UD‘s already posted on the absurd over-production of lawyers in this country, a fact overlooked for so long by law schools that now even the most elite boast plenty of unemployed graduates.
That hasn’t stopped any number of new law schools from opening their doors in the last few years, and UCLA professor and blogger Stephen Bainbridge proposes one particular demolition as part of a solution:
In 2006, California did not need a fifth public law school. We certainly didn’t need one in Irvine, when much of the growth in UC admissions is in places like Riverside.
Today, with state revenues having plummeted faster and further than Regent Montoya might have expected, we simply can’t afford Irvine’s law school. Odds are, with the California economy doing even worse than the nation as a whole, we have even less need for extra lawyers than we did when the [California Postsecondary Education] Commission rejected the Irvine proposal back in 2006.
I’m firmly convinced that UC Berkeley and UCLA will come out of the current troubles in excellent shape. We have great alumni whose support continues to grow despite the economy.
But I see no reason for the state to spend a dime on Irvine. Kill it now and put the money to better use, such as helping reverse some of the cuts to undergraduate education.
UD wrote the same thing a week before Bainbridge did:
UD’s angle on the new Irvine law school has nothing to do with whether its liberal dean can get a balanced faculty. UD wonders why America’s opening another law school. You want a debacle, look at the number of lawyers in this country. Many of the new graduates among them can’t find jobs. Harvard alone, which each week seems to add about ten new faculty to its law school, could train most of the nation’s attorneys.
How in the hell does this new law school justify itself?
I know a rich guy gave Irvine twenty million because he wanted the school to do this. But, you know, you’re not supposed to just lie there and do what rich people tell you. Rich people can be eccentric. This one likes the prospect of lots of unemployed California attorneys. Your university doesn’t have to agree with him, even if he’s waving money at you.