Juris prudence | Husson College's ongoing bid for a rural Maine law school could be just what the courts ordered, or a misguided attempt to fix what isn't broken
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Husson College President Bill Beardsley supports a second Maine law school
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Peter Pitegoff, dean at the University of Maine School of Law, does not believe Maine needs a second law school
For the past several years, Husson College in Bangor had planned to open a small law program to serve residents in northern and eastern Maine who could not commute to Portland’s law school. But those plans were set back in June when Maine’s highest court said Husson’s graduates wouldn’t be allowed to sit for the Maine bar exam. Husson needed the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s nod because it had decided to bypass American Bar Association accreditation, which automatically allows graduates to take the Maine bar.
Following the rejection, Husson College regrouped. Now, President Bill Beardsley tells Mainebiz, “Our goal is to file a new application.” A prepared statement from Beardsley clarifies his intentions: “Husson remains very interested in a law school in response to serious interest expressed by place-bound northern Mainers. Husson is carefully reviewing the recent Maine court law decision to see if it can address issues raised by the court in a satisfactory manner in its goal to file a new application.”
Ask Beardsley whether Maine needs a second law school and you’ll hear a predictably decisive, “Yes.” But does the state really need another law program when it already has the University of Maine’s law schoolâ&Copy;
Opinions in legal circles are mixed. Even those who agree with Beardsley that Maine needs more rural attorneys disagree on whether a second law school is the best way to create them. Whatever the debate, it’s clear there are relatively few attorneys in rural Maine — for example, in 2007 there were just nine registered attorneys in Piscataquis County and 77 in the whole of Aroostook, versus 1,789 in Cumberland County — and this means some rural courts struggle to hire defense attorneys. When there are only a few available, it gets harder to appoint attorneys to indigent cases, even if they are willing, because they might already be booked or have a conflict of interest. Some lawyers, too, might be reluctant to accept court fees of only $50 per hour.
But another law school might not be able to solve a basic economic reality: Maine’s hinterlands may not have the client base to support a robust population of private-practice attorneys.
“If you had a larger number of attorneys in smaller communities, it would be beneficial as far as making court appointments,” says Ted Glessner, the state court administrator. He adds, though, “I don’t know whether the issue is another law school, because people can go to law school anywhere and decide where they’re going to practice. The issue is whether there is enough work, enough money, in some areas.”
Legal limbo
When the Supreme Judicial Court denied Husson College’s bid to open a law school, the court wrote in its opinion, “The benefits associated with having a law school serving central and northern Maine have not been challenged in this proceeding. Having more well-trained and educated lawyers in all parts of the state could improve access to justice for all.”
Beardsley says the college was responding to an unmet need expressed by some Mainers who said they would become lawyers, if they could. Many living in Maine’s northern and eastern reaches cannot afford to commute to law school or leave their jobs and become full-time students, which Portland’s intensive three-year program demands.
The presumption is that many graduates of Husson’s law school would stay in the state, keeping with trends at the University of Maine School of Law, where two-thirds of graduates stay in Maine. Beardsley believes Husson grads would settle in rural Maine, relieving the shortage of court-appointed attorneys, improving access to legal representation and filling jobs left by Maine’s retiring lawyers. “We’ve estimated that, in four of Maine’s rural counties [Waldo, Hancock, Washington and Aroostook], less than 20% of practicing attorneys are under the age of 50,” Beardsley says.
The court justices, however, said they were reluctant to endorse the proposed law program because it lacked a track record they could use to assess its quality. They also asked for a source of accreditation that would be an appropriate alternative to the endorsement from the American Bar Association the school didn’t apply for, and were concerned that the school intended to hire faculty with limited experience in law pedagogy and offer a library that would rely on electronic resources.
As the college re-examines its law school plan, Beardsley says Husson is looking at whether it can afford to follow the court’s advice. He says it will be difficult to hire experienced faculty without passing on those costs to its students. Beardsley wanted to keep the law school’s tuition relatively low — $12,000 was proposed a year ago — by avoiding expensive ABA-accreditation requirements, such as being located in a certain-sized facility or buying more legal volumes for its library. (The University of Maine School of Law, on the other hand, charges $18,360 per year for in-state students.)
Beardsley insists Husson College never wanted to compete with Maine’s existing law school. “The market is saturated,” he acknowledges. “There are too many law schools producing too many lawyers. But they don’t move north.” Since 1974, the number of ABA-accredited law schools in the United States has increased from 157 to 200. Instead, Husson would stay small, with 20 to 30 students matriculating each year, in order to be the right size for Maine’s rural markets, he says.
Maine’s legal associations were pretty evenly split in their support of or opposition to Husson College’s plan. Some of those in favor were the four district attorneys serving Piscataquis, Penobscot, Aroostook, Hancock, Washington, Kennebec and Somerset Counties and the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Those opposed included the Maine State Bar Association, the Maine Trial Lawyers Association and the Maine Board of Bar Examiners.
“To the extent that a campus in northern Maine, or a different law school, creates more lawyers who will do indigent defense, that is probably not a bad thing,” says Peter Rodway, president of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Currently, Maine has, out of a total of 3,599 active resident lawyers, about 344 who are willing to take on court-appointed criminal defense cases, according to MACDL. And about 70 of those lawyers do 80% of the work, the organization estimates.
If Husson had launched a law school, District Attorney Michael Povich says he would have formed an internship program with the school that might have helped with his office’s staffing needs in Washington and Hancock counties. And fellow Aroostook District Attorney Neale Adams says, “I know that [a second law school] would supply more attorneys. Obviously it would be focused regionally, and individuals from the area would go to it and return to the area. Aroostook finds that their native population tends to be leaving, but if anyone stays, it’s someone from here.”
But others argue a second law school would be superfluous. “Maine should focus on having a quality law school,” says Deborah Meier Carr, an attorney in Greenville. “I think Maine should focus on putting University of Maine in the top 100.” Currently, U.S. News and World Report ranks the school in the third tier of four out of 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the United States.
Plus, despite the mere five or so working attorneys Carr can count in her remote county, she doesn’t see a pressing need for more lawyers. “I can’t see too many lawyers being in the area and being able to support a practice because it’s a poor area. In fact, when I opened my practice [in 2005], people were nervous that another lawyer was moving in because they didn’t think there was enough business,” she says.
A second law school?
Maine’s single law school, the University of Maine School of Law, opened in 1961. Today it graduates about 85 students a year, the majority of whom remain in Maine. According to school estimates, 51% of the 2007 graduating class took jobs in a private firm, 12% went to work for the government, 10% are working in public-interest settings, 13% are judicial clerks, and the balance are teaching or are in business, according to Derek Van Volkenburgh, the school’s director of career services.
As for whether Maine needs another law school, the opinion of University of Maine School of Law Dean Peter Pitegoff is clear, despite the school’s official neutral position on Husson’s program. “I don’t think Maine needs a second law school,” he says. “We are the law school of the entire state, and we do try very, very hard to draw students from around the state and to see that a lot our students remain in Maine. Fifteen percent of our incoming class is from Bangor or North.”
Pitegoff admits, though, that more lawyers are needed for work in rural courts, district attorney offices and indigent services, and that UMaine is exploring ways to entice more graduates to rural areas. The incentives already in place are modest, such as a fund of less than $10,000 to help a handful of students pay their student loans for one year if they choose public-service employment.
Whatever Maine’s rural lawyer saturation is now — too few or just right, depending on whom you ask — some worry the state could soon run into a serious problem. Paul Sighinolfi, president of the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar, seconds Beardsley’s point when he says a “substantial number” of Maine’s lawyers are 50 and over, roughly 54%. “In 10 to 15 years, we might have an acute shortage,” he worries. But he is not sure a second law school is the answer. Instead, he says rural areas need to attract lawyers with opportunities that generate enough pay to compensate for a typical student’s debt load, which these days can easily soar over $100,000.
That might be tough. Typical clients in a rural law office ask for help writing a will, forming an LLC or solving a minor legal dilemma. Many of them will “not have the financial resources to pay compared to corporate clients,” Sighinolfi says.
Sarah LeClair, a lawyer in Presque Isle, is living the rural life Sighinolfi describes. “In our practice, we make money, but we also have to answer a lot of questions for people on a daily basis that we don’t get paid for,” she says. “Yesterday I got a call from someone who said there was someone trying to throw her out of her mobile home — some other guy — a bizarre situation. You’re dealing with a lot of everyday-type problems that are caused by people living on the edge.”
Rebecca Goldfine, Mainebiz staff writer, can be reached at rgoldfine@mainebiz.biz.
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