There is a new documentary just out about law schools by the documentary film makers T and B Owen. The video is available on Amazon Prime Video here for $2.99 HD or $1.99 SD if you want to save a buck. The film features Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos and myself, and also tells the story of a Georgetown law graduate who has struggled to find a decent job, and another student who was admitted to Charlotte Law School through an "admission by performance" program with a 127 LSAT (bottom 1%). Not surprisingly, she later flunked out. There is a hilarious reenactment of my infamous Florida Coastal dean presentation using Legos and featuring a toy T-Rex as President Dennis Stone. (That alone should be worth the price of admission.) The movie effectively explains how some law schools are taking advantage of students with poor aptitude for the study of law while advising students considering law school to be savvy about where they go and how much they spend. While it can fairly be characterized as a cautionary tale about attending law school, the filmmakers avoid making overly broad generalizations popular in the "law school scam" movement, and overall, I think they weave a fair, compelling and entertaining narrative. The film is 40 minutes long, and several parts of the film (or perhaps the whole thing) would serve as excellent material to generate discussion in a course on legal or business ethics.
And no, I was not paid to appear in the film, nor will I profit in any way from sales of the film.
Since I try to be a stickler for accuracy, let me note that there are a couple of minor factual errors in the movie, including one made by me. The narrator states that the median LSAT score is 150. That is incorrect. The median LSAT score is actually between 151 and 152, even though the range is 120-180 and 150 would logically be the median. A 150 score is actually in the 44th percentile.
In the film, I state that Charlotte Law School and Florida Coastal were, at one point, the two largest law schools in the country. This is not accurate. However, these schools did, at one point, have the largest 1L entering classes of any single campus law schools in the country. Florida Coastal had the largest 1L class for a single campus school in 2011 with 671 matriculating students. Only Cooley, with four or five campuses, matriculated more 1L students overall. In 2012, Charlotte had the largest 1L class in the country (again, other than Cooley), at 626 entering students, with Florida Coastal just behind with 580 students. Because of high attrition and transfer rates, neither Florida Coastal or Charlotte ever had the largest enrollment overall. While I regret my overstatement, I don't believe that it detracts from my point which is that these schools grew too large, too fast, and admitted many students who were destined to fail.
I welcome your comments on the film.
See the trailer here: Law School Confidential
Followed by And Justice For All and the Verdict....
Posted by: Deep State Special Legal Counsel | January 12, 2018 at 12:08 AM