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In my final post on the subject of “respectability” of lawyers (the first four can be found here, here, here and here), I’d like to tie my thoughts together, discussing what the various parties can do to make Bird and Orozco’s thesis of assimilation of lawyers into corporate business teams the “new normal”.  This should give lawyers more career opportunities in the future, slow the loss of influence of the legal profession in businesses, and make legal education a more attractive choice.  Much of the discussion in academia has ignored the in-house counsel approach as being a viable option for the woes of the legal industry.  Below the fold, this post will discuss the roles that academia, in-house counsel, and business firms each may play in increasing the potential for success of a new model for business lawyers.

The New York Times ran two articles this week about administrator and executive pay that struck a chord with me.  One piece was about a new report linking student debt and highly paid university leaders.  The article discusses a study, “The One Percent at State U: How University Presidents Profit from Rising Student Debt and Low-Wage Faculty Labor.”  The study reviewed “the relationship between executive pay, student debt and low-wage faculty labor at the 25 top-paying public universities.”

Then-Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee was the highest-paid public university president for the time period review. The study found that

Ohio State was No. 1 on the list of what it called the most unequal public universities. The report found that from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, Ohio State paid Mr. Gee a total of $5.9 million. [$2.95 million per year.] During the same period, it said, the university hired 670 new administrators, 498 contingent and part-time faculty — and 45 permanent faculty members. Student debt at Ohio State grew 23 percent faster than the national average during that time, the report found.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that President Gee is the president of my institution, for…