Actions speak louder than words. For a few years now, we’ve all been wringing our hands about the law school crisis. Enrollment is plummeting–from 2004-2013, the amount of law school applicants have almost been cut in half. Even worse, the lawyers that are being produced are unable to find jobs, barely over half were in jobs that required passage of the bar last year. These issues are exacerbated by the fact that law school is incredibly expensive. Students who go to private law schools borrow an average of $91,000. The stats aren’t much better for slightly cheaper public law schools; loans there are around $76,000.
Legal education and the legal industry as a whole are changing rapidly. They’re presented with a catch-22, because a large part of the prestige for a law school is claimed from rankings, like those by US News & World Report. But those rankings can be thrown into jeopardy by taking drastic actions, such as downsizing.
Brooklyn Law School, located in Brooklyn, NY, usually ranks somewhere in the 60s-80s in law school rankings by various publications. Specifically in US News and World Report, they clock in at 83. But a couple days ago, they announced that they no longer care about those rankings, and are now taking comprehensive steps to make a legal education more affordable and efficient. For the class that will matriculate in 2015, tuition will be cut by 15%. There will also be more types of financial aid offered, while merit aid will lessen. And the school will introduce programs that will make it possible to complete a legal education in 2 years rather than the ubiquitous 3. This will come just a couple years after they downsized through a voluntary early retirement program, and sold a few dorms and other buildings, yielding revenue for the school. But what’s so interesting about the actions of Brooklyn Law School is that they’re refreshingly extreme. Other schools have taken baby steps, but Brooklyn Law School is leaping forward.
There are a few other schools cutting costs, but Brooklyn Law School is still joining an incredibly small group. Some public law schools, like Penn State, University of Iowa, and University Arizona, have dropped costs for in-state students. On the private school front, Roger Williams University School of Law, in Rhode Island is dropping their tuition by about $8000.
What Brooklyn Law School is doing seems almost laughably obvious–they’re offering cheaper tuition in the hopes that it will attract undergraduates who see the merit in spending less money for a law degree. It’s a pretty simple move, business-wise. But in a law school atmosphere dominated by an obsession with rankings, it seems a bit riskier than it is. Students from law schools that are viewed as prestigious by their peers and by the legal industry are more likely to get jobs and clerkships after graduation.
Brooklyn Law School Dean Nicholas Allard is fine with that. He stated, “we’re not going to throw money at some artificial rankings. As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. News rankings may be good for lining the cage of a parakeet, but as a road map for students, they’re not useful.”
I absolutely applaud the gutsy move taken by Brooklyn Law School, but it’s important to remember that they also have a unique status. As an independent law school–meaning it’s not connected to an undergraduate institution, it does have more flexibility and ability to make broad moves.
I also think the choice to get rid of merit scholarships is incredibly interesting. According to this Forbes probe into the subject, often students that receive merit scholarships are ones who don’t necessarily need them. Refocusing attention to need-based scholarships can solve that problem, and Brooklyn Law School, among others, seem to get that.
The biggest question that is left is whether this will actually be successful. It’s innovative for sure, and cool, and I hope it makes positive difference. But throwing the rankings manual out of the window is risky, and for a middle of the pack school like Brooklyn, it could prove costly.