Seton Hall Law Prof. Michael Simkovic bags $220,000 from the Access Group and the Law School Admissions Council.

"Funding bias" or "funding effect." This is the widely-accepted phenomenon whereby the results desired by a study’s funders closely correlate to those reported by its researchers. Funding bias includes a researcher’s awareness that some types of studies are more likely to be funded than others. 

It is old folk wisdom that he who pays the piper calls the tune, but funding bias is more subtle. The payer may sincerely give the piper discretion to play whatever tune he or she wants, and the piper may sincerely do so. Nonetheless, the tune that the musician selects will still have a striking tendency to be one known or believed to be favored by the moneyed patron. This bias can apparently operate unconsciously, which is why funded studies should be treated with a mammoth dose of skepticism. See e.g. Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 501 n.17 (2008) ("Because this research was funded in part by Exxon, we decline to rely on it"). 

As most here presumably know, last year Seton Hall lawprof Michael Simkovic published a provocative study of the economic value of a law degree, claiming that a law degree is worth an average of just over a million dollars more than a BA, with the average annual earnings premium calculated at $57,200. See Michael Simkovic & Frank McIntyre, The Economic Value of a Law Degree, 43 J. Legal Stud. 249 (2014). Simkovic has recently followed up by publishing a draft of his next article, called "Timing Law School." 

According to Simkovic, the huge lifetime JD premium accrues whether a JD actually practices law or not. Moreover, even at the bottom quartile of outcomes--the fourth tier of law graduates as it were--the lifetime JD premium is calculated at $432,000, and the annual earning premium at $21,700. In my mind’s eye, I see a young JD-Barista or a JD-part-time tree-trimmer whipping out a Cooley or Florida Coastal law degree before his or her boss’s delighted eyes, and receiving an immediate $20,000 a year raise. 

Kids need not fret about missing the gravy train if they graduate in a recession year, or about the size of the "cohort" of new lawyers that law schools pump into the economy in their graduation year, or about starting salaries, or about those dismal nine-month-out job stats. According to Simkovic’s new research, that stuff doesn’t matter in the long-run-- the main thing is to enroll as soon as possible to maximize the value of the JD-premium. Thus, Simkovic explains one of his "key takeaways": "The best time to go to law school is the earliest point possible after which you make the decision that you’d eventually like to go. By waiting, you’re spending more of your limited working life working for lower wages."

Now, Simkovic is a junior law professor at a second-tier law school, and therefore a finding that a law degree is an extremely risky proposition would be adverse to his employer's interests, and his own -- it doesn't take an econometrics study to deduce a causal connection between the decline in tuition-paying lemmings and the decline in cushy lawprof jobs. But perhaps even more saliently, Simkovic has received grants totaling $220,000 from the Access Group and Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) to fund his ongoing studies of the great value of a law degree. Simkovic collected $120,000 from the Access Group and $100,000 from the LSAC. The draft of his new article discloses the funding source, but not the grant amounts, and his CV mentions the amounts, but merely describes the source as "private foundations."

So who exactly are Simkovic's generous funders--patrons of his pied piping, Pembrokes to his law school Bard, sugar bowl to his porridge pot? Let's have a brief look at these private foundations, and readers can judge for themselves whether there could possibly be any ulterior motive to their philanthropy. 



The Access Group is a nonprofit membership organization comprised of 196 ABA-approved law schools. It touts itself, on its website, as a "leading provider" of student loans for aspiring professionals. As such, it has served as a national originator, holder and servicer of federally guaranteed and private, credit-based loans, funding more than $18 billion of education loans since 2001. On its IRS Form 990, Access Group lists its "primary activity" as being to "support. . . the organization’s student loan borrowers in facilitating timely repayment." It also seeks to "promote access to higher education through lending programs offered." [1]

Access Group's President and CEO Christopher Chapman earned a trifling $730,470 in fiscal year 2012. But, being public spirited, Chapman also serves on the ABA’s Task Force on Financing of Legal Education, which is chaired by Dennis Archer (who is also chairman of Infilaw's National Policy Board, and a past President of the ABA). 

Access Group’s Board of Directors is headed up by Syracuse Law Dean Hannah Arterian, and includes several other current and former law deans. It also includes a Hastings lawprof named William Wang, who once published an article on investment strategy bearing the following title: "Toilet Paper—It’s Good As Gold or How to ‘Clean Up’ in Toilet Paper."  (I couldn’t have thought up that title even as an April Fool's joke. It is like the perfect motto for every lawprof who got rich off the law school scam). 

The Law School Admissions Council is the nonprofit that administers the LSAT and facilitates the law school application process on behalf of its 200+ member law schools. According to its Form 990, LSAC exists to "provide services" to member law schools.  These services include staging "national forums" to acquaint students with their "legal education alternatives" and holding training and educational programs for law school admissions professionals. LSAC’s gross receipts in fiscal 2013 totaled about 49 million dollars. 

In addition to funding Simkovic, the LSAC provided a generous grant of $54,731 to DiscoverLaw (recall: DiscoverLaw coordinates law school pipeline programs for college students and schoolkids, and developed a remarkable PowerPoint presentation touting law school to kids as the way to fulfill their noblest aspirations, including saving endangered dolphins). In 2013, LSAC paid its CEO, Daniel O. Bernstine, $657,363 for performing this noble work, and I am a sure that no dolphin would begrudge him a cent. 

Yes, a kid's decision to attend law school generates a lot of money for stakeholders of various sorts. But scambloggers are not among these stakeholders. OTLSS has received no six-figure grant offers to date. No one-figure grant offers either. No paid advertisements on OTLSS, you will notice. No compensation of any sort, unless we can figure out a way to monetize smears and threats from certain of our professorial betters.

OTLSS, like its inspiration ITLSS, is a project rooted in the personal consciences of its writers and commenters, in our simple desire not to see young people get scammed, and in our professional integrity. The dramatic and ongoing drop in law school applicants and enrollment--notwithstanding Access Group’s and LSAC’s sponsored scholars, sponsored conferences, sponsored pipeline programs, and cozy relationship with the ABA-- is proof positive that the scam is deflating, and a really remarkable tribute to our collective cyber-activism. 

But maybe I should give selling out a whirl, since so many of our profession's learned teachers have done so without apparent moral qualms. Hey, Access Group and LSAC, I have a scholarly thesis about the immense benefits of a legal education, and you may rightly conclude that my research needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. It goes like this: Those who enroll in law school are virtually certain to obtain temporary occupancy of their very own castle in the air where they will all dine sumptuously on pie in the sky.

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[1] Register with "Charity Navigator" (for free) and log-in to view Access Group's recent 990s.