LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2015, Part 9

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 2/20/15, there are 233,706 fall 2015 applications submitted by 34,054 applicants. Applicants are down 4.8% and applications are down 7.5% from 2014.  Last year at this time, we had 66% of the preliminary final applicant count."  If this year's applicants follow last year's pattern, then we will have about about 51,507 total applicants for the fall 2015.  The last post in this series is here.

Comments

[John Charles Kunich]

Related to this LSAC data, the National Law Journal’s new list of the “Top 50 Go-To Schools” (published on February 23, 2015) is notable almost entirely as a classic example of a “dog bites man” story. Rankings such as the NLJ “go-to’s” perpetuate and exacerbate the elitist and exclusivist effects of the thoroughly-debunked U.S. News rankings. The criteria by which such lists are derived are manipulable, self-fulfilling, arbitrary, and reinforcing of cultural/racial divisions.

Is it at all surprising that highly selective “elite” law schools like Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Chicago, Stanford, et al. are disproportionately successful at placing their graduates, expensively burnished with shiny credentials, at the largest/most selective law firms? Elitism reproduces itself. Vast networks of alumni, accumulated and enlarged generation after generation, favor top graduates from their own schools in their hiring decisions. This is completely predictable, and not necessarily a phenomenon to be celebrated.

[Nathan A]

Probably not the greatest sign that 2015 applications are closing the gap with 2014 applications toward the end of the cycle. The best applicants apply early and the best schools have earlier deadlines.

[Observer]

"Is it at all surprising that highly selective “elite” law schools like Columbia, Harvard, NYU, Chicago, Stanford, et al. are disproportionately successful at placing their graduates, expensively burnished with shiny credentials, at the largest/most selective law firms? Elitism reproduces itself. Vast networks of alumni, accumulated and enlarged generation after generation, favor top graduates from their own schools in their hiring decisions. This is completely predictable, and not necessarily a phenomenon to be celebrated."

LOL. Where did you get your law degree from, again?

[John Charles Kunich]

To build on my previous comments, I think the National Law Journal ranking of the “Top 50 Go-To Schools” is both unsurprising and anti-progressive, doing more harm than good within the current legal education/profession environment. The NLJ’s touting of the obvious (if not inevitable) correlation of graduation from traditionally “elite” law schools and subsequent employment at traditionally prestigious mega-firms serves only to fuel yet another round of self-perpetuating privilege and divisiveness.

Much as I despise the shopworn cliché “thinking outside the box,” it’s time to do just that. As an old scientist who long ago pivoted into the study of law, I still recall a bit about the scientific method and how to evaluate empirical evidence to test hypotheses. I recognize that there are inherent biases, assumptions, inaccuracies, over-simplifications, and questionable judgments built into any system that purports to rank law schools according to relative merit. But we should be able to do better than the U.S. News and the NLJ hierarchy-replicating games.

Given the well-known racial, ethnic, and cultural bias of the SAT and the LSAT, as well as the gamesmanship “top” law schools use to artificially enhance their admissions credentials (see the recent “predatory poaching” controversy), we need to recognize that there are many law schools that achieve admirable results under circumstances much more daunting than those facing the old-guard titans. With many diverse students eager for an opportunity to become the first attorney in their family, or even in their community, a system that overly rewards traditional metrics of merit stands as a stumbling-block, not a stepping-stone.

I can anticipate the horrified reaction from my fellow alumni at Harvard and other legal leviathans, but law schools that serve working-class applicants, racially diverse communities, non-traditional students, and people who have never dined from a silver spoon deserve affirmation and positive recognition. Law schools such as Elon, Charlotte, Roger Williams, Florida Coastal, Lewis & Clark, Appalachian, and Vermont are expanding the options for legal education, each in their own way. Their efforts require additional investment in academic support, bar preparation, remedial work, specialized focus on one niche, and/or emphasis on certain socio-economic backgrounds. The standard U.S. News rankings disfavor such departure from the established order, but many graduates of these law schools are successful today precisely because someone was willing to look beyond the obvious LSAT/UGPA/legacy criteria.

The NLJ list would be more impressive and more useful if it incorporated some variant of the “degree of difficulty” factor used in many Olympic events. After all, it takes a lot more for a law school to produce successful graduates when it is not overwhelmingly favored in advance by generations upon generations of brilliantly-credentialed, elite alumni. Law schools that provide an opportunity for people who would never be considered by the “Top Go-To’s” warrant some affirmation for accepting applicants who are not hereditary “legacies” and who had to work multiple jobs while in high school and college. People are more than the sum of a few numbers. I’d like to see some positive attention for the law schools that accept a higher degree of difficulty and devote themselves to achieving excellence for their students despite the obstacles. It is more impressive to confront and overcome disadvantages than to evade and avoid them.

[anon]

Observer

Looks to me that Prof Kunich is a highly accomplished and credentialed.

The "LOL" is about you. Where did you get your law degree from, again?

[JM]

"Probably not the greatest sign that 2015 applications are closing the gap with 2014 applications toward the end of the cycle. The best applicants apply early and the best schools have earlier deadlines."

No kidding. What kind of person just cranks out law school applications in March or April? Probably someone who is doing it on a whim, or is half-hearted about the idea. Intelligent people plan these things carefully and apply no later than January. No wonder bar passage rates are plunging to unheard of depths.

[Observer]

"Looks to me that Prof Kunich is a highly accomplished and credentialed.

The "LOL" is about you. Where did you get your law degree from, again?"

Of course Prof Kunich is highly accomplished and credentialed. It's just amusing that he is denouncing large law firms for excessive credentialism, when law schools generally exceed large law firms in their quest for elite credentials.

How many law schools in the United States hire their own graduates?

[anon]

Observer

Not many. They all want Yale grads: even the bottom feeders, because their faculties attended like schools and are deluded by a sense of their own importance and merit.

That was Prof Kunich's point, as I understood it. It sort of like the old House of Lords here, preaching to us about how meritorious heredity really is.

The better view is to let the sliver of schools and BigLaw firms that rely on them be and focus on improving the rest. The "standards" set by the "elite" schools and firms - epitomized by Wall Street - should be ignored, except as the subject of study and imposed reform from without, not within.

[Anonymous]

John Charles Kunich- find someone to say what you are saying who hasn't made a living teaching at places like Appalachian School of Law and Charlotte School of Law. You are anything but a disinterested party, and you are smart enough to know that.

If these schools are so devoted to helping their disadvantaged students, why do they charge so much? Why are some of the most indebted graduates those who attended the bottom-tier schools? It's fascinating to see how you conveniently shift blame toward the law firms that won't hire these graduates, and the entities that make rankings based on this reality, and away from the schools which exploit these students.

[John C. Kunich]

As a professional with 12 years of full-time experience as a law professor at university-based not-for-profit law schools (Roger Williams University), stand-alone not-for-profit (Appalachian), and stand-alone for-profit (Charlotte), I have seen it all from the inside and from the outside. I've also been an invited guest speaker/debater at approximately 70 of this nation's law schools during the past 4 years, including Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Georgetown, Chicago, Berkeley, Duke, and many other "elite" schools, as well as "regular folks" schools like Elon, South Carolina, Washburn, Vermont, Lewis & Clark, Widener, etc. During these speaking engagements, I've spoken with students, faculty, and administrators at roughly 35% of all U.S. law schools. I know more than a little about the realities of legal education today.

One overarching lesson I've learned is that there is no genuine difference among law schools based on their status as for-profit, not-for-profit, university-affiliated, or stand-alone. All, and I do mean all, law schools strive mightily to maximize their surplus of revenues over expenses. They may "re-invest" that surplus in their own salaries, benefits, office furnishings/equipment, research stipends, sabbaticals, and travel allowances, and then call themselves non-profit. But one can easily discern that this is a distinction devoid of difference when one considers the great lengths these law schools go to in gaining and retaining as many tuition-paying students as possible.

The recent "predatory poaching" conversation illustrates this nicely. "Not-for-profit" schools like American University's Washington College of Law have been bemoaning the large number of their tuition-paying students who transfer to more highly-ranked nearby "not-for-profit" schools like George Washington and Georgetown after their 1L year. Each year, the gaining schools eagerly accept dozens of these tuition-paying transfer students, secure in the knowledge that their LSAT and UGPA numbers will not in any way tarnish the glittering but illusory credentials of their official U.S. News student body. We might call this "predatory poaching" as one of American's deans has recently done, or we could think of it as an entirely voluntary decision made by each student, based on factors that seem relevant and appropriate to each individual. But the prevalence, and the controversial nature, of this phenomenon is evidence that the abundantly well-paid professors and deans at all of these putatively non-profit schools care very, very much about their P&L balance sheet.

No one in this system is motivated entirely by self-effacing altruism. As one with extensive experience at a variety of law schools, I know that self-interest is ubiquitous. Some law schools are just more honest about it than others. And, as professors and deans at GW might say, no one is poaching or exploiting anyone here. Students are free to apply to, remain at, or transfer out of, any law schools they choose. They too are responsible, rational adults who are fully accountable for their own voluntary decisions. No one is exploiting them--not the faculty/administration at GW, Georgetown, Charlotte, Appalachian, American, or any other law school.

[Anon123]

"Students are free to apply to, remain at, or transfer out of, any law schools they choose. They too are responsible, rational adults who are fully accountable for their own voluntary decisions. No one is exploiting them--not the faculty/administration at GW, Georgetown, Charlotte, Appalachian, American, or any other law school"

Madoff could make the same argument, that adults are accountable for their own decisions.

[Anonymous]

John C. Kunich- I appreciate the honesty, if nothing else, displayed in your comment at 9:10. I think we can both agree that, regardless of technical status as a for-profit or not-for-profit, these schools exist to maximize profits, like any other corporation, the only difference being whether those profits are paid to shareholders, in the case of a for-profit entity, or stakeholders such as administrators and faculty, in the case of a not-for-profit. I just wish law professor would drop the sanctimony, such as that of your 4:14 comment, and stop claiming that they are doing their jobs as a public service or with the goal of helping the underprivileged.

[Just saying...]

Anon123: Madoff could and he would be right. The people who begged --and many did beg -- Madoff to allow them to invest with him did so because of his year-after-year outsized returns. One could argue that at least some were greedy and only saw the $$. They chose not to do any due diligence or question how he managed to do what others could not in terms of investing.

Supposedly, some of his peers were highly suspicious of him, but his were adults accountable for their own actions.