”

Yellen’s doubts also stem from his experience as a member of the ABA group — the Task Force on the Future of Legal Education — that recently wrapped up its work.

“I think we wrote a good report,” he said. Still, “the issues confronting legal education are so varied and the landscape is changing so rapidly that these high level task forces are not really likely to come up with dramatic solutions.”

Dean Harold J. Krent of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law was more optimistic about the new task force, though guardedly so.

“If the task force can think of a more beneficial system that helps students more, that would be great,” Krent said. “But, certainly, law schools have been trying to think about innovative ways to help students fund education for years.”

The prior task force — which worked from July 2012 to January 2014 — examined a range of issues, including pricing and financing of legal education, accreditation standards and innovation in programming. Throughout the process, the task force found the question of financing to be the most difficult, Silkenat said.

“They didn’t feel they had enough time or the technical expertise to deal with those issues on a timely basis,” said Silkenat, a partner at Sullivan & Worcester LLP in New York. “They set those aside to bring together a group that did have that expertise and could look at those issues between now and the end of this calendar year.”

That new group is led by Dennis W. Archer, a Detroit lawyer, former Detroit mayor and former Michigan Supreme Court justice. Joining him are a mix of law deans, professors, clerks, corporate executives and student loan experts.

By completing the findings at the end of the calendar year — a much shorter time frame than the previous study — the task force can present its conclusions at a February ABA meeting in Houston.

Those conclusions will come in the form of recommendations to two groups of legal policymakers, Silkenat said: the ABA House of Delegates, which sets the group’s policy, and lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

Law schools are making their own moves, too.

“As almost everyone knows, to reduce costs in a school is going to mean some variant of reducing staff and/or faculty,” said Dean John E. Corkery of The John Marshall Law School.

“Since most law schools are tenured up, very few faculty reductions are going to occur which are not voluntary.”

Earlier this year, John Marshall created its own task force to study the financing and cost problem. The group is of similar size to the ABA group and will report its findings to Corkery on June 2.

“We knew we were going to have to reduce the cost of the way we deliver legal education, so I thought I would ask my faculty and staff for their suggestions,” Corkery said. “I think they’ll come up with good ideas and we’ll go from there.”

The school has already begun looking for areas to cut spending, Corkery said, starting with travel, supplies, vendor contracts, independent contractors and maintenance.

“Much of the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked,” he said. “But everybody in the law school business is really in the same position.”

In response to the matter of student debt, Dean Gregory Mark said DePaul University College of Law will be using “a lion’s share” of the school’s capital campaign “to provide resources to students,” such as an increase in scholarships and a larger loan repayment assistance program.

DePaul’s campaign began in 2006, setting a goal of $33 million for the law school. Final totals will be released June 30.

The types of scholarships awarded is also a significant part of the issue, as legal educators debate the value of merit-based versus need-based awards.

Krent sees both sides of the merit scholarship debate.

“They have a salutary impact on students,” Krent said. “Most students can face a tradeoff by having their education partially or mostly paid for with a little less prestige or finance the education and go to a more prestigious school. That empowers students with choice.”

Schools don’t want to drop merit-based scholarships on their own and lose out on quality students to other schools that offer such aid. But if all schools made that change simultaneously, it could happen.

“Each school lacks the incentive to end the policy of merit scholarships,” he said, “so if there is to be change, it would have to come from the ABA.”

He added: “If the task force can think of new, innovative approaches that are more evenhanded and help students even more, that’d be great.”

Yellen remains dubious about the potential impact of any recommendations.

“I think this is a process that’s best served by lots and lots of people analyzing the issues,” he said. “I think that’s what’s going on and that’s a good thing. I’m just skeptical about yet another high level task force.”