Fixing Law Schools: From Collapse to the Trump Bump and Beyond

An urgent plea for much needed reforms to legal education The period from 2008 to 2018 was a lost decade for American law schools. Employment results were terrible. Applications and enrollment cratered. Revenue dropped precipitously and several law schools closed. Almost all law schools shrank in terms of students, faculty, and staff. A handful of schools even closed. Despite these dismal results, law school tuition outran inflation and student indebtedness exploded, creating a truly toxic brew of higher costs for worse results. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the subsequent role of hero-lawyers in the "resistance" has made law school relevant again and applications have increased. However, despite the strong early returns, we still have no idea whether law schools are out of the woods or not. If the Trump Bump is temporary or does not result in steady enrollment increases, more schools will close. But if it does last, we face another danger. We tend to hope that crises bring about a process of creative destruction, where a downturn causes some businesses to fail and other businesses to adapt. And some of the reforms needed at law schools are obvious: tuition fees need to come down, teaching practices need to change, there should be greater regulations on law schools that fail to deliver on employment and bar passage. Ironically, the opposite has happened for law schools: they suffered a harrowing, near-death experience and the survivors look like they're going to exhale gratefully and then go back to doing exactly what led them into the crisis in the first place. The urgency of this book is to convince law school stakeholders (faculty, students, applicants, graduates, and regulators) not to just return to business as usual if the Trump Bump proves to be permanent. We have come too far, through too much, to just shrug our shoulders and move on.

About the Author :
Benjamin Barton is Helen and Charles Lockett Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. He is author of several books, including The Credentialed Court: Inside the Cloistered, Elite World of American Justice (Encounter Books, 2022); Fixing Law Schools: From Collapse to the Trump Bump and Beyond (NYU Press, 2019); and Rebooting Justice; More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future Of Law (Encounter Books, 2017).

Review :
"A swashbuckling and informative critique of legal education… Indispensable for law school personnel and for students contemplating attending law school" (Choice) "Barton provides an excellent exploration, in a very readable style, of what American law schools have experienced since the 2007 recession. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in legal education." (Canadian Law Library Review) "Fixing Law Schools is essential reading for anyone who cares about legal education or is thinking of getting one. With enormous insight, wit, and eloquence, Ben Barton describes the challenges facing law schools and their students, and the profession's inadequate responses. At a time when Americans increasingly recognize the importance of the rule of law and reforms to the justice system, this book provides a blueprint for where to start." - Deborah Rhode, Director, Center on the Legal Profession and E. W. McFarland Professor of Law, Stanford University "Nobody knows more about the state of legal education than Ben Barton, and in this tour-de-force he addresses everything from the past, to the present, to whether enrolling in law school is a good investment for the future. Highly recommended!" - Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law