Schools at the seventh Circuit Bar Association annual meeting in indianapolis. It runs about one hour 15 minutes. [applause] thanks for making time on the program for this conversation about the future of our profession. As brian said i am randy and i spent most of my adult life as chief justice of the spring court and i now do Senior Service and are in a mediator court and i have an appointment over the Indiana School of law. To my right is rebecca who after a career as a trial judge and a practice into more than a decade on the Colorado Supreme Court she left there ten or 11 years ago to be the founding director of the institute for the advancement of the american legal system. She does all sorts of research and work on the improvement of courts and the improvement of Legal Education of the Legal Profession. Then Professor William henderson is certainly a man the circuit, if there ever was one. His Legal Education at the university of chicago became a clerk at the seventh circuit and happily spent his recent career at the Indiana University school of law and i say there is no one who has done more intriguing work about the future of our profession then bill and becky. I will begin with words of setting the stage. There are many things about modern Legal Education and that we as lawyers know a little about but not necessarily know about in detail and they provide considerable foundation for evaluating the current state of law schools and both now and in the future. You could actually describe recent developments by using just eight words. The eight words would be rising tuition, massive debt, fewer jobs, fewer applicants. I would say a few words about each of those to begin laying the foundation for our conversation today. No mystery to anyone 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. It is, in fact, rising at a rate so rapid that the finance officers of the american universities systems have created a new measure and it is called the Higher Education price index designed to give a more accurate reading of how much what ought not to be called the Sticker Price as opposed to the nominal price of how fast the Sticker Price has been going up. In the two decades that, say just ended in the late of the First Century and the this entry the general rate of inflation for higher ed was 71 real actual adjustment for inflation cpi, 71 . The rate in law schools was not 71 over that. But 317 . It has actually been rising at an average rate of 8 a year in recent decades. That, of course, has led to stories we all read about. The largest amount of debt that students, both undergraduate and law students, experience rising to the point where americans now owe more in education debt than they owe on their homes. It is a stunning change in the american that picture. The average law student debt on the way out the door is about 85000 in the Public Schools in about 50 higher than that, 122 100,000 for students who gone to private schools. This continues, of course, in general to be easy to read about. Last week in the wall street journal a new wrinkle on debt was a federal program that has been in place for a while but its called parents plus from the front pages on the second section about the opportunity that parents have been given to empower their children to borrow more money for parents would sign and then the federal government would enter a guarantee so that more money could be borrowed. It is now clear that parents plus is having an effect on the disposable incomes, if you will of working middleclass parent parents not just on their children but on the parents it has become an abrasive part of what it means to not only be a University Graduate but a law graduate. Third, fewer jobs. One of the things, we as lawyers, didnt notice unless we had a child or close friend who was looking for work over the last two decades is that we have been turning out more jd graduates and turning out more law license holders then there were jobs for lawyers for a long time. The reason we didnt notice that unless we had someone directly involved was that the way in which employment for new lawyers was reported didnt do a very good job of telling us where they were employed and it simply told us by a large whether they were employed and for what kind of organization for they employed. It was ordinary as recently as 2002 read announcements once a year from the National Association of law placement for the american Bar Association which they this was a great year, 90 of our graduates have found work within nine months and ten months is the measure now and that sounded like a happy result. Well, as you will recall, there was a series of scandals about the way in which this was reported in one of those occurred next door in illinois our friends from illinois will particularly recall. The change in the reporting system asked topper questions. In particular, how many law graduates, license holders, find a fulltime ongoing job for which you have to have a law license 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 to have a law license and the answer to that was 29 . Now, that number has stabilized and there has been as low as 57 but the number has stabilized over the last couple of years. It is still that a lot of people dont find work for attorney general offices or prosecutor offices or private law firms. The other reason is it stabilized is because of the number of new law grads keep declining. The way in which you calculate the percentage gets altered. The fact is that over the last five or six years the number of jobs, fulltime, license required job has continued to decline. As recently as five years ago intended to be Something Like 20000 mind you we were graduating 4045000 or maybe a little more but five years ago there was 28000 jobs in the kind that most think they would look for when they go to law school. This number this year has fallen to 23000 jobs. Its a slower decline than perhaps in the decade but still a small number. College seniors and secondgeneration aspirants and college law advisors are no dummies and they can read those numbers so the result is a dramatic change in how many apply to law school. Within the last decade the normal number and it was the highest number we had ever seen in the country was the alltime high was 100,600 applicants and applicants is a funnier number but that number had been Something Like a hundred thousand for quite a long time and it dropped dramatically in 2016 the number was 26000. It is on the order of a 50 decline of the people who come down and put in their applications. As of last week, so far this year, there was 50200 down from last year of about a percent. I think thats a number that we could say has stabilized but there are things happening inside that number thats particularly attractive. For instance, of the matriculate, people who get into school, those who come into school with lsats of over 160 0 are half of what they were five years ago. The number who had 150160 has stabilized and the number of people come in under 150 is up 80 from where it was. There is a very noticeable shift in the metric to use the easiest word. Others might say talent or suitability for law school. The other thing that happened is the change in legal aid as the competition increases people have used their legal aid to change the numbers because it helps ratings and you want to have the smartest students in your law school. The result of that is the amount of meritbased aid over the last decade has gone up 10 and the merit aid has doubled and there is a third category called both merit and need base. I havent spoken yet to an actual law school administered officer but both men merit so that most of that goes to people with the best metrics. Its the folks at the back end of the line that end up with a far greater share of that debt when they walk out the door with their degree. Ive been particularly worried about the effects of this, the demonstrable facts, of minority applicants because their gpa and lsat isnt as good as asians and caucasians. The hispanic applicants in the africanamerican applicants have lower metrics and its harder for law schools to hand them scholarships or financial assistance, if you will. As i said earlier, its been a thought these days is discounting. We have schools in the circuit, by the way, who dont charge any tuition at all for a substantial number of their students. Indeed, we have a few schools to send the schools money. Not only do they not charge money but they write checks to support the students living expenses. There are only a few who do that but its a part of the greater trend. And, of course, last week news there was bar passage rates in the country no great surprisn falling. I want to and on an Important Note which is this is not gone unnoticed by our friends at the academy. The number of people in the academy says, this too will pass, weve heard this as a and its a shrinking number. Research done by aisles and by various entities with which professor henderson is associated about how we change Legal Education to adjust what it looks like to the professional is very encouraging and very substantial in just thl learning. How many actual handson experiences do we give students has been dramatically changing over the last two decades because the schools are determined to do as good of a job as they can. We are going to hear some interesting news about all of those trends and will start with justice becky. Professor henderson and i have to stand because the monitor is only visible from up here, not from our seats. I have to apologize for breaking up our trio and would prefer to be seated. As you know, i am betsy. I have a background as a trial court and Appellate Court judge but now at the university a denzer and we refer to as a think do think. Isles which is the worst acronym in the world and i apologize but we were named by a federal judge. [laughter] he wouldnt let me put justice in the name because he thought justice was a term that was too susceptible to the interpretation of the day. We work in four different areas. I have spoken to this assembly on prior occasions but this is on Civil Justice form. We do work in Legal Education, Civil Justice form and we work on the family justice on the sides and then we work on judicial selection and performance evaluation. Weve done a little bit in the indiana on that topic, as well. Our process is identify a problem, we gather research, put together a Wonderful Group of stakeholders and we create models and facilitate and monitor the implementation of those models and we measure outcomes. Hence, think do take. The problem here, which were talking about this morning, chief Justice Shepard has already identified which is in the context of Legal Education we are struggling with how to prepare lawyers for the profession as it is evolving so that we begin to revitalize the numbers and more importantly the role of lawyers in our society. These are the drill down numbers to which he has also just referred and this is the percentage of 2015 law graduates did not land fulltime employment regarding bar passa passage. Bill henderson and i just chatted and we think the 2016 numbers are due out in the next couple of days. I apologize for the fact that these are a year old but this is the best set of numbers we have at the moment. 30 is the percentage of 2015 law grads who didnt land fulltime employment recognizing their law degree; 25 didnt land fulltime employment including professional and nonprofessionae priest a number. And 71 of thirdyear law students who believe they have sufficient skills to practice, the set of numbers is really interesting. 71 of the thirdyear law students who think they are locked and loaded, ready to go into law practice. However, the law professors who teach them say that is 45 and wait for it the percentage of practitioners who believe that new lawyers have sufficient skills to practice is 23 . So, there is a problem there and we at aisles developed a project intended to shed some light of addressing this. We created our foundations for practice practic project. We have support from the Hewlett Foundation and this is a three phase project and we have put together an Advisory Committee consisting of practitioners, judges, justices, representatives from the National Association of bar execs from the National Conference of bar president s and the National Examiners representatives from the public defenders product, the aba and even the attorney general of colorado. We developed a plan. The first piece of that plan is to identify the foundation that entry level lawyers need to practice. The second phase is to develop measurable models of Legal Education that support those foundations and the third will be to align, market needs with hiring practices in order to incentivize cognitive improvement. So, phase one. We developed a survey based on existing research for those who are mavens in this area such research as scholz and ascetic and with the assistance of our Advisory Council we distributed that survey through Bar Associations across 37 states in the country. There were individuals from 50 states who answered but the Bar Association is in 37 states distributed the survey and we had a little of crossover of people who practice in two states. We got 24137 valid responses to the survey. If there are any of you in this audience who answered that survey, thank you for your time. It was a prodigious undertaking because the survey itself was 25 minutes long but we got over 40000 actual responses and 24000 valid responses. The respondent base mirrors the Legal Profession and some of the numbers are not wonderful in terms of demographics but, in fact, the respondent base is a representative of both geographically, in terms of the size of firms in which lawyers across the country practice, the amount of money they make, and the demographics themselves. We asked about 147 different foundations in the survey and we categorized those foundations and they broadly fall into three different categories. Some of the examples are identify relevant facts and legal issues, critically evaluate arguments, conduct and defend depositions, listen attentively and respectfully, make decisions, work as part of a team. The three categories into which we divided those foundations are as follows skills, characteristics and competenci competencies. Remember we have 147 foundations and we are dividing them into these three categories. 27 of the foundations were skill based, 28 were characteristics based, and 45 competencies. We also graduated the questions that we asked of the respondents and we asked what is necessary in the short term and we asked what is advantageous but not necessary in the short term but we asked what was necessary over time and we asked what is not relevant at all. This screen doesnt pick up gray so it looks like im missing but virtually, not on your screen. Here are the results. There were 77 foundations identified as necessary in the short term and by 50 or more of the respondents. Again, 147 foundations, 77 were identified as necessary in the short term by 50 more of the respondents. What emerged surprised us. We call it the character questions. Here it is. How does the top 20 of those foundations identified as necessary in the short term, nine are characteristics, ten are competencies and one is a legal skill. There it is. Research of the law at number 14. The ten competencies keep confidentiality, arrive on tim time this is a millennial issue, right . Arrive on time. Treat others with courtesy and respect, listen respectfully and attentively, respond promptly, take individual response ability, emotional regulation selfcontrol, speak professionally, write professionally, exhibit tact and diplomacy. The key characteristics, honor, commitment integrity and trustworthiness and diligence and a strong work ethic, attentions to detail, common sense and a strong moral compa compass. Cumulatively we refer to this as the whole lawyer but what about legal skills. This is ostensibly why we go to law school, right . The legal skills show up in the must be acquired over time set of responsibilities. These 20 characteristics or these foundations of the top 20 must be acquired over time for our respondent base. Here they are develop appropriate risk mitigate based mitigation strategies, conduct and defend depositions, prepare appeals, prepare for and participate in mediation, all of the skills that i suspect all of us would identify either on the transactional or litigation side of practice as being necessary. The take away here is we expect people to acquire these over time. We dont necessarily expect them to show up at the time that they sign up for work, ready to do those things or qualified to do those things. Now here is the second part of our survey. Heres where it becomes a little more relevant to all of you. We asked respondents to consider the helpfulness of a set of hiring criteria in determining whether a candidate they identified as important. You have to understand that we took this as a given that they had already answered the survey and identified what was import