SYSTEM TOO LEAN? PART III: INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
SYSTEM TOO LEAN? PART III: INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS
KATHRYN R. L. RAND Dean, University of North Dakota School of Law
In my last two columns, I shared the impacts of the latest round of budget cuts at the School of Law. While we have long prided ourselves on“ doing a lot with very little,” I believe the law school has reached the point our“ check engine” light is on, and that means we have something we need to fix.
One aspect of our“ check engine” light is identifying where we can make changes that result in savings, while still serving students and the legal profession. While these changes are most certainly budget-driven, we would not have made these decisions without the necessity of a reduced budget, we worked very hard to find ways in which to minimize negative impacts, especially on students, and to seek creative and considered opportunities in the face of deep cuts. If there is a“ silver lining” to the storm clouds of dramatically decreased resources, it is that a reduced budget inspires innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.
Let me share with you one of the budgetdriven changes that caused us a great deal of angst and concern, and how we have worked to make the best of a challenging situation.
As a result of the Spring 2017 budget cuts, I made the very difficult decision to place
24 THE GAVEL the law school’ s Clinical Legal Education Program on hiatus. Through the Clinic, second- and third-year students represent clients under the supervision of full-time faculty who teach in the Clinic. Clinical legal education, when done right, is considered by many to be the most effective form of experiential education to prepare students for practice.
Over the past 15 years or more, we’ ve invested resources to align the Clinic with national best practices, starting with the decision, under former Dean Davis’ s leadership, to stabilize the Clinic’ s caseload by eliminating its dependence on grant funding. We also made the faculty positions eligible for tenure, raised the number of credits students earn through the Clinic courses, developed expertise in specialized areas of law for which there is a community need, heightened confidentiality and security measures, limited the student-to-faculty ratio in order to enhance the non-directive approach to student supervision, renovated space to create a specially designed office suite, and designed a curriculum based on cases and projects selected for their educational value.
All of these changes greatly improved students’ educational experience in the Clinic. They also made the Clinic the most expensive component of our program of legal education. With two full-time faculty, a fulltime staff member, student workers, summer coverage of cases, and other expenses, the Clinic courses generated relatively high costs for the number of students served.
So long as we could afford these investments in the Clinic, they were absolutely the right decisions for our students. But with budget cuts, we had to figure out a way to serve students with fewer resources. The American Bar Association’ s accreditation standards require us to provide six credits of experiential coursework to each student. The Clinic counts as an experiential course, but students can also earn experiential credits through simulation courses, like Trial Advocacy, and through externships. Looking at the financial bottom line, we saw we could offer experiential credits at less expense by expanding the number of simulation courses and externships available to students. Thus, we made the difficult decision to put the Clinic on hiatus.
We didn’ t just stop there, though. We immediately set to work to ensure there would be sufficient student“ seats” in our simulation courses and externships. In fact, more than 50 students, a record number, completed an externship this summer, and we will offer four sections of Trial Advocacy, along with other simulation courses, this academic year. We were so successful in expanding these opportunities, we have had some growing pains in the last several months. My challenge now is to assign resources to ensure we keep up with student demand in these areas while maintaining a high-quality educational experience for our students.
We also listened to faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends who were critical of the decision to place the Clinic on