“Creative Destruction” in Legal Jobs III – Education Law

This third Law Careers  blog in the Creative Destruction series examines the tectonic shifts in Education Law resulting from a combination of four factors (explained below) that, in destroying old ways of delivering education, are creating new ones at close to light speed and are not likely to remain static.

Expanding Education

A new education paradigm is in the early stages of emerging out of the destruction wrought by the economic devastation of recent years.  Two motivating factors are at play here:

First, affordable education is rapidly disappearing as a possibility for millions of Americans as governments slash both higher and K-12 education budgets and the principal funding mechanism for public education―property tax revenues―continue their precipitate decline with no possibility of climbing back to pre-Great Recession levels for years.

From its founding to the late 1960s, public higher education in California was tuition-free.  During that lengthy time period, California built the finest public education system in the world.  Once tuition was imposed on California students (by Governor Ronald Reagan), it was only a matter of time for it to escalate to the point where, today, it is being raised every year and is quickly approaching the tuition charged by private academic institutions.  In fact, the flagship institution, the University of California at Berkeley, now earns more tuition revenue from out-of-state students (who must pay more) than from California residents.

While tuition rates climb, academic quality has declined.  While California is the prototype, other states find themselves in the same boat.  Correspondingly, private colleges and universities are also raising tuition rates – an increasing number of them to stratospheric levels, so that affordable education is looking less attainable.

Consequently, the education market is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into finding new ways to educate students at reasonable costs.  If it wants to survive, it is going to have to change its business model.  And anytime sea changes are in the offing, attorneys prosper because major directional changes always mean more legislation, more regulations, more court actions and more of everything that lawyers are trained to do.

Second, Americans will need more education in order to compete in the increasingly global economy, prompted by the need to maintain their income levels and advance.  Two phenomena will propel this increased demand:

1.      The need for millions of Americans who lost jobs in the Great Recession to “retool” for jobs in the global economy.  Paralegal programs, to cite only one example, already report increasing enrollment. 

2.      The need for “lifelong learning” in order to keep up with the increasingly rapid pace of change.  Job changing has never been more frequent, a situation unlikely to stabilize in the future, due to technology’s advance.  Hiring and firing is easier than ever and labor markets are much more dynamic than ever.  The demand for training and retraining has already outdistanced the supply of training programs and trainers.

That means more teachers, including law teachers (see below) and more administrators, including more jobs for attorneys in campus professional positions where a JD degree is a distinct advantage (see below).

Plato Meets His Match (Finally)

Early in the 4^th century B.C., Plato, the “sandwich” generation of the great Greek philosophical triad― flanked, temporally, by his mentor Socrates and his disciple Aristotle―launched the first epic innovation in the delivery of education when he chose an olive grove on the periphery of Athens for his Academy.  For almost the next 2,500 years, the Platonian model of educational delivery remained unchanged:  A teacher stood before his or her students and (presumably) imparted his or her superior knowledge to them.

It took the Internet and the advent of online, distance education to begin to change the way education is conveyed.  Despite the desperate, often Herculean efforts of Platonian stakeholders in ivory towers and even K-12 facilities to cling to the classical model, the harsh realities of contemporary economics will eventually overwhelm the Luddites among the professorial and administrative classes.

Increasing reliance on distance education represents an enormous change in the way schools must organize themselves and do business.  Again, attorneys must be heavily involved in nurturing these transitions if they are to succeed.

Government Chimes In

If you think that “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” are the only two major shifts in education policy of the last decade, you are dead wrong.  Overlooked has been the effect of one of the biggest changes in Education Law of the last 30 years, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA).

This under-the-radar legislation is changing everything on the nation’s 4,300 college campuses.  The law contains sweeping new regulatory compliance mandates that require colleges and universities to report to the U.S. government on more than 300 new topics subject to federal scrutiny, such as tuition and fee information, tuition cost reduction initiatives, textbook prices by individual course, transfer-of-credit policies, file sharing, binge drinking, meningitis outbreaks, missing persons, fire safety, voter registration, drug violations, fatalities, student sanctions and technology disposal, among many others. 

HEOA is complex.  More than three years after enactment, it is still in the process of being implemented by the U.S. Department of Education.  Since it passed, academic institutions have hired several thousand individuals for new positions, many of them attorneys.

Law on Campus becomes Ubiquitous

The nation's colleges and universities provide expanding and diverse job opportunities for lawyers in both teaching and professional staff environments. These include non-traditional law school teaching positions; legal teaching positions outside of law schools; and professional staff positions both within and outside of campus general counsel offices.

Non-Traditional Law School Teaching Positions

The growth in non-traditional teaching positions in law schools is prolific and also open to other than exclusively "dream" resumes. Law schools realize that they have to offer a more diverse curriculum and better prepare their students for the harsher, more competitive practice world of the 21st century. Consequently, they now pay more attention to basic legal skills (research, analysis, and writing) and also offer more clinics and special programs. Non-traditional teaching job titles include: Academic Support Instructor, Clinical Program Director/Instructor, and Legal Research & Writing Program Instructor.

Teaching Law to Undergrads and Grad Students

This is where you find the most significant growth in teaching opportunities for lawyers. One of the most interesting recent developments has been the "formalization" of what used to be called "pre-law" studies into an actual undergraduate major, most commonly called Legal Studies (now offered by more than 600 undergraduate institutions).

There is also a strong and growing market for attorneys in other, more traditional undergraduate and graduate departments, such as business, accounting, criminal justice and law enforcement, real estate, insurance, and international affairs, among others. In addition, the rapid expansion of paralegal certificate programs at accredited institutions also means more teaching positions for lawyers.  Expect these developments to continue as life becomes more, not less, complex and law extends its tentacles into additional areas of human endeavor.

The qualifications for most of these positions are not nearly as rigorous as they are for traditional law school teaching positions.  A large number of professors and instructors at this level come to their jobs directly from a broad range of practice backgrounds and have varying levels of experience.

Representative job titles include:

• Paralegal Program Instructor
• Business Law Professor
• Criminal Justice Program Instructor
• Dispute Resolution Teacher
• Environmental Policy Teacher
• Ethics Instructor
• Labor Relations Instructor
• Law and Anthropology Professor
• Law and Economics Professor
• Law and History Professor
• Law and Psychology Professor
• Law and Society Professor
• Law and Natural Resources Professor
• Legal Administration Professor
• Legal Studies Program Coordinator
• Legal Studies Program Instructor
• Real Estate Instructor
• Security Assistance Management Instructor
• Tax Instructor

Professional Academic Staff Positions

The last two decades saw the establishment of college and university in-house counsel offices and the corresponding campus absorption of much of the legal work that previously was farmed out to law firms.  Today, there are only a handful of post-secondary institutions that do not have in-house counsel offices.  

In a related development, institutions discovered that the increasing complexity of campus life mandated that many legal and law-related staff functions needed more specialized attention than they could receive from the general counsel's office. This has resulted in a national trend toward the breaking out of certain highly specialized legal/law-related activities from the campus general counsel's office, such as:

• Academic Grievances
• Campus Security (including sexual harassment)
• Contract Management
• Disabled Student Affairs
• Environmental Matters
• Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action
• Ethics
• Faculty and Staff Employment Matters
• Foreign Student Administration
• Intellectual Property Asset Management
• Labor Relations
• Legislative and Regulatory Affairs
• Privacy Issues (primarily academic and health information)
• Real Estate Transactions
• Risk Management
• Student Discipline

As a result, you can find many of the following (or similar) representative legal/law-related job titles on campus, particularly at the larger schools.

• Affirmative Action/EEO Officer
• Agreements Manager
• Assistant Provost for Research Compliance
• Assistant to the President/Chancellor
• Business Affairs Director/Officer
• Campus Ombudsman
• Campus Security Compliance Officer
• Contract Staff Analyst
• Corporate Liaison Officer
• Disability Services Coordinator
• Diversity Management Director
• Equity Coordinator
• Environmental Programs Professional
• Federal/State Relations Professional
• Grants and Contract Compliance Specialist
• Grants and Contracts Manager
• Healthcare Licensing Manager
• Health Information Privacy Compliance Officer
• Institutional Compliance Officer
• International Student Programs Coordinator
• Judicial Officer
• Laboratory Business Manager
• Legislative/Government Affairs Professional
• Paralegal Program Administrator
• Planned Giving Officer
• Real Estate Director/Officer
• Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault Counselor
• Sponsored Research Director
• Student Legal Affairs Officer
• Technology Licensing Associate
• Trust Officer

Where to Look for Academic Legal Jobs

• Chronicle of Higher Education 

• Higher Education Jobs
• Academic360.com
• Council for Advancement & Support of Education
• National Association of College & University Business Officers
• Association of University Technology Managers
• Association for Student Judicial Affairs
• College Adjunct Teaching Positions
• Student Affairs Administrator Jobs
• Campus Dispute Resolution Jobs
• International Collegiate Licensing Association
• Legal Writing Institute
• Association of American Law Schools

The K-12 Legal Scene

To a great extent, what is going on in colleges and universities is being replicated at lower levels of education.  The legal needs of school districts throughout the country are increasing rapidly and going off into areas previously not an issue.  The litigiousness of Americans and the growing intensity of parent involvement as advocates for their children are causing a lot of this, compounded by the budget constraints that are impacting so heavily on school systems today.

As one goes around the country, one sees a growing number of school districts recruiting and hiring in-house counsel, compliance officers, risk managers, privacy officers, ombudsmen, etc.

Education Law is an arena that is destined to be a growth opportunity for years to come.  Because it encompasses such a multitude of diverse practice areas, it is really open to virtually any attorney who wants to make the move into academe.

Next:  Foreclosure Law