It recently occurred to me that there are several big-name universities that don't have law schools, even though a law school established at any of those institutions would probably do well. Princeton arguably heads this list, along with Brown, Johns Hopkins, Rice, and Tufts. Brandeis University also doesn't have a law school (ironically, for a prominent university named after a Supreme Court justice).
Why these universities haven't established law schools is a bit of a mystery (at least to me). Law schools tend to bring in net revenue for the university. This is even more likely to be true at a big-name institution that can quickly attract good faculty and students. If Princeton were to establish a law school tommorrow, appoint a credible dean, and provide adequate initial financial backing, they could very quickly turn it into a highly successful (and profitable) enterprise. Many good students would come just because of the Princeton name, and most outstanding scholars who are not already at top 20 or top 30 institutions might well be willing to move to Princeton if asked.
Why have these schools in effect left money lying on the table? I don't know for sure (and the reasons may differ from school to school). But here are a few conjectures:
1. ABA accreditation requirements.
ABA accreditation requirements artificially raise the costs of establishing a new law school. However, wealthy institutions like Princeton or Brown can surely meet these expenses and still make a profit on the school. So I doubt this is a crucial factor.
2. Institutional inertia.
This probably is a factor, as in most large bureaucracies. Still, many universities (including George Mason in 1979) have established new law schools, so one would have to explain why Princeton, Brown, et al., have more inertia than other schools.
3. The inefficiency of non-profit institutions.
If a for-profit firm increases its revenue, the stockholders will benefit directly. This gives them an incentive to exploit new profit opportunities to the hilt. In a nonprofit such as a university, by contrast, there are no residual claimants to additional revenue. If the university establishes a new law school and increases its revenue as a result, the administration won't get a pay raise or otherwise directly benefit. That reduces their incentive to exploit opportunities to increase revenue, and may account for the failure to create what might well be highly profitable law schools. That said, universities surely do take all sorts of actions to increase revenue streams. And some have even established law schools for this purpose. So this factor too can't explain why several specific institutions have failed to establish law schools even though most of their peers have.
Ultimately, I suspect that the initial failure to establish a law school may have resulted from chance factors that were then reinforced by a combination of 2 and 3 above. If you know more about the real reasons why these big-name universities have no law schools, feel free to comment.
UPDATE: Various commenters suggest that these universities choose not to have a law school because of their desire to focus on undergraduate education. That may indeed be the right explanation, though several of these institutions (including Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Rice) have other professional schools on campus. But it doesn't strike me as a very compelling reason not to establish a law school. If the law school were to drain resources away form undergrad education, there might indeed be a conflict between the two. In fact, however, a law school is likely to bring in net revenue that could be used to improve undergraduate education. Moreover, some law school professors (especially at elite schools) teach courses that undergraduates might be interested in taking, as sometimes happened at Yale, when I was a law student there.
Even if a law school adds resources to undergrad education instead of draining them, it's possible that its presence could detract from undergraduate education in some other, more subtle way. But it's hard for me to see how. If Yale Law School were closed down tommorrow, would undergraduate education at Yale improve? Are undergraduates at Yale currently worse off than at Princeton in some way traceable to the fact that Yale has a law school and Princeton doesn't? Possibly. But I remain skeptical. I'm not arguing that Princeton or any other institution that doesn't yet have a law school should necessarily create one. But the undergraduate education rationale for not doing so seems dubious.
Princeton not only has no law school -- it has no business school, no medical school, no dental school, and no school of education.
The reason is that Princeton has always been a remarkably undergraduate-focused institution, and most of those connected to the University feel that it should stay that way. If I recall correctly, the administration has occasionally floated the idea of adding a law school, but the undergraduate alumni tend to oppose the idea pretty strongly.
You note that Princeton could make money from a law school, and I think that is true. Fortunately for Princeton, they don't need the money. The school already has the largest per capita endowment of any college or university in the United States -- about $2 million per enrolled student. And it also has alumni annual giving rates of something like 60%.
Orin
(Princeton '93)
I always thought Princeton was just a basketball school.
Maybe this is indeed the reason. But several of these schools do have other professional schools, and even Princeton has a major focus on grad students and on research institutions (such as the Institute for Advanced Studies). Moreover, if adding a law school increased revenue, it might actually help undergrad education rather than detracting from it.
2007-08 record: 6-23 overall, 3-11 in Ivy competition.
GG
Rice has also declined to start a med school, since there is a top 5 school across the street (Baylor) and another good one next to Baylor (UT Houston) in the Medical Center. They do have joint programs with them for MD/PhDs, biomedical engineering, and nanotech health applications.
The Institute for Advanced Studies is separate from Princeton, even though there is a degree of informal assistance and cross-pollination.
There is always a feeling among grad students at Princeton to being second-class citizens in the eyes of the administration.
As to whether a law school would help undergraduate education, most administrators and alumni donors believe that the focus on undergraduates sets Princeton apart from its peers, especially in the admissions ratrace. Peers being the other Ivies, Stanford, MIT, and sometimes Chicago. (arrogant? a bit.)
Having been both an undergraduate and graduate student at Princeton, I contest the statement that there is a major focus on graduate students. There is certainly more attention paid to undergraduate education.
I'm not sure what you mean by "research institutions". The one example you gave, the Institute for Advanced Study, is not affiliated with Princeton University. It just happens to be in the same town.
As to your last point, is it normal for universities that have law, business, medical, etc. schools to use excess profits from those to fund undergraduate education?
Or how about a locomotive?
Rah, rah, rah,
Tiger, tiger, tiger
Sis, sis, sis,
Boom, boom, boom, bah!
No law school! No law school! No law school!
Texas A&M is not an elite university!!!
Like Penn State, Mason did not build a law school from scratch. In 1979, it acquired the International School of Law which was founded in 1972.
This is not to say that law schools that aren't in major cities can't be great law schools, but if you were deciding whether to start a school it would certainly be something you'd want think about. By way of comparison, it wouldn't surprise me that one of the reasons that Cornell hasn't expanded is the limited number of clinical opportunities in that area.
At Harvard, there is virtually no overlap between the Kennedy School faculty and that of the Government Department. Contrast that to Princeton, where there is significant overlap between the Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton's one professional school, which also has an undergrad major) and the Politics Department.
While the problem is particularly acute at Harvard, I think it's a problem for many large institutions. I suspect that the Princetons and Johns Hopkinses prefer to remain smaller, more flexible institutions that focus on their core competencies, and I think they would be ill-advised to change that.
Go Tigers!
But its an interesting question. I recall a dean from my undergrad alma mater Yeshiva University stating that the reason they established Cordozo law school was that its a rrevnue positive, especially once alumni can be counted on to contribute.
I never made any such assumption. Indeed, my point 3 is directly counter to it.
That's a rather eclectic group. I imagine the reasons why none of these schools has established a law school are varied. My guess as to the most common reason they haven't done so is that they simply haven't investigated it in depth. The administrations at these schools probably have their hands full with running a world-class educational institution and the resources--which includes things in addition to money--to start a whole new professional school from scratch just aren't available.
Texas already has four good law schools - UT, U of H, SMU, and Baylor. And it's more difficult than one would think to bring a new law school up into the top hundred. Of course, it would be humiliating for Rice to be creamed by U of H in other things than athletics, but all I can say is Ruck Fice!
That being said, there is an example of what Prof. Somin suggests only in business, not law. Yale started its school of managment in the 1970s, and has managed to get a ranking of around #10 due to a combination of prestige brand name and plentiful cash from the general endowment. Even in this case, I doubt that Yale's existing departments benefitted financially from the creation of the School of Managment above and beyond what would have been gained from putting that money directly into their operations.
Fletcher offers an LLM in international law; it does not have a J.D. granting school, however.
Tufts does not have a business school, either (undergrad or MBA), although it does have a plethora of graduate schools. I will note, however, that Ilya's statement, "That may indeed be the right explanation, though several of these institutions (including Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Rice) have other professional schools on campus," is only partially correct: the med school, vet school, and dental school are not located on the Medford/Somerville campus.
Alternate explanation: until very recently, Tufts lacked the financial resources to build a world-class law school. The endowment, when I started there, was under $400 million. Arguably, it would have drained the university's coffers to build and accredit a law school. Even if the expenditure would eventually pay off, and even if space for the school could be found on the M/S campus (a tough one - v. crowded at the moment, with some of the engineering buildings being essentially off-campus), such an endeavour may have been financially unfeasible in the short term.
But then they now have the Carey Business School. Perhaps a law school will be Bloomberg's next gift.
And as others have said, Rice does an amazing job of undergraduate education; it's stayed small, it focuses on its young'uns, it sends them to great careers with the ink still wet on their bachelor's degrees. Why mess up a good thing by diluting the core competency with another grad school?
@Tern: Go Owls. :) Go where, other than to the bottom of the local conference rankings, I don't know, but coming from the school that frequently puts the "#10" into "Pac-10," I can empathize with a school full of "brainiacs," as the Houston Press put it, who suck at sports.
This factor--how much research money a university lands each year--is THE factor in explaining why my alma mater, Notre Dame, periodically sets up a committee to decide whether the place needs a med school.
Under the old Carnegie ranking system, ND ranked behind places such a Howard U; the reason being entirely the money that Howard Med School brought in, and the "points" that research dollars gave a school under that former methodology.
Ranking is INCREDIBLY important to administrators and boards these days. I don't know if opening a law school would help much. But a med school can get you somewhere.
Someone raised an interesting point about there being too many law schools. Ironically, there is also a shortage of highly qualified law students for big firm work, which is why prices have been going up to such outrageous rates. I wonder if adding another top tier law school would actually pull in more highly qualified students, or if it would just redistribute the ones that already apply. However, I also wonder if pulling more bright students into law is good for America.
My guess is that a start-up school could not match the prestige of the general university brand name. Take Princeton for example.
Larry Bacow, the current Tufts President, was an attorney in his previous career. I wonder whether or not that is some of the reason that Fletcher added an LLM in international law; perhaps it is a test programme for a larger, J.D.-granting institution.
If not for the space and resource considerations, Tufts would be in a good position to start a law school - as it could append the law school to Fletcher. IIRC, Fletcher and HLS have a dual-degree programme (MALD and JD in four years); that could be changed to a dual-degree MALD/JD from Tufts. We do have the problem of space, however: the Medford/Somerville campus is at capacity; Jumbos love their trees, President's Lawn, and quads too much to allow much more building. Even if the law school were to be about the size of W&L, which is the smallest of the top 25 schools, it is questionable whether the campus could handle an additional 400 students, which means parking, dorms, and dining services for 400 students plus faculty.
Counterexample: NYU, whose law school has far exceeded the brand name and prestige of the associated undergraduate institution.
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I'm sure this is most of why Carnegie Mellon doesn't have a law school.
There were rumors that Purdue wanted to claim the Indianapolis-based law school as its own, but too many alumni protested.
John87 @ 4:12 - Orly? Or are the firms simply keeping the barriers to entry artificially high?
"Law firms digging deeper on campus"
If anything, there is an acute shortage of lawyers willing and able (financially) to do government and public interest work. Many of the new law schools founded in the last few decades try to address that (CUNY especially). But that kind of niche doesn't lead to Ivy-sized endowments when you start a new school from scratch.
A question--I have no idea, but I'd like to hear what you all think:
If a name university decides it absolutley MUST have a law school, what are the advantages/disadvantages of buying-out an indepenent law school?
I assume the prestige issue would prevent, say, Princeton from taking such a step. Amalgamating any independent law school with Princeton would raise that school's standing, of course. But Princeton could probably get a higher-ranker L school by starting from scratch. The "Princeton" label is so powerful.
But let's say Purdue were to absorb John Marshall in Chicago. (No inside dope here. Just the closest independent LS I can think of to Lafayette, Indiana.) They would get pre-fabricated facilities, faculty, name-recognition, alumni, etc.
On the other hand, the students might have lower LSAT numbers than Purdue would want. The faculty might not be as prestigious and productive as their counterparts in Engineering, Sciences, Letters, etc.
Is the trade-off worth it?
I find it interesting that some good universities have no law schools, but a lot of bad ones do.
Truer words were never spoken, brother! It just doesn't seem that the endowment ought to be the primary focus of a university.
This kind of brand differentiation strikes me as market forces at work. It does not strike me as irrationality or market failure.
At the three universities I know best -- Columbia, USC and Harvard -- each faculty operates on its own revenue stream, with no subsidies from any of the others. A portion of each school's budget goes to the central administration to pay for such items as the libraries, the gyms, central computing, etc. (and the administration itself), but each keeps the rest of its money. This is why, for example, Columbia's arts programs are cash-strapped while its law and business schools are relatively wealthy.
The only exception is that undergraduate programs often help subsidize graduate programs offered by the same faculty. Thus, tuition from USC's engineering undergrads probably helps fund the education of engineering grad students. Tuition from Harvard College undergrads likewise helps fund Harvard's graduate programs in the arts &sciences. Law schools don't have undergrads -- and even if they did, under this model the undergrads would be subsidizing the JD students rather than the other way around.
Perhaps other universities operate differently, but those which operate as I have described would not have much financial incentive to open a law school.
Another valuable trivia point learned at the VC. Thanks Sasha!
I guess I'm skeptical about whether there's any such need; is it possible that Princeton et al feel the same way? Maybe it's the Jurassic Park idea - just because you can doesn't mean you should. [Of course, I probably have my own biases - I worry that the job market I'll be entering in a couple of years is going to be competitive enough as it is.]
The original post said "big-name" not elite, and I think we qualify for that. We're not elitist here either!
john dickinson @ 8:00 brings up a very interesting idea about an alternative JD. Is there a place in the legal academy for an "executive JD" in the same fashion as executive MBA's? Law schools across the board right now are primarily set up to train students to pass the bar and become practicing lawyers. Even a student who wants to become a pure academic and pursue a JSD usually has to have a JD first. (Right?) I believe there are many professionals who could benefit from a serious study of law, especially as it applies to their industry, and who don't intend to practice. I also believe there may be students in MPA, MPP, and M.Phil. programs who want to study law as its own rigorous academic discipline. Both of these groups have a disincentive to go to law school under the current paradigm. Can a new or existing law school develop an alternative JD niche? I know Kaplan's Concord online law school and some other unaccredited schools already do this. Should they be brought into the mainstream?
Nobody has mentioned the story about how Woodrow Wilson wnet to Andrew Carnegie to ask for money to start a law school, and came back with funds for a rowing pond. Urban legend?
The initial post presumed that the returns to a law school are not captured by law school faculty and administration. Evidence?
Finally, despite not having a law school, Princeton has a surprising number of law professors, including the Provost.
Architecture and engineering strike me as both very academic subjects. I could easily see the argument that having graduate students in engineering hanging around campus helps the undergraduate program.
(looks at their architecture program's website) Wow, it sure ain't a professional program in webdesign!
I graduated from Princeton in '06, and agree with this assessment. I also agree with Dan's suggestion that the Architecture and Engineering programs are academic enough as to retain "academic purity." I also think those programs are run with a peculiarly Princetonian "academic" bent.
Interestingly, Princeton did have a law school briefly in the mid-19th century: wiki.
there's too many law school already, don't wish for me
I think this is an important reason. Sure, Princeton could get good faculty and after a while the reputation of its law school woould be fine. But it would take time, for lots of reasons. How long would it take, for example, for a Princeton graduate to be named to the Supreme Court?
Meanwhile, they spend a lot of money, and weaken the Princeton brand. Not a great idea.
He went to Princeton undergrad and Yale Law.
Although a good university, A&M is not a big name university academically.