Highlights and Lowlights of the 2016 ABA Standard 509 Reports

The 2016 ABA 509 reports are out and there are some interesting things to report:

Let's Start with the "Hall of Shame" headed up, not surprisingly, by InfiLaw's three law schools: 

1.  Charlatan Law, I mean Charlotte Law, just placed on probation by the ABA, still doesn’t get it.  Their 2016 entering class profile is 148/144/141  3.07/2.80/2.48.  This is after their bar pass rate has come down from 62% in 2013 to 58% in 2014, to 46% in 2015 to somewhere in the low 40s for 2016 (in North Carolina, they had a 34.7% rate in February and a 45.2% rate in July).  Yet the school still admitted 1416 students and matriculated 343 students, an even larger class than last year’s entering class of 309, when what they should have done is cut the class size in half and tried to get to 151/149/147 3.2/3.0/2.8 to get back to some semblance of respectability.   Clearly, Dean Conartiston  decided to milk maximum profits out of the school for one more year.

2.  Florida Costly, that is, Florida Coastal: The September 19, 2016 letter by Florida Coastal Dean DeVito’s, which I wrote about previously, turns out to have been very misleading.  The letter stated, “We have raised our incoming LSAT requirements by five points and plan to raise it two more in the subsequent admission cycle.”  This suggested to me that Florida Coastal had already raised standards for the class that just started in the fall of 2016.  But in fact, they did no such thing.  In fact, they admitted a class almost identical to their sister school, Charlotte Law, with LSATs of 149/144/141 and UGPA of 3.27/2.87/2.57.   This class is also virtually identical to the class they admitted last year, at 148/144/141 3.29/2.88/2.54.   Meanwhile, having completely destroyed their reputation, the number of applications and the class size at FCSL continue to plummet.  Consider that in 2011, Florida Coastal had 5277 applications and matriculated 679 students.  This year, they had 1813 applications and enrollment is down to 235, almost 2/3 less on both counts.

3.  Arizona Plummet, er Summit somehow managed to convince 143 students to matriculate this fall, despite their incredibly dismal record of performance on the bar and in job placement.  The class they admitted is virtually identical to last year’s class in terms of credentials.  Both the 2015 and 2016 entering classes are at 148/143/140 with virtually identical grades as well – 3.34/2.88/2.54 last year and 3.31/2.96/2.54 this year.  Arizona Summit’s bar pass rate has gone from a respectable 72% in 2012, to 69% in 2013 to 52% (more than 21 points below the state average) in 2014, to 42% in 2015 (more than 24 points below the state average) to somewhere around 30% in 2016 (38.1 on the Arizona bar in February and 24.6% in July).  Arizona Summit is likely to be more than 30% below the state average for 2016.  So Arizona Summit is clearly out of compliance with ABA Standard 316 having been more than 15% below the state average 3 years in a row.  And they are clearly in violation of ABA Standard 501, for admitting students who do not appear capable of completing a J.D. and passing the bar.  In fact, the classes of 2015 and 2016 are even weaker than the class of 2013 that just bombed the bar in historic fashion.  The ABA must act immediately to stop this egregious exploitation.

(Note - Interestingly, Charleston Law School, which shrank to 85 incoming students last year when InfiLaw was trying to buy it, rebounded this year to matriculate 215, students, but they had to dip way down in the LSAT pool to do it, a huge mistake in my opinion.  LSAT profile 149/145/141.)

4.  Thomas Cooley has continued its exploitative admission practices, admitting 86% of its applicants and enrolling a huge class of 415 students, slightly down from last year’s class of 448, but with identical LSATs, a horrifying 147/141/138.  Cooley’s bar pass rate has hovered in the low 50s for the last three years (it is actually lower, because Cooley reports only 70-71% of their students and omits results from states where they did even worse, like California, as the current ABA standard permits).  Cooley has been 20 points or more below the state average since 2013 and was 16 points below the state average in 2012, so they are also out of compliance with ABA Standard 316.  Expect the ABA to place Cooley on probation in the very near future.

5.  Thomas Jefferson shrank from 247 to 232, but still had to lower its standards from 148/144/141 to 147/143/141.  This is not the way to improve on the 31% first time bar pass rate on the July California bar.  Thomas Jefferson has been out of compliance with ABA Standard 316 for four years in a row and must be placed on probation immediately.

6.  Ave Maria, which was just sanctioned by the ABA for admitting students who couldn’t succeed, has inexplicably lowered their admission standards this year.  They are down to just 88 students with a 151/147/143.  I question whether they will be able to stay in business.

7.  St. Thomas, another Catholic school in the Miami area also is going the wrong way, dropping their 75% percentile LSAT from 145 to 144.  That is not going to help with their 45% bar pass rate on the most recent Florida bar.

8.  North Carolina Central - class size dropped from 199 to 183 while LSATs dropped to 149/144/141 from 149/145/142, a decline the school could ill afford.

9.  Southern is also in trouble, shrinking from 210 entering students in 2015 to 171 this year, while their 75^th percentile (the top of the class) dropped to an incredibly low 146, the lowest in the country.  This places virtually every single student at the school at very high risk of failure.

10.  Whittier - see my last column.

11. Golden Gate - see my last column, especially the comments.

Schools in Deep Trouble

12.  Appalachian – Down to just 38 students, with a dismal 147/143/140 3.1/2.8/2.6 and bar pass out of compliance in 2014 and 2015 (don’t know about 2016 yet).

13.  Concordia – Provisionally accredited, and facing competition from the University of Idaho which is opening a campus in Boise next year, Concordia managed to attract a class of just 44 students, with a 151/149/145 down from 157/152/149 just two years ago.  It will be difficult for them to sustain their strong initial bar pass performance with such students.

14.  Faulkner Law school is down to 92 very weak students, with 149/145/142 LSATs and rapidly declining bar passage rates.  (UPDATE - Faulkner's Dean says their bar pass rate was much improved in 2016.   See comments.)

 

Bottom Tier Schools Doing the Right Thing, or at Least Trying

Valparaiso continues to try to dig out of the hole created by Dean Jay Conison before he left to destroy Charlotte Law School.  They have improved their incoming class to 151/147/145 (still not good enough, but going in the right direction), but had to shrink to 103 students to get there, less than half their size five years ago.   

Barry Law School raised their admission standards significantly and also shrank significantly from 278 in 2015 to 195 this fall.  Their numbers went up from 150/146/144 to 151/148/146, a major step in the right direction after seeing their bar pass rate drop into the 40s this year.

Texas Southern shrank its class a tiny bit (from 236 to 227) and improved it a tiny bit from 146/143/141 to 147/145/142.

 

The Bottom Line

Most of these admission decisions were made last winter and spring, before the ABA announced sanctions against Ave Maria, Valparaiso and Charlotte Law and before the horrific (but entirely predictable) bar results of this summer, but it is still incredibly disappointing to see how many schools have failed to heed the lessons of the last few years, or are simply so desperate to stay in business that they are willing to exploit very low aptitude students to do it.  Expect another round of sanctions, including probation, in the very near future.  Arizona Summit, Thomas Cooley, Thomas Jefferson, Golden Gate and Whittier are my leading candidates. 

Comments

[anon]

Again, just to make the point crystal clear: probation is insufficient if a prior probation within the last 10 or so years failed to result in sustained compliance. Repeated failure merits a harsher sanction, and here, the lack of seriousness that accompanies so quick a relapse into non compliance merits swift and sure action, i.e., suspension of accreditation with the right to reapply in five years for reinstatement. (At least in California, this would not be a fatal and determinative blow ... but enough, perhaps to get the attention of some who apparently don't care how exploitative their conduct becomes.)

[Charles I. Nelson]

I was surprised to find Faulkner listed here. We did have a "one off" in bar passage two years ago when the UBE was adopted in Alabama but that has been corrected and we are the only school in Alabama with a significantly improved bar passage rate (second in our state). Even the bottom quartile of our graduating class this year passed at a 62% pass rate. We will have a bottom quartile score of 145 for our entering class in 2017.

[confused by your post]

David,

Do you feel any concern that you may be prevented from making posts like this that are openly critical of law schools' admissions practices?

The statistics you cite are valuable but there are those here who are hostile to your views.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

A good percentage of my clients are on Probation too. ABA probation is meaningless, however. Can't lock up Dean Wormer for violating the terms and conditions of his probation.

[David Frakt]

confused -

I'm sure there may be some who are hostile to my views, but I am not aware of any efforts to prevent me from stating them. Even if there were, it is unlikely that I would be deterred. I welcome reasoned civil counterarguments, and have repeatedly stated that I would welcome anyone to come forward with actual data that undermines or contradicts any of my conclusions. In the two plus years I have been writing on this site, that has never happened.

[David Frakt]

Charles Nelson,

As Dean of Faulkner Law School, I appreciate that you would want to highlight any positive developments at your school, but your actions in admitting a class with a 149/145/142 is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the ABA Standard on admissions. It appears to me that having seen what happened to Charlotte, Valpo, and Ave Maria, you are planning to adjust your admissions practices to try to avoid ABA sanctions by announcing that you plan to raise your bottom quartile to 145, much as the Dean of Florida Coastal announced a plan to raise their LSAT median by 5 points after just admitting a class that was just as bad as the year before. Your bar pass rate may not be terrible, but based on what is in your 2016 509 report, it is in a steady downward trend: in 2013, it was 92%, in 2014, in was 69% and in 2015 it was 65%. I have not seen the 2016 results, but if you showed significant improvement, then I congratulate you for it. But I must also note that out of 104 matriculants in 2013, you had academic attrition of 18 first year students in 2014 and 5 "others" (plus 9 transfers), and then lost another 3 students in the second year class. So, the bottom quarter of the class actually never made it to graduation. This puts your comment that the bottom quartile had a 62% pass rate somewhat more in perspective. How many students who started law school at Faulkner in the fall of 2013 graduated on time and passed the bar on their first attempt? Almost certainly it was less than half. I would also note that the 2013 entering class which achieved these improvements on the bar was stronger than this year's entering class, with higher LSATs 151/146/142 and significantly higher UGPAs, 3.42/3.14/2.77 in 2013 compared to 3.45/2.92/2.51 this year. As I have written, if you are going to admit students with low LSATs, then those low scores should be counterbalanced by good UGPAs. That does not appear to have happened at Faulkner this year, so you are unlikely to be able to replicate the same results with these students. But hopefully your students will prove me wrong and do very well. I wish them all the best.

[minor point]

This is a minor point in the context of the overall post, but you write: "8. North Carolina Central - class size dropped from 199 to 183 while LSATs dropped to 149/144/141 from 149/145/142, a decline the school could ill afford."

This reads to me as a small improvement, not a decline. Not impressive, either way, of course.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

There will always be a market for these types of schools. Your name is Jake and you were born in 1993 and graduated with a BA in Exercise Arts from Central Indiana Baptist Torah Tech earning a 2.45 GPA. You were hired by Hardess to be an Asst. Regional Manager at 31K working 70 irregular hours per week with very few holidays off. Or your name is Amber and you are the Assistant shoe manager at Ross in "Evansville." You are bored and your career is an endless sting of being a retail monkey. So, the cultural attraction and TV pulls you toward being a LAWYER. The mystique and allure of being the next Clarence Darrow....the endless possibilities of a million dollar degree....Even if you cant make BIG LAW and those 180K salaries, at least you can be a solo making around 35K. At least you don't work 70-80 hours a week, have weekends off and just maybe, just maybe, you will hit the legal jackpot after one of your cousin twice removed calls when he gets smooshed by a bus that has INSURANCE!

[anon]

As usual the Captain feels compelled to fart in every room. The comment above is so off topic, so banal and so insulting in so many ways that it reminds us all that until there is a comment policy enforced in the FL, the Captain's efforts to disrupt and undermine the comments on this site will continue.

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

What? I am sooooooooo sorry. You like Hardees?

[terry malloy]

if you accept tuition dollars from someone who scored 142 on the LSAT you are a snake oil salesman. full stop.

[anon]

Terry

Unbelievably, the response by many on this site to your observation would be "No, I am selling opportunity."

The key here is to identify to whose benefit this "opportunity" is most likely inure ...

In the case of bottom feeders, with a track record of institutional failure, inability to meet their core mission, obliviousness to prior sanctions, and stubborn refusal to acknowledge and address these failures frankly, only one answer comes to mind.

Operation of such a law school inures to the benefit, principally, of the self interested persons who operate it. The fact that a minority of its grads may actually pass the bar and an even smaller minority of those admitted may obtain employment as attorneys is not the point, insofar as these greedy, self interested persons are concerned.

Instead, it is their survival, at any cost, that is at stake, and, for that reason, they will bring to bear all of their powers of rationalization, legal argument, phony moral appeals and all sorts of other techniques to forestall any reckoning for their malfeasance.

[Ethical Professor]

See also Western State College of Law which, among many other falsities, touts being "ranked first in state ... for bar success" despite having one of the lowest bar passage rates in the state as well as abysmal employment records. Shameful!

[Greg Sergienko]

Dear David,

I’m sorry you didn’t give me a call before posting your statement on Concordia. Please let me correct some misapprehensions.

First, the visit we just had from the ABA was our two-year visit, not our full approval visit. You can verify that by looking at the approval date on Concordia's 509.

Second, the site visit was very positive. That reflects things like our excellent bar pass rate. In July, our bar pass rate was 80% in Idaho, despite Idaho's having a UBE cut score that ties with Alaska for the highest of any state. http://law.cu-portland.edu/news/concordia-law’s-idaho-state-bar-passage-rates-announced.

We already comply with the proposed ABA bar passage requirements for both our graduating years, even though none of our graduates have had two years to take the bar. We also have an extremely low non-transfer attrition rate, as you can tell from our 509, so we easily comply with the proposed standards on attrition.

Given all our outcome measures, I am confident that we will obtain full ABA approval when the time comes.

Best regards,

Greg Sergienko
Associate Dean of Academics
Concordia University School of Law

[Anonymous]

The author of this post applied for jobs at two of the law schools attacked in this post. In fact, he had callback interviews at no less than two of the law schools attacked in this post (and perhaps more of which I am unaware). He is a failed academic with a bone to pick, using Faculty Lounge in much the same way our President-elect is using a Twitter account.

[J.R. Goodwin]

Minor point:
With regard to "while LSATs dropped to 149/144/141 from 149/145/142, a decline" I believe the referenced decline was with respect to the slight drop in LSAT scores. Taken in conjunction with the significant decrease in class size, however, this could be construed as an overall net positive.

[David Frakt]

Dear Dean Sergienko,

Thank you for your polite post and for the update regarding Concordia, and for correcting my misstatement about the full accreditation visit. I am glad that things are going well from your perspective. My concerns have to do with the drop in admissions standards this year, and the longer-term economic viability of the school. I am not convinced that Boise can support two law schools, and financial viability is something that ABA accreditation teams are supposed to carefully scrutinize. But I certainly wish you and your colleagues the best.

Regards,

David

[Derek Tokaz]

Greg Sergienko,

The 25th percentile uGPA at Concordia is 2.60. What gives?

[terry malloy]

Greg Sergienko, do you sleep well at night taking 30,000/year from people who you know very well have little chance at a career that will pay back the debt they incur?

Is it more like marquis de evermond 'this is the order of things' or more like PT Barnum?

[concerned_citizen]

DOE today yanked CSOL's access to federal financial aid....