HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: What LSU Portends for the Future of Legal Education. “When we are trying to figure out what is going to happen with law schools we need to think through what is going to happen with universities. Regardless of what law schools do, if they become financial burdens on their host universities it can be expected that the universities will initiate actions. One is the bankruptcy variation such as reported in relation to LSU in the Boston Globe and the other is the closing of the law school in its entirety and termination of its faculty en masse. The latter approach may be as strategically cynical as closing a school for 3-5 years and then reopening as a new school after ridding the university of faculty during a period in which the demand for new law graduates may increase again.”

Yep. “Financial exigency” lets you override tenure for economic reasons. If economic conditions change, there’s nothing stopping schools from starting over, with new, cheaper hires. Accreditors might be a speed bump, but if more than a couple of schools do this, the accreditors will roll over. They have to have someone to accredit, after all.