Lawyers and Education
Justin Bathon on Monday, September 10, 2007 at 1:13PM Couple of interesting notes in Legal Clips (brought to you
by the NSBA) this past week regarding lawyers and education.
First, the Seattle firm that represented the Parents Involved in Community
Schools pro bono is now seeking to recover attorney's fees from the school
district in the amount of 1.8 million. See the Seattle Times story on it.
Second, the Fulton County Daily Report has a story
stating that more and more districts are hiring in-house counsel. Here is a
snippet from the story:
Schools face an array of legal
issues that include negotiating contracts, firing teachers, expelling students,
following federal and state requirements, seeking restraining orders, possibly
even defending against suits by parents angry over cheerleading. As their legal
matters increase in frequency and complexity, a growing number of public school
systems around Atlanta have hired in-house counsel."I think more should,"
said Dorsey E. Hopson II, newly named general counsel for Clayton County Public
Schools. Although Hopson started his new job this week, he had been
representing the Clayton County Board of Education through his law firm,
Greenberg Traurig. Previously, he spent five years with the in-house legal
department of Atlanta Public Schools, including a year as interim general
counsel. He will be Clayton's first GC."The Clayton County school
system has a half billion dollar budget," Hopson said. "It's almost
scary when you think about any entity with that type of budget not having
in-house counsel."In announcing the decision to create
the new position, the Clayton board cited growth, complexity of legal issues
and growing cost for outside counsel -- $552,000 in legal bills last year
alone.
Both stories are interesting in their own right, but what I find more
interesting is the deepening connection between education and law. Especially when
we are beginning to consider having attorneys on staff at many urban and
suburban districts. I think we will continue to see more and more districts
hiring in-house counsel in the near future. Also, I could see a single attorney
being hired for a co-op of districts, many of which presently exist for special
education, alternative education and school psychologist/counselor purposes
already.
All of this makes me think about the lack of attention education law gets as a
specific specialty. Education law does enjoy somewhat of specialty status
within the education community because of its place in the ISLLC standards for school administrators.
This has translated into most educational leadership preparation programs
offering a course in education law as one of the requirements. However, this
specialty status has never existed in law schools to the same degree (I will be
posting a report about it soon). However, we now live in an era where
educational lawyers are intimately involved in many aspects of schooling,
including being on staff. While I am not going to compare education and
schooling to healthcare, the premise underlying both specialties is very
similar, even if there still is not such a thing as educational
negligence/malpractice. Yet, healthcare is a specialty heralded by many (most?)
law schools these days? I can think of very few programs that specialize in
education law (if any now that Franklin Pierce seems to
have lessened its focus on education law, although this Public Interest Law Scholars program at Georgetown
seems to do a decent job).
I think it is time for law schools to more fully consider educational law as a
distinct specialization as clearly it is a legitimate specialization within the
legal community. It would serve both the educational institutions and the
lawyers they employ much better.
Reader Comments (2)
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