Prior to this week Alaska remained the only state without its own law school, but thanks to the Seattle University School of Law that is no longer true. After six months of planning and negotiating, it’s official: Anchorage will be home to a satellite campus of the Washington state law school. This is potentially a positive symbiotic relationship. The goal of this move is to improve the legal industry in both states, and if the intended outcome becomes reality, there may be hope for our nation’s legal industry. Let’s look at how.

Alaska’s Benefits

Of all 736,399 Alaskan residents, approximately 4,000 are lawyers, but very few of those lawyers are Alaskan natives. According to the American Bar Association, the total number of active lawyers in 2013 who are U.S. residents was 1,268,011. That means that only .003 percent of American lawyers reside in Alaska. The reason for such a small legal industry in the state is accessibility. Alaskans are deterred from moving to other states to go to law school because of high expenses and complicated logistics. This deal with Seattle University will help change that trend.

It’s  important to note that Alaskans will finally be granted an easily accessible legal education. Why this hasn’t happened sooner I cannot understand. But I think the partnership with Seattle is a great step forward for the legal education industry and I hope Alaskan students dive right in.

Seattle’s Benefits

In an attempt to fight the rapidly decreasing law school enrollment rates, SU Law is implementing several creative methods. In addition to offering a two-year law program and in-state tuition to top out-of-state students, SU Law is planning this satellite campus in Alaska.

According to the Seattle Times, law school enrollment has declined by about 23 percent over the last three years; in Washington, it’s dropped by a third. Simultaneously, the need for representation is at an all-time high, so what solution could be better than making law school more accessible across the nation?

Beginning of a Trend?

I’ve done some scouring and it seems SU Law is not alone in the implementation of a satellite campus. But the other institutions merely implement satellite centers or the satellite campus is in a different city, not a different state. For example, the main campus of Stetson Law is located in St. Petersburg, Florida, but the school hosts a satellite center in Tampa Bay. The Tampa Law Center is located in an upcoming hub for legal activity and shares its law library and courtroom with Florida’s Second District Court of Appeals. Similarly, the University of Oregon School of Law is located in Eugene but has a satellite in Portland. Like the Seattle-Alaska program, students will be able to complete their third years at the satellite campus.

Could satellite campuses that reduce tuition be the best way to increase law school enrollment?

The United States is home to more than 200 law schools. Seems a bit excessive, but I guess it fits with our unofficial national motto of “Go big or go home.” If more states begin implementing methods similar to those of Seattle, more students would be inclined to enroll.

Even better, schools with specialized areas of study could offer program-specific courses at satellite campuses. The need for more accessible law schools paired with a new approach to provide highly specialized studies could fix the downturn in law school enrollment. Alaska lacks lawyers who practice in specific disciplines, including same-sex issues, civil rights, and drug crimes.

Offering specialized programs like business, civil rights, healthcare, and intellectual property law allows students to graduate with a fuller knowledge of those fields. Plus they get to focus on what interests them most, in an environment that is even more accessible than ever before for remote areas like Alaska.

I commend Seattle University for making a noble attempt to create real change in the legal industry.

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Natasha Paulmeno (@natashapaulmeno)

Featured image courtesy of [Christian Meichtry via Flickr]

Natasha Paulmeno

Natasha Paulmeno is an aspiring PR professional studying at the University of Maryland. She is learning to speak Spanish fluently through travel, music, and school. In her spare time she enjoys Bachata music, playing with her dog, and exploring social media trends. Contact Natasha at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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According to the American Bar Association’s latest findings, law school enrollment is down 11%, or 5,000 students from last year. Many bloggers, and legal news outlets have somewhat ironically blamed this on the negative media attention law schools have gotten over the last few years. But that’s selling graduates a bit short. If the potential benefit of a six-figure investment isn’t all that clear, I doubt a blog entry will be the deciding factor. So it begs the question: what is to blame?

In her WSJ blog article on the drop, in which she pointed out that enrollment numbers are now hovering around those from 1977, Jennifer Smith writes in passing, “some lower-level legal tasks that firm associates used to do, such as document review, are now increasingly farmed out to contract attorneys or legal outsourcing companies that can do the work more cheaply”. And though brief, she has touched on one of the major challenges for new members of the J.D. club. In 1977, new lawyers were competing amongst each other for jobs. Now, they’re competing with the rest of the world. And in many offices ranging from Mumbai to Bangalore, the rest of the world is winning.

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO), as it’s officially been named, has nearly doubled in the past few years, going from a $640 industry in 2010 to worth over a billion dollars in 2012, according to the LPO Program. Experts predict that it will continue to grow as providers set up shop in Latin America and former British colonies with similar English Common Law justice systems. A 2012 report on the industry from Professor Mary Lacity of the University of Missouri and Professor Leslie Willcocks of the London School of Economics argues that because of a fragmented legal industry stateside and many untapped countries as possible LPO providers, “the potential global LPO market is enormous”. “Just considering the US market”, the paper adds, “the legal services industry is worth about $245 billion”.

“the potential global LPO market is enormous”– Legal Process Outsourcing: LPO Provider Landscape

For the most part, the ethics of outsourcing have already been decided. In 2007 and 2008, when LPO first burst on the scene with national media attention, various state bar associations along with the ABA blessed the fledgling industry. But there is still the question of how far it can go?

If you’re thinking that this is another case of overseas contractors doing grunt work, you’re wrong. While some would be happy to skirt the tedium of legal discovery and document review, LPO providers like Pangea3— a recent recipient of the provider-of-the-year-award– assists US firms in everything from corporate contracts to intellectual property agreements, falling just short of performing the actual attorney responsibilities themselves. For a law school graduate looking at one of the most dismal legal markets in recent memory, those jobs aren’t anything to sneeze at.

So what’s a young lawyer to do? Do we lasso the industry through regulations, or let entry level positions go the way of the automobile industry? Or the manufacturing industry? Or the information technology industry? I don’t have the answers to these questions. But in light of the precipitous decline in law students this year, let us not scratch our heads in confusion as we wonder why nobody wants to be a lawyer anymore.

[ABAJournal]

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Featured image courtesy of [Michael Fernandes via Wikipedia]

Jimmy Hoover

Jimmy Hoover is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Jimmy at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The world we live in today makes it hard for any twenty-something to find a decent-paying, full-time job. Although we may search and search, many of us retreat back to school, taking on more debt while seeking higher education.

Even so, we have all accepted unpaid internships with the hope that there is a sliver of a chance that we may be hired as a full-time employee. Despite working for free, we expect to be treated along the same lines as any other employee, entitled to certain rights such as lunch breaks, vacation days, and freedom from sexual harassment, right? WRONG!

David Yamada reported that a New York Federal District Court held that an unpaid intern could not bring a sexual harassment claim against her employer, Phoenix Satellite Television US, Inc., under NYC Human Rights Law. The complaint alleges that the plaintiff, Liuhuan Wang sustained injuries as a result of quid pro quo sexual harassment and sexual harassment in the form of a hostile work environment created by her supervisor Zhengzhu Liu.

As a 22-year-old student at Syracuse University, Ms. Lihuan claims that during her four weeks at Phoenix Satellite US, Mr. Liu had almost complete supervisory authority in the New York and D.C. bureaus. Ms. Lihuan’s complaint alleges that Mr. Liu had a history of sexual harassment throughout his employment with Phoenix Satellite and he would prey on female employees just starting their career in America and lure them to his hotel room where he would grope and kiss them, and attempt to have sex with them. He is accused of insinuating that in order to have a successful career, female employees and interns at Phoenix would have to submit to his unwanted sexual desires.

Ms. Lihuan claimed that Mr. Liu had similarly invited her back to his hotel after treating her and several co-workers to lunch when he was in town. After asking her to stay behind to “talk about her job performance,” Mr. Liu guided Ms. Lihuan back to his hotel room, under the guise of an work-related issue, and attempted to grope and kiss her, forcing Ms. Lihuan to push him back and leave the room immediately.

Her grievance is due to the fact that she believes her refusal of Mr. Liu’s sexual advances is the reason she was denied full-time employment. The complaint also mentions that a fellow Syracuse student, Qian Chen, worked for Phoenix and was also sexually propositioned by Mr. Liu. Perhaps Mr. Liu and the people over at Phoenix Satellite need a visit from this guy.

The U.S. District Court judge, Judge Kevin P. Castel, ruled that Ms. Lihuan could not bring a valid claim of sexual harassment under New York City Human Rights Law against her employer because her lack of compensation rendered her unable to meet the employee status required by the statute.

Using federal and NY case law, the district court determine that unpaid interns are not employees as defined under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act or NYC Human Rights Law. The district court stated that remuneration or the absence of remuneration is an essential element to determining the existence of “the employer-employee relationship.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) supports the U.S. District Court’s position that sexual harassment laws don’t cover interns unless they receive “significant remuneration,” according to an EEOC spokesperson, Joseph Olivares.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Phoenix denies that Ms. Lihuan ever applied for a position and Mr. Liu is no longer with the company. This wasn’t the first case, and it surely will not be the last. Although the workplace dynamic for unpaid interns is already changing, maybe it’s time to take another look at the rights unpaid interns are entitled to while working. Perhaps something slightly more than a video at orientation.

And no live demonstrations are necessary.

And remember, its not just women who suffer from sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Rob Anthony is a founding member of Law Street Media. He is a New Yorker, born and raised, and a graduate of New York Law School. In the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, “We need to be bold and adventurous in our thinking in order to survive.” Contact Rob at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Melissa Gira via Flickr]

Robbin Antony

Rob Antony is a founding member of Law Street Media. He is a New Yorker, born and raised, and a graduate of New York Law School. Contact Rob at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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