Colorado Supreme Court. She left there perhaps 10 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 programmatic work on the improvement of the court and the improvements of Legal Education in the legal profession. And then, profess them Professor William henderson, after his Legal Education at the university of chicago became a clerk at the seventh circuit, but happily has spent his recent career at the Indiana University school of law and id say theres nobody whos done more intriguing work about the future of our profession than bill and becky kourlis. I will begin by setting the stage. There are many things about moderate Legal Education that we as lawyers know a little about, but not necessarily know about in detail. They provide considerable foundation for evaluating the current state of law schools both now and in the future. Now, you could actually describe recent developments by using just a word. The eight words would be rising tuition, massive debt, fewer jobs and fewer absence. Let me say a few words about each of those to begin laying the foundation for a 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 receives twice the Consumer Price index. It has been rising at a rate so rapid that the finance officers of the American University system has created a new measure. It is called the Higher Education price index designed to give a more accurate reading of how much but that now be called the Sticker Price as opposed to the nominal price. The Sticker Price has been going out. In the two decades that just ended in the last century in the first decade of this century, the general rate of inflation for higher ad with 71 real actual adjusted for inflation, 71 . But the raid in moscow says that 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 thats evidence, both undergraduates and of course law student experience, rising to the point for americans now own more and education debt than they owe on their homes. Really quite a stunning change in the american debt picture. The average law student debt on the way out the door is about 85,000 in the Public Schools and about 50 higher than not, 122, 125,000 for students who have gone to private schools. This continues of course in general to be easy to read about. Just last week in the wall street journal, a new wrinkle on debt. A federal program in place for a while but i think its called parents pause on the front page of the second section about the opportunity parents have been given to empower their children to borrow more money if the parents would cosign and then the federal government would enter a guaranteed so that foreign money could be borrowed. It is now clear parent class is having an effect on the disposable incomes of, if you will, working middle class parent, not just children, but the collection of parent. It has become a pervasive part of what it means to be not only 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 a very close friend looking for work over the last two decades is that we have been turning out more jd graduate and turning out more law license holders and there were jobs for lawyers for a long time. The reason we didnt notice that unless we had somebody directly involved with it is the way in which employment for new voyeurs was reported didnt do a very good job of telling us where they were employed, simply told us via march whether they were employed and for what kind of organization they were employed. It was quite ordinary as recently as 2000 to read announcement once a year from the National Association of law placement or the American Bar Association that was paid this was a great year. 90 of our graduates have found work within nine months, now 10 months is the measure and not sounded like a very happy result. Well, as you recall, there were a series of scandals about the way in which this was reported in one of which of course occurred next door at illinois. Our friends from illinois will particularly recall. They asked tougher 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. In the last half decade or so, the answer to that has been last year was 59 . That is to say about 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 is 59 . That number has stabilized. It has been as low as 57 , but the number has stabilized over the last couple of years still means that a lot of people dont find work for attorney generals offices are prosecutors offices or private law firms. The other reason is stabilized of course is that keeps 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 type jobs has continued to decline. As recently as five years ago it tended to be sent and like 20,000. Mind you we were graduating 40,000 to 45,000 or maybe a little bit more, but there were five years ago about 28,000 jobs, the kind most people think they are looking for when they go to law school. That number has this year fallen to thousand 700 p. A slower decline perhaps been earlier in the decade, but a pretty small number. Well, College Seniors and Second Generation aspirins in college law advisers can read those numbers and so the result has been a dramatic change in how many people apply to go to law school. Within the last decade, the normal number and it was the highest numbers wed ever seen in the country, the alltime high was 100,600 applications is a funnier number, so it seems to me more important to focus on applicants. That number had been Something Like 100,000. 100,698,000 for quite a long time. It dropped dramatically in 2016 the number was 56,000. So it is on the order of a 50 decline in the number of people who come down and put in their applications. As of last week, so far this year there were 50,200 down from last year, just about 8 . That is the number i would say has probably stabilized, but there are some things happening inside the number that are particularly is. For instance, of the matriculate, the people that actually get into school, those who come into school with lsat of over 160 are half of what they were five years ago. The number who had 150 through 160 is stabilized. The number of people who comment under 150 is up 80 from where it was. So there is a very noticeable shift in the matcher eric to use the easiest word. Others might take talent or suitability for law school. The change in student legal aid as the competition for a lot applicants increases, schools have used more and more legally chasing the numbers because it helps ratings and of course students in the law school. The result of that is the amount of merit waste aid over the last decade has gone up 10 . The amount of merit aid has stumbled and there is a third category called both merit in needbased. I havent spoken yet to an actual Law School Admissions officer who didnt tell me that both men could merit. Most of that goes to the people who have the best metrics. So it is the folks at the back end of the line end up with a far greater share of that debt when they lock out the door with their degree. Ive been particularly worried about the effects of this, the demonstrable effects of this minority applicants because their profile in gpa and lsat isnt as good as asians and caucasians. The hispanic applicants and 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, really better thought of these days is discounting. We have some schools in the circuit, by the way, who dont charge any tuition at all for a substantial number of students. Indeed, we have a few schools who sent the students money. They dont charge any tuition. They write checks to the students to support living expenses. Only if you do that but its part of this greater trend. And of course, again last week the news that the bar passage rates in the country, no great surprise have likewise been following. February is not as good of a measure as july. The february rate here in the state with the lowest we have ever experienced. On an important note, that this is not gone unnoticed by her friends and the academy. The number of people in the academy who say this too will pass and weve heard before is a shrinking number. Research done both by idols and by various entities with which professor and its associated about how we change Legal Education to adjust to what it looks like the profession will be is really very encouraging and very substantial and the easiest one to see if the change in whats now referred to as experiential 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 possibly can. We are going to hear some intriguing news about all of those trends. We will start with justice kourlis. Professor henderson and i have to stand because the monitor is only visible from up here. Not for morris dees. I apologize for breaking up our little trio and what referred to be seated. As you know, im becky kourlis. I have a background, thank you, as a trial court and Appellate Court judge, but now in a Research Institute at the university of denver that we refer to as a think to tank i else, which is the worst acronym in the world and i apologize. But we were named by a federal judge. And he wouldnt let me put justice in the name because he thought justice was a term that was to assist up to bold to the interpretation of the day. We work in four different areas and actually, i have spoken to this assembly on prior occasions, but usually in the context of our Civil Justice reform work. We do work in Legal Education, Civil Justice reform. We work on the family justice i is state courts and then we work on judicial selection and performance evaluation. Weve done a little bit in indiana on that topic as well. Our process is we identify a problem. We gather research, put together wonderful groups of stakeholders. We create models. We then facilitate and monitor the implementation and measure outcomes. In common to tank. The problem here, which we are 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 voyeurs 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. This is the percentage of 2015 the law graduates who did not land fulltime employment requiring bar passage. Bill henderson and i just touted the 2016 numbers in the number of days, so i apologize for the fact 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 grad who didnt land fulltime employment recognizing their law degree. 25 who didnt land fulltime employment including professional and nonprofessional this is deborah risa number. 71 of thirdyear law students who believe they have sufficient skills to practice. This set of numbers is really aimed. 71 of the thirdyear law student who think that 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 crack this is 23 . So, there is a problem they are and we developed a project intended to shed some light on ways of addressing this. We created our foundation for prop this project. We have support from the hewlett foundation. This is a three phase project. We put together an Advisory Committee consisting of crack tensioners, judges, justices, representatives from the National Service edition of our exams from the National Conference of bar president s. The National Conference of bar examiners, representatives from the Public Defenders Office of the aba and even the attorney general of colorado. We developed a plan. The first piece of that plan is to identify the foundations that entry level lawyers need to this. The second phase will be to develop measurable models of Legal Education that support those foundations in the third will be to align market needs with hiring practices in order to incentivize positive improvement. So phase one, we developed a survey based on existing research for those of you who are made to in this area, such a research as schultz and benedict and with the offense and of our advisory council, we distributed that survey through bar associations across 37 states in the country. Actually, there were individuals from fifth the state to insert, but the bar associations in 37 states distributed to survey and we have a little bit of crossover people who practice in two states. We got 24,137 valid responses to the survey. If therere any of of you in this audience who answered the survey, thank you for your time. It was a little bit at a prodigious undertaking because the survey itself is 25 minutes long. We got over 40,000 actual responses and 24,000 valid responses. They responded base nearest the legal profession. Some of the numbers are not wonderful in terms of demographic, but in fact, the respondent days is representatives, both geographically and 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. We categorized the foundation and they broadly fall into three different categories, but some of the examples are identified relevant facts and legal issues, critically evaluate argument, conduct and defend, 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 competencies. So, remember we have 147 foundations and we are dividing them into these three categories 27 of the foundations were skill base. 28 characteristicbased and 45 competencies. We also graduated the questions that we asked of the respondents. We asked what is necessary in the short term. We asked what is advantageous but not necessary in the short term. We asked what is necessary over time and we asked what is not relevant at all. The screen right here doesnt think im great, so it looks like im missing a cylinder in the middle, but fortunately not on your screen. So here are the results. There were 77 foundations identified as necessary in the short term by 50 or more of the respondents. So again, 147 foundations, 77 were identified as necessary in the short term by 50 more of the respondents. But what emerged surprised us. We call it the character quotient. Here it is. Out of the top 20 of those foundations identified as necessary in the short term, nine are characteristic, 10 are competencies and one is a legal skill. There it is. The 10 competencies, keep confidentiality arrived on time. This is a millennial issue, right . Arrive on time. Treat others with courtesy and respect. Listen intently and respectfully, respond promptly, take individual responsibility. Emotional regulation and selfcontrol. Speak professionally. Write professionally, exhibit tact and diplomacy. In the characteristics, the other nine honor, commitment, integrity, trustworthiness, diligence, strong work ethic, attention to detail, conscientious, intelligence and a strong moral compass. So cumulatively, we refer to this as the whole lawyer. But what about legal skills . This is extensively why we go to law school, right . The legal skills show up in them must be acquired over time set of responses. These 20 characteristics are the top 20 for these foundations are the top 20 that must be acquired over time according to our responded base. And here they are. Develop appropriate Risk Mitigation strategies. Provide quality in court trial advocacy. Cannot and defend appeal, prepare for participated mediation. All of those skills that i suspect all of us would identify either on the transactional or the litigation side of crack this as being necessary. But the take away here is we expect people to acquire these over time. We dont necessarily expect them to show up at the time they sign up to work on a ready to do these things are qualified to do these things. So now here is the second part of our survey and here is where it becomes a little more relevant to all of you. In the second part of the survey, we asked respondents to consider the helpfulness of a set of hiring criteria in determining whether a candidate has the foundations they identified as important. So, you have to understand, we took as a given the fact they had already answered the survey and identified what they felt was important and then we said, okay, how would you hire in order to suss out the individuals who have those foundations. We did not ask them how they currently higher. And he was poor Oliver Barrett before it who went to yale and harvard and was no senator of the log review and did a summer clerkship for welfare. So, the avowed notion is that this person would