Please close "these" law schools, and open "those"! Forum

[Danteshek]

Abolish the ABA.

[evilgenius]

I would trade all of the T4's to add Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown. Those 3 would definitely shake up the T14-or-die ideology. New Hampshire and Rhode Island also need a decent law school.

[Kchuck]

Define "cose"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cose

[MJMD]

Dartmouth, as a liberal arts college, is just an inappropriate setting for a law school, and as for Princeton and Brown, why should they now play catch-up to the other Ivy League schools? There's nothing wrong with elite schools lacking law schools. Speaking as a Canadian, our best medical school is probably McMaster University, and our best school for engineering is probably the University of Waterloo (though, as with our law schools, there's an extremely small differential across the country), and neither of those universities has a law school, nor any tradition of legal education. They shouldn't dilute their focus by adding them. That goes double for MIT, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon.

I would say that, if we were to open new law schools in Canada, there are a few established universities here that should have first crack at it, but I'm personally opposed to the opening of any new law schools. Americans should be even more opposed to ABA accreditation of any new law schools south of the border, as you already have far too many.

[sdv]

i dont think any new schools should be opened. They should close t3 & t4 schools in markets that already have enough t1 & t2 schools (New England school of law, NYLS, etc.) The exception would be a school like Suffolk, where they offer a part time program that the other local schools don't.
Why would you open a law school, say, at Carnegie Mellon, when Pitt & Duquesne provide more than enough lawyers for Western PA? Why open one at Princeton, when Columbia & Penn provide plenty of ivy league lawyers for that area?

As a proud Pittsburgher, I think it's total crap that there's only one T1 school in the area (Pitt), one in Cleveland (Case) and you have to go all the way to DC (Georgetown) for the nearest T14 (yes, DC is closer to Pittsburgh than Philly, most people don't know that!) I also am mildly resentful that a T3 like Duquesne places perfectly well here, whereas similarly ranked schools would not place nearly as well in other major cities.

In conclusion, take Minnesota Law and move it here.

[Z3RO]

One note about opening new schools: the number of excellent legal academics in this country does not magically increase when a new school opens. It will have to poach them from other schools. This has a 'watering down' effect on faculty quality across the top schools. It would also probably increase the # of people graduating with JD's, because the existing schools won't lower their class sizes in response.

It would be a populist thing to do, but wouldn't help this industry one bit.

[billyez]

Rice University doesn't need a law school if they are going to have one. The Texas legislature has been fighting for a while to create a public law school in downtown Dallas. We have enough expensive private law schools in Texas and not enough public graduate schools. They can just go to Houston instead of Rice for law.

[soullesswonder]

One note about opening new schools: the number of excellent legal academics in this country does not magically increase when a new school opens. It will have to poach them from other schools. This has a 'watering down' effect on faculty quality across the top schools. It would also probably increase the # of people graduating with JD's, because the existing schools won't lower their class sizes in response.

It would be a populist thing to do, but wouldn't help this industry one bit.

Bolded seems highly unlikely to happen in any significant way - I've heard from many sources (including a LS prof who posted here) that it's a very competitive market for Law Professor positions and that even profs at TTTs have terrific credentials.