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Overpriced School Lawyers?

By Justin Bathon

From today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

The district's Office of General Counsel will receive a slight increase of $325,074 in 2008-09, bringing its total outlay to $13.5 million, according to the budget proposal presented during City Council hearings April 28 and 29.

The head of the office, General Counsel Sherry A. Swirsky, and the 18 attorneys who work for her are not only among the highest-paid school employees, but also make more than the attorneys who work for Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham and City Solicitor Shelley R. Smith.

The school attorneys' high salaries caught the eye of City Council President Anna Verna during the hearings.

"I just can't fathom what they do seven or eight hours a day, five days a week," Verna said. "That's something that I would definitely want to look into."

Continue Reading ...

Later the article goes on to say this:

Swirsky, 56, defended the salaries paid to her and her staff, saying that they have more experience than other city-government lawyers, and more responsibilities.

Five of her attorneys work in the area of contract law, Swirsky said, four in special-education law, one on charter-school issues, two in civil rights and tort litigation, one in claims, one in commercial litigation, two in labor and employment law and two in school law.

"School districts are the most highly regulated institutions that exist," she said. "We get federal and state grants with very technical compliance issues.

"We're a little different than other government law departments in that we have no entry-level positions," she said. "The least experienced person [in her office] has 10 years' experience. The most experienced, including myself, have 30 or more years of experience. Whereas, with the D.A.'s Office and the City Solicitor's Office, they have people right out of law school.

"It would not be possible for someone without a substantial amount of legal experience to practice in this office," she added.

Let me just throw this crazy, wild, wacky idea out there ... maybe we could employ some entry level lawyers (thus cheaper lawyers) if we actually trained law students in school law issues? Will they be as good as lawyers with 10 years experience? No, but they could probably get by and learn quickly ... all while saving the district tens of thousands of dollars which could be devoted to more teacher positions, etc.

This problem, high priced school lawyers, is not going away any time soon. We have clearly entered an era where the school lawyer is an intricate member of the school leadership team. More and more individual districts are employing general counsels and this is a trend that will continue in my estimation until every school district has a general counsel and relies less on outside counsel.

In light of this clear transition that is happening right now in how school law is practiced, we need to make changes to legal education to accommodate that transition. We also need to think about the school leadership team differently in light of the reality that most major decisions pass through the general counsel's office first.

There are lots of ways to save money here, but the key is beginning the discussion with the realization that school law is a legitimate specialty and thus deserves special consideration. Education law is moving beyond a niche practice to a mainstream specialty of law ... with its own niches inside the specialty. The way we employ and train school lawyers has to catch up to this reality. We cannot continue to rely on only lawyers with 10+ years of experience ... we don't have that kind of money. We need to develop a pipeline to bring young lawyers into the system at lower prices and let them develop within education ... not bring in them in from outside education 10 years out of law school. That is a costly and inefficient way of operating. Schools of Education and Schools of Law need to start thinking about this and working together to develop education law concentrations, joint-degrees, law journals, etc. within law school.

These articles, like the one in today's Inquirer, are going to become more and more frequent until we figure out a way to bring in young lawyers.

Full post as published by Edjurist on May 19, 2008 (boomark / email).