Academic

While I was racking my brain about the optimal car purchase, the rest of the blogosphere was debating whether Northwestern's new two-year plan was the best thing since sliced bread or the stupidest fad since socks with toes.  Our own Gordon Smith gave his thumbs up, as well as Bill Henderson, but the plan has had its detractors.  Josh Wright, who joins the gang who say that the market will eventually decide the question, thinks the answer may already may be revealed by the reaction of faculty at U. of Chicago and U. of Illinois.  Josh thinks that NW must be on to something or Geoffrey Stone (Chicago) and Larry Solum (Illinois) wouldn't hate it so much.

Well, to be honest, Larry seems merely skeptical, and Larry Ribstein (also Illinois) likes the idea.  And really, the competitive stance that the 2-year program gives NW over Illinois that it didn't already have is that it might make NW cheaper than it is right now.  (NW may charge the same amount as an aggregate 3-year degree, but students would reap back the opportunity costs of the lost third year.)  However, Illinois is already substantially cheaper than NW and we are very aggressive on the scholarship front with competitive applicants with many attractive options, so I'm not sure that even if the program proves wildly successful that the marginal difference for us will be much.

So, do I like the idea?  (Does anyone still care?)  I do not think that there is any problem with the program as far as quality of education.  That is a red herring.  We have a cousin who is applying to law school, and I would offer him this caution.  The potential problem with accelerated law school programs is the same issue that arises with night programs for those in the workforce.  Without two free summers, when will students clerk?  (Larry Solum was quoted as mentioning this in the Tribune article, so I thought I would expand.)

Clerking is a valuable experience in many ways.  First, can be lucrative (and six months of foregone summer pay in the accelerated program is not much less than the nine month opportunity cost of the third year of law school).  Second, it is used by many law firms as the most important, if not sole, recruiting and hiring method.  Yes, many students are hired in their third year by a firm for which they did not clerk (including me), but this is not the norm among most schools of NW's caliber.  Third, clerking is a great way for law students to find out about firms, practice areas, and cities before committing to them.  Although an in-school practical experience can teach many skills that would be gained by real-world clerking experience, experiential learning cannot fill these voids.

Having taught at two schools with night programs, I noticed that many of the top students in those programs eventually quit their jobs and transferred to the day program because they quickly saw that the opportunity to get a law firm clerkship through the on-campus interviews was worth more in the long run than their opportunity cost of working full-time during their second and third years.  On the other hand, the students who got the most out of the night program were students whose employers were paying for their law school education and who had promised them a legal job upon graduation.  And for these students, the 2-year plan would be ideal.  The accelerated degree would also be ideal for those who don't particularly plan to practice but perhaps gain another academic degree and enter academia.  However, if someone with no connections to a legal job wants to go to law school with an eye toward getting a high-paying job at a large law firm, I'm not sure that the accelerated plan is the way to go.  Perhaps NW is working with employers to overcome this glitch -- they seem to be pretty bright people there, so I wouldn't put it past them.  Stay tuned.