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Thank you to Regents Chairman Parsky, Provost and Senior Vice President Academic Affairs Hume, Chair, Educational Policy Committee, Marcus; and to Dean
Edley and Senior Associate Dean Parker (David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA).
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Let me begin by outlining the many points of agreement I have with Dean Edley,
before explaining my somewhat different vision of public legal education in
California.
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With the removal of most state funding (outside of tenure-track faculty
salaries and benefits) in the last five years and the substitution of
professional student fee funding, all UC law schools have become dependent
on this source of funding for staff salary and benefit increases and
inflationary cost increases generally – these are mandated by the Office of the
President and the California Legislature or imposed from without. Currently,
there is no exit from this spiral which requires professional fee increases at
7-10% annually just to keep even.
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Without stable and guaranteed fee increases of 10% or more, none of the UC
law schools can implement – except at unacceptable risk – any costly new
programs, faculty increases, financial aid increases, or other valuable
initiatives (including LRAP, enhancement of our legal writing program,
library acquisitions relief).
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Different campuses and professional schools on those campuses need
flexibility to set fees to reflect their differing goals and market positions.
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Now let me suggest that the policy pursued over the past five years (by the Office of
the President and Regents) risks – if continued – changing forever the public nature
of the University of California Law Schools, and why I see that as a tragic loss and
waste of a great investment by the people of California.
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Look just for a moment at the Berkeley Law School. It is 125 years old (or nearly
100 depending on how you count). Its great graduates include Earl Warren, Roger
Traynor, Pete Wilson, Cruz Reynoso, Edwin Meese, Thelton Henderson, and many,
many other judges public servants and private attorneys. Can we say with any
certainty that these great benefactors of California and the United States would have
attended had the cost of their education been the equivalent of what they are today?
Can you or Dean Edley really guarantee that erecting this wall of fees around our
law schools, but promising that there will be ropes and help once you surmount
those walls does not discourage the next generation of Californians considering law
as a profession?
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[first slide] More to the point, consider my current Law School, UC Davis, King Hall.
We are not nearly so old – our first class graduated in 1969, less than 40 years ago.
King Hall is particularly proud of its contribution to the public service and public
interest communities of California. We proudly list among our earliest graduates
former and current legislators and other public leaders Art Torres, Elihu Harris,
Congressman George Miller, and current or recent California legislators Darrell
Steinberg, Dario Frommer, Charles Calderon, and Pedro Nava, civil rights leader
Angela Oh, the 2006 President of the Bar Association of San Francisco, Joan
Haratani, and noted author Gus Lee. Our graduates lead Legal Services offices up
and down this state. The Chief Executive Officer of the State Bar of California (Judy
Johnson); the California Legislative Counsel (Diane Boyer Vine); and the outgoing
Executive Secretary of the California Law Revision Commission (Nat Sterling) are all
UC Davis law graduates. Indeed, the largest single employer of our graduates is the
California Attorney General’s office. All of these individuals attended UC Davis in
days when it was truly a public law school, available to all California residents who
showed the ability to qualify to attend our school. To this day, one-half of all
entering law students attended one of the campuses of the University of California
before law school.
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[second slide] This promise of a first-rate legal education based on ability, provided
by the people of the state of California with an implicit agreement that our
graduates who recognized they owed a return to the people of the state of California
was embodied in the low-fee policy that truly welcomed applicants with and
without the means to attend private law schools here in California or elsewhere. It
was a legal education open to every generation of Californians, including its newest
residents, first generation Californians. Indeed, fully one-half of the law students at
UC Davis come from one of the campuses of the University of California.
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This compact between the people of the state and those who seek the doors of
opportunity in its law schools is now strained at best and perhaps broken forever.
[third slide] Financial aid packages and LRAP programs, as valuable and as
necessary as they are, come after applicants and students face fees of $25,000/year
and rising, fees that overwhelmingly – whatever Dean Edley, and Dean Schill, and I
do – must be financed through debt. This is an enormous barrier to the newest,
neediest, and most generously-spirited California undergraduates dreaming of a
legal career.
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[fourth slide] Even the financial aid funding being proposed as a part of any fee
increases may not be as significant as the 33% return to aid benchmark suggests.
The actual financial aid return on law school professional fees of $14,637 at UC
Davis this year (2006-2007) is only 24% or $3,499 per student because several of
the increases over the past five years carried returns to aid of 0% and 25%, not the
full 33%. This is only 14% of the $24,500 overall law student fee charge at UC Davis
this year, a charge that includes the registration fee, education fee and other
University and campus fees. The UC Davis Law School does, however, benefit from
aid funds available to the campus from the education fee, and generously provided
by the campus leadership.
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[fifth slide] In this environment (burden sharing), the only alternatives are a return
to OP (state), and campus reinvestment in our law schools to avoid additional fee
increases, and the enhancement of private giving to support new programs and
enhanced financial aid and LRAP programs. Realistically, we cannot expect a return
to more fully state-supported legal education, but you could help stop the further
privatization of law school funding. Given the financing environment at the
University of California, and in particular at UC Davis, there is every reason to be
discouraged. Our financial foundation has been undermined; fees are rising at odds
with our mission; we have fewer endowment resources than either Berkeley or
UCLA (less the 1/5 of Berkeley’s and less than ½ of UCLA’s). Nevertheless, we are
not discouraged, and we will continue to advance our efforts to build a great law
school, a truly public law school, a place of personal promise for all our students,
one that welcomes everyone based on their intelligence and ability, and that carries
out its mission of teaching, scholarship and service to the community, the state, the
nation and the world.