EL MODELO DE CONTROL PROPUESTO POR HANS KELSEN

students, but they visit my office much less frequently, seem to view our relationship much more formally, and consume much less of my time than my legal writing students did. Even so, tenured women and untenured women on the tenure track appear to bear an inordinate amount of student counseling in law schools.

Id. at 131 n.163. 278 _{Id. at 130.}

279 _{Press Release, NALP, supra note 5.}

280 _{Deborah Cassens Weiss, School Rank and GPA Aren’t the Best Predictors of BigLaw}

Success, A.B.A. J. (Oct. 16, 2008),

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/school_rank_and_gpa_arent_the_best_predictors _of_biglaw_success.

letter writing, and interviewing and counseling exercises into the first-year curriculum.”281

IV.COUNTERARGUMENT:IS “GOOD”REALLY COST-PROHIBITIVE IN LIGHT OF AFFORDABLE “BAD?”

It might be argued that, especially in the wake of a recession, we cannot afford to foster a better-paid class of legal writing professionals. It is true that a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) study attributed law school tuition increases, in part, to an increase in resource- intensive skills education in law school.282

The cost of legal education has been rising steadily throughout the extended expansion of the legal market during the last thirty years. Beginning in the 1980s, law school tuition has consistently risen at a rate more than two times the rate of inflation. Between 1992 and 2002, inflation was 28 percent, while the cost of legal education rose 134 percent at public schools and 76 percent at private schools. Since 2002, tuition has continued to rise anywhere from 5 to 15 percent a year. In 2007, the average tuition at private law schools was $32,367—and at public law schools it was $15,455. When one includes books and living expenses, the overall annual cost of attendance is $50,000 or more. As a result, many law students graduate today with more than $100,000 in debt, regardless of the rank of the school they attend.283

281 _{Cohen, supra note 22. This list would include the University of North Dakota School} of Law’s Lawyering Skills program. Syllabus, University of North Dakota School of Law, Lawyering Skills II Spring Semester 2010 (on file with author).

282 _{Wegner, Response, supra note 41, at 629.}

283 _{Thies, supra note 31, at 608. The 2010 tuition at Yale Law School, the top-ranked U.S.}

News and World Report law school, was a staggering $48,340 a year. Debra Cassens Weiss, US News Warns of Tough Times for Law Grads; Expert Says ‘It’s Just Like the

Lottery,’ A.B.A. J. (Apr. 15, 2010),

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/us_news_warns_of_tough_times_for_law_grads _expert_says_its_just_like_the_lo/ [hereinafter Weiss, Lottery].

When the legal hiring boom was on, law schools could raise their tuition to support the rising cost of legal education and their graduates could still be

assured of remunerative jobs that would support their debt loads.284 _The

recession now makes this untrue in many cases.285

Moreover, tuition will likely continue to rise as the effects of the financial crisis become fully apparent. The recession is driving a reduction in private donations to law schools,286 _{and both public and private law schools have}

thus been forced to cut their budgets.287 _{Many schools have no choice but to}

raise tuition by double-digit amounts.288

There is also a serious question as to whether many law graduates will be able to pay back their educational debt:

There can be little doubt that students are, with reason, worried about the mismatch between income (job opportunities and pay levels) and future expenses (anticipated living costs and debt repayment obligations). The ABA reports that for students who graduated in 2008, the average debt load of those who attended private schools was $91,506, while those who attended public law schools on average accumulated $59,324 in debt. . . . Current monthly repayment levels thus approach the amount required to carry a house mortgage for those who graduated a few years before.289

“In 2007, the median salary of new graduates was $62,000, a level at which servicing debt loads in excess of $100,000 is, at best, difficult.”290

284 _{Thies, supra note 31, at 602.} 285 _{Id. at 599.}

286 _{Amanda Bronstad, Law School Fundraising Tightens, N}

AT’L L.J. (Oct. 27, 2008), http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202425539593.

287 _{Karen Sloan, Law Schools Dealing with Budget Cuts, N}

AT’L L.J. (Jan. 19, 2009), http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202427496279.

288 _{Thies, supra note 31, at 608.}

289 _{Wegner, Response, supra note 41, at 627.}

290 _{Thies, supra note 31, at 609. And most lawyers do not even make $100,000. The} 2010–11 Edition of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook’s section on Lawyers lists the median salary for all law graduates at $68,500, practice practitioners at $108,500, those practicing in business at $69,100, government attorneys

Since the advent of the recession, salaries are only going to decline from that point until the economy improves. In particular, this level of debt is burdensome to attorneys hoping to enter public interest law and can serve as a barrier to entering such practices.291

Law school has recently been described as “an unfolding education hoax on the middle class that’s just as insidious and nearly as sweeping as the housing debacle.”292 _{These conditions threaten to strip away the progress of}

the profession and legal education to return to a time where access to the practice of law was restricted to the economic elite of this country. This has deeply troubling social justice implications.

Yet as the job market declines, law school enrollment increases.293

Despite the disheartening employment numbers, it appears that a growing number of people think they have what it takes. According to the Law School Admissions Council, applications for ABA-accredited law schools rose 3.9 percent in 2009. A New York Times article in January of 2010 said that applications to Cornell Law School were up 44 percent, and the number of people taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) rose 20 percent in October 2009.294