Lambda for Law School?
“In the future, schools will pay students to attend in exchange for long-term financial upside.” – David Perrell
What would law school look like if this were true?
Completely different!
This is such a great thought experiment. Most lawyers are used to the question: “If you had to change one thing about law school, what would it be?” Standard responses include “make it 2 years instead of 3” and “more clinical work.” These answers are OK, but they’re limited by the question itself. The question forces you to marginal or incremental improvements, but it doesn’t make you challenge the purpose of law schools.
There are things called coding bootcamps, which teach students how to write code (i.e., software code) in under a year. With this training, it makes them readily employable for hundreds of sought-after coding jobs. One of the most successful of these is Lambda School. [See here for more] Lambda is unique because it doesn’t charge tuition. Instead, students sign up for free and take Lambda’s full 1-year curriculum. If (more accurately, when) they get a coding job, Lambda gets 17% of their salary over $50,000. Lambda provides the education for free and bets on the outcome. It bets that it will recoup its investment in the students when they put to use their coding skills in high-paying jobs. To implement this, Lambda uses “income sharing agreements,” or ISAs. These are like stock in people. Lambda takes a bet on you now, gives you a free education, and gets a share of your income when you appreciate in value.
Would any law school today take that bet?
Sure, maybe some T14 law schools. Would they forego 3 years of guaranteed tuition payments just for upside? A bird in the hand and whatnot. Maybe some lower ranked schools would take a chance on students’ upside. For now, I’m not as interested in which schools would do it. Instead, I want to think about what it would look like if a school actually did it. What would change? What would law school look like? I have a few ideas. And just to make something clear: I don’t necessarily believe this is a good idea. As you’ll see, there are some tradeoffs that we may not want to take.
1 – Law school no longer teaches to pass the bar. Graduating from law school doesn’t mean much if you don’t pass the bar, so students want schools with good bar passage rates. This leads schools to “teach for the bar.” That helps students pass the bar, but once you’ve passed the bar, that value drops precipitously. [Taleb chart about turkeys on Thanksgiving]. Assuming that the bar exam won’t change, it makes more sense for a law school to delegate bar prep to companies like Barbri that already do much of the legwork. If a law school no longer has to teach for the bar, how would its required curriculum change? If it is looking to maximize its students’ career earning potential, it is probably going to drop a few courses. Criminal law and criminal procedure probably get the hook first. Except for high-profile or white collar criminal lawyers, the earning potential is probably too limited for law schools to focus here.
As I mentioned, this approach does have some tradeoffs. Are we willing to avoid training lawyers in certain fields just because they may not be as potentially profitable as others? I don’t know. But if you’re a prospective law school student, wouldn’t you find it more comforting to know that your school is taking an active role in your future career? This is what Lambda School does so well. It aligns incentives. Lambda School teaches several coding or programming languages. Students graduate being proficient in several languages. Does Lambda waste time on obsolete or unpopular languages? No. Why would they? It doesn’t make their students any more employable. It doesn’t raise their students’ earning potential? And thus it doesn’t raise Lambda’s earning potential. Imagine how a prospective Lambda student feels knowing that their school has already identified the skills that are most profitable and teaches only those skills. Doesn’t it feel like the school’s incentives are more aligned with those of the students? Contrast that with law schools currently. Every student takes constitutional law. Do you know a lot of lawyers who actually practice constitutional law?
This means that schools can’t rely on the bar exam to define curriculums.
you to reimagine the purpose and future of law schools the way that this
So let’s say that I’m appointed dean of a law school tomorrow. The school has decided to forego tuition and will instead get a percentage of its graduates’ future earnings. The school wants to know what, specifically, I’ll be implementing.
What would law school look like if this were true?
Completely different!
This is such a great thought experiment. Most lawyers are used to the question: “If you had to change one thing about law school, what would it be?” Standard responses include “make it 2 years instead of 3” and “more clinical work.” These answers are OK, but they’re limited by the question itself. The question forces you to marginal or incremental improvements, but it doesn’t make you challenge the purpose of law schools.
There are things called coding bootcamps, which teach students how to write code (i.e., software code) in under a year. With this training, it makes them readily employable for hundreds of sought-after coding jobs. One of the most successful of these is Lambda School. [See here for more] Lambda is unique because it doesn’t charge tuition. Instead, students sign up for free and take Lambda’s full 1-year curriculum. If (more accurately, when) they get a coding job, Lambda gets 17% of their salary over $50,000. Lambda provides the education for free and bets on the outcome. It bets that it will recoup its investment in the students when they put to use their coding skills in high-paying jobs. To implement this, Lambda uses “income sharing agreements,” or ISAs. These are like stock in people. Lambda takes a bet on you now, gives you a free education, and gets a share of your income when you appreciate in value.
Would any law school today take that bet?
Sure, maybe some T14 law schools. Would they forego 3 years of guaranteed tuition payments just for upside? A bird in the hand and whatnot. Maybe some lower ranked schools would take a chance on students’ upside. For now, I’m not as interested in which schools would do it. Instead, I want to think about what it would look like if a school actually did it. What would change? What would law school look like? I have a few ideas. And just to make something clear: I don’t necessarily believe this is a good idea. As you’ll see, there are some tradeoffs that we may not want to take.
1 – Law school no longer teaches to pass the bar. Graduating from law school doesn’t mean much if you don’t pass the bar, so students want schools with good bar passage rates. This leads schools to “teach for the bar.” That helps students pass the bar, but once you’ve passed the bar, that value drops precipitously. [Taleb chart about turkeys on Thanksgiving]. Assuming that the bar exam won’t change, it makes more sense for a law school to delegate bar prep to companies like Barbri that already do much of the legwork. If a law school no longer has to teach for the bar, how would its required curriculum change? If it is looking to maximize its students’ career earning potential, it is probably going to drop a few courses. Criminal law and criminal procedure probably get the hook first. Except for high-profile or white collar criminal lawyers, the earning potential is probably too limited for law schools to focus here.
As I mentioned, this approach does have some tradeoffs. Are we willing to avoid training lawyers in certain fields just because they may not be as potentially profitable as others? I don’t know. But if you’re a prospective law school student, wouldn’t you find it more comforting to know that your school is taking an active role in your future career? This is what Lambda School does so well. It aligns incentives. Lambda School teaches several coding or programming languages. Students graduate being proficient in several languages. Does Lambda waste time on obsolete or unpopular languages? No. Why would they? It doesn’t make their students any more employable. It doesn’t raise their students’ earning potential? And thus it doesn’t raise Lambda’s earning potential. Imagine how a prospective Lambda student feels knowing that their school has already identified the skills that are most profitable and teaches only those skills. Doesn’t it feel like the school’s incentives are more aligned with those of the students? Contrast that with law schools currently. Every student takes constitutional law. Do you know a lot of lawyers who actually practice constitutional law?
This means that schools can’t rely on the bar exam to define curriculums.
you to reimagine the purpose and future of law schools the way that this
- No Bar Prep.
- Specialization. Schools would force students to specialize as early as possible. Maybe even making the decision before applying.
- Flexibility. Schools would have to adapt quickly to newly emerging areas of law. Data privacy is quickly growing. The COVID-19 pandemic has put several topical areas in the spotlight, such as bankruptcy. How would schools be able to identify trends quickly to capitalize on students’ abilities to enter those areas?
- Legal technology. Schools would benefit from an emphasis on legal-adjacent fields like project management, design thinking, and technology. These fields are amplifiers for potential lawyers. Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, has written about talent stacks. He argues that successful people combine normal talents to create a unique skill set. Adams isn’t an extraordinary artist. He isn’t an exceptional business expert. But by combining his cartoon artistry with his business experience, he created a unique cartoon in Dilbert, which set him apart. This approach can create an advantage for law schools and students. Training a class of lawyers in project management gives each of those students an additional non-legal skill for their talent stack.
- Self-sufficiency. I hesitate to use the phrase “client development” here. At first thought, it seems like a law school should try to place all of its students in biglaw firms. In that sense, client development skills would help. But I think it helps to return to the purpose of this experiment: if the law school gets a share of its graduates’ future earnings, the horizon should be longer and broader. Students should learn to recognize how to leverage. The “client development” is limited to private practice. Alternatively, the self-sufficiency approach asks how the student can best prepare for a career, whether in private practice or not.
- Less exams. Do exams show what students have learned? Do they help show what type of lawyer a student is likely to become? If these answers are different, schools would have to reimagine the exam structure. First, schools would want a good way to identify and possibly weed out students who seem less likely to provide return on the school’s investment.
So let’s say that I’m appointed dean of a law school tomorrow. The school has decided to forego tuition and will instead get a percentage of its graduates’ future earnings. The school wants to know what, specifically, I’ll be implementing.
- I create at least a few tracks: corporate, entrepreneurial, and justice.
- The corporate track is for future firm lawyers and inhouse counsel.
- The entrepreneurial track is for lawyers who want to go solo immediately after graduation or who wish to innovate within the practice of law.
- The justice track is for prosecutors, criminal law lawyers, and politicians.
- I all but eliminate electives.
- I cut any 3rd-year course called “Law and _____”
- For at least 1 class, the only passing requirement is to earn $100 from a real-life client (with licensed attorney supervision).
- I eliminate class ranks. I decrease the emphasis on testing and instead implement 360-type reviews. Students are encouraged to give reviews of their friends, such as those in study groups.
- I eliminate law review and journals.
- I probably restrict the Socratic method to the first semester. I do think it is an effective way to teaching somebody how to think like a lawyer.