University of Wisconsin School of Law Lays off Faculty Members
The School insists that it is not terminating its Public Defender Project. It is only terminating the dedicated faculty member who administered the Project and its associated externships. Professor Gross expressed concerns beyond his own career path. Wisconsin faces a shortage of public defenders. The state public defenders’ office is down thirty lawyers and is seeking to recruit out of state. The School insists that it is “reenvisioning” the program. It is hard to do that without the help of the person who has been leading it since 2020. Perhaps they are in fact envisioning how to do the same with less money. Replacing full-time faculty members with adjuncts is certainly one way to do so.
The timing is interesting. Just last month, the Legal Education Council of the American Bar Association tabled a proposal that would have doubled the number of experiential learning credits required for graduation from ABA-accredited law schools. This proposal was first introduced in May and was vocally opposed by law school deans. One reason for such opposition may be that, whatever its virtues, experiential learning courses involve more one-on-one training by faculty members and is thus far more expensive than traditional doctrinal courses. Law schools enhance experiential learning opportunities by paying clinical faculty less than doctrinal faculty or by hiring adjuncts to run clinics. Some enterprising law schools can attract outside funding to help pay for clinics, but that funding has to be renewed regularly, and the environment for procuring government grants for education currently is not propitious.
I’m afraid we will be seeing more stories like this as we head over the enrollment cliff So far, law schools are not affected, as applications were way up this year. This may be a temporary bump — a response to political upheavals that put law center stage. But the cliff is exacerbated by those same political upheavals that threaten the already precarious finances undergirding education. University administrators have become irrational centralizers, demanding across-the-board cuts, even from schools that are managing their budgets well, while also engaging in creative accounting in order to hide the fact that they are dedicating law school surpluses to pay down debts generated by other divisions. There are worse things than diverting legal education dollars to support undergraduate education, but it is not a long-term solution, and this country may currently lack the political will to do what we used to do.
Irrational cuts hit irrationally. Legal education is touting the importance of experiential learning, but those programs, often staffed by people who are not protected by tenure, are the low-hanging fruit that deans, faced with no other options, will pluck first. Investment in education is investment in the future. Investment in legal training is investment that will yield very rapid dividends.