In-house legal counsel at two-year community colleges

A survey done in 2004 and the six-page report of its results, tells you almost everything you might want to know about the internal legal functions of two-year US colleges. It draws on the responses of 25 lawyers who replied out of the 42 that were identified. Three points deserve brief comments.

The report cites at least three earlier studies of collegiate law departments and no less than two books! I wish academics paid as much attention to corporate law departments (See my post of May 5, 2006 on a few who have an interest in the topic.).

The person doing the research, Michael W. Simpson, randomly selected 746 colleges from the 1,655 community colleges in the United States and took the extra step of using a “stratified sampling to insure each state representation.” Law departments that survey their clients should also understand and apply stratified sampling.

A third aspect of this detailed research caught my attention. It has nothing in it about spending and budgets. Everything is about people: numbers of them, reporting lines, careers, time allocation, issues dealt with. Nothing in the report gives any benchmarks on costs and expenditures.