THE library at the Duncan School of Law may look like nothing more than 4,000 hardbacks in a medium-size room, but it is actually a high-tech experiment in cost containment. Most of its resources are online, and staples like Wright Miller’s Federal Practice and Procedure — $3,596 for the multivolume set — are not here.
“We have a core collection,” says Sydney Beckman, the school’s dean, “and if someone needs something else, we provide it.”
Duncan, which opened two years ago, has 187 enrollees, all of whom have wagered that this library — and everything else about the school — is up to scratch. Because before these students can practice in every state, Duncan needs the seal of approval of the American Bar Association, the government-anointed regulator of law schools.
That means complying with a long list of standards that shape the composition of the faculty, the library and dozens of other particulars. The basic blueprint was established by elite institutions more than a century ago, and according to critics, it all but prohibits the law-school equivalent of the Honda Civic — a low-cost model that delivers.
Instead, virtually every one of the country’s 200 A.B.A.-accredited schools, from the lowliest to the most prestigious, has to build a Cadillac, or at least come close. Duncan’s library costs $750,000 a year to maintain — a bargain when compared with competitors.
Is it Cadillac enough for the A.B.A.?
“We’ll see,” Mr. Beckman says.
The debate about legal education has focused on tuition costs in the stratospheric layers of the law-school world. But what of the ground floor? Duncan hopes to draw students from economically distressed parts of the country, including the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, and sincere efforts have been made to keep overhead to a minimum.
But tuition here is still $28,664 a year. With living expenses and various fees, the student handbook warns, the total price tag for a year runs $50,000.
The reason, according to Pete DeBusk, a retired businessman and the school’s main benefactor, is the A.B.A. standards. Without them, he says, Duncan could have cut its tuition in half, maybe by two-thirds.
“The rules, the regulations,” Mr. DeBusk moans, recalling the day he first met with officials of the A.B.A. four years ago. “Massive. Just massive. ‘We’ve got this standard, we’ve got that standard’ — and the standards don’t ever stop. I realized then that I’d bitten off a big bite, O.K.? And I’m still chewing on it!”
Anyone willing to invest $175,000 on a legal education, and hoping to earn a pile of money at a corporate firm, has plenty of options. But let’s say that your ambition is to make a modest living, perhaps in an area that is struggling. Or that you’d rather not enter your mid-20s lashed to a six-figure loan.
If you want a diploma blessed by the A.B.A. — and you don’t have rich parents, a plum scholarship or an in-state public law school with lots of taxpayer support — you are pretty much out of luck. And that is not just a problem for would-be attorneys. The lack of affordable law school options, scholars say, helps explain why so many Americans don’t hire lawyers.
“People like to say there are too many lawyers,” says Prof. Andrew Morriss of the University of Alabama School of Law. “There are too many lawyers who charge $300 an hour. There aren’t too many lawyers who will handle a divorce at a reasonable rate, or handle a bankruptcy at a reasonable rate. But there is no way to be that lawyer and service $150,000 worth of debt.”
This helps explain a paradox: the United States churns out roughly 45,000 lawyers a year, but survey after survey finds enormous unmet need for legal services, particularly in low- and middle-income communities. This year, the World Justice Project put the United States dead last among 11 high-income countries in providing access to civil justice.
It’s not just that many lawyers are prohibitively expensive. It is that when it comes to legal expertise, there are not a lot of cheaper alternatives — not in the United States, anyway. Britain, on the other hand, has a long menu of options, including a tier of professionals called legal executives, who are licensed after getting the equivalent of a community college degree. Counsel is also available from nonlawyers at a variety of nonprofits. And you can buy a simple divorce over the Internet for a set fee, or pay for customized legal advice, online or by phone.
“In the U.S., people and businesses have only one place to go for all their legal help — lawyers who graduated from an A.B.A.-approved law school and who follow mostly A.B.A. rules about how they run their practice,” says Gillian Hadfield, a professor at the Gould School of Law of the University of Southern California. “Everyone else who offers legal advice is engaged in the unauthorized practice of law.”
To understand why Americans have one option for legal counsel, and why even start-up law schools are so expensive, you need to understand the various roles played by the A.B.A., say Ms. Hadfield and others.
With nearly 400,000 members and a staff of 939, the A.B.A. is the pre-eminent association of the profession. It also drafts and amends the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which have been adopted by every state except California. Then there is the A.B.A.’s gatekeeper role in law school education, through its Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
Detractors contend that these responsibilities allow the A.B.A. to behave like a guild — limiting competition and keeping the cost of legal education excessively high.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/business/for-law-schools-a-price-to-play-the-abas-way.html?partner=rss&emc=rss