Law school faculty numbers shrink 11 percent since 2010; which schools shed the most full-timers?
Corrected: The number of full-time faculty members at law schools has shrunk by 965 people over a four-year period, a loss of nearly 11 percent, according to a new analysis.
Writing at the Law School Tuition Bubble, lawyer Matt Leichter found that law schools shed 1,308 full-time faculty members and gained 343 others during the four-year period ending in the fall of 2014, for a net loss of 965 people. TaxProf Blog noted Leichter’s findings.
It’s possible, Leichter cautions, that some law schools are buying out some full-time instructors and rehiring them as part-timers.
The law school that shed the most full-time faculty members was Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, down 52 faculty members since 2010. The school is closing its Ann Arbor campus at the end of this year. Cooley currently has 49 faculty members, compared to 101 faculty members in 2010.
Next on the list are George Washington, which has 34 fewer full-time faculty members in four years; Florida Coastal, which lost 33; Vermont, which lost 29; and Pacific McGeorge, which lost 27.
Two law schools now have only eight full-time instructors. They are La Verne and Appalachian, whose faculties shrunk by 50 percent or more since 2010.
Corrected at 6:10 p.m. on Dec. 23 to change cumulative total and to remove reference to Chapman, which made an error in data submitted to the ABA used by Leichter in his analysis. Leichter has changed his blog post to reflect the corrected information.
