Why it is important. Former judges from the colorado and indiana supreme courts joint and Indiana University law school per hazard to discuss the future of law schools. This panel was part of the seventh Circuit Bar Association annual meeting, about an hour and 20 minutes. For makingand thanks time on the program for this conversation about the future of our profession. As brian welch said, i am randy shepherd. I ended up spending is my life as chief justice of the indiana supreme court. I now sit doing Senior Service in our intermediate court, and i have an appointment over at the Indiana University school of law. Corliss,ht is rebecca who after a career as a trial judge an entire practice, spent more than a decade on the colorado supreme court. She left there perhaps 10 or 11 years ago to be the founding of the institute for the advancement of the american legal system. She does all sorts of research and programmatic work on the improvement of courts and the improvement of Legal Education and of the legal profession. And then Professor William henderson, certainly a man of the circuit, if there ever was one. After his Legal Education at the university of chicago, came a clerk at the seventh circuit, but happily has spent his recent career at the Indiana University school of law. Nobody whohere is has done more intriguing work about the future of our and becky than bill corliss. I am going to begin with words of setting the stage. There are many things about modern Legal Education that we ,s lawyers know a little about but not necessarily know about in detail, and they provide a considerable foundation for evaluating current state of law schools both now and in the future. Now, you could actually describe recent developments by using just eight words. The eight words would be rising tuition, massive debt, fewer jobs, and fewer applicants. I will say a few words about laying those to begin the foundation for our conversation today. No mystery to anybody that tuition in Higher Education has been rising. Indeed, it has been rising for the lifetime of virtually all of us here at a rate that exceeds twice the Consumer Price index. In fact fact it has been rising at a rate so rapid that the finance officers of the American University systems have created a new measure. It is called the higher designed price index, to get a more accurate reading ought nowh what really be called the Sticker Price as opposed to the nominal price, but how price the Sticker Price has been going up. That, say,decades just ended, late in the last century and the first decade of this century, the general rate of inflation for higher ed was , actual adjusted for inflation, cpi. 71 . At the rate in law schools was not sent a 1 over that period, but 317 . It has been rising at an average rate of 8 a year in recent decades. Led to course has stories we all read about the largest amount of debt that students, both undergraduates, and, of course, law students, experience, rising to the point where americans now owe more in education debt than they owe on their homes really quite a stunning change any american debt picture. The average law student that on the way out the door is about 85,000 in the Public Schools that,out 50 higher than 100 22,000, 125,000 for students who have gone to private schools. This continues of course that in general to be easy to read about. Last week in the wall street journal, a new week in debt. There is a program called parents plus, the front page of the second second chama about the opportunity that parents have been given to empower their children to borrow more money if the parents would cosign, and then the fairly rural government would enter a guarantee so more money could be borrowed. It is now clear that parents plus is having an effect on the disposable incomes of, if you will, working middleclass parents, just on their children, that on the collection of parents. So it has become the pervasive part of what it means to be not only a university graduate, but a law graduate. Jobs. Fewer one of the things we as lawyers did not notice, unless we had a child or a very close friend who was looking for work over the last two decades, is that we e been turning out j mor j. D. Ing out more graduates than we had lawyers in a long time. The reason we cannot see that is the way in which employment for new lawyers was reported did not do a very good job of telling us where they were employed. It simply told us by and large whether they were employed and for what kind of organization they were employed. So it was quite ordinary as recently as, say, 2000 two read announcements once a year from the National Association of all places or the american Bar Association that would say this was a great year, 90 of our graduates have found work within nine months, now 10 months is the measure. And that sounded like a very happy result. Well, as you will recall, there were a series of scandals about the way in which this was reported. One of which of course occurred next door in illinois. Our friends in illinois will particularly recall. The result is the change in reporting system asked tougher questions. In particular, how many law findates, license holders, a fulltime ongoing job for which you have to have a law that is the hardest way of asking the question and in the last half decade or so, the answer to that has been last year it was 59 . That is to say, of all the people who turned out of the school, how many people found ongoing work fulltime for which you had have a law license, and the the answer to that is 59 . Ow, that number has stabilized it has been as low as 57 . Stabilizedber has over the last couple of years. Peoplel means a lot of do not find work for attorney generals offices or prosecutor offices or private law firms. The other reason it has stabilized is the number keeps declining. The way you calculate the percentage gets altered. The last fiveer or six years, the number of jobs , fulltime, license required jobs, has continued to decline as recently as five years ago, Something Like 20,000. 40 245,000 ting 40,002 45,000. That number this year has fallen to 23,700. Decline perhaps that earlier in the decade but still a small number. Seniors and secondgeneration people and advisers are no dummies. Been a dramatic change in how many people apply to law school. Decade, the normal number, and it was the highest theer seen in the county, high was 100,600 applicants. Applications is a funnier number so it seems to me more important to focus on applicants. Likenumber was something 100 thousand, 90 8000, for quite a long time. Dramatically and in 2016, the number was 2006 206 2006000. 206,00. 0. Down from last year about 1 . I think that number today has probably stabilized. But there are things happening inside that number that are attractive. For instance, for people who actually get into school, those who come into school with stats are half of what they were five years ago. A number of people who come in under 150 is up 80 from where it was. There is a noticeable shift in. He metric, the easiest word others might say talent or suitability for law school. The other thing that has happened inside the number is a change in student legal aid. As the competition for law increases, changing the numbers, as would like to ine the smartest students law school. The amount of meritbased aid over the last decade has gone up 10 . There is a third category called both merit and needbased. I have not yet spoken to an al law and officer most of that goes to the people with the best master best metrics. The post at the back end of the line and up with a far greater share of debt. I have been particularly worried about the effects of this with minority applicants because their profile and gpa is not as good as asians and caucasians and hispanic applicants and africanamerican applicants have a lower metric. It is harder for law schools to hand them scholarships or financial assistance, if you will. Better thought these days as discounting. We have schools in the circuit who dont charge any tuition at all for a substantial number of students. Few schools who sends the students money. They not only dont charge tuition, they write checks to twitch and. It partyou do that but of a greater trend. Week, no great surprise they have likewise been falling. February, not as good a measure as july. The february rate was the lowest weve ever experienced. An important on note. The number of people in the academy who say this will pass, is a shrinking number. Done by various entities with which professor henderson is associated, about how we change Legal Education to what it looks like professionally is very encouraging and substantial. The easiest to see is the change in what is now referred to as experiential learning. How many actually handson experiences do we give to students is dramatically changing in the last two decades because schools are determined to do as good a job as they possibly can. We will hear some intriguing news about those trends. We will start with justice corliss. Professor henderson and i have to stand because the monitor is only visible here. I apologize raking up that trio and we prefer to be seated. As you know, i have a background as an Appellate Court judge but i am running a Research Interest institute of the university of denver that we refer to as a do tank it is the worst acronym in the world and i apologize. By a federal judge and he would not let me put justice in the name because he thought justice was a term that was too susceptible to the interpretation of the day. In four different areas. I have spoken to this assembly in prior occasions. We do work in Legal Education, Civil Justice reform, the family justice side, and then we work on judicial selection and performance evaluation. Our process as we Gather Research and put together wonderful groups of stakeholders. We then facilitated and monitor the implementation of the models and we measure outcomes. The problem here we are talking about this morning, chief Justice Shepard has already identified, which is that in the context of which of education, we are struggling with how to prepare lawyers for the profession as it evolves so we can revitalize the numbers in the role of lawyers in our society. These are the drill down numbers to it she has just referred. This is the percentage of 2015 law graduates who did not land fulltime employment regarding bar passage. We just chatted and we think the 2016 numbers are due out in the next couple of days. I apologize that these are yield a year old. These are the best set of numbers weve had in a moment. Percentage of 2015 law grads who did not land fulltime employment recognize things that are law degree. 25 did not land fulltime employment including professional and nonprofessional. These are the priest in numbers. Loss law students who believed they had sufficient skills to practice. This set of numbers is really interesting. Lawercent of 30 year students who think they are locked and loaded and ready to however,aw practice, the law professors who teach and,say that that is 45 wait for it, the percentage of practitioners who believe new lawyers have sufficient skills to practice is 23 . There is a problem there. We developed a project intended to shed light on ways to address this. We created our foundations for practice project. We have support from the hewlett foundation. This is a threephase project. We put together an Advisory Committee consisting of practitioners, judges, justices, representatives, representatives from the National Association thats the National Conference of bar examiners, representatives from the public and even thefice, attorney general of colorado. We developed a plan. The first piece of the plan is to identify foundations that entry level lawyers need to practice. The second phase would be to develop measurable models of education that support those foundations and the third would into align market needs order to incentivize positive improvements. Surveyne, we developed a based on existing research for with of you, such research the assistance of our Advisory Council we distributed that survey across 37 states in the country. The Bar Association is in 37 states and distributed the survey. Little bit of crossover of people who practiced into the states. We got 24,001 hundred 37 valid responses to the survey. If there are any of you in the audience who answer that survey, thank you for your time. It was an undertaking because itself mostly five minutes long but i got over 40,000 actual responses and 24,000 valid responses. Base mirrorst legal professions. Some of the numbers are not wonderful in terms of demographics, but in fact, the response base is representative both geographically in terms of the size of firms in which lawyers across the country practice, the amount of money and then, demographics. We asked about 147 different foundations in this survey. Andategorize the foundation they broadly fall into three different categories. Some of the examples are identified relevant facts and legal issues, critically evaluate arguments, conduct and listenedpositions, respectfully, make decisions,. Ork as part of a team, these three categories in which we divided the foundations are as follows. Characteristics, and competency. 100 47 foundations and we are dividing them into three categories. 27 of the foundations were skilled based. 28 were characteristic based and 45 competency. Graduated the questions we asked of respondents. We asked what is necessary in what ist term, we asked advantageous but not necessary we asked whaterm, is necessary over time and we asked what is not relevant at all. It does not pick up grace so it looks like im missing a cylinder in the middle. Fortunately, not on your screen. Here are the results. Were 77 foundations identified as necessary in the short term by 50 or more of respondents. Foundations, 77 were identified as necessary in the short term by 50 or more of the respondents. What emerged surprised us. We call it the character quotient. Here it is. 20 of those top stone identified as necessary in a shortterm, nine are 10 oureristics, competencies, and one is the legal skill. There it is, research and the lot number 14. The 10 competencies keep confidentiality, arrive on time. This is a melodic millennial issue. Arrive on time, treat others with courtesy and respect, listened and death attentively and respectively, take individual responsibility. Speak professionally, right professionally, exhibit tax and diplomacy. Characteristics, the other nine, honor, commitment, integrity, trustworthiness, diligence, a strong work ethic, attention to common sense, intelligence, and a strong moral compass. This as the whole lawyer cumulatively. About legal skills . This is extensively why we go to law school. Legal skills show up in the must be acquired over time set of responses. These 20 characteristics are the top 20 or the foundations are the top 20 that must be acquired over time according to our respondents based. Here they are. Riskpriate risk minute strategies. Depositions. Efend and participate in mediations. All of the skills i suspect all of us what identify either on a transactional or litigation side of practice as being necessary. The takeaway is we expect people to acquire them over time and we do not necessarily expect them to show up at the time that they sign up for work ready to do these things or being qualified to do these things. Where it becomes a little more relevant to all of you. In the second part of the survey, we asked respondents to ansider the helpfulness of set of hiring criteria in determining whether a candidate has the foundations they identified as important. Given the fact that they already answered the survey and identified what they thought was important. Then we set how would you hire in order to snuff out the individuals who had those foundations . We did not ask them how they currently hire. Oliver went to yale and harvard and was editor of the log review and get a summer clerkship. Is this personn would get an interview premuch anyplace in the country but does this person really have on his resume something that would suggest that he has those foundations that people said they were looking for . What would people focus on if they wanted to hire the lawyer with a character quotient. 17 people and we asked respondents to rank them from very help to very unhelpful. Criteriaok at the 17 and i will show you how the results worked out. Here they are. Top of the list, legal fromyment, recommendations practitioners, or judges, bottom of the list, log review, and journal experience. Respondents. Note the first eight have to do with experience. What the respondents told us is that the character quotient or the whole lawyer metric emerges through experience. We broke out the data by government employer, legal plusces, with firms of 100 ofnd law school, with firms to100, a little bit of a shift in the top eight, particularly the second floor. It is still the same top eight. In smaller firms, solar practitioner settings, specialized loss School Classes move up because there is a for actual demand ability to jump in on a particular topic. Government employment is still the same, a shift in priority. , you see aces particular lawsuit in a criminal area. Ast does all of this tell us we are thinking about the future of Legal Education and the future of employment . First, it tells us practice be the best term to define what we expect from new lawyers entering the profession. We expect new lawyers to learn on the job. Emerge fromem to law school as whole lawyers with legal skills, professional competencies, and the character quotient. When it comes to evaluating whether a new lawyer has the character motioned, or the blend , experience really matters. Date, the foundation for practice project has put out two reports available on our website. First focuses on the evaluation terms of what respondents are looking for a new lawyers