LEARNING FOUR LESSONS FROM FAILURE

On October 2, 2015, Northwestern University ended a six-year experiment — the two-year accelerated JD. Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez deserves credit for pulling the plug. Now comes the important part: learning the right lessons from failure.

Lesson #1: Beware of Public Relations Hype

With much fanfare in June 2008, Dean Rodriguez’s predecessor, David Van Zandt, released a document outlining his new long-range strategic vision: “Plan 2008: Preparing Great Leaders for a Changing World.” The centerpiece was an accelerated JD program whereby the school jammed three academic years of ABA-required curriculum into two calendar years.

Van Zandt worked tirelessly to sell the program. From local talk show appearances to speeches at law schools, he never let up. But one of his stated goals should have generated concern. Even as the market for lawyers plummeted, his keynote address at a February 2009 Southwestern Law Review symposium explained that he hoped to “tap a different population of students to expand our pool of potential applicants.” In particular, he wanted to “reach those who were planning on going to MBA programs.”

In other words, he offered a prescription for what the profession needed least: more law students who had been on their way to business school until the prospect of a Northwestern accelerated JD appeared.

Lesson #2: Dig Deeper

A program that “accelerated” a student through law school in two years instead of three sounded like an unambiguously good idea. But beyond the superficial appeal were troubling realities.

Students in the program started with a Web-based course even before they arrived on campus. In May, they began full-time study. In the fall, they joined first-year students in the traditional three-year program while also adding an extra course. For anyone on the two-year accelerated path, an already precious commodity — time during the first year to integrate experiences while contemplating one’s place in a diverse, challenging and changing profession — disappeared.

Even worse, Northwestern missed an opportunity. Total tuition for the two-year program was the same as that for the three-year degree. Accelerated students just paid more in tuition each semester. According to Van Zandt, students still benefitted financially because they could enter the job market sooner. Never mind how dismal that market remained.

Lesson #3: Ignore the Spin 

Many deans claim to be remaking their schools in ways that respond to the current crisis in legal education. For the sake of the profession, let’s hope that’s true. (But see Lesson #1 above.)

Even so, cramming three years of legal education into two was never particularly creative or innovative. For example, Southwestern Law School started its accelerated JD program in 1974. (Southwestern also has dismal full-time long-term JD-required employment rates for recent graduates.)

After leaving the deanship to become president of the New School in 2010, Van Zandt continued his defense of the Northwestern AJD in an online July 25, 2011 New York Times op-ed. In the process, he earned one of my “Unfortunate Comment Awards.” That was four years ago.

Lesson #4: Beware of Motivated Reasoning

Van Zandt spoke often about the importance of markets and market-based decisions. But it took six years (and a new dean) before Northwestern responded to what the markets were telling it about the AJD. As Dean Rodriguez announced on October 2, the program failed to achieve its aspirational target of 40 AJD students per year (Van Zandt had hoped eventually to enroll 65 AJD students annually):

“[D]ealing with this smaller program,” he said, “has impacted our ability to serve the objectives and needs of all our law students.”

As schools pursue various efforts to reduce the cost and improve the content of legal education, perhaps they’ll learn one more lesson: Don’t wait years to admit a mistake.