By Chris Mincher '11
Associate Features Editor

The announcement that 3Ls planning on attending their own graduation have to toss in $55 for the pleasure to do so has highlighted the Law School’s clever use of hidden fees: You enroll for what seems to be a (relatively) reasonable tuition, only to end up being charged for all kinds of things one would have assumed to have been covered by the initial $150,000 price.

Such hidden fees have been off-putting to users of other products, for example, cell phones. The popular solution? Pay-as-you-go phone plans. Why can’t a legal education be similarly consumer-savvy?  Accordingly, I suggest that UVA become the world’s first pay-as-you-go law school.

Students would still, of course, pay tuition, but everything else would come with extra charges. For example, incoming 1Ls would sign up for an orientation package based on how much they wished to spend on different activities: Sure, on its face, the $45 “Icebreaker Fee” may seem steep for simply sitting around playing a name game, but you’ll be wishing you’d opened up your wallet come November when Lemonade Larry and Jet-Ski Jason are still referring to you as “that guy.” (On the other hand, the $10 ticket to hear Dean Mahoney address your class is a rip-off—I’ll tell you how smart you are and list a bunch of jobs people probably had before coming to law school for only $5.)

Not a person who goes to class very much? How frugal of you! Everyone else, make sure you keep adequate funds on your LecturePass debit card: If your class doesn’t keep enough in the lesson account while the professor is teaching, the microphone cuts and lights go out—whether or not that question you had about derivative suits ever got answered. Keep track of the balance (shown in the lower right-hand corner of the PowerPoint presentation), and if it gets dangerously low, simply swipe the card-reader attached to the desk to transfer money from your LecturePass to keep the lesson going. Of course, if the class if painfully boring and no one is paying attention, students have the power to let the balance run out and end the lecture. For some professors, this would mean never having to prepare more than seven or eight minutes of material for each class.

But law school isn’t just about classes—it’s about developing relationships with professors and taking advantage of their accessibility to get a personal touch to your education. Luckily, these, too, are easy to charge for. One thing lawyers in the real world don’t do is allow people to come talk to them in their offices without hitting them with a bill for it. Why should the school’s lawyers be any different? That’s why professors shouldn’t just be required to hold office hours, but fulfill a certain number of billable office hours. On the low end would be a floor of 1,000 billable office hours, with ambitious professors putting in many, many more. Of course, some professors will object, pointing out that students don’t come to see them all that often. Clearly that complaint wouldn’t cut it in the real world; a lawyer can’t shrug off his lack of billable hours simply by blaming his lack of clients. Professors would be encouraged to generate office visits by “student-clients” to make office visits for billable subject advising. This shouldn’t be hard, especially with all that leftover material from the 12-minute class that students wouldn’t pay to keep going. 

All can agree: The Law School has an impressive amount of study space available. Yet so much of it is under-capitalized. There’s no reason that every study desk, couch, and bench can’t be generating income even when they’re empty. This could easily be accomplished through the same processes used for parking and lockers: attach fees to seating in and around the school and hold a lottery to award usage rights. Those looking to get value for their reservation might want to consider such thrifty options as a $100 permit to study at that weird dirty stone bench by the plastic holding tanks on the path from the Café to the JAG School—it’s good for posture. “Seating maids” would then patrol the school looking for study violators; get caught reading a book in the windows of Clay Hall without your permit and you might have to skip a few lectures to pay for it.

Creating the first pay-as-you-go Law School requires some broad thinking about what students have already decided is worth paying for. For example, hundreds of 2Ls this year felt it was a good deal to hand over cash to Lile Moot Court for the privilege of arguing legal points in front of other students. And, in case the school’s administration hasn’t noticed, students at the Law School argue legal points in front of each other all the time. Whether it’s in class, in the hallway between classes, when studying, or even just in casual social conversation, students studying the law often talk about the law—a habit Lile has proven has financial value. Thus, all legal discussion among students could be incorporated under the banner of a “Moot Lawyer” program, where students who pay the appropriate fees would be allowed to discuss and debate legal points with other Moot Lawyer participants. Those who choose not to pay to enter the Moot Lawyer program will be strictly prohibited from making legal arguments to others. Doing so would be a violation of the Honor Code; those overheard verbally justifying any legal stance can be reported to the Moot Lawyer Board and subject to expulsion.

Opponents to such a pay-as-you-go program might argue that it just wouldn’t work, because law students might actually be willing to forgo attending classes, meeting with professors, or even discussion of the law if a fee was involved. Perhaps. But there is one thing they certainly would pay for: taking exams. “Now wait a minute,” the naysayers are nay-saying. “Certainly students need time for exams.” That is exactly why the Law School would generously provide a free hour for each exam. Beyond that, each additional hour (up to the time limit set by the professor) would have to be purchased ahead of time. Gunners who think they can tackle a four-hour test in only two would thus save themselves a couple hundred bucks. See, studying hard does pay off!

I personally applaud the new graduation fee: If there’s one thing us lawyers need to learn, it’s how to take money from helpless people who are deep in debt and without any other options. We should be thanking UVA Law for teaching us the valuable lesson that when people have already put a lot of money into something, you can just keep charging them for whatever you want and they’re too financially invested to refuse! As for my ideas about a revolutionizing legal schooling, I hope you’ve enjoyed them . . . because there’s a $15 “column fee” for reading this.