Florida Coastal, Barry and St. Thomas Bomb the Florida Bar

Back in April 2014, when I gave my infamous Dean candidate presentation to Florida Coastal School of Law, (see also here) I predicted that the class that had just been admitted for the fall of 2014 would surely have less than a 50% bar pass rate in 2017.  The numbers for the entering class of 2014: LSAT 147/143/140 and UGPA 3.20/2.93/2.63, were down across the board from 2013 when they were already appallingly low. I also predicted, correctly, that Florida Coastal's bar pass rate would drop below 60% that summer.  Well, the 2016 Florida bar exam results are out, and Florida Coastal has underperformed even my low expectations by dropping below 50% a year early, at least in Florida, where most Florida Coastal grads take the bar.  Here's the numbers:  16 of 49 Florida Coastal first-time takers passed the February 2016 Florida bar;  83 out of 160 passed the July 2016 Florida bar.  The combined total for 2016 is 99 of 209, or 47.4%.

Now, in fairness to Florida Coastal, they were not the worst performing school in Florida this year. Both Barry (where I used to teach, but not since Fall semester 2011, so don’t blame me)  and St. Thomas had a 45% combined first-time bar pass rate in Florida this year, with 98 of 217 Barry first-time takers passing (45.2%), compared to 81 of 180 for St. Thomas (45.0%). 

Based on these results, Florida Coastal may arguably be doing a better job at educating high-risk students than either of these two non-profit private Catholic schools, given that Barry’s and St. Thomas’s 2013 entering classes, although very weak, were stronger on paper than Florida Coastal’s, as seen in this chart:

2013 Admitted Student Profiles from ABA Standard 509 Information Reports

School                     75/50/25 LSAT                     75/50/25 GPA                      Entering Class Size

Barry                      151/147/145                        3.20/2.90/2.59                   283

St. Thomas            150/147/145                       3.33/3.06/2.78                   261

Florida Coastal     148/144/141                       3.26/2.97/2.69                   441

I say “arguably”, because we would also have to look at issues like academic attrition and transfer attrition to get a more accurate assessment of who is graduating and taking the bar. But although Florida Coastal could have done worse (like their InfiLaw sister schools, Charlotte and Arizona Plummet, I mean, Summit),  let’s not lose sight of the big picture, more than half, over a 100, of their recent graduates failed the bar. A sub-50% first-time pass rate, especially on an easy bar like Florida’s (I took and passed the Florida bar in February 2014), is an abomination, and is a direct result of the exploitative admissions policies that I tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them to abandon.

So what should we make of the results at Barry and St. Thomas?  These bar results provide strong validation of my LSAT risk bands, reproduced below:

David Frakt’s LSAT Score Risk Bands 

156-180           Minimal Risk

153-155           Low Risk

150-152           Modest Risk

147-149           High Risk

145-146           Very High Risk

120-144           Extreme Risk

Law schools considering admitting applicants in the high and extreme risk categories should ensure that they have other indicators, such as above average college grades, which suggest they will outperform their LSAT scores.  Otherwise, schools are simply setting up the majority of these students for failure.  While it may be reasonable to accept a small number of students with weak LSAT scores who appear, for other reasons, to have the capacity to succeed, no law school should ever admit 25% or more students at 144 or below, unless they can prove that they have a sustained record of high success rates with such students.   (I don’t think there currently are any such schools, but I leave open that possibility.)

Incidentally, Barry and St. Thomas, which do not have a proven track record of success with such high risk students, both admitted even weaker classes in 2014 than the 2013 class that just bombed the Florida bar, with a bottom 25% LSAT at 144 at both schools.  That does not bode well for next year at either of these schools.

The ABA should take action against all three of these schools, such as they have done recently at Ave Maria, to ensure that they discontinue their irresponsible admissions practices.

Comments

[Leo]

Agree with your conclusion, David.

Why do you thinkFlorida has so many bad law schools? I realize that from k-12 thru college Florida is not known for having great schools, but still.....

[anon]

Leo

California has it's share as well.

It is the weird anti-market in the law school economy.

Competition results is a race to the bottom.

Could unlimited federal money, funneled thru the hands of unwitting and naïve "children" (who, as we know from a recent post, are believed by law school denizens to need primarily to feel cared about, not actually be trained to be lawyers and obtain employment as such) contribute to this weird anti market? Could the fact that the distribution of this money is subject to ZERO standards but for those of the toothless, hapless and corrupt ABA, have something to do with this condition?

How disgusting this all has become. Everyone who has thought about these issues honestly now more or less agrees with all that was denied and disputed ad nauseam a few years ago (when the defenders of the status quo were hurling profanities at and labeling anyone who dared to speak the truth "miscreants"). But, nothing really has changed, except perhaps that now all the law school industry shills throw around new buzzwords like "experiential" and "practice training" (while changing basically nothing, or, perhaps a few electives).

As said, how disgusting can this be.

Adopt some standards and adhere to them. Is that so hard? The law hasn't changed much. The court system hasn't changed much. Mortgages look like mortgages still. Stop posturing and get back to business.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

The tuition for law school is outrageous given its ROI. My suggestion is simple. Pay all Prawfs and Deans roughly what I earned along with legions of other Solos---not more than 37K per year. You pay for your own Obama Care Bronze Plans, no paid vacations, no defined pensions, no sabbaticals, and you teach 40-60 hours per week. Pay for your own phones, offices and bar dues. We are a little over 50% of the legal profession. I am about average. You guys should get what most of your graduates get and nothing more. Why? Because there are 250,000 desperate schmucks like me who can teach Palsgraff, Terry and International Shoe and I practice it everyday. You don't. I will do your job as a 1099 Independent Contractor for @250.00 per week for ten weeks teaching one class.

[[M][a][c][K]]

Leo,

Part of the reason Florida has so many bad law schools is that it has so many law schools - 12!
• Barry University School of LawFlorida A&M University College of Law
• Florida Coastal School of Law
• Florida International University College of Law
• Florida State University College of Law
• University of Florida Levin College of Law
• Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University
• St. Thomas University School of Law
• Diamond Graduate Law School LLM Online Program (i.e., Thomas Jefferson School of Law Florida satellite)
• Stetson University College of Law
• University of Miami School of Law
• Ave Maria School of Law

That is simply a ludicrous number of law schools - and you tend to see that where a state (or city) has too many law schools, some are going to 'bottom feed.' See California, Illinois, etc.

[Matthew Reid Krell]

Never mind, I found the 12th one (your carriage return between Barry and FAMU didn't register).

[Ralph Clifford]

I don't know what the current numbers are as I haven't focused on this area for about a decade, but I would be very interested in seeing the trend line on the bar itself. Has the pass rate on the Florida bar decreased over the last years? If it has, to justify your conclusion, you need to establish that the standards on the bar itself haven't changed. If the Florida bar is now harder than it was a few years ago, the change in a school's statistics could be out of its control.

A change in overall standards is possible. If a state's bar examination committee decides that there are too many attorneys in the state, an likely change is to make it harder for new attorneys to join.

[David Frakt]

Ralph -

The Florida bar pass rate has gone steadily down in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as a direct result of lowering admission standards in 2011, 2012, 2013. There is no other explanation. The bar examination itself has not gotten any harder. The cut score has remained the same.

[David Frakt]

And let's not forget that Thomas Cooley has opened a branch campus in Tampa, Fl, adding even more very poorly qualified students to the mix of Florida bar takers, although it is still reported as a Michigan based school.

[[M][a][c][K]]

So I was wrong - I not just failed a carriage return, but missed what is effectively a 13th law school in Florida. Cripes 13!

[[M][a][c][K]]

It may seem simplistic but its worth looking at Wikipedia's list of law schools in the United States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_schools_in_the_United_States
which usefully can list by city/state to get an idea of the distribution, but as David Frakt pointed out, it does mean that I missed Cooley's campus in Florida - which means that the state has a remarkable 13 law schools.

In part when you read it you end up wondering at why some states have so many law schools - Ohio (nine), Pennsylvania (eight), California (I mean it's a big state but wow! that many), Tennessee (six!), Virginia (eight-nine) North Carolina (seven) and DC (six.)

Moreover, many states with a lot of law schools are in the same economic regions or catchment area - e.g., DC, Va, NC with a total of twenty one law schools only three of which would really be considered "national" law schools (and in DC (and other major cities such as SF, Chicago, New York) Harvard, Yale and other "national schools" compete for employment too.) The same issue applies to Ohio and Pa, or for that matter Illinois, Indiana and Tennessee.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Brackets,

Understand that in many States, there is a law school GAP. This is analogous to what that weak liberal human rights loving Carter created for the United States of America during the 80s. We had a missile GAP, tank GAP, war head GAP, transport GAP, fighter GAP, artillery GAP, bomb GAP, battle ship GAP. carrier GAP with the USSR, the Russians. This could not stand. Thank god for our savior, Ronald Reagan.

[dupednontraditional]

Captaian:

Don't forget the "mineshaft GAP"!

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

Yes, of course. Just like Kerry forgot Poland.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

dupednontraditional:

Great movie. "Gentleman, you can't fight here, this is the War Room."