Law School Transparency Jumps the Rails (Or, Why I’m Still Disappointed with LST’s Latest Contribution to the Discussion on Law-School Reform)

With thanks to the commenters and correspondents who responded to my original post on this subject with an absolutely fascinating range of views, I’m going to take another run at explaining why I’m still disappointed with the recent article by Law School Transparency co-founders and research director Kyle McEntee, Patrick Lynch and Derek Tokaz (to whom I will refer in this post interchangeably with LST, though I’m not sure whether they would agree with that).  The paper, forthcoming in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, is rather dramatically entitled “The Crisis in Legal Education:  Dabbling in Disaster Planning.”  Familiarity with my original post is not presupposed.

As I mentioned in my original post, I’ve always admired Law School Transparency—even, I’d like to think, before it was fashionable.  There is a good deal to admire.  LST and its principals recognized early in the collapse of the law-job market that law schools were doing a discreditably poor job of making available the information necessary for a rational person to determine whether or where to get a law degree.  They believed that potential consumers of legal education would make better choices if they were better informed.  They were pointed, patient and persistent in pressing for more and better disclosure.  They were an instrumental part of the process that effected that change.  And they’ve offered a number of thoughtful perspectives on the information they helped bring to light (I don’t particularly agree with a number of them, but I certainly respect the effort and empirically supported analysis that went into them).

So what’s my problem with “Dabbling in Disaster Planning” (beyond everything the title ought to tell you without asking further)?  Here’s a catalogue of my most serious concerns:

Don’t overdramatize.  Don’t let your urge to be the center of attention distract from the ideas and their merits.  To those of you who pointed out that this was a vice of my original post (most of you in the most understated and appropriate way): you were right, and thank you.  This vice appears in “Disaster Planning” in the overused and overwrought rhetoric of crisis that pervades a certain class of commentary about the current state of the legal academy and the legal profession.  LST’s title tells us its paper is all about “Disaster Planning” to address the “Crisis in Legal Education.”  And indeed the word “disaster” appears three times in the first paragraph of the Abstract alone, with two “cris[e]s” thrown in for good measure.  By the third page, “the law school disaster” has been erected as the foil against which the paper’s recommendations are defined. 

Don’t allow hysterical language to mask a failure to define the issue you need to address.  So what is “the law school disaster” according to LST? I scoured over forty pages without finding an answer.  While “Disaster Planning” trots out various inventories of misfortune, it fundamentally fails to identify the “disaster” it’s “planning” for, leaving us facing down that “disaster” armed only with the queasy uncertainty that we won’t know when we’re ready for it, how effectively we weathered it, or when it might be over.

Am I suggesting that there is nothing amiss in the legal academy or the legal job market?  Of course not.  Law schools; their faculty, staff and administrators; law students; law graduates; lawyers and legal employers—and by far most importantly, clients—are all currently awash in real, serious and substantial difficulties of various kinds.  But which are causes, and which are effects, and which are which for what?  Or to put it slightly differently, it’s pretty much impossible to solve a problem you haven’t defined; in fact, it’s difficult to speak coherently about a problem you haven’t defined.  You end up with exasperated generalizations on the order of “life sucks; then you die” (which, I might observe, leaves you with innumerable inconsistent avenues to explore concerning whether or how to make life suck less, or end quicker).

Some measure of how serious an obstacle this tactic is to sound analysis can be found in the responses I received to this point in my original post.  Several of you (including Kyle McEntee himself in a very thoughtful and measured Comment for which I thank him) chastised me for quibbling with LST when it was perfectly obvious what the “disaster” was—and each of you identified different issues!  Mr. McEntee believes that “the disaster would be if legal education's traditional and important role in American society is further delegitimized”; others of you identified the problem as the excessive cost of legal education (a subject I will discuss in an upcoming post); still others pointed to the genuinely tragic flotilla of unemployed law grads currently marooned in a sea of debt. 

That’s why I have devoted (some might suggest squandered) so many words in this space considering “What Matters Most.”  For those no longer keeping score at home, what I think Matters Most—that is, what is most fundamentally a direct or indirect cause of more current hardships, and what would be most difficult, and least likely, to change—is the fact that there are significantly more recent and imminent law graduates than there are entry-level law jobs.  You are invited to review my empirical and logical bases for the conclusion that this is What Matters Most right now (e.g., here and here), and fault my reasons in any way your reason will permit.  But for heaven’s sake, let’s have a coherent and common-sense discussion about causes and effects grounded in actual facts and practical realities, and leave Henny Penny in the barnyard.

Whether you agree with my assessment of What Matters Most or not, defining the problem you want to solve is utterly essential.  Beyond insignificant and temporary adjustments on the margin, law schools don’t create law jobs, and they don’t destroy them.  Legal employers and clients do that, driven by their own economic exigencies.  Law schools have been making the same mistakes that LST and others identify today in one form or another for close to 40 years, during which time legal employment saw essentially uninterrupted and unprecedentedly rapid growth at rates far in excess of the greater economy’s.  There is no empirical evidence, and no coherent argument, that whatever you think law schools are doing wrong today made one-third or more of all entry-level law jobs suddenly disappear between 2008 and 2010.  There is no empirical evidence, and no coherent argument, that any change to the substance or method of legal education today would bring any material portion of those recently disappeared jobs back into the economy. 

What this means is that, if you’re trying to relieve the oversupply of recent law graduates (or the undersupply of entry-level law jobs), tinkering with law-school curricula or instruction methods will not meaningfully touch the problem.  Nor will simply lowering the cost of a law degree, which as I’ve already suggested in this space, seems more likely to increase the number of unemployable graduates as reduced price stimulates demand.  This is not to say that I endorse the current economics of law school, but that’s no excuse not to think through the plausible consequences of your policy prescriptions.

So while I do not question the seriousness and good faith with which LST advances its proposals, I hope none of you will question the seriousness and good faith with which I suggest that some of the ideas in “Disaster Planning” deserve some further thought and refinement.  To put my examples in context, two of the big ideas around which LST wants to build an experimental “modular” law school are (i) shorter-term class “modules” lasting only a few weeks apiece in lieu of most full-term courses (a Colorado College model for those familiar with it) (ii) taught predominantly by adjuncts at a cost far lower than permanent faculty.  In the remainder of this post, I’ll try to illustrate some recurring errors in LST's article that we can all try to avoid in our next efforts.

Don’t ignore the implications of your justifications.  A number of the explanations offered for LST’s specific proposals don’t respond to broadly held perceptions of what’s broke; don’t hang together, or just don’t make much sense.  For example, the authors praise the compressed class “module” structure because it “encourage[s] exploration of topics that would otherwise be considered too narrow in a semester-long curriculum structure.”  But overbreadth of particular class offerings is not a common view of the current deficiency in curricular selection; if anything, excessive and impractical narrowness is.  This does not necessarily mean that shorter “modules” are a bad idea; but it does mean that how they are selected, structured and coordinated is quite important.  Future discussion should bring this essential factor, which is not addressed in the current paper, into play.  Similarly, LST touts its proposed structure because it allows faculty to respond nimbly and rapidly to the curricular “input” and “demands” of students.  This is not altogether surprising given that the authors are all recent law-school graduates.  But the premise is not unlike criticizing a physician for bad patient service because she did not provide the diagnosis or prescribe the therapy the patient thinks he prefers.  Most students come to law school having no idea what they need to learn to prepare themselves for one of the innumerably varied careers they have not yet chosen.  The fact that some of the doctors may be loopy or self-involved is no reason to put the patients in charge of the asylum. 

Don’t ignore inconvenient facts.  One of the greatest challenges in formulating coherent law-school reform proposals is (as a number of you pointed out in response to my original post) how little we actually know about what works or why.  Experimentation should be undertaken advisedly, since the guinea pigs are people who are gambling huge amounts of money and their future on the experiments’ outcome.  So when we actually have empirical data, we are duty-bound to make the most of it.  In this particular instance, LST—ordinarily an outspoken champion of better information driving better decisions—refuses.  Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, the authors note, has pointed out that one of the serious objections to a very small core of full-time faculty surrounded by a cloud of adjuncts who wander in for their three-week modules and then disappear until next year (or forever) is that adjuncts regularly receive materially less positive student evaluations of their teaching in the aggregate than permanent faculty.  One likely reason, Dean Chemerinsky has argued, is that whatever else teaching involves, it is a skill that benefits from practice.  LST’s response is a series of unsupported assertions that the student evaluations are somehow comprehensively wrong, and that most practitioner adjuncts are really better teachers, both in their practices and at school, than most permanent law faculty (something not entirely obvious to anyone who has ever worked in a law firm, which none of the authors has for any length of time).  While greater use of adjuncts may present other advantages—which, while not in my view as self-evident as the authors apparently believe, seem to deserve exploration and testing—it is at the very least self-defeating to deny years of actual empirical observation and evaluation by the very student population the authors wish to serve.  Let’s use the facts we have, not pretend they don’t exist. 

Don’t assume away the problems you perceive; recognize and try to solve them.  No proposal is perfect.  Good policy involves identifying the weaknesses in your suggestions and figuring out ways to avoid or ameliorate them.  Bad policy leaves the problems you know are out there for someone else to take responsibility for (so at least the program’s failure won’t be your fault).  For example, the authors concede that “[t]he sheer number of adjuncts may accentuate the problem of finding, scheduling, evaluating, and filtering competent teachers.”   Their solution: “The . . . faculty must be actively managed in a way that ABA-approved law schools are not presently doing.” Any suggestions about the quantitative or qualitative nature of the “problems” their novel structure creates, or what any of those currently nonexistent techniques of “active[] manage[ment]” might involve?  Nah, these mere operational details are delegated to a “module coordination staff, focused on the challenges distinctive to the modular structure,” who will somehow do what such currently nonexistent people have never done before “ensuring a sound and affordable legal education.”  Any solution involving the adjunct cloud that LST favors cannot be taken seriously without some very detailed prescriptions for how to manage this very significant challenge.   

LST deserves everyone’s gratitude for an earnest and courageous effort to advance the discussion on a miserably complicated and difficult set of problems.  The execution leaves something to be desired for the reasons just discussed.  But at a minimum, it highlights a number of the challenges that are going to have to be addressed before meaningful and effective reform will be possible.  We can only hope that, as each of us comes forward with our own ideas, the mistakes we make are new.

Next time, my promised response to the crisis-mongers.

In the meantime, a Happy New Year to all.

--Bernie

Comments

[lawyer]

On what I hope is a non-contentious note, next week there will be a symposium at Santa Clara on the ethics of marketing law schools in a down economy. The symposium is open to the public. Details can be found on the front page of the SCU Law School site. Three deans will be on the panel.

[Steve Diamond]

Stan, The likelihood that Joe has taught anything that appeared on the bar recently is pretty low although I bet he and I would agree that securities law should be tested. That said there is no doubt Stanford attracts very bright students and has a great faculty. Again, their focus over many decades has been in one direction, SCU's in another.

[BoredJD]

Look Steve, any way you slice it the point stands. Tuition at your school went up by 8K starting in 2007 when the economy was shaky. Any prospective student should be way of tuition hikes in the future.

“Interestingly, USC, Davis and Berkeley (using in state resident tuition for the UCs) ranks ahead of Stanford. If this then is all about the correlation between nominal tuition and USNWR then I would think the students at USC Davis and Berkeley should be howling. But I would give them the same answer as I have here - the experience is different, the schools serve different markets, the cultures vary. Having recently advised a family friend to go to USC, for example, I think she made a great choice, is having a great experience and will make a terrific lawyer. She had several other choices.”

Oh USNWR is a huge problem. USNWR is a terrible metric to judge whether a school is a good deal, because outside of a few law schools (the top 10 or so) the percentage of students getting PSLF qualifying employment + biglaw + A3 clerkships (read, jobs where you can pay off your loans in a reasonable timeframe) at most schools are so low that it makes it a poor investment at sticker. I advise all prospective students I meet to take an individualized approach to admissions based on what they want to do after graduation, what their COA is, and where they want to practice. If I met a student who wanted to go to SCU to practice mergers and acquisitions in the Bay Area and has no scholarship, I would tell them to run the hell away. And Steve, believe it or not there are students at your school who paid 150K thinking they would do mergers and acquisitions after graduation, because people are not rational actors.

Browse top-law-schools.com. Davis and Hastings are considered poor investments at sticker. Hardly any of the posters on that site would recommend them without a substantial scholarship. I can link you specific threads if you like. Davis has a non-discounted cost of $268,000 (in-state 237K) and places about a quarter of its graduates in the jobs I just mentioned. Not a good deal at sticker or even 50% off.

Now the next thing you can do is shoot an email to Career Services. Ask them how many large firm employers attend OCI at SCU. Ask some of your students what grades/class rank it takes to get a job at a Vault 100 California firm. Ask your public interest office how many students went to work for federal government organizations. How many students are getting clerkships with AIII judges? SCU students do not have “roughly” the same opportunities as students at Stanford (as you posted on Con Daily). Their “opportunities” are oceans apart. Ask admissions how many students turned down Stanford for SCU. Ask 10 median 3Ls at SCU what they are doing for work next year, then head to Palo Alto and ask 10 median Stanford students.

That is not self-selection, it’s is the simple fact that the demand for SCU graduates, including in public interest and government, is lower than the demand for Stanford graduates. And I don’t know how you keep avoiding the fact that Stanford sends its students into public interest and government jobs at TWICE the rate that SCU does.

“Of course, it looks like she will be graduating at a time when the economy remains sluggish. This is a serious problem but it is not one caused by law schools. It is distressing to me to see so many in our profession ready to eat their young.”

I’ll just let this one stand on its own.

[john]

"Again, their focus over many decades has been in one direction, SCU's in another."

And just what direction is that, Steve?

With only 7.8% going into public interest, that doesn't seem to be the direction, despite your earlier claims.

Maybe the direction is toward unemployed (24%)
Or is it pert-time (8.7%)
Perhaps school-funded (3%)
Solo (2.7%)

That's close to 40% of the class for whom, objectively, going to SCU was a horrible decision. And among the lucky ones that actually have legal jobs, the largest chunk (16%) work at 2-10 attorney firms.

[Steve Diamond]

Bored/John:

First, let me apologize to BoredJD for any suggestion that you were associated with LST, assuming that is the case. Your defense of their views was so robust I assumed you had a relationship. It would help if people did post under their own names, for the sake of transparency, of course. And in that regard, I am still waiting for the Form 990s and Annual Reports of LST. Their website is also now down for some unexplained reason.

As for the substance of the ongoing discussion, I think we just come down on two different sides here. I think law school applicants are rational. They apply to law school in larger numbers as it becomes clear that law firm hiring is picking up. They continue applying in larger numbers even after the hiring rate plateaus and then as the fact of an economic downturn becomes clear the number of applicants declines. Thus, the continuing fall off in LSAT takers is precisely consistent with what I argued at the very outset here has always been the pattern in the wake of several macroeconomic events in the last 30 years.

As for the mythical disappointed M&A aspirant, I have taught at SCU since 1999, except for a year at Cornell. I teach mergers and acquisitions. I practiced mergers and acquisitions. I have yet to meet a student here, in Ithaca, or anywhere, who told me they thought they would be guaranteed a job practicing in that area at a so-called BigLaw firm.

It is the case that every year (with the possible exception of the recent period) BigLaw does hire our graduates in practice areas that include M&A. I do not monitor and do not know the exact numbers but the number in M&A directly is likely a relatively small percentage. But that has always been the case and I think students who come to SCU know that. Of course, at Yale and Cornell I knew students who were disappointed to find out that they did not get offers to practice at certain firms, or in certain practice areas. Guess what, so was I. M&A is making a modest recovery as the economy stabilizes. But capitalism is unpredictable and I would tell any student now that they should not count on being able to practice in that area. At the same time I would tell that being in Silicon Valley, perhaps the most robust business sector in our economy, gives them an exceptional opportunity to learn about business law and practicing in that area.

In any case, that kind of disappointment has been part of the law school process for many decades. It has nothing to do with the 100 year storm that has left us with the overhang in the market today as it has in every other job market. It turns out, John, that for everyone just living in the United States for the last four years was a "horrible decision."

But this is really not the point I was (trying) to discuss. I have only maintained that a student accepted at BOTH schools would most likely have very similar opportunities once they graduated. I feel reasonably confident, in other words, that Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati would be interested in that student, assuming they performed well, whether they took me for securities regulation or Joe Grundfest. But whether that student should go to SCU or Stanford or another school is an entirely different question depending on values, career goals, and other factors. For example, I readily admit, if you play golf, I would recommend going to Stanford.

One thing I am certain of - law school tuition is not a reasonable metric for that student to worry about in making that choice. If it was, then the students who should be picketing the dean's office are at UC Davis where they pay more than at Stanford for a much lower USNWR ranked school.

[john]

Steve Diamond: "I think law school applicants are rational. They apply to law school in larger numbers as it becomes clear that law firm hiring is picking up. They continue applying in larger numbers even after the hiring rate plateaus and then as the fact of an economic downturn becomes clear the number of applicants declines."

Wrong on two points --
1. Law school application numbers are typically counter-cyclical. In the past, when the economy was down people would go hide in law school. Once the economy improved, application numbers would drop as more undergrads went into the job market right out of school.
2. There is nothing about law school applications that suggests collective rational action. As has been repeatedly pointed out, we have 45,000 grads but only half as many actual legal jobs available. If applicants were rational, no one would pay sticker at SCU, let alone a Golden Gate or Whittier. The odds of that being a good choice just don't support the decision.

"At the same time I would tell that being in Silicon Valley, perhaps the most robust business sector in our economy, gives them an exceptional opportunity to learn about business law and practicing in that area."

The Valley may be a robust business sector, but it is also an oversaturated legal market. Stanford, Berkeley, Davis and Hastings all outrank SCU and all feed the bulk of their grads into the SF/SV area. A significant chunk of the UCLA, USC, Pepperdine and Loyola grads will also go north. And of course, the area is popular for T14 grads. That doesn't leave a lot of room for an SCU grad.

"It turns out, John, that for everyone just living in the United States for the last four years was a "horrible decision.""

But the latter is not a decision that cost $131,000.

"I have only maintained that a student accepted at BOTH schools would most likely have very similar opportunities once they graduated. I feel reasonably confident, in other words, that Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati would be interested in that student, assuming they performed well, whether they took me for securities regulation or Joe Grundfest."

And on this point you couldn't be more wrong. Really, this is just delusion beyond anything I can comprehend. We know BigLaw is more interested in the kid from Stanford because we know BigLaw hires more Stanford grads year in and year out than they do SCU grads.

"One thing I am certain of - law school tuition is not a reasonable metric for that student to worry about in making that choice."

Saving the best for last, I see. Two things matter above all else for a potential applicant -- (1) cost of attendance, and (2) job prospects. Your school is Stanford's peer in the former, but certainly not in the latter.

[Steve Diamond]

John,

Thank you for allowing me back into the discussion. I do feel at this point that we are just repeating positions already stated but I would contest one new point you make:

"The Valley may be a robust business sector, but it is also an oversaturated legal market."

I actually argue that the Valley remains underlawyered. In two important respects, at the low income level there is a dearth of legal services for thousands of small businesses and individuals. I think there are important opportunities and responsibilities there. We have clinical initiatives that are looking at those areas and I hope they will be successful. In the high tech environment, I think there should be a more involved role for lawyers and business people with legal training because what often leads to unnecessary litigation later is underlawyering early.

In any case, the Valley remains a great - perhaps unparalleled - environment to study business law.

And for everyone following this discussion I would like to direct their attention to this terrific interview with Dean Larry Mitchell at Case Western:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XAaMpxgv-g&feature=player_embedded

One important point he makes, among many, is that the demand from law firms, the ABA, or folks like LST for more clinical and experiential learning have to realize that that increases the cost of law school because it is more labor intensive. As I can attest, very hard to engage in a mock negotiation or drafting session with 150 students. In other words, all law schools face tough choices that require balancing acts. I remain confident that the case where it can be fairly said that diligent efforts to manage law schools are lacking are the rare exception not the rule.

[john]

"I actually argue that the Valley remains underlawyered... at the low income level there is a dearth of legal services for thousands of small businesses and individuals. I think there are important opportunities and responsibilities there."

There is a very good reason why low income people are underserved -- they, quit literally, cannot pay for legal services. I agree that there are important responsibilities there, but I do not agree that those responsibilities should be born by SCU grads with $131,000 (or more) in debt. It's great that your school has a clinic to help serve these people, does your school also have an LRAP program to help the law grads that are trying to serve these people while also servicing their debt? If so, how many people qualify? How much aid do they get? How long does it last?

"In the high tech environment, I think there should be a more involved role for lawyers and business people with legal training because what often leads to unnecessary litigation later is underlawyering early."

How are SCU grads filling this role? Is your school actually doing anything to get your students jobs in "legal training in the high tech environment"? If succesful, won't reducing unecessary litigation ultimately reduce the total amount of legal work and, thus, legal jobs? Doesn't that go against your point that there aren't enough lawyers in the Valley already?

Bottom line: a large chunk of your grads are not finding full-time legal jobs. Suggesting that they take jobs that won't pay the bills or jobs that don't exist except in your mind isn't really a solution.

And Dean Mitchell ... really?

[BoredJD]

John hit most of the major points I'd make in response to your last two posts. You simply do not understand that what is interesting to professors does not lead to jobs for ENTRY-LEVEL lawyers (if that were the case, 25% of the lawyers in the country would be practicing "international law" or "constitutional law"). And demand for legal services does not mean that people can actually afford legal services, just like "demand" for Ferraris is probably higher than the number of people who can pay.

Now of the government took the money they are loaning to law students and used it to fund more Legal Aid clinics- then we'd see both an increase in jobs for lawyers and an increase in services to the poor. But this should not be done through the initiative of law schools and on the backs of students.

Here is a graph of employment and underemployment rates for young college graduates (page 11): https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.epi.org/files/2012/bp340-labor-market-young-graduates.pdf&hl=en_US&embedded=true

Here is a chart of law school applicants by year: http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/lsac-volume-summary.asp

December LSAT takers were released today and it seems we are looking at another double-digit drop in 2013.

Now I don't think those two add up to what you're saying. The job market for recent college grads is still anemic, although slightly better than during the crash. If you evidence that the job market for recent graduates specifically is much better, I'd love to see it. But demand to enter the legal market has simply plummeted.

Now a drop in law school applicants does not mean that applicants are rational. The applicants dropping out could also be doing so because they now irrationally believe that ALL law schools are a bad deal at any price, something I submit is not true. For example, I'd agree that a student might attend SCU for free, with a low scholarship stipulation.

Interestingly, the drop in applicants is occurring disproportionately among higher LSAT scorers. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/

Perhaps there is a spectrum, and that people who do poorly on a test of logical reasoning tend to have poor reasoning and decision-making skills?

[Kyle McEntee]

Steve,

You can find our annual reports on the TN Secretary of State website, although I would not waste my time because it only includes LST's addresses, registered agent, principal officers, and board of directors. We have never filed a Form 990 because we have never been required to by law. I know you've asked three times now for this (in a matter of hours), but I've been busy working today. I hope you understand.

I admit that I am unsure of what you hope to discover about us from this request. Perhaps you do not trust what I said earlier about our revenue (or my income), or you wonder how we spend what little money we have raised. Or perhaps you'd like to paint me as a hypocrite.

[An aside response to "Kip," who asked about whether it's appropriate for me to opine on law school curricular reform. I have not once claimed to be an expert. Neither does any part of the MJLR piece require this expertise. It is curricular-adjacent. In fact, the purpose is to allow latitude for schools (and professors) to choose and perfect methods. I have no interest in micromanaging what law professors teach. We can't consider new models without considering the implications on pedagogy, but that's something best left to experts, not to a micromanager. It appears you've fallen into the same trap as Bernie here.]

Back to you Steve.

"If I recall correctly, the suggestion that LST might be engaged in an effort to start a business was implied at the outset by Bernie when he pointed to their recent "brand recognition" tab on their website. At least, that is why I even thought about that possibility. In addition, there was the suggestion that LST has had some relationship to the law suits now filed around this issue."

The only people to point to the brand reach tab on our website are you and an anonymous commenter. This same anonymous commenter wrongly stated that we have a relationship to the lawsuits. Even assuming that the relationship would be something to be ashamed of per se (it's not), we do not have a relationship to the lawsuits anymore than we have a relationship with a huge number of law schools around the country and the ABA. I routinely speak with law school deans (and associate deans) and ABA staffers. I periodically speak with the plaintiffs' attorneys. On occasion, these attorneys will send me story tips (e.g. the Karen Grant story). Likewise, however, their opposition does too. In fact, I would say I have a pretty good relationship with TJSL's communications director.

I'm sorry that I have to explain this, but an advocacy group of outsiders requires credibility to operate among insiders and in the policy/political realm. Moreover, when seeking funding, both from institutional sources and individual donors, people like to see that their money can have an impact. Media impressions are one way to do this, and it is extremely common among thinktanks and nonprofits to show brand reach.

As you should be able to see, stories that quote LST or are about LST or use data from LST matter to our mission. Our mission is to advance the cause of transparency, which includes accountability and informed decision-making, and to use transparency as a tool for making legal education affordable. We're doing pretty damn good, but there's much to be done. Providing a metric for those people who stumble across our website and wonder whether we're credible or unsophisticated complainers helps (and will continue to help), particularly as we scale back some of our operations.

"I do think however that the obsession with nominal tuition numbers is not helpful, a point I have now made here and on ConstitutionalDaily exhaustively. That this blatantly obvious and rational conclusion is ignored by LST and others suggests that there is another agenda here."

It is not ignored by us and LST's agenda is clear -- read our mission statement. If you would read the paper that's subject of this very post, you would see that at the very end of it we describe the necessity of structural (financial) transparency. The so-called obsession with nominal tuition (a proxy) is the obvious consequence of having little other data upon which to rely. What we do know, however, is that the nominal tuition is the real tuition for a great number of students. (Somewhere in the range of 50% across all law schools, though I think that statistic is outdated as of this past admissions cycle.)

To bring this point home, we know from ABA data that 54% of SCU students were paying "nominal" tuition. (Of the 983 students, 452 were receiving grants, with a median of between $8,000 and $10,000.) I am very concerned with every law student, not just the mythical average student. Nominal tuition is the place to start before applying tuition discounts. If you would like to share a distribution of tuition paid by SCU students and how it has moved over the past 10 or so years, I think it would be very enlightening.

I'm almost finished, I promise.

You asked Carlos whether, in his view, "the service provided by LST or Kyle helped law students get jobs?" You then say you're not sure how this works because you missed his point. He did not suggest that the service created jobs; he suggested that the service (the website and message) limits the number of people willing to attend law school at the current price point. I frankly have no idea how many people have been persuaded by the data we present, the analyses we provide, etc. I suspect a non-insignificant number.

That said, the information we provide is not available elsewhere and has not been available for years. The LST Score Reports are the most comprehensive source of school-by-school employment data out there and it isn't even close because of how we aggregate the data. Almost uniformly, we have more data than law schools provide on their websites because (a) we obtain NALP reports from schools (and they usually and frustratingly don't also publish them on their websites) and (b) many schools decline to post their ABA reports despite Standard 509. Schools have had these kind of data in ready-to-go reports for many many years, but the public presentation of these data have improved light years only in recent times.

"One important point he makes, among many, is that the demand from law firms, the ABA, or folks like LST for more clinical and experiential learning have to realize that that increases the cost of law school because it is more labor intensive."

Please read our paper instead of continuing to make flagrantly false statements. The paper and our mission is curricular-adjacent.

One final note. Our website has been acting funny all day, I assure you nothing fishy is going on as you for some reason imply. I have lodged a support ticket with my host. If you would like to see that too, for the sake of transparency, I will graciously oblige.

[Steve Diamond]

It's not my area of the law but I am unaware of any kind of genuinely tax exempt entity that does not have to file one of the 990's.

"The LST Score Reports are the most comprehensive source of school-by-school employment data out there and it isn't even close because of how we aggregate the data. Almost uniformly, we have more data than law schools provide on their websites because (a) we obtain NALP reports from schools (and they usually and frustratingly don't also publish them on their websites) and (b) many schools decline to post their ABA reports despite Standard 509. Schools have had these kind of data in ready-to-go reports for many many years, but the public presentation of these data have improved light years only in recent times."

I think you could build a pretty interesting business with this kind of material. I certainly wouldn't give it away to plaintiffs attorneys unless I was trying to build up a potential future base of customers. But if you have chosen to do this then I applaud you for being a model of how a law school graduate leads a thoughtful life without earning any income from your hard work! Very few people I know of can afford to do this, however.

[David Friedman]

A number of separate points:

1. The difference between Stanford and SCU:

Stanford gets, on average, better students than we do--students who would make more money whether or not they went to law school. So it is not surprising if the difference in their salaries as lawyers is much larger than the difference in tuition of the two schools. That salary is partly a return on their education, partly a return on their pre-existing abilities--which are different for the two groups of students.

2. A related point--on useful information:

Stanford's bar passage rate is higher than ours, but that provides essentially no information about how good a job each school does preparing students for the bar, since they are starting with smarter students. What law schools ought to be reporting is not bar passage rate but bar passage rate as a function of entering LSAT (or undergraduate GPA, but LSAT is probably a better measure of ability). Not only would that give a more accurate picture of the relative quality of schools, it would also tell applicants what school is likely to give them the best chance of bar passage. If your LSAT is in the 80th percentile, the fact that a school does a good job of educating students in the 95th percentile is not very interesting--might easily anticorrelate with how good a job it does of educating students like you.

3. I agree with the view that law school education is much more expensive than it need be, in part due to successful pressure by the ABA to force law schools to use expensive inputs—tenured and tenure track faculty instead of less expensive adjuncts, classroom time instead of online or at home study, big libraries that are mostly made unnecessary by an internet connection. I had a recent blog post on the subject, which pointed to an elegant and entertaining summary by a graduating law studnet of what a law school really required, and concluded that it would bring the total cost of a law school education (not including cost of living) down to about twenty thousand dollars.

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-are-law-schools-expensive.html

[Steve Diamond]

John,

Regarding underlawyering in the Valley, you are right that if we bulk up on early transactional lawyering we could save on litigation lawyering down the road and that might in theory reduce jobs there. But is that a bad thing? Most people complain that we are an overly litigious society. So there appears to be a social cost to litigation. I am also trained as a transactional lawyer so am biased towards the solutions to problems - not just in business - that transactional law offers. But I would go further and suggest that there is a potential link between what I see as underlawyering in high tech and in lower income communities.

Because you are right that low salaries can discourage some from practicing in that area and limited resources prevents offering these services. One approach in the Valley might be for law schools to work with law firms to set up programs that train young startup entrepreneurs on the value of early stage legal advice to lower costs in the long run in return for a commitment to increase charitable giving aimed at funding legal services for the surrounding low income communities. The overall number of jobs might remain the same but we might have a more just and conflict free community and that would benefit us all. We would also potentially then lower the cost of living as well. That would allow companies to increase employment and grow the economy.

In any case, I agree that law schools should be playing a dynamic and leadership role in solving these problems and involving their students in that process.

[john]

"But if you have chosen to do this then I applaud you for being a model of how a law school graduate leads a thoughtful life without earning any income from your hard work! Very few people I know of can afford to do this, however."

And why might that be? Maybe because a law school like SCU charges $131,000 in tuition.

"What law schools ought to be reporting is not bar passage rate but bar passage rate as a function of entering LSAT... it would tell applicants what school is likely to give them the best chance of bar passage."

No, what law schools ought to be reporting is tuition as a function of job placement statistics. This would tell them what school is likely to actually be worth attending.

"Regarding underlawyering in the Valley, you are right that if we bulk up on early transactional lawyering we could save on litigation lawyering down the road and that might in theory reduce jobs there. But is that a bad thing?"

Nope, but it does mean there is no shortage of lawyers. You made the ridiculous statement that there weren't enough lawyers in the Valley because there was a dearth of "legal training in the high tech market." Mind you, no one in the high tech environment seems willing to pay for this legal training, but even if they did, it wouldn't lead to more legal jobs. Making the whole system more efficient and cheap isn't going to do much for the employment prospects of lawyers.

"One approach in the Valley might be for law schools to work with law firms to set up programs that train young startup entrepreneurs on the value of early stage legal advice to lower costs in the long run in return for a commitment to increase charitable giving aimed at funding legal services for the surrounding low income communities."

An easier approach would be to lower tuition so law graduates can actually do this, and other public interest work, and still pay the bills. I'll admit that this proposition (putting the burding on firms) is more fair than your earlier one (putting the burden on indebted law students), but it's no more likely to happen. There isn't much incentive for the firm in this scenario (other than some potential publicity).

"In any case, I agree that law schools should be playing a dynamic and leadership role in solving these problems and involving their students in that process."

The two main problems are:
1. Too many graduates.
2. Too much debt.

The solution to the first is to shrink or outright close law schools.

The solution to the second is to find a way to make law school less expensive.

Unfortunately, it is in most law schools' interests to not solve either of these problems.

[Critic]

"[W]e do not have a relationship to the lawsuits anymore than we have a relationship with a huge number of law schools around the country and the ABA. I routinely speak with law school deans (and associate deans) and ABA staffers. I periodically speak with the plaintiffs' attorneys. On occasion, these attorneys will send me story tips (e.g. the Karen Grant story). Likewise, however, their opposition does too. In fact, I would say I have a pretty good relationship with TJSL's communications director."

I think this statement is a bit misleading. LST has been directly involved in promoting these lawsuits, appearing jointly with plaintiff's attorneys at a press conference announcing the suits. LST has also promoted the lawsuits before there were even plaintiffs for them or complaints filed, such as this story.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/do_law_schools_defraud_students_mYO0KW5TBKNBaYQVyPcQJI

I am not saying there is anything wrong with being involved in a lawsuit if you believe in it. I am just saying that it puts LST in an adversarial position with the schools, and this is a perfectly logical reason for schools to avoid working with you or providing you information even if they otherwise seek transparency. It is a valid reason for the people to question the information and scores you put out particularly when they involve criteria and formulas you invent and subjective judgments you make in interpreting that criteria.

[Steve Diamond]

Constitutional Daily's Witch Hunt, or the dangers of calling the bluff of the law school transparency crowd -

http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=4290

[Frank Grotius]

Bravo, Bored.

[john]

Steve,

A few questions:

Why did you run off to your own site? Why not just post a response here?

What is your obsession with the financial records of LST? You repeatedly asked for an annual report, until they told you it was freely available on the TN Sec. of State website (as a business law prof., aren't you embarassed that you didn't you already know this?). Now you are repeatedly asking for a 990 that they have said doesn't exist because they aren't required to file one. Do you really want to embarass yourself again when that turns out to be true?

Do you honestly think that Constitutional Daily is is trying to supress your academic freedom? This is the entirety of their witch hunt:

"Steve Diamond isn't just flying into outer space, he's approaching escape velocity. And Santa Clara lets this guy teach business law and corporate finance. Lucky for him, he has tenure, but if we were SCU students, we'd under-enroll his classes until he was forced out."

Finally, and most importantly, would you recommend that anyone attend SCU at full sticker? Do you think the job prospects justify $131,000 in tuition?

[patentesq]

Kyle - if LST is a exempt from paying federal tax then you are required to file a form 990, are you not? If not, why not?

John - form 990 is important for transparency purposes; it requires statements regarding potential conflicts of interest and compensation of board members and other such matters.

[john]

According to the IRS website, a 501(c) that makes less than $50,000 per year only needs to file an e-Postcard --

Completing the e-Postcard requires the eight items listed below:

1.Employer identification number (EIN), also known as a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN).
2.Tax year
3.Legal name and mailing address
4.Any other names the organization uses
5.Name and address of a principal officer
6.Web site address if the organization has one
7.Confirmation that the organization’s annual gross receipts are $50,000 or less
8.If applicable, a statement that the organization has terminated or is terminating (going out of business)

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Information-Needed-to-File-e-Postcard

So the great mystery of the missing 990's has been solved. They don't exist, because they aren't required. And the document that is required, the e-Postcard, doesn't have any more information than what can already be found on the LST website, or the Tenn. Sec. of State website. In fact, I can fill out all but #1:

1.
2. 2011
3. Law School Transparency
4. LST
5. Kyle P. McEntee, 401 17TH ST NW, APT 3209, ATLANTA, GA 30363-1038 USA
6. http://www.lawschooltransparency.com
7. The organization’s annual gross receipts are $50,000 or less.
8. N/A

But don't let that stop you from continuing to demand production of these non-existant documents, Steve. As a professor of business law, isn't it a little embarassing that you couldn't find publicly available information like this?