The Faculty Lounge

ABA Names Jennifer Rosato Perea Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education

The ABA has announced that Jennifer Rosato Perea will serve as the Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education. Rosato Perea currently serves as the dean of DePaul College of Law.  She will assume her new position on June 1. 

That's the newsy part.  But this is especially exciting for me - and folks at the Drexel Kline School of Law.  Jenn and I were among the first faculty hired in 2005 to start what was then the Drexel College of Law.   She was named interim dean shortly before the law school opened and was a superb leader through the birth of the law school and our process of initial ABA accreditation.  I can't imagine a person better situated to understand the diversity of issues that face law schools than Jenn.  And putting aside the practical part, Jenn is the best of human beings.   What good news for all of us in the law school world!

Concord Law School Officially Renamed Purdue Global Law School

Concord Law School - the online law school started in the days of Kaplan - has been renamed Purdue Global Law School effective November 8.  More details can be found here. I'll be curious to see whether Purdue will begin moves toward ABA accreditation. 

Fostering Professional Identities: Ikigai, Tolstoy, and Therapeutic Jurisprudence

Recently I’ve had several conversations with fellow law professors about the American Bar Association’s new Accreditation Standard 303(b)(3), which holds that law schools “should provide substantial opportunities to students” for the “development of a professional identity.” The ABA’s Interpretation 303-5 of that Standard states that:

…(P)rofessional identity focuses on what it means to be a lawyer and the special obligations lawyers have to their clients and society. The development of a professional identity should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice. Because developing a professional identity requires reflection and growth over time, students should have frequent opportunities for such development during each year of law school and in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.

I confess my skepticism towards ABA requirements that can easily prompt somewhat ham-handed attempts to treat topics about values and personal qualities as content to be covered -- in this case, shoehorning professional identity formation into enough courses to claim regulatory compliance. Rather, I see professional identity formation as something that develops organically and depends a lot on (1) the social, emotional, and intellectual maturity of individual students, and (2) legal educators and lawyers being aware of openings to weave potentially teachable moments into conversations and discussions.

Nevertheless, the topic itself is important for our students' professional development. As my Suffolk Law colleague Harmony Decosimo points out in her insightful taxonomy of factors contributing to professional identity formation, values, wellness, and professional competencies are all part of the mix. As I see it, opportunities to highlight these elements may occur at any time and in unscripted ways, such as a student’s response to a simulation exercise or clinical assignment, a professor’s reference to some aspect of practice, or an attorney’s account about representing a client in an important case.

To the extent that professional identity is tagged as a topic for classroom discussion, the approach should be engaging and contemplative, rather than directive or pedantic. Towards that end, I’d like to look at three items: (1) a Japanese concept for examining life purpose; (2) a novella by Leo Tolstoy that invites big questions about life and work; and, (3) a school of theory and practice that can serve as a useful lens for creating a life in the law.

Ikigai

Ikigai, explains Wikipedia, “is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.” It is usually captured via some version of the diagram reproduced here. Being at the intersecting center of all four circles is the state of ikigai.

Laura Oliver, writing for the World Economic Forum, says that the philosophy and practice of ikigai is “a way to live longer and better.” She explains:

While there is no direct English translation, ikigai is thought to combine the Japanese words ikiru, meaning “to live,” and kai, meaning “the realization of what one hopes for.” Together these definitions create the concept of “a reason to live” or the idea of having a purpose in life.

Oliver adds that those who have studied ikigai raise four key questions to start us down the path toward an ideal state:

• “What do you love?”
• “What are you good at?”
• “What does the world need from you?”
• “What can you get paid for?”

Hmm, this sounds like an invitation to law students to consider professional identity formation.

Beat It on Down the Line

"Beat It on Down the Line" was written by the great Jesse Fuller, who performed it as a one-man band on 12-string guitar, harmonica, kazoo, high-hat cymbal, and fotdella (a six-string upright bass of his own invention and construction, played with his right foot). It was covered by the Grateful Dead on their first album, and most covers since have been of the Dead's version.

Unusually, this post begins with two audio clips because (1) I cannot find a video of Fuller performing this song, and (2) I really like the tambourine coming in on the third verse of the Dead's recording -- at 1:44. It is probably my single favorite moment in the entire Grateful Dead oeuvre -- which for some reason was not used in their live performances. There is also a video clip of Fuller at the bottom of this post.

Lamont Dozier (1941-2022)

Lamont Dozier, one third of the legendary Motown songwriting team Holland Dozier Holland, passed away on August 8. Along with the Holland brothers, Dozier was the creative force behind dozens of hits in the 1960s and early '70s for nearly every Motown act, including the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Junior Walker, the Isley Brothers, and many others, including a few after they left Motown in a royalties dispute with Gordy Berry. They were probably responsible for more hits in a shorter time span than any other composers -- save perhaps Lennon and McCartney -- including the Brill Building songwriters. Here is a sampling of HDH songs by the original acts (there have been plenty of covers).

Late addition: Sam Gooden, of the Impressions, died on August 4. The Chicago-based Impressions had the distinction of being fronted by both Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield, overlapping and separately, with Gooden singing baritone and bass for both iterations. There are two Impressions clips -- one with Mayfield, one with Butler -- at the bottom of this post.

ABA Drops the Ball on WMU Cooley

As I noted in this recent post, Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley Law School continues to be out of compliance with ABA Standard 316, having missed the ABA's 75% Ultimate Bar Pass rate (at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates in a calendar year who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their date of graduation) for the classes of 2017, 2018 and 2019.  Back in May 2020, the ABA gave WMU two years to come into compliance with Standard 316.  Instead, WMU's UBP rate dropped in successive years -- from 66% for the class of 2017, to  62.3% for the class of 2018, to 59.5% for the class of 2019.

One might have expected a robust response from the ABA.  Instead, while noting Cooley's continued non-compliance, the ABA gave Cooley a three-year extension to come into compliance, with some modest conditions attached, as reflected in the Council's Notice of Correction Action posted on the ABA's website.  

What was Cooley's defense?  Basically, the new Dean, James McGrath, acknowledged that Cooley used to have really weak admission standards before he came in, but now, they have tightened those standards; so, he argued, there is every reason to believe that bar pass rates will start going up in a couple of years.   And I believe this to be true.  I have previously given credit to Dean McGrath for the very substantial improvement in entrance credentials at WMU Cooley that coincided with his appointment as Dean, and have continued.  But I take issue with one argument apparently made by Dean McGrath.  According to an article in the ABA Journal, the poor performance on the bar exam "relates to old admissions standards that Cooley Law used before he arrived, which were in place prior to Standard 316 being revised."   What Cooley seems to have successfully argued to the ABA is that Standard 316 didn't go into effect until 2019, and that, as soon as it did (starting with students entering in 2020), they tightened their admissions standards, so therefore they shouldn't be punished for their old admissions standards.  But this argument ignores the fact that Cooley was placed on notice in 2017 that their admissions standards were too low, when they were found out of compliance with ABA Standard 501(b), after I and others had repeatedly called for action against Cooley. As I noted in this post, "The class that Cooley admitted in 2015 is statistically the worst entering class of law students in the history of American legal education at an ABA-Accredited law school, and that is saying something."  

So, given that Cooley was specifically informed that their admissions practices were unacceptable in 2017, why should the ABA give Cooley a break when Cooley continued to admit hundreds of unqualified students in 2018 and 2019, students with no meaningful prospect of passing the bar, in clear violation of ABA Standard 501(b)?   Perhaps the answers lies in the fact that the ABA left Cooley off the hook back in March 2018, inexplicably finding the school back in compliance with ABA Standard 501(b), just in time for them to admit hundreds more unqualified students for the fall 2018 entering class.  This decision surely must go down as one of the most wrong-headed decisions the ABA has ever made, as I noted in an baffled post I wrote at the time.  Indeed, at the same time the ABA was letting Cooley off the hook, they found two schools with higher admissions standards to be out of compliance with the admissions standard.  The bottom line is that the ABA essentially authorized Cooley's exploitative admissions practices which led to the incredibly weak class that WMU admitted in 2018.   And, although Cooley started to improve its admissions practices in 2019, it was still the least selective law school in the country that year (for more granular information about the dreadfully underqualified students Cooley was admitting in those years, see my Bottom Ten lists for 2017, 2018, and 2019.) 

Given that Cooley knew for years that it was admitting droves of students with no meaningful likelihood of passing the bar exam, and was never punished for it, I think it is fundamentally wrong to not punish Cooley for the completely predictable abominable results on the bar exam that these classes achieved.   On the other hand, I can see why the ABA might be reluctant to punish Cooley now for results achieved by students under admissions practices that the ABA essentially authorized back in March 2018.  This conundrum illustrates the folly of not having clear standards and consistent enforcement of those standards.  Giving Cooley a free pass for their horrendous UBP rates continues this tradition of weak enforcement and sets a very poor example for future enforcement of Standard 316.  How bad do things have to be before the ABA decides to actually sanction a law school?

I continue to believe that the most appropriate sanction against Cooley would be to offer some kind of refund or loan forgiveness to the many students who never should have been admitted in the first place who  have wasted years of their lives attempting to become lawyers.   These are the victims of Cooley's exploitation and they deserve some form of reparations.   Sadly, because the ABA was also complicit in their victimization, the ABA is unable or unwilling to do anything to rectify these past wrongs.    

 

2020 Bottom Ten List - America's Least Selective Law Schools

For the past few years, I have written a post listing the bottom 10 least selective ABA-accredited law schools.   (See, 2017 , 2018 , 2019  columns) 

The point of these columns was to try to draw attention to the exploitative admission practices of some ABA schools.  This public shaming, along with more aggressive enforcement of ABA Standard 316 by the ABA and other measures, such as tightening the bar pass standard, has resulted in the gradual decrease of the once widespread practice of admitting large numbers of poorly qualified students at many ABA-approved law schools. 

Things had improved enough with the entering class of 2019 that in last year’s column I raised the question:  “Is the era of exploitative admissions in law schools over?”  My conclusion?  Not quite.  But we're getting there.  This year, I am pleased to report again that even fewer law schools are admitting significant numbers of dubiously qualified students.  In fact, the numbers have improved so much that I am abandoning the Bottom 10 List this year altogether (reserving, of course, the right to bring it back again in future years, if needed).  Indeed, after reviewing the admissions numbers in the ABA’s Standard 509 Information Reports for academic year 2020-2021, there is only one law school which I consider to be currently engaging in admission practices that are clearly problematic -- Southern University.

America's Least Selective Law School - Southern University

Concordia Law School Changes Parent Institution

Until now, Concordia Law School in Boise has been an arm of Concordia University in Portland, Oregon.  Concordia Portland recently announced that it will close its doors this spring.  Now, Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota has agreed to take over as the law school's parent institution. Both Concordia campuses are operated by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.  ABA review will occur in upcoming months. 

The 2019 Law School Bar Pass Hall of Shame

As I wrote in a recent column about America's least selective law schools, the days of widespread predatory admissions practices by ABA-accredited law schools seems to have come largely to a close.  The schools that engaged in these practices have either gone out of business (Whittier, Valparaiso, Charlotte School of Law, Arizona Summit) converted to State-Accredited Schools (Thomas Jefferson, University of LaVerne) or have been sufficiently chastened by ABA sanctions that they have largely reformed their ways (Florida Coastal, Ave Maria, Atlanta’s John Marshall, Texas Southern, Appalachian, North Carolina Central, Western Michigan (formerly Thomas Cooley). 

But although law schools are no longer admitting large numbers of unqualified students, the legacy of the years of these irresponsible and unethical admission practices carries on in the form of atrocious bar pass rates at the schools that engaged in these reprehensible practices.  The worst admissions abuses occurred between 2013 and 2016, so law school are still feeling the effects today.  Most students who matriculated in 2016 graduated in 2019, but many part-time students admitted in 2016 will be graduating this year.  

The ABA has recently released comprehensive bar pass statistics, including first year bar pass statistics for 2019 and ultimate bar pass rate statistics for 2017.  UBP measures the percentage of graduates who pass the bar within two years of graduation.  You can find the ABA’s spreadsheets here.   Overall, these statistics are up, and that is good news.  Nationwide, 89.5% of 2017 law graduates who sat for a bar exam passed it within two years of graduation.  This is up from the 2016 UBP rate of 88.64%. And the 2019 first time pass rate was up substantially, at 79.64%, a nearly five percent increase from 2018, when it was 74.83%.   But these aggregate statistics mask, to some extent, how dire the situation still is at the bottom.    

Eight of the nearly 200 ABA-Accredited Law Schools failed to meet the current ABA Standard 316, which has just gone into effect. (Incredibly, no law school ever was found out of compliance with the old Standard 316)

The current ABA Standard 316 is very simple:  “At least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates who sat for a bar examination must have passed a bar examination administered within two years of their date of graduation.”

The 2019 HALL OF SHAME

The ABA 2019 Bar Pass Spreadsheet Part II: Ultimate Bar Pass and the New Standard 316

This is the second part of my series discussing the 2019 ABA Bar Data Consumer Info Spreadsheet (the “Spreadsheet”).  My first article looked at the 2018 first-time bar passage data. This post looks at the 2016 Ultimate Bar Pass (UBP) Rate within two years of graduation for 2016 graduates, most of whom started law school in 2013.  This post is especially timely given an important change to the ABA accreditation standards that occurred today.

For almost three years, the ABA has been considering changing Standard 316 to require that all law schools have a UBP of 75% within two years of graduation.  The ABA started publishing UBP data last year in part to allow people to evaluate whether such a standard was a meaningful, fair and reasonably achievable standard.   Earlier today, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar finally adopted this revision, effective immediately. This means that starting in 2020, schools will be required to meet the 75% standard for the graduating class of 2017.

Based on the data in the Spreadsheet, I believe the ABA made the right decision.   The data from last year and this year prove convincingly that this Standard is reasonable and is not too difficult to meet, even in California. 

The overall UBP for all ABA-accredited law schools nationwide was 88.57%, very similar to the UBP for the graduating class of 2015 which had a composite UBP of 88.28%. 

2019 ABA Bar Pass Spreadsheet Analysis, Part 1 - 2018 Bar Pass Rate

There have been several articles published recently regarding the 2019 ABA Bar Data Consumer Info Spreadsheet (the “Spreadsheet”), including one here on The Faculty Lounge by the estimable Gary Rosin.  The Spreadsheet provides bar data through the July 2018 bar exam regarding all ABA accredited schools.  The data includes the 2018 first time pass rate, both overall and by jurisdiction, for each school.  The data also includes the “ultimate” bar pass rate (UBP) for calendar year 2016 graduates within two years of graduation. This is the second year the ABA has published this consumer data in this form.  Last year I published a four-part series of articles here on the Faculty Lounge about the inaugural spreadsheet.  (See here, here, here and here.) Most of the articles about the new spreadsheet, (other than Gary’s, of course) have simply recited some overall figures and identified a few of the best and worst performers without any real analysis of what the figures mean.   In this series of posts, I will try to extract some meaningful lessons from the raw data in the Spreadsheet.  I will start by analyzing the 2018 first time bar passage rates, then, in a subsequent post or two, delve into the UBP rates for 2016.

The overall first-time bar pass rate in 2018 was 74.82%, down from 77.34% in 2017.  This is not particularly surprising given the overall weakness of the entering class of 2015.  2015 was the low point for law school admissions with many law schools admitting high numbers of weak students to partially offset five straight years of declining applications.

As usual, by and large, bar outcomes tended to very closely track the entrance credentials of students three years earlier.  However, there were a few notable bright spots, schools which substantially outperformed the predictors.  Four schools in particular stood out for their first-time bar pass performance in 2018:   Liberty U. (44/46, 95.65%); Belmont (73/78, 93.59%); Cleveland State, (76/83, 91.57%) and Florida International (129/147, 87.75%).  Kudos to these schools!

Unfortunately, many other schools did not fare nearly as well.  (To find out who really stunk it up in 2018, continue reading below the fold.)

Ultimate Bar Passage: Law Schools at Risk

The Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has twice proposed that, for accreditation purposes, the Bar passage requirements of Standard 316 be amended to focus solely on what the ABA calls "Ultimate" Bar passage: the percentage of a law school's graduates who pass the Bar within two years of graduation. All ABA law schools would have to maintain Ultimate Bar passage percentages of at least 75% for every year-group of graduates. The proposed Standard 316 would abandon the current alternate measure, which compares a law school's first-time Bar passage percentage to the ABA first-time Bar passage percentages in each state where its graduates took the Bar.

The proposed new Standard 316 has twice been rejected by the ABA House of Delegates. Despite that, ABA rules permit the Section Council to "reaffirm and adopt" the proposed revision to Standard 316. It is widely expected that they will do so.

At this point, the Section on Legal has released the 2018 and 2019 Ultimate Bar Passage Outcome Reports, which include data for 2015 and 2016 graduates, respectively. The overall Ultimate Bar passage outcomes for all ABA law schools was 88.32% of all 2015 graduates, and 88.57% of all 2016 graduates.

New Study on the State of the Entry-Level Law-Jobs Market and its Implications (Part IV: What the Current State and Likely Future of the Law-Jobs Market Means for the Legal Academy)

This is the fourth in a series of what I originally intended to be four posts springboarding off my new study of the entry-level Law-Jobs Market.  I’m now planning a fifth (and if that’s what you have to look forward to, you have my sympathy).  The full paper is available here.  Part I laid out the current state of the job market, and you can find it here.  Part II was about “JD Advantage” placements, and you can find that here.  Part III made some predictions about where entry-level hiring is headed in the foreseeable future, and that one is here.

In the first post in this series, I showed you that the entry-level Law-Jobs market appears to have finally leveled out after a decade-long decline, but that the number of entry-level Law Jobs is now 25.7% lower than it was in 2007, and at levels not seen since the early 1990s.  The proportion of the graduating class getting a Law Job (the Law-Jobs Ratio) has recovered, but that’s only because of the crash in the number of people attending law school.  In short, there are way fewer entry-level Law Jobs than there were ten years ago, but even fewer people graduating from law school.  In the third post, I predicted that while the long, steep decline in entry-level hiring is probably over, the steady and rapid growth in the job market that preceded it for at least thirty years is not likely to return anytime soon.  Instead, we have reset to a new, more modest entry-level job market about 25% smaller than the one we had in 2007, one likely to show, on average, only gradual growth of perhaps 1%-2% per year.

So what does this mean for the legal academy?  I offer my reflections after the jump.

New Study on the State of the Entry-Level Law-Jobs Market and its Implications (Part II: What the Market is, and What the ABA is Not, Telling Us about “JD Advantage” Placements)

This is the second in a series of what I intend to be four posts on my new study of the entry-level Law-Jobs market.  Part I laid out the current state of the job market, and you can find it here.  The full paper is available here. 

Today I’ll discuss so-called “JD Advantage” placements, what the job market is telling us about them, and what the available data is not telling us.

For those not entirely familiar, the ABA’s disclosure requirements call on reporting law schools to break down their recent graduates’ employment outcomes (among other ways) into four mutually exclusive categories:  Bar Passage Required, JD Advantage, Professional Position, and Nonprofessional Position.  The current definition of a JD Advantage position (see here at p.26) includes that its “duties . . . do not require passage of the bar exam or an active law license or involve practicing law”; but “[t]he possession of a JD by the graduate was sought by the employer, required by the employer, or provided a demonstrable advantage in either obtaining or performing the duties of the position from the perspective of the employer . . . .”  (For a history of the evolution of this job category, see my earlier job-market study at 555-59.)

I’ll talk about the problems with this definition, and what we do and don’t know about its application, after the jump.

ABA Standard 316 Gets Shot Down Again - Here's How To Fix It

The ABA House of Delegates resoundingly defeated Resolution 105, the proposed revision to Standard 316, which would require all law schools to achieve a 75% bar pass rate for all graduates within two years of graduation.  (Read the ABA Journal Story here.) 

The proposal now goes back to the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.  According to Barry Currier, the Council has three options: "abandon the effort to revise the standard; propose a different revision; or reaffirm and implement the changes." In my opinion, the Council should follow the middle course.  The current Standard 316 is a joke and there is widespread agreement that it needs to be overhauled.  It is so weak, and so riddled with loopholes, that no school has ever failed under it, despite years of woeful performance on the bar at many schools.  The proposed revision would close all those loopholes, simplify and toughen the Standard, and would be a huge improvement over the current version.   But the proposed revision is not perfect.  While simplicity and uniformity is desirable, there is an inherent problem with a one size fits all standard for bar passage in a country with widely different bar pass cut scores.  Critics of the proposal have made a credible case that the Standard would have a disparate impact on minority admissions in at least some jurisdictions, especially in California, which has the second toughest bar pass cut score in the country.  (The proposed Standard would also be virtually impossible to meet in Puerto Rico where the pass rates are historically far below 75%.)   Last March, I proposed a way to modify the Standard that would keep virtually all of the positive attributes of the proposed revision while blunting the unintended consequences on diversity.

As the Council sits down to review Standard 316, I thought it would be a good time to reintroduce my (slightly refined) proposal as a potential middle ground that might satisfy most of the major stakeholders.  First, let's look at the current rule and the Council's proposal.

The 2018-19 Bottom Ten Law Schools

The 2018 ABA 509 Required Disclosures are hot off the press and I couldn’t wait to delve into the numbers and see who has been naughty and who has been nice.

The title for the least selective law school in the country goes to:

1. 2017 Defending Champion - Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley! Once again, Cooley tops the bottom 10 list, but this year there is a twist. Last fall, the ABA found that Cooley was out of compliance with ABA Standard 501 on Admissions. Cooley sued the ABA, and in March 2018, the ABA essentially capitulated and found Cooley back in compliance with Standard 501(b), based on “concrete steps” that the school was making to improve its admissions policies. I analyzed those steps in this post, and predicted that they would barely make a difference in the credentials of the admitted students. Well, guess what?  Turns out I was right.

Why Florida Coastal's Lawsuit Against the ABA Should Go Forward

Earlier this fall, the ABA filed a motion for summary judgment, seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit filed by Florida Coastal and its parent company, InfiLaw.  Yesterday, Florida Coastal School of Law and its parent company, InfiLaw, filed a motion in opposition.  Florida Coastal argued that it is still entitled to, and actively seeking, discovery, and that there are plenty of genuine issues of material fact to be decided. Florida Coastal is challenging the ABA’s finding that Florida Coastal remains out of compliance with several ABA Standards, including Admissions Standard 501(b), despite the fact Florida Coastal has significantly raised its admission standards multiple times over the last few admissions cycles, and made other quality initiatives which have resulted in improved bar passage rates.  Although the Federal Courts have generally been very deferential to accrediting agency decisions, including the ABA, and often grant summary judgment motions in these cases, I think this is a case where there are good reasons for the court to permit the case to go forward.

Standard 501(b) requires a law school to “only admit applicants who appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” I have argued that schools admitting a quarter or more of students with LSATs at 144 and below should be found in violation of this standard.  And for the last three years, the ABA has seemed to agree. All of the schools that have been found out of compliance with this standard over the last two years have had an LSAT 25% at 145 or below.  Most have been well below that.   But Florida Coastal isn’t.  According to Florida Coastal’s filing, their 2018 entrance credentials are as follows: 75/50/25^th  LSAT: 152/150/147   UGPA  3.35/3.12/2.80.   Furthermore, no students were admitted or matriculated to Florida Coastal in 2018 with an LSAT below 145.    Based on logic and precedent, there is simply no reasonable argument that Florida Coastal is currently non-compliant with this standard.  The LSAT numbers represent a 6 point increase at the 25^thand 50^thpercentile from 2016, when Coastal’s profile was 149/146/141  3/27/2.87/2.57.  The difference between a 141 and 147 on the LSAT is HUGE.  A 147 is at the 33^rdpercentile, and a 141 is at the 16^thpercentile.   Students with a 147 LSAT and   reasonably good college grades have a decent chance of completing law school and passing the bar (except maybe in California).  Here are some more pertinent facts: there were 45 law schools in 2017 that had an LSAT 25^thpercentile in 2017 below 147; and no law school with a current 147 25^thpercentile has ever been found out of compliance with 501(b).

The ABA and Standard 501 – Still Inconsistently Applied

In March, the ABA sent a letter of non-compliance to Lincoln Memorial Duncan School of Law, a provisionally-approved school, stating that it had been found out of compliance with ABA Standard 501(a) and (b) and Interpretations 1, 2, and 3 of the Standard.  The school was ordered to submit a report over the summer and to appear at the November meeting of the Accreditation Committee.

What prompted the ABA’s determination that LMU was out of compliance?  For the fall entering class of 2017, LMU’s LSAT 75/50/25 profile was 152/148/145. For UGPA it was 3.47/3.08/2.64.  According to my LSAT risk profile chart, students with LSAT’s at 146 and 145 are at very high risk of passing the bar, and those at 144 and below are at extremely high risk.   Thus, up to 24% of LMU’s students could have been extremely high risk (144 or below), and somewhere around a third of students were either very high or extremely high risk. 

Also, according to their 2017 509 report, LMU had a 22.2% non-transfer attrition rate in the 2016-2017. Under the ABA Standards, first year attrition rates over 20% create a rebuttable presumption that a school is not complying with the admissions standard.

With its provisional accreditation in jeopardy, LMU significantly improved the credentials of its fall 2018 entering class.  (Although the official ABA 509 report is not out, the school has posted on its websitea profile of the fall admitted class.) The LSAT and GPA profile for the 2018 entering class is 152/149/147 and 3.51/3.07/2.73.  Importantly, the 25^thpercentile went from 145/2.64 to 147/2.73, and no student was matriculated with an LSAT below 142.    According to LSAC, a 147 is around the 33^rd percentile while a 145 is around the 26^thpercentile.  A 142 is at the 18^th percentile.  At its November 2018 meeting, the ABA Council reviewed these numbers and determined that LMU was in substantial compliance with Standard 501(a) and (b) and Interpretations 501(1)(2)and (3).  So, LMU’s latest numbers provide some useful data for gauging what the ABA currently considers to be acceptable admission standards.

But the ABA’s latest actions also add credence to the claim of some critics that the ABA is applying its standards inconsistently.

Recent Bar Pass Rates - A Cautionary Tale

A number of states have released bar results from the July 2018 examination over the last several weeks, including New York, Texas and Florida.  Overall, performance on the bar was very poor, although there have been a few bright spots.  The national average on the MBE was down 2.2 points to 139.5, a 34 year low.   To those who have followed law school admission trends closely, this should not have come as a surprise. The 2014 and 2015 entering law school classes were arguably the weakest ever in terms of entrance credentials, and these cohorts (part-time students who started in 2014 and full-time students who started in 2015) made up the majority of the first-time test takers in July.  There were also a lot of repeat takers from 2017 and February 2018 who also had very low credentials.

The purpose of this post is to remind everyone, especially law school faculty and administrators at lower tier schools, of the perils of admitting very high risk (LSAT of 145-146) and extremely high risk (144 and below) students.  As law schools start to experience an uptick in applications, the focus, especially at low-performing schools, should be on raising the quality of admitted students, not growing the class.  A few examples should suffice to demonstrate this point.

Touro Law School – Touro had 105 first time takers on the New York July bar; 51 passed. That’s a 48.6% pass rate.  Touro’s 2015 entering class was terrible:  149/147/145 LSATs with GPA at 3.31/3.03/2.77.   

Texas Southern - 69 of 155 Texas Southern graduates passed the July 18 Texas bar for a 44.5% rate. In February, TSU had 5 of 18 first time takers pass, for a 27.88% rate.  Overall 74 of 173 TSU grads passed for a 42.8% first-time pass rate in Texas for 2018.  TSU’s 2015 entering class had an atrocious LSAT GPA profile of 146/143/141 3.44/3.11/2.80. Texas Southern was sanctioned by the ABA for its admissions practices in June 2017, and this is why.  Texas Southern was admitting large numbers of extremely high risk students and the bar pass statistics reflect this.  Texas Southern has not yet released the class profile for the 2018 entering class but it has promised the ABA to significantly raise its admission standards.

UNT Dallas - UNT had 10 of 25 of its students pass the February 18 Texas bar (40%), followed by 52 of 85 on the July bar – 61.18%. The combined pass rate for 2018: 62 of 107, was an uninspiring 58%.  According to fact sheets published by UNT Dallas, the LSAT profile for the 2015 entering class was 149/146/143 3.40/3.11/2.67 for the full-time division and 150/145/142  3.36/3.03/2.64 for the part-time division.  This was even lower than the woeful credentials of their inaugural entering class in 2014. After nearly not getting provisional approval from the ABA in part because of valid concerns over admitted student credentials, UNT-Dallas has significantly tightened admissions standards. Their admitted student profile for the Fall 2018 class is 153/150/148 with a 3.32/3.08/2.68.  Expect UNT Dallas to see a steady rise in bar passage rates over the next three years.

Barry Law School and Florida A&M Law School – July 2018 results at Barry: 55/121 (45.5%) In February 2018, Barry had 16 of 39 first-time takers pass for a 41.0% rate. Overall for the year, Barry is at 71/160 (44.4%) in Florida.  Similarly, Florida A&M was 11 for 30 ( 36.7%) on the Feb 18 Bar, and 39/77 (50.6%) on the July Bar, for a 2018 total of 50/107 (46.7%) in Florida.  Barry and FAMU had very similarly weak entering classes in 2015: 150/146/144  3/29/296/2.64 for Barry and 149/146/144  3.29/3.00/2.72 for FAMU. 

These five examples demonstrate (once again) that when law schools admit high percentages of very high and extremely high risk students, these classes are virtually certain to have very low bar passage rates.  Put another way, no law school has figured out a magic formula to take students with very limited aptitude for the study of law, as demonstrated by their LSAT scores and college grades, and turn them into bar passers.   All the law schools that have closed in the last couple of years (or are in the process of or in peril of closing), including Whittier, Indiana Tech, Charlotte, Arizona Summit, Valparaiso and Thomas Jefferson, amply demonstrate this point.  Although the overall decline in demand for legal education played some role in the downfall of these schools, it was their decision to lower admission standards to an unethically low level that started the vicious cycle of dropping bar pass rates, declining reputation, decreasing applications and increasing transfers that ultimately doomed them.

Dead, Dying and Zombie Law Schools

Happy Day After Halloween. In the ghoulish spirit of the season, here is a is a quick update on some of America's most troubled law schools:

The Dying:

Arizona Summit is closing.  On Oct 24, the school submitted a revised teach-out plan to the ABA after its initial plan was disapproved by the ABA in September.  Under the proposed plan, the ABA would agreed to refrain from revoking the school’s accreditation until the current students graduate, and the school would drop its appeal of the ABA's decision to revoke its accreditation.  (It is not clear if this would also include dropping its lawsuit against the ABA.)  The school did not admit new students this fall and has only 22 students remaining.  At its peak in 2011, Arizona Summit (then known as Phoenix Law) has 1092 students enrolled, but after substantially lowering admission standards, its bar passage rates cratered, leading to the school being placed on probation, and ultimately, having its accreditation revoked.  A large cohort of 25 Arizona Summit students transferred to the University of North Dakota Law School this fall.  UND gained this student windfall by agreeing to accept all the credits the students had earned at Arizona Summit.  UND took a page from Appalachian’s playbook, which last year took 16 transfer students from Arizona Summit’s now defunct sister school, Charlotte Law.

Valparaiso Law School is closing.  Valparaiso also did not enroll first year students this year and has about 100 second and third year students moving through.  Valpo killed itself by substantially lowering admissions standards, which led to huge declines in bar passage rates, and resulted in ABA   sanctions.  (See a pattern here?) Valparaiso tried to give its law school away to Middle Tennessee State University, but the move was rejected last month by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission after objections from the five law schools already in Tennessee.

Thomas Jefferson Law School has announced that it won’t enroll new students for the spring semester, as it has done in the past.  The law school also applied for and received accreditation from the State Bar of California. As a California-accredited school, TJSL grads will be able to take the California bar, even if the school loses ABA accreditation, which is a distinct possibility. The school is currently on probation with the ABA, and there are little signs of the kinds of improvement that would get the school back in compliance with ABA Standards.  Because of financial woes, the school had to move out of its fancy new building into a smaller, cheaper office building, which did not go over well with students.  The seemingly insurmountable issues faced by Thomas Jefferson may have been a factor in the decision of Dean Joan Bullock to announce her resignation after just a year on the job.

The Dead:

Charlotte Law School, which ceased operating last year, reached a $2.7 million settlement in a class action lawsuit by students.  At its peak in 2013, Charlotte enrolled 1410 students, according to its 2013 509 Report.  Charlotte got so big by dramatically lowering its standards, and it kept lowering them until the school's bar passage rate tanked, which ultimately led to ABA sanctions and withdrawal of federal loan eligibility from the Department of Education. Lawyers for the students are still trying to figure out a way to go after deep-pocked Sterling Partners, the owners of InfiLaw, which operated Charlotte Law School. Sterling Partners has thus far evaded any financial liability for the debacles at Charlotte Law and Arizona Summit.

The Zombie:

Zombies can’t be killed and they destroy the lives of a lot of people.  That is a pretty good description of Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley School of Law, America’s least selective ABA-Accredited law school.  WMU-Cooley has had a sub 50% first time bar pass rate for at least the last two years.  Last year Cooley was (finally) found out of compliance by the ABA for failure to comply with Standard 501, the admissions standard.  Rather than agree to change its ways, as other schools found out of compliance have done, Cooley sued the ABA, claiming arbitrary and capricious enforcement of the Standards.   The ABA then inexplicably reversed itself and found Cooley back in compliance with Standard 501, (providing compelling evidence in support of Cooley’s claim of arbitrary and capricious enforcement) after Cooley promised some extremely minor adjustments to its admission practices.  The ABA also acquiesced to Cooley’s request to open another branch on the campus of Western Michigan State in Kalamazoo, which the ABA had originally rejected.  Back in June, I predictedthat the two sides were nearing a settlement of the lawsuit. Earlier this week, the parties formally settled the lawsuit.