The Business of Running a Law School

I confess that as a faculty member I gave little thought to the business of running a law school. Deans do not have that luxury. Someone has to pay attention to things like the budget, payroll, physical plant, purchasing, admissions, career services, and (most important of all) the kind and quality of service that we provide to students in the classroom. Stated abstractly, we are a nonprofit business that provides a service to about 800 customers each year, and we, like all businesses, have to balance our books. From a business point of view the most interesting challenge we face is that our costs increase every year, and they are driven by social changes over which we have no control. I will explain briefly why costs keep going up, and mention some of the strategies that schools employ to cover them