the rutgers law "merger": lots of form, not much substance

I believe it was Fred Rodell who said there were only two problems with most law reviews: style and content.   I think a lot about that remark when contemplating the proposed merger of the Camden and Newark Law Schools into one "R-Law" brand.   The proposal is high on form, but low on content, and the style is--well, read on.

The merger was originally prompted by a desire to fend off a proposed takeover of the Camden law school by Rowan University, which was perceived as less prestigious than Rutgers.   An unstated goal is to distract attention from the relatively poor performance of both, but especially the Camden, law schools since the Rowan proposal was blocked.   In the most recent US News survey, the Camden law school ranked 81and Newark 83; since Camden has since been forced to accept more (read weaker) students by the central administration, there is a good chance it will fall out of the top 100 in the next survey.    It is important to remember that these are relative numbers, so the excuse of the national law school crisis doesn't really apply.

What else has Camden done since the Rowan fiasco?   So far as I can tell three main things.   First, it hired about a half dozen new faculty, all or nearly all women and heavily concentrated in the areas of law and philosophy, on the one hand, and what might be called progressive social change--primarily race and gender studies--on the other.   This is at the same time that at least two practice-oriented faculty have retired and the salaries and research budgets of remaining professors have been frozen or reduced.   To remedy the deficit in business subjects, the law school administration proposed to hire a Canadian legal philosopher with a side interest in business transactions and little if any practice experience.

Second the Camden campus--the one whose largest unit (the law school) is supposed to be merging with Newark--has decided to spend an extraordinary and unprecedented sum on administrative expenses.   There is currently a campus-wide "chancellor" (salary in the $400,000 range); provost ($300,000); and there will soon be a highly compensated campus research director, for aggregate salaries of about $1 million on a campus that one can literally throw a stone across in a good wind.    This is, in fairness, a university-wide problem, which the faculty union is bitterly protesting and may need to a campus-wide strike next year.

Finally, the law school has actually reduced the budget for adjunct faculty, who are the most cost effective and the most likely to have contacts that can help students get jobs.

Oh, did I mention that the law school emphasizes two-year employment statistics and brags of its placement of students in judicial clerkships?   The vast majority of these clerkships are with local New Jersey courts and there is little if any evidence that they lead to permanent jobs.

Not surprisingly for a school that emphasizes race, gender and philosophy and has a history of misleading employment statistics, the Camden law school has had trouble attracting students.   Hence the merger, which it is hoped will improve its marketing or (at very least) distract attention by rolling the law school's statistics into the larger university.  

The problem is that the merger, as almost anyone can say, has little if any substance.  As best as I can tell, it consists largely of an administrative reshuffling together with the addition of one small distance learning classroom, with a capacity of perhaps 30-add students, and for which there will be a waiting list to be filled.   Even if this room were in nonstop use, that would leave something like 90-95 percent of the students in each law school having essentially no contact with the other school at any time in the day.   Camden and Newark are 100 miles apart, and (so far as I know) there has been no effort even to introduce the two faculties to each other, although one if apparently planned later this year.

Nor will the merger do much to promote diversity, which the administration likes to talk about but does relatively little to accomplish.   Camden has a reputation as a largely white law school, with Newark somewhat more open-minded: in the last three years I don't think I've had more than a handful of minority students.   With the two school rolled into one, there will be little if any incentive to change that.

The Rutgers merger is a good example of how form frequently trumps substance, especially when the industry in question (here law schools) is in a crisis mode.   Will they get away with it?  For a time, perhaps.    But the facts have a way of catching up with you.   Instead of dealing honestly and forthrightly with a crisis--one largely, although not exclusively, of its own making--Rutgers is attempting to pull a fast one.    I think that, deep down, the participants themselves realize this.    Do they really think nobody else will notice?