Even with the very large excess capacity represented by the number of law schools and graduates versus the available jobs it is unlikely that the number of closings of ABA accredited schools will exceed the predictions offered below by Matt Leichter, Jerry Organ [10%] and Brian Leiter [up to 10]. … But as many as 20 law schools could be closed in the near future and many others will be forced to adjust and adapt. … My best guess would be that 80 law schools are at some degree of risk. The risks will in many cases be managed by shrinkage, layoffs, mergers and consolidations, distance learning and computer-based instruction strategies, and by adoption of additional kinds of educational missions. Accessing new applicant pools that benefit from some modified forms of education in law while not seeking the right to practice in the traditional sense will also produce new versions of law schools or new components within schools. The changes will be exciting but for many they will be painful.
Just as the legal employment market is over-saturated due to the surplus numbers of graduates law schools pumped into the system over the past twenty years, the productive capacity of the law school “industry” is entirely out of balance with all foreseeable need for law graduates. Given the direction the traditional employment markets for lawyers are heading no more than 80-100 law schools could easily serve America’s need for new law graduates. With various projections of law employment (as we know it) put at 23,000 available positions annually (and quite possibly substantially lower) compared to the 45,000 that was the norm for a time, there is no need for 203 (ABA) fully accredited law schools, for another five provisionally accredited schools, or for the graduates of the numerous California non-ABA law schools approved by that state’s Bar, and another ten or so new or entirely unaccredited law schools. California by itself has an amazing number of law schools, 60 in total, with only five of the law schools public and fifty-five private, some with real universities and others that are either free standing or even existing primarily in electronic hyperspace. Taking all types of law schools together California is home to about 25 percent of the total number of institutions offering graduate education in law. …
The truth is that law faculties and law deans have very limited control over what is going to occur at law schools. The ongoing “tinkering” with largely cosmetic curricular change that is claimed to significantly reform legal education is more public relations than substance. Minor curriculum adaptations are not going to “win the day” because the problems law schools and universities face go far deeper than curriculum. After decades of denying, ignoring and marginalizing educational (and research) orientations directed toward the needs of graduates entering the legal profession the idea that a majority of traditional law faculty members are suddenly committed to educating graduates to be more prepared to enter the practice of law is a combination of public relations announcements that re-label existing programs and teaching approaches that many clinical, professional responsibility and skills teachers have been doing for decades while being looked down on as intellectual inferiors by their doctrinal counterparts. …
The fact that California is home to sixty law schools suggests an impending “domino-like” collapse of a number of those institutions, particularly given the fact that there are already problems with a shortage of “law jobs” in that state. A similar observation seems applicable to Florida. Ohio has nine law schools, Michigan five, Indiana another five and Pennsylvania eight. Not counting the “national” and “flagship” law schools in those states (Ohio State, Michigan, Indiana Bloomington, Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania) that leaves 22 law schools to compete for a limited pool of applicants in a region of static, aging or declining population with compromised economic systems, and high public expenditures on social priorities. It is difficult to see why Ohio needs nine law schools (not even counting competition with border-state law school graduates from schools such as Wayne State, Pittsburgh and Northern Kentucky. It will be unsurprising if in five years several of the nine Ohio law schools have either merged or closed. It makes sense to me that Cleveland State, Case Western Reserve (even though private) and Akron ought to begin serious talks about how they can create a regional law school. …
[N]on-national law schools located in areas where the pool from which they attract students (and place their graduates) must shrink, or merge with another law school in the same competitive territory, or be closed at the hands of universities increasingly unwilling to subsidize what they had always considered a positive revenue generator. A number of law schools are likely to be shocked when their universities simply “pull the plug” on their operations. As suggested above, eliminating an entire department is the most viable option both for budgetary reasons and to avoid protracted and costly disputes with law faculties. Cutting out an entire department can eliminate tenure rights and other employment conditions because the unit in which they had tenure and rights no longer exists and faculty in other academic departments possess priority rights and qualifications within those disciplines.
A consideration that makes the law school closure strategy more likely is that given the increased diversity found in law faculties any attempted discharge of a faculty member is almost certainly going to involve a university having to defend against a claim of discrimination whether it is said to involve age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, political beliefs or a “conspiracy” by the administration to get rid of a trouble-making employee. It is my experience that all law professors have a firm belief in their own competence relative to other faculty members. Law faculty egos may be hypersensitive but they are not under-developed. If a law school and its parent university seeks to use termination of even a limited number of faculty in order to balance expenses and revenues it will face years of accusation and extremely expensive litigation. At some point and in some situations universities will decide it simply isn’t worth going through the turmoil and “pull the plug”. Attrition through retirement and death is one option but failure to replace faculty who leave slots also has serious morale, intellectual vibrancy, teaching coverage and financial consequences. The positive options for preserving the traditional business model and operational scale for numerous law schools are few and far between.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/11/80-law-schools-are-at-risk-of-closure-.html
