Husson Lobbies for Law School
By Judy Harrison, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Mar. 1–BANGOR, Maine — Gerald Nessmann wants to be a lawyer, but commuting to the University of Maine Law School in Portland from his home in Dover-Foxcroft does not make economic sense to the 39-year-old real estate investor.
Nessmann told the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Friday that if the justices allow graduates of Husson College’s proposed law school to take the Maine bar exam, he would be one of the first students to enroll in the program this fall.
William Beardsley, president of the Bangor college founded in 1898, said 102 other people have asked about the possibility of attending the law school that was approved last year by the Maine State Board of Education.
Whether Husson opens a law school this fall is now up to five of the seven members of the state’s highest court. Justices Donald G. Alexander, who teaches part time at the law school in Portland, and Andrew M. Mead, whose wife, Kelly Mead, teaches part time at Husson, have recused themselves from the decision.
The five other justices heard arguments Friday at the Penobscot County Courthouse on whether graduates of the proposed school would be able to take the bar exam and practice in Maine.
Members of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, the Maine Prosecutors Association and several members of the legal community who practice north of Augusta spoke in support of Husson’s plan citing the need for more lawyers in rural Maine.
Officials from the Maine Board of Bar Examiners that administers the test to license lawyers, the Maine State Bar Association and the Maine Trial Lawyers Association told the court that they oppose Husson’s plan because the college is not seeking accreditation from the American Bar Association.
The state’s only law school in Portland is ABA-accredited. That institution, which is part of the University of Maine System, has not taken a stand on Husson’s proposal.
The only law school not accredited by the ABA whose graduates are permitted to take the Maine bar exam is the Massachusetts School of Law and those graduates first must pass the Massachusetts bar exam.
Attorneys for Husson said in briefs filed with the state’s high court that ABA accreditation is too expensive, cumbersome and burdensome for a small law school, such as the one it is proposing. The ABA’s requirements on the number of tenured faculty and law library volumes, among others, would drive up tuition costs and require Husson to increase class sizes because the provisions are designed for schools with 100 students or more, Husson argued.
“Our reason for not going the ABA route relates solely to the small size of our proposed program,” Beardsley said in his statement. “The cost of a law faculty member who is tenured, full-time, with light teaching loads, teaching during the workday, with cost spread over 100 students per class is affordable only because there are 100 students in each class.
“Spreading such cost over a class of only 30 students,” he continued, “however, is three times as expensive; hence, there is no ABA law school in northern Maine. If we were to seek immediate ABA affiliation, we would have to recruit far more students per year.”
Husson has proposed tuition of $12,500 a year for up to 30 full-time students. Tuition for in-state students at the UMaine Law School is $18,000. In Massachusetts, tuition at ABA-accredited law schools is nearly $30,000 a year compared to $13,200 at the Massachusetts School of Law, according to Husson’s brief. Husson attributed the difference in tuition rates to the cost of ABA accreditation.
Justices questioned Friday how, without ABA accreditation, the quality of the curriculum and teaching at Husson would be assured.
Husson has said it already has seven faculty members who are lawyers and academic administrators, two of whom would teach law classes full time and another who would specialize in the legal library and law research services.
Brett Baber, a Bangor lawyer who is president of the bar association, said it is vital that a Husson law school be evaluated by a profession specific group, such as the ABA, that sets objective standards. He said that in Massachusetts just 45 percent of the graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools pass the bar exam the first time they take it. That compares to a more than 90 percent pass rate for UMaine Law School graduates last year, according to information posted on the school’s Web site.
Those supporting Husson’s plan turned again and again to the need for attorneys in the northern two-thirds of the state and the high cost of commuting to Portland.
Husson has estimated that only 20 percent of attorneys practicing in rural northern and eastern Maine are under age 50.
“Given this market assessment, Husson is proposing a law school designed to meet, but not exceed, these existing unmet needs of these place-bound regional students and an aging rural law fraternity,” Beardsley said in a statement released to the press. “We plan to matriculate 30 students per year, which, by chance, is deemed an excellent number of students for the case study and Socratic teaching styles favored by most law schools.”
That’s 11 more graduates than were in the first class in 1900 of Maine’s original law school that was located in downtown Bangor.
The court took the matter under advisement. There is no timeline under which the justices must issue their decision.
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