During the "lean" years, will legal scholarship become more practice oriented?

Professor Orin Kerr (George Washington) opines in this post at the Volokh Conspiracy (courtesy of the Washington Post) that lean economic times for law schools may mean that for some, legal scholarship will play a diminishing role.  Less tuition revenue means less money for summer research stipends as well as less money to recruit top scholars in an effort to influence the USNWR rankings.  Professor Kerr also speculates that there may be a slight shift in the focus of scholarship being produced at some schools away from the esoteric and towards practical subjects that have relevance to the bench and bar.  As he explains:

Legal scholarship in the lean years.

. . . . .

I would guess that the new [economic] environment also will have at least some impact on the substance of legal scholarship. My thoughts are tentative, but here’s a prediction: The lean years will create pressures for scholarship to have more relevance to the bench and bar. The impact will be modest on the whole, as most professors are unlikely to change the basic tenor of their research in light of outside influences. The impact will be felt at some schools more than others. Still, I think the lean years will push legal scholarship as a whole to engage more with the kinds of issues that judges and lawyers see.

 

I think that’s true for reasons similar to those in point No. 1 above [i.e. scholarship could play a diminishing role in the legal academy, at least at some schools, as the money dries up]. During the boom years, the search for new scholarly ideas often encouraged work outside law that seemed foreign to judges and practicing lawyers. Leaner times likely mean more focus on the core mission of training lawyers. And more focus on the core mission likely means more scholarly connection to the legal profession and more scholarship that is more relevant to what judges and lawyers do. Or at least that’s my tentative guess.

Continue reading here.

(jbl).