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But law professors at other universities are skeptical. Ohio State University law professor Deborah Jones Merritt says she supports the sentiment, but questions the notion that, by some alchemy, a smaller graduating class will cause jobs to materialize: Wu can cut, but he can't cut enough. Associate Dean James Robb of Cooley Law School, at Western Michigan University, told news outlets he wouldn't try the same tack. Sudden class-size cuts disproportionately hurt students from disadvantaged backgrounds, he says, because they raise the entry barrier.
In truth, Wu wasn't the first dean to try a radical class-reduction gambit. But he was the first to brag about it to mainstream newspapers, establishing Hastings as a barometer for the desperate state of law schools in general, and himself as the innovation-minded folk hero who would save them.
"So in addition to being lazy, I'm totally ineffective," the dean says, rounding the corner at Haight Street and Stanyan Street. "Do you know why I'm totally ineffective? I did something which at the time was thought of as crazy" — he beams — "[even though] three years later, three-quarters of law schools have followed us." (Wu is, indeed, largely credited with inspiring them.)
"Except not all of them have: Law schools continue to open," he continues.
"That," the dean says, pausing dramatically, "is craziness."
Wu is convinced that the best thing he can do for students is have fewer of them. But he can't achieve that goal unless his peers cooperate. As more law schools open, more people are pursuing degrees that wind up being worthless.
It seems that every Hastings alum, professor, or administrator has a friend or former student with a hard-luck story. There's the woman who had to take an unpaid internship and move in with family, and there's her boyfriend, who still can't find a job. There's the sterling student who had a summer job with a firm that then collapsed, who then got offered a similar job with another firm, which also imploded. There are part-time lawyers who cobble together the rest of their income with odd jobs, such as nannying or driving for Lyft. There are the students whose best bet is to move far away — the Alaska Supreme Court has excellent clerkships, as does the energy law sector in Montana. And there are those, like 2012 grad Morgan Muir, who get frustrated and decide to go it alone.
"I was looking for jobs," Muir recalls, "and I kept having friends, and friends of friends, say 'Oh, you're a lawyer? Could you help me with this?' And I kept turning them down. Then I realized it was more practical to just take the work."
Now Muir runs her own general practice law firm from an office in the 580 California building. She's still hoping a larger firm will eventually pick her up.
Nnena Ukuku, a Mercer University law school grad who started her own practice advising tech startups in 2010 after moving to San Francisco from Georgia, says she's one of only a handful of young lawyers who've managed to successfully go it alone. She later became a senior fellow at Hastings' Startup Legal Garage.
"I feel like some of my peers were more deer-in-the-headlights," she says, recounting stories of friends who were offered jobs during the Great Recession, only to be laid off after three months. "I only know a handful of people who graduated and started their own practices," Ukuku continues. "A lot of people just had a meltdown."
Ironically, the need for legal services — in San Francisco and throughout California — has ballooned over the last few years, even as the number of jobs has decreased. Thousands of people are having to represent themselves in eviction, divorce, and debt cases, and a spate of budget cuts has left the courts with fewer clerks to help them navigate the legal system.
"The courts have been kneecapped, budget-wise," Hastings professor Cohen explains, "and public defender offices that have always been understaffed are even more so, now."
Hastings, which has a long tradition of public service, used to pipe students right into those family law, landlord-tenant, and public defender positions. But now the students who want them have to compete with peers from Ivy League schools.
The thought makes Cohen shudder. "Somehow," she says, "Hastings has always had a hungrier population. They were happy to get in, a lot of them were the first in their families to go to law school, and they wanted to give back," she says. "But now, those jobs have gotten so hard to get."
Of late, Dean Wu has grown fixated on "the nudge," a concept popularized by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell.
"Do you know about this?" he asks, slipping into lecture mode as he glides along Fulton Street. "It's important for lawyers. Instead of directly regulating, you 'nudge' [people] a little bit by changing certain things to produce behaviors."
The concept also seems apropos in describing Wu's role at Hastings. He's a seemingly indefatigable fundraiser who constantly travels overseas to glad-hand with potential donors. (In the 2013-14 fiscal year, Hasings reeled in about $6.39 million in donor largesse.) He's employing a few risky ideas and hoping to influence larger trends — to "nudge" the school, as it were, through a turbulent economy.
The ideas have caught on but the larger trends haven't changed. Wu remains upbeat.
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