Adjunct Law Prof Blog

Adjunct Law Faculty Conference

Kudos to Western State College of Law which organized the first Adjunct Law Professor teaching conference, details can be found by clicking  Download Law Teaching for Adjunct Faculty

The conference will be held on April 13, 2013 at Western State College of Law in California. Registration is $100.00 and CLE credit is available for an additional $150.00. While these fees are reasonable, I question how many adjuncts are actually going to attend. While this is a wonderful first step, law schools around the country, if they are interested in training their adjuncts (and sadly, most are not), should step up and fly their adjuncts out to this conference and yes, pay the registration fee and pay them for their time.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

So You Want To Be An Adjunct Professor

Best Colleges Online, a commercial site, recently published 25 facts about college adjunct professors, here. The most startling statistic is that adjuncts make up 73%, yest 73% of the instructional workforce in colleges today. I know it is high, but it is hard for me to believe that the number is that high. In any event, for those interested in adjuncting, you may want to take a look at this article.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

So, you want to become an adjunct law professor

To Teach or Not to Teach is an interesting August 1, 2012 article from the ABA Journal about becoming an adjunct law professor. It implies that the market for adjuncts is becoming even more competitive. The article also accurately describes the terrible pay that adjuncts make and that most adjuncts do not teach for the money. They teach for intangible benefits. As one of the commentators notes at the end of the article, some schools undoubtably abuse adjuncts. They use them instead of FT faculty, instead of being, an adjunct to the faculty.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein 

The Problem With Student Evaluations

Adjunct Professor Tim Edwards, University of Wisc. Law School sent in an excellent commentary on student evaluations which is applicable to full-time faculty. I could not agree more with the below statements. It is a bit long, but stay with it as it is well worth it:

____________________ 

Student Evaluations

Timothy Edwards

Axley Brynelson, LLP 

I write to share my thoughts about the use of student evaluations to evaluate instructor performance at my Law School.  I have taught here, as an adjunct, for over ten years.  During that time, I have taught Legal Writing, Advanced Legal Writing, Civil Procedure I, Civil Procedure II, Pre-Trial Advocacy and Professional Responsibility.  The purpose of this document is to inspire discussion, not to offend.  

As an adjunct, I am removed from the day to day discussions within the Law School, including those pertaining to student evaluations.  When I started, I was not provided with any training.  I received no feedback regarding my teaching from any of the Faculty Members at the Law School.  I often invited members of the faculty to sit in and evaluate my teaching, but it never happened.  From what I understand, this is common in most law schools that rely on adjuncts, both to teach and to keep institutional budgets in check. I am not suggesting that this approach is wrong, only that it has consequences.     

Absent such an evaluative process, the only feedback that I have received comes from student evaluations.  Most of the time my evaluations are quite good.  More recently (and for reasons that I will explain), my evaluations have suffered, due in some measure to my own actions.  Unfortunately, it appears that these evaluations are the only tool that the Law School relies on in measuring the performance of its adjunct lecturers.  To the extent another metric is being used, I have not been told about it, nor have I seen it in my classroom. 

My thesis, which is not wildly unique, is very simple:  Absent some corroborating tool to evaluate instructor performance, student evaluations are an inherently unreliable and misleading source of information for purposes of measuring the effectiveness of an instructor.  While student evaluations can provide objective information (i.e., whether the instructor is on time, intoxicated, treats the students appropriately or appears to be organized), law students are not equipped to objectively evaluate the value of their own learning experience, or the skills of the instructor, when they complete their evaluations.  Their evaluations should not be used for this purpose.  

From what I understand, one central objective for the Law School is for its instructors to teach the students how to analyze legal problems and prepare them to practice law.  I believe that this requires, among other things, instruction regarding analytical and practical skills that the students will actually use when they become lawyers.  This emphasis has been confirmed by recent studies, and consistent commentary, which criticizes the significant gap between theory and practice that pervades our law schools.  I have observed this gap, and its impact on young lawyers, who are often unprepared for the practice of law when they graduate.  Many students who graduate from the UW Law School do not even know how to cite a case or prepare a basic pleading (as I teach pre-trial advocacy, the blame for some of this should rest squarely on my shoulders).  We have seen this over and over at our Firm, to the point that some of my partners are reluctant to hire from law schools that do not have a comprehensive legal writing program.     

As an adjunct who litigates, full time, in his “real life,” one of my primary goals is to impart some practical knowledge/skills to my students.  Students need to understand that the law, as written, is often applied much differently.  Students need to understand (and acclimate to the fact) that the practice of law is demanding and, in many ways, unforgiving.  Problems do not have easy answers, and they don’t always have “right” answers.  Deadlines become critically important, as is timing.  Confusion is common, as clients, judges, senior partners and opposing counsel often make it difficult to solve problems involving competing interests and effectively represent a client.  This is a very difficult job with tough challenges that cannot always be resolved by reading a book or looking up a statute.  The students need to know what they are signing up for, and to the extent possible, they should be prepared to follow through.  Of course, this should be done at the appropriate time in their education.  

Some basic thoughts: 

• A law school student (especially in her first year) typically has a very narrow set of objectives.  Generally speaking, she wants to get a good grade.  She wants to know what will be on the test, or what I am looking for in a given writing assignment.  She wants to figure out the easiest possible way to get a good grade by doing well on that task, and she wants immediate, detailed feedback on any work she does because she is scared.  As a general matter, these students believe that grades are everything, and they are rarely interested in whether they are learning how to be a good lawyer unless it helps them get a better grade.  In the meantime, they resist confusion, perceived inconsistency or anything else that detracts them from the most efficient path to a good grade.  While this description is somewhat magnified it is, for the most part, accurate.  The pressure to perform well and secure a good grade defines their objectives in many critical ways. 

• As a law school instructor, my objectives are much different.  While I want everyone to succeed, I am less concerned about whether the students are confused or struggling to address a problem.  I tell them how litigation works.  We apply the rules to different situations and I often ask them questions that do not have an easy answer—questions that require the application of judgment, not just knowledge.  I require the students to meet deadlines, and I require them to rewrite assignments that are done poorly.  I don’t accept a lot of excuses and I expect a lot from them.  At the risk of being truly unpopular, I now ban laptops unless used for note-taking purposes.  In addition, I no longer buy them pizza.     

• I also focus on problem solving.  Setting aside the first few weeks, I do not “spoonfeed” information from the book or hold the students’ hands through every single issue in the reading material.  As a result of this, the students become frustrated, but their learning experience is much different.  It seems likely that my evaluations dropped because I am doing a better job of teaching and the students are, in fact, learning more.  In any case, the evaluations tell me nothing about whether I actually did my job. 

• In years past, I have often received very favorable evaluations.  In every single one of those situations, I tried to align my teaching style with the students perceived expectations and needs.  I “taught to the test” (or in legal writing, spoonfed what I expected on the writing assignment) and did everything I could to placate their needs and expectations (a “consumer” model, if you will).  In retrospect, I view this approach as ineffective, and I view the evaluations as somewhat useless because they appear to reflect the student’s comfort level more than anything else. 

• Last spring, I taught evidence.  Unfortunately, my work commitments distracted me from the class, and I was frequently absent.  The evaluations were low, and deservedly so.  The students complained about the absences and the resultant disorganization.  This is a perfect example of how student evaluations can be used, in limited instances, to identify objectively verifiable problems with instructor performance.  I deserved the criticism.    

This should not be a popularity contest.  Moreover, the Law School should not rely on student evaluations to determine whether the students are learning basic analytical and practical skills.  While students may have general, verifiable information to share, they are not presently qualified to assess our teaching skills, or for that matter, whether they actually learned anything in our classrooms.  I am not basing this conclusion on a fancy empirical assessment of student evaluations but, rather, common sense, years of teaching experience, and many years of reviewing inconsistent and misguided student evaluations that have done little to assist me as I search for new and more effective ways to teach. 

In addition to the fact that student evaluations cannot provide meaningful information regarding teaching skills or learning, they are also inherently unreliable.  Consider this by applying the Federal Rules of Evidence, which are designed, as a core value, to exclude unreliable information to prove a given assertion.  Setting aside the fact that evaluations may not be probative of teaching skills or learning, many are insulting, false and otherwise prejudicial.  More importantly, student evaluations constitute inadmissible hearsay whose unreliability is compounded by the fact that the out-of-court declarant is completely anonymous.  Finally, no court would ever consider such random aspersions from an unknown declarant as competent character evidence.  Understanding that this comparison is limited because the Law School is not a courtroom, the application of these rules does reinforce a basic point regarding the inherent unreliability of student evaluations.   They would never see the light of day in a courtroom.  

I am not pretending that I have all of the answers, and only write this short paper to make a simple point:  it is not fair or wise to judge adjuncts solely through student evaluations.  The Law School should put other measures in place (peer mentoring, etc.) and provide continued training to all of its adjuncts.  The Law School should not tolerate an environment where students can surf the internet in class (without reading the assigned material) and then anonymously criticize his instructor for not being “engaging” or “organized.”  To bridge the gap between theory and practice, students should be appropriately confronted with the realities of the practice of law, not placated when they are properly challenged.  While this may lead to lower evaluations, it will certainly lead to better lawyers.  

* * * * *

 

 

Novel About Adjunct Abuse

Psychology Today, of all places, published a review of Fight for Your Long Day, which won the 2011 Independent Publisher's Gold Medal for Best Fiction from the Mid-Atlantic Region by Alex Kudera, available here. It is a $14.34 paperback day-in-the-life satire that follows the eventful misadventures of a college adjunct instructor who teaches at four urban universities. 

Though I recognize that this is satire and it is a novel, it appears to highlight how badly adjuncts are treated by universities. It is no secret that we are grossly underpaid, have no benefits and many work at more than one institution. It is also no secret that most law schools would not be able to operate without us because we are the only ones that have any useful experience.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Hat Tip: Professor Rick Bales Workplace Prof Blog

Adjunct Professor Found To Be Employee

This should not be a surprise to labor scholars, lawyers as well as to readers to this blog. In Schramm v. Commissioner, No. 8938-09 (T.C. Aug. 30, 2011), a professor who taught an Internet-based course for a university attempted to claim deductions on Schedule C as an independent contractor. The Tax Court rejected his argument and applied the common law right to control test which examined the following factors:

1. the degree of control exercised by the principal;
2. which party invested in the work facilities used by the worker;
3. the opportunity of the individual for profit or loss;
4. whether the principal can discharge the individual;
5. whether the work is part of the principal’s regular business;
6. the permanency of the relationship;
7. the relationship the parties believed they were creating; and
8. the provision of employee benefits.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

A Law School Law Firm??? Yeah Right!!!

What if law schools opened their own law firms? is an interesting August 17, 2011 National Law Journal article. It reports on a law review article where two professors speculate about   law firms operated by law schools. The article also argues that traditional law school should be two in class years with the third year spend operating as a student attorney for this law school law firm.

What I find most significant is that the professors recognize that this law school law firm would have to be staffed by attorneys-not by the professors. The major problem with law school professors today is that many, if not most of them, are simply incapable of practicing law and many never had. But, this is what we have, for the most part, training the lawyers of the future.

Now, I suppose that the law schools will respond by stating that is what us adjuncts are for. Really; law schools should rely on the lowest paid members of the staff who have no say about admissions or curriculum or running the school. But, that is exactly what most law schools today do. 

What a system. I hope it changes, but I do not see any evidence of that in that virtually every law school is looking for the newly minted ivy P.hd. who also has a ivy law degree and may have done a federal clerkship for a year or two. 

Mitchell H. Rubinstein 

 

More On Abuse of Adjuncts

Hello Adjunct, Meet Prof Cozy is a July 22, 2011 Wall Street Journal Online article which is actually a book review of The Faculty Lounges By Naomi Schaefer Riley. The review summarizes what we have been highlighting for some time. Adjuncts are grossly underpaid to the point of being abused at many universities. Some colleges employ 70% of their faculty as adjuncts. As the article states:

To free up tenured professors for research, she observes, much of the teaching at universities is delegated to graduate assistants and "adjunct" faculty who are ill paid and ill treated. An adjunct instructor teaching six courses may earn less than $20,000 a year; an adjunct teaching only three credits short of a full-time position may have to pay more than 20% of his salary to join the university's least expensive health-care program. One administrator noted that "Wal-Mart is a more honest employer of part-time employees than are most colleges and universities" and admitted that adjunct teachers are a "highly educated working poor." Meanwhile, tenured professors at many universities, often with shockingly light teaching loads, enjoy six-figure salaries, summers of freedom and sabbatical years that are, again, unduplicated in the rest of the economy.

Hat Tip: Neil Dudich, Esq.

 

Survey For Adjunct Profs

 Professor Greg Duhl was just named Director of Adjunct Faculty at the William Mitchell College of Law. He has asked me to ask my fellow adjuncts what kind of support, training, and recongition they would like to receive from their law schools. Please post your thoughts in the comment section of this blog. Post only once as posts have to be approved before they are published. I will start:

___________________

I have been an adjunct for seven years at two major law schools. My biggest complaint (aside from the terrible pay) is that I do not feel that I am part of the faculty. I teach at night and am an outsider. It would be nice to be included on faculty emails and correspondence and to solicit my input on issues. Though it would be difficult to attend faculty and scholarship meetings, it would be nice to be invited. 

One school is better then the other where I teach. Seminars were held on grading students, on teaching skills and publishing in law reviews. Those seminars were all very helpful and should be held more often. It would also be nice to formally meet once in a while with the faculty that teach in your discipline and find out what topics are covered to avoid overlap. 

 

 

 

 

Adjuncting Benefits

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story on September 30, 2010 called the Ultimate Power Hobby. It is basically about why adjuncts, well adjunct. Interestingly, the article focuses on a New York atty who teaches one night a week at the Univ. of Penn. Law School.  The article describes adjuncting is part as follows:

Generally, adjuncts fall into one of two classes: The so-called professional or practitioner adjunct brings the experience of a successful career and isn't in it for the money. Academic adjuncts, many of whom have doctorates, teach in hopes of landing a tenure-track job, and for most of them the salary and lack of benefits are a hardship. Reliance on adjuncts is increasing. In 2007, part-time teachers made up 50% of faculty at degree-granting institutions, according to the association of professors, up from 41% in 1995.

A university has much to gain from well-chosen professional adjuncts, including cachet and credibility. And adjuncts also form a potential donor pool. Like many schools, the University of Michigan Law School has a number of donors on its adjunct faculty roster, says Todd Baily, the law school's assistant dean for development and alumni relations. The development office may pass a donor's resume to the dean and faculty members who vet applicants, or fund-raisers may approach professional adjuncts about donations. Adjuncts "get to know an institution from a different perspective and are invested in it," says Mr. Baily. "It's one resource for us, but it's not our primary resource."

Individuals interested in adjuncting may find this article of particular interest.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Important Law Review Article On the Current State of The Legal Academy And The Lack of Emphasis on Training Lawyers

Preaching What They Don't Practice: Why Law Faculties' Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy is an interesting law review article by Adjunct Professor Brent Newton (Georgetown Law School). This appears to be a must read for anyone interested in the legal academy. The abstract provides:

In response to decades of complaints that American law schools have failed to prepare students to practice law, several prominent and respected authorities on legal education, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, recently have proposed significant curricular and pedagogical changes in order to bring American legal education into the twenty-first century. It will not be possible to implement such proposed curricular and pedagogical reforms if law schools continue their trend of primarily hiring and promoting tenure-track faculty members whose primary mission is to produce theoretical, increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship for law reviews rather than prepare students to practice law. Such impractical scholars, because they have little or no experience in the legal profession and further because they have been hired primarily to write law review articles rather than primarily to teach, lack the skill set necessary to teach students how to become competent, ethical practitioners. The recent economic recession, which did not spare the legal profession, has made the complaints about American law schools’ failure to prepare law students to enter the legal profession even more compelling; law firms no longer can afford to hire entry-level attorneys who lack the basic skills required to practice law effectively. This essay proposes significant changes in both faculty composition and law reviews aimed at enabling law schools to achieve the worthy goals of reformists such as the Carnegie Foundation.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Interesting Blog On Technology Issues

On Technology Law is an interesting blog by Texas Attorney D.C. Toedt who practices intellectual property  and  is Adjunct Law Professor at Univ. Houston Law School. The blog addresses much more than technology issues. It contains notes and "cheat sheets" which summarize different areas of the law such as arbitration and choice of law. It is worth book marking and checking out. 

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Why Adjunct? or Why Teach?

Steve Blank recently wrote on his blog an interesting posting about why someone with something to say should consider teaching. It is called You Cannot Take It With You. As the posting states: 

 Lessons Learned

• If you don’t teach it or write it down, the accumulated knowledge of your career is gone.
• War stories about your career can be entertainment, or even better if you want to teach, make them the basis of a strategy and methodology worth passing on.
• Retirement doesn’t have to be only about golf and skiing.

Hat Tip: D. C. Toedt III

On Technology Law Blog 

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

NY Times Article On Being An Adjunct

The Jan. 30, 2010 ran an interesting article entitled Back To School, As An Adjunct. It is geared towards college teaching. It does not contain any information that we have not covered before. The pay is low, but the work is rewarding. For those interested in becoming an adjunct, the article is worth a read.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

NYT: The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor

The New York Times published Samantha Stainburn's "The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor" last week.  Stainburn reports that "[i]n 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are."  The short article highlights both the good (some adjuncts are highly accomplished - President Barack Obama was an adjunct professor of law (lecturer, actually, which is about the same thing) at The University of Chicago Law School) and the bad (some adjuncts are hired at the last minute and do not necessarily have experience with the course subject) sides associated with increased reliance on adjunct professors.

Craig Estlinbaum

So You Want To Be An Adjunct

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a Special Report entitled "The State of Adjunct Professoriate". While directed at college adjuncts, much of it could be directed at law schools as well. Basically, adjuncts routinely are paid terribly and do not do it for the money. Rather, they adjunct out of a love for teaching. Some of the articles in this series include:

You're an Adjunct? Why?

By Audrey Williams June

Adjuncts don't make much money, but for many, the time spent with students makes it all worthwhile. The Chronicle went to Chicago to give you a glance inside the minds of adjunct professors.

• At a 2-Year College, Adjuncts Feel Left Out
• Full-Timers Shoulder Burdens, Too
  
• Chronicle Survey: A Rare Look Into Adjuncts' Work Lives

Frankly, with respect to lawyers who adjunct, some have a different motivation. Quite simply adjuncting looks good and some lawyers may use their position as a way to obtain clients.

As for me, I adjunct for several reasons. I like it. I get a chance to do good, make some pocket change and see what it is like to be real prof.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Adventures of An Adjunct

The AFL-CIO ran an interesting posting about an adjunct at U. Mass., available here. The point of the story is that the Adjunct loved his job, but was underpaid and that about 70% of colleges classes are taught by adjuncts. As the article states:

The pay came in handy, but if I figured it out by the hour, I was making half what a bench-hand makes in the factory where I work. And for me it was a side-job. Most adjuncts are professors who can’t get full-time work and hustle from school to school, without health care benefits or pensions. I have no idea how they make it. About 70 percent of college instruction today is by adjuncts. Just another cheap labor pool in today’s America. 

I read the final papers and took a deep breath. Somebody had been listening. The student evaluations (written by those who were still showing up) were positive. Nearly half of the students used the word “passionate” to describe my teaching, so they got that part. An accounting major—who understood mainstream economics better than I did—told me he got more out of my class than anything that semester. 

One student started volunteering for Jobs with Justice and planned to switch his major to labor studies. The department was happy with my work. 

Honestly, by May I was just relieved that it was over.

Mitchell H.  Rubinstein

 

Adjunct Professor Spitzer

Disgraced former Governor Elliot Spitzer starts a new job on Tuesday. He will be an adjunct professor of Political Science at CUNY. Lower Hudson carried the story here.

I wonder if he applied to be a law professor. I'm guessing that he did, but no law school would hire him.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Rubinstein Quoted In Las Vegas Sun

One of the advantages of editing a blog is that you get to engage in self-promotion. The Las Vegas Sun recently interviewed me and included me my comments along side one of the giants in labor law, Bill Gould who is a prof at Stanford Law School and who served as Chair of the NLRB during the Clinton Administration. I was quoted as saying that the FLSA applies to undocumented Aliens even after the Hoffman Plastics Supreme Court decision. A copy of the article can be downloaded here. Download LasVegasSun

Mitchell H. Rubinstein

Adjunct Professor Abuse

Will Teach For Tenure is an excellent June 25, 2009 article by Kevin Clarke who writes for U.S. Catholic.
It outlines how grossly underpaid adjuncts are at colleges-particularly at several Catholic universities which the article focuses on. As the article points out, in 1975 30% of profs were adjuncts. Today that number is between 50 and 70%. Why? Because adjuncts get no benefits, have no tenure and receive embarrassingly low wages.    
One might ask why is that? My answer is because the universities can get away with it. Many adjuncts teach because they like it and it is good for business. Additionally, having the word "Prof." next to you might bring you clients in your day job.
I do not believe that anyone seriously believes that having so few full timers is good for the students. Isn't it suppose to be about the students? So what is the solution?? It is time that more and more faculty seriously think about joining unions. In the private sector, there are issues with full timers unionizing because they may, repeat MAY, be considered managerial employees. However, most adjuncts are not managerial employees and there is no such restriction at public universities.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein