As many of you know, Kate Stoneman was the first woman admitted to practice law in New York and the first woman to graduate from Albany Law School.  She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame this past weekend. She joins such greats as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rosa Parks, Frances Perkins, and Maya Angelou, to name a few of the 236 members.

I was asked to accept this recognition on her behalf. Humbling to say the least.

At the time she took the bar exam in 1885, there were no female lawyers in New York State, and precious few scattered throughout the rest of the country. Despite passing the exam, however, she was denied admission based on her gender.

Kate quickly organized a campaign to remedy this injustice, recruiting suffragists and other supporters to stand with her to demand that women be allowed into the profession. Ultimately, her tenacity was rewarded, new rules were passed, and 123 years later, nearly one-half of the people admitted to the New York bar each year are women.

After becoming a lawyer Kate remained active in social causes of the day, continuing to participate in the suffrage movement. It’s particularly noteworthy, given that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, that she was also involved in the temperance movement. As Professor Mary Lynch, the director of our Domestic Violence Clinic, has pointed out, the temperance movement was really the first organized anti-domestic violence movement. Part of the theory was that if men weren’t drunk they wouldn’t beat women.  Sadly, the theory was wrong.

Over the years, Albany Law School has educated thousands of women. It began slowly, and only after Kate blazed a difficult trail. The difficulty of blazing that trail, the depth of that prejudice, is evidenced by the fact that by 1898, if you were Black, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, or Native American AND a guy, you weren’t the first.

The legal field profession in New York State, as well as across the country, has benefited from Kate’s life work. Her refusal to be denied access to her goals opened the doors for so many women to become lawyers and make significant contributions to the field of law.

Apparently an optimist Kate said in 1925, at the age of 84: “I am happy for the opportunity that I have had. Time, place and circumstances combined to help me accomplish my work. Up to my time there were many who tried to win and were unsuccessful. Later there were others who accomplished greater things. My message is to younger women… they must take their opportunities as they come. Always there are opportunities to be had.”

For more information about Kate Stoneman you can visit http://www.katestoneman.org

Over a year ago I was quoted in the press saying that I thought it was silly for the state of New York to create three new law schools. The state budget apparently still has earmarks for as much as $50 million to explore opening new law schools in Binghamton, Rochester and Long Island. A year ago $50 million dollars to explore creating law schools ought to have been enough to grab your attention. But if it did not grab your attention then, it ought to now – at least in a state facing a budget deficit in the area of $3 billion.

 I don’t have much of an opinion on new law schools generally. This is a big country. There are places where a new law school might be able to flourish. But, New York?

Demand by Applicants from New York will Decline

With 15 law schools in New York  enrolling 14,100 full-time law students, all indicators are that  the state is preparing enough, and maybe too many, lawyers already. New York State’s own projections indicate that enrollment in first-professional degree programs will remain constant from 2008 to 2013. State-wide, high school graduates are expected to decline from 180,301 in 2008 to 175,653 by the year 2013. When the decline is broken down by region the numbers appear even worse upstate. Fewer high school graduates means fewer college applicants which means fewer law school applicants from New York.

Adding Schools Will Glut further a Crowded Market

If the goal is to create more New York lawyers, the goal is misguided.  While a new law school may successfully increase the number of lawyers in the state, the job market will not be able to accommodate them. It’s no secret that the current economic crisis has only made this worse.  Nationally, the need for new lawyers is expected to increase by 84,000 nationally by 2016. Last year alone, 44,000 people graduated from a U.S. ABA accredited  law school. New York State is expected to need 90,260 lawyers by 2014. This is 9,000 more than we currently have. Last year alone 9,267 new lawyers were admitted in New York. That approximate number is expected again this year.

This is an Expensive Proposition

Starting one law school will cost at least $50 million; probably closer to $75 million. Buildings, library acquisitions, faculty, and campus infrastructure all come at great expense.

Once up and running, of course, it is no cheaper to run a state law school than it is to run a private law school. A public school costs less to the student only because the taxpayers are picking up the difference between tuition and actual cost.

Based on what New York taxpayers are already paying for state law schools, it would cost approximately $25,000 per law student per year. That’s approximately $22 million a year for each law school. For a private school, that would be equivalent to a $440 million dollar endowment.

Let’s Not Kid Each Other About the Rationale for New Law Schools in New York

The most common arguments for creating new law schools are 1) making legal education affordable and 2) spurring economic development. Well, as I have already said, a state school is only more affordable because of taxpayer subsidies. If the state wants to make law school more affordable, it would be much cheaper to provide loan repayment assistance for graduates who go into public interest jobs or work in some capacity for state or local government. As for spurring economic development, I have to question how much benefit would actually be created. Even then, any benefit is paid for with student debt. It hardly seems efficient or fair to try to redevelop, for example, an upstate downtown by having students borrow the money to pay for it.

If the real reason to start a new law school is institutional ego, all I can say is that it’s expensive therapy. It would be cheaper just think of all the great universities that seem to get along quite nicely without a law school. Princeton and MIT come to mind.

Spend it on Something Else, if you Must Spend it at All

Here’s an idea. If New York really wants to spend the money, why not spend it on something it needs? A nursing school, a vet school, or public school teachers’ salaries come to mind.

Tom

 Deans  deal with lots of issues. For example, I am currently receiving my annual complaints about parking. 

The president of a large state university was once asked, “What do you worry about?” He answered that he only worried about the things he could fix. He said he didn’t worry about the insufficient number of parking spaces on his campus. He said no one in higher education has fixed parking and he was not going to be able to fix it either. Now that I think about it, this may be the same guy who described faculty as independent contractors joined only by a common complaint about parking.

 The complaints usually involve: 1) How can we charge for parking and not guarantee a parking space? 2) Why don’t you just get more spaces?

 First let me say, no higher education institution gives out the same number of parking permits as parking spots. One of my colleagues refers to parking permits as merely hunting licenses. Given that many students are not here every day and may only be on campus 15 hours a week, it is simply not feasible. Indeed, we have surveyed the area colleges and universities and know that our ratio of permits to spaces is comparatively favorable. The fact is, if we had a space for every individual parking, the cost would not be $300 per year, but closer to the market rate of $650 a year.

 Having said that, over the past few years we have taken steps to alleviate the problem. For example, as implicit in the previous comment, we did impose a parking fee this year, in part to see if we could reduce the number of people who drive to school when there are other alternatives available. This has actually worked. There are currently 253 fewer cars registered this year compared to last year. Last year this meant we had available space for 49% of the registered cars. This year we have space for 77% of the registered cars. Also, last year we began providing taxi vouchers for trips home after 5:00 p.m., so that we could encourage students to walk, yet feel safe to go home after dark.

 We have tried to buy or lease additional space in the lots around campus, but they are simply unavailable. On several occasions I have suggested that the 3L lot be made available to 1 and 2Ls at certain times. You can imagine what the 3Ls thought.

 We, like other schools, will obviously continue to tinker with existing resources to try to alleviate the problem. We will, for example, be making class scheduling changes in the spring semester. More upper level classes will be offered later in the day and, more significantly on Friday. This change will help spread out student demand more evenly over five days rather than just four.

 The long term solution is a parking structure instead of the surface lot. The problem we have yet to solve is where students would park during the year while the structure is being built.

 All most deans can do when there are complaints about parking is express an understanding of the students’ frustrations and assure them the law school is doing what it can to solve the problem. You can imagine how helpful the students find this.

U.S. News & World Report obviously continues to publish its rankings for law schools. There is nothing I deal with that is more frustrating than law school rankings. It was particularly frustrating that this year Albany Law School was ranked 103. When you realize that there were three schools tied at 100, it means we were only one position away from the top 100. The fact that we have moved up in the ranking does not take away the frustration because, while I know the law school has made steady, sometimes remarkable progress over the past few years, the rankings formula is so fundamentally flawed, we could end up at 120. Indeed, there are a number of my dean friends that I feel particularly sorry for. Can you imagine being one of those deans whose school regularly switches back and forth between the first and second tiers or the second and third tiers? There can be nothing worse it seems to me than to be ranked 50 or 100 only to be 51 or 101 the following year, knowing full well you actually improved!

 There are plenty of very specific criticisms of these rankings that I won’t repeat. I do think, however, that a couple of specific examples as applied to Albany Law School illustrate the silliness of the rankings. First it should be realized that the single most important portion of the ranking (25%) is the reputation the law school has among four faculty members at each of the ABA accredited law schools. That means, of course, that some 750 other law professor’s assessment of a program, most of whom have never looked at a single thing concerning Albany, essentially controls the rankings.

 Another 15% of the formula is the reputation among an undisclosed group of judges and practitioners. The rate of return on these surveys is so low that the magazine has to combine two years of ratings in order to get anything even it would consider valid. Not surprisingly, these ratings from practitioners and judges pretty much  mirror those of the faculty, leading many to believe that the practitioners, knowing even less about the 185 ABA accredited law schools ranked, merely parrot last year’s rankings.

 The one part of the survey where the rank is determined by those with specific knowledge is in ranking the specialties. For example, to rank the law school clinical programs, a survey of clinical professors is taken. We have an excellent clinical program. Our clinical faculty are routinely asked to speak about our program at both regional and national meetings. It does not surprise me, therefore, that those outside the school who have specific knowledge of the program placed the clinical program at 31 out of the 185 schools rated.

 What I find most interesting, however, is the short shrift given to what actually happens in the law school. One of my favorite examples is bar passage. This year Albany Law School was ranked 44th out of 185 in bar passage. Although central to the mission of the of the law school, bar passage counts for only 2% of the formula.  The closest measure of what is actually delivered to the students, average expenditure per student for instruction, counts for only 9.75% of the formula. Albany Law School is ranked 38^th out of the 185 schools in this category. As a final example, we are justly proud of the world class library we have at Albany Law School, but of course total library volumes and titles counts only 0.75% of the formula. Albany ranks 34^th.

 As important as these rankings are to the various constituencies of the law school, I urge you to remain very skeptical about what they actually tell you about what is really happening at any particular law school.

We welcomed the Albany Law School Class of 2012 this week and with this new beginning, I thought it was an appropriate time to launch this new blog.

 Communication with the various law school constituencies is a real challenge. We are all busy. I realize blogs are easy to ignore. This blog will not substitute for the semiannual letters I send to friends and alums or the open meetings and visits with the SBA that I use for student communications. What I wish it to do is, for those who are interested, to provide a forum in which I can share in perhaps more detail my views mostly on legal education in general and Albany Law School in particular. As importantly, I hope it provides a convenient way for alums, students and friends of Albany Law School to share their views on important issues in legal education.

 Among the first topics I will cover include such things as why U.S. News & World Report rankings are misleading, the silliness of creating new law schools in New York, and the difficulty of keeping legal education affordable. I hope it will not all be serious, I do have my personal list of best legal thrillers that I might share. I’d also welcome any suggestions readers may have for topics they would like me to address.

 Speaking of the Class of 2012, they look to be a wonderful group of students. A few stats:

 255  J.D. students:
15 LL.M. students:
2 International LL.M. students
Median LSAT: 155, up from 154 last year.
Median GPA: 3.3, up from 3.27 last year.
42% women
20%  people of color
33% out-of-state residents
37 students speak more than one language (including Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, German)

That’s it for now.

Tom