Overpriced School Lawyers?
Justin Bathon on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 1:36PM From today's Philadelphia Inquirer Daily News:
books for nearly $40 million in spending cuts needed to balance next
year's budget, one group of school employees appears to be safe from
the ax: lawyers.
The district's Office of General Counsel will receive a slight increase
of $325,074 in 2008-09, bringing its total outlay to $13.5 million,
according to the budget proposal presented during City Council hearings
April 28 and 29.
The head of the office, General Counsel Sherry A. Swirsky, and the 18
attorneys who work for her are not only among the highest-paid school
employees, but also make more than the attorneys who work for
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham and City Solicitor Shelley
R. Smith.
The school attorneys' high salaries caught the eye of City Council President Anna Verna during the hearings.
"I just can't fathom what they do seven or eight hours a day, five days
a week," Verna said. "That's something that I would definitely want to
look into."
Swirsky, 56, defended the salaries paid to her and her staff, saying
that they have more experience than other city-government lawyers, and
more responsibilities.
Five of her attorneys work in the area of contract law, Swirsky said,
four in special-education law, one on charter-school issues, two in
civil rights and tort litigation, one in claims, one in commercial
litigation, two in labor and employment law and two in school law.
"School districts are the most highly regulated institutions that
exist," she said. "We get federal and state grants with very technical
compliance issues.
"We're a little different than other government law departments in that
we have no entry-level positions," she said. "The least experienced
person [in her office] has 10 years' experience. The most experienced,
including myself, have 30 or more years of experience. Whereas, with
the D.A.'s Office and the City Solicitor's Office, they have people
right out of law school.
"It would not be possible for someone without a substantial amount of legal experience to practice in this office," she added.
Let me just throw this crazy, wild, wacky idea out there ... maybe we could employ some entry level lawyers (thus cheaper lawyers) if we actually trained law students in school law issues? Will they be as good as lawyers with 10 years experience? No, but they could probably get by and learn quickly ... all while saving the district tens of thousands of dollars which could be devoted to more teacher positions, etc.
This problem, high priced school lawyers, is not going away any time soon. We have clearly entered an era where the school lawyer is an intricate member of the school leadership team. More and more individual districts are employing general counsels and this is a trend that will continue in my estimation until every school district has a general counsel and relies less on outside counsel.
In light of this clear transition that is happening right now in how school law is practiced, we need to make changes to legal education to accommodate that transition. We also need to think about the school leadership team differently in light of the reality that most major decisions pass through the general counsel's office first.
There are lots of ways to save money here, but the key is beginning the discussion with the realization that school law is a legitimate specialty and thus deserves special consideration. Education law is moving beyond a niche practice to a mainstream specialty of law ... with its own niches inside the specialty. The way we employ and train school lawyers has to catch up to this reality. We cannot continue to rely on only lawyers with 10+ years of experience ... we don't have that kind of money. We need to develop a pipeline to bring young lawyers into the system at lower prices and let them develop within education ... not bring in them in from outside education 10 years out of law school. That is a costly and inefficient way of operating. Schools of Education and Schools of Law need to start thinking about this and working together to develop education law concentrations, joint-degrees, law journals, etc. within law school.
These articles, like the one in today's Daily News, are going to become more and more frequent until we figure out a way to bring in young lawyers.
Also: Adjunct Law Prof Blog
Reader Comments (5)
Even if you start *new" lawyers in the school districts, won't they want to stay? As district employees, they may find it irresistable to leave with added perks (tax-payer funded pensions and benefits).
I expect you would lose some to private firms over time, but the idea is to have a pipeline that can generate replacements for these losses. You may even get to a point where your in house staff have an experienced, well-paid manager and a staff of relatively younger attorneys that handle your day to day legal issues ... contract negotiations, special education hearings, teacher due process, etc. When complex cases come along, you could contract with outside counsel.
Anyway, the point is that I was a young educational law attorney coming out of law school and there were not many opportunities for me because most firms/schools have a tendency to only hire well seasoned attorneys. That is a great plan, but it is also an extremely expensive plan as this story out of Philadelphia documents.
Because the in house lawyer thing seems to be a rapidly expanding trend, we are going to have to find ways to reduce the costs of this. One way to do that is using more early career lawyers instead of mid-career or late career lawyers. But, you want those early career lawyers trained as much as possible by the law school before they enter the district office.
I have to disagree with you in part. First, I do not believe that the salaries being paid are particularly high. The article also does not discuss how difficult the attorneys' job is.
Many school districts have in house attorneys. This is nothing new. The NYC Department of Education has a very large staff of attorneys as does Newark NJ Board of Education. Undoubtably, this saves school districts significant amounts of money. Staffing an office with junior lawyers will likely result in a decrease in quality. While there are some exceptions, there is no comparision between a first year attorney or even a third year attorney with an attorney who has been representing clients for 10 years.
Additionally, like any job, supply and demand must be considered. For $50,000 what type of lawyer will the district get?
However, I do agree that Education Law is a speciality and law schools need to do a better job in teaching it. I teach education law at St. John's Law School, but many law schools do not even offer such a class.
As for a combined class with Education graduate students, I would be against that as the tools law students need to learn are different than what graduate students learn. I would, however, favor more education law classes in graduate programs as well.
Are you surprised by the number of students interested in taking your course? While I was in law school at Southern Illinois they offered it one semester (probably largely because of me) and they expected 8-10 students to enroll. We wound up with like 20-22 students and there were at least 7-8 former teachers in the class. I was really, really stunned (and encouraged). But, even though that class had good enrollment and everyone enjoyed it, SIU has not offered it again since I left. Anyway, I would be interested to hearing your experiences on that and the kind of enthusiasm you get with your education law class.
I do think there would be benefits to interacting a little with education leadership students (future principals and superintendents) to get at least some idea of the backgrounds, concerns, and pressures of school leaders. I am around school leaders all the time and the largest complaint I hear from them is that their school lawyer (most are outside counsels in the rural areas I work in) "doesn't get it." So it would be nice if we could find ways to somehow sensitize school lawyers to educational leadership issues at some point. Whether graduate school is the place for that I don't know.
On the money and young lawyers, you make good points. And, for their experience levels, the salaries are not that high I agree. But I am frustrated that we are consistently relying on highly experienced lawyers to do school law (I realize that is a good thing, but it is also costly in many ways). The cost that concerns me the most (besides the actual $$) is that we really do not have much of a base of young educational lawyers at all (comparatively to other fields that develop young lawyers). I think young lawyers bring a lot of energy, ambition, and new ideas with them. Sure, they are not as great with clients or in court as a 10 year veteran, but they still contribute and can do a good job.
Anyway, I might have overstated my argument. I don't want to get rid of all the experienced lawyers, I just want to begin to supplement them with some young lawyers as well. Thanks for the comment Mitchell.
At St. John's Law School where I am an Adjunct, I basically built the Education Law class about 4 years ago. I get about 20-25 students with 2 or 3 former teaches in each class. It is offered 1x year. Additionally, we offer a special education clinic which-to my knowledge- is the only such program in the country. I am also the faculty adviser to the Education Law Society which brings speakers to our school.
There is actually a significant amount of opportunity for young lawyers to get a job in the field of education law- at least where I hail from. Several of my students have gotten jobs in law firms as junior associates. One even works in my office (the teachers union). In New York, there are a number of law firms that practice Education Law. There are also not a lot of students interested in Education Law-so if a student really has an interest (as opposed to just applying for a job) they have a big plus. Most of my students who really were interested in this field have been able to get jobs. (I know this as I am often asked to write letters of recommendation).
I agree with you that Education Law is often overlooked and there is a need to educate non-lawyer administrators. At St. John's in the graduate school of education, such a class is offered. I thought about co-enrollment, but concluded that was a bad idea.
Students in my law school class are still learning to become lawyers and read cases. That remains an important part of my class. The graduate program is more black letter law and teaching out of a treatise. The two programs do not mix.
In New York, there are CLE programs which are obviously designed for lawyers, but many non-lawyers also attend. I believe they find those types of programs useful.
Keep up your great blog. We need more of them.
Mitch