Perschbacher`s Remarks - UC Davis School of Law

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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. ·

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. ·

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. ·

[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. ·

[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.