More LSAC Hi-jinks

First off, thank you to our contributors and our commentators for standing tall on the law school scam.  I normally try to pitch my hat in the ring two or three times a month here on OTLSS, and unfortunately work has prevented me from doing my part as much as I would like as of late.  It's a group volunteer effort, and I for one appreciate everyone's participation here during the summer, which can be a time of slow news days to begin with.

LSAC's latest numbers have come out, and they are showing a modest 1.9% drop in applicants for 2014-2015.  This has been heralded in some corners (mostly academic) as the end of the recession, the renewal of the legal profession, and other platitudes from those desperate to believe that needed changes have come.   Perhaps the rate of decline has indeed slowed or even stopped, but that didn't prevent LSAC from playing games with their reported data then and now.

Early this year, I lambasted LSAC for their questionable accounting and charting standards.  As we all know there have been declines in applicants for several years now, and the cartel was looking for any sign, anywhere, that the bleeding was staunched.  Below is my own view of the data, plotting applicants against applications for the last five years.  Amazingly, not only are the r-squared regression values damn near 1.0 each year, apparently you can count on about 6.75 applications per applicant without fail.

Which leads to the disturbing "bump" in the latest applicant chart from LSAC.  Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, you can see the same chart from the June 2015 timeframe without the bump.  Now, in August 2015, there is a strange bump in the applicant count for BOTH 2014 and 2015 where there was none before for 2014.  Furthermore, as we know the relationship between applicants and applications is linear, where is the consummate "bump" in applications?  Hmmm...nowhere to be seen, and the applications curves are as smooth as a baby's bum.

Or maybe there is a bump in the applications after all...?  I back-calculate approximately 4,500 students in the applicant "bump" that appeared between June and August, and if I use my 6.75x correlation on what appears to be a very small change in applications, I get around 2,200 students, or half of the recently-proclaimed bump.  Close enough?  No real change at all in applications, given the 0.99 correlation value between applicants and applications, so the disconnect between the two LSAC charts remains?  It's hard to tell just looking at the chart with its severely compressed scaling.

August 2015

June 2015

August 2015

In any event, LSAC has already demonstrated a propensity to game the numbers and their charts to suit their own view of the world, and this modest 1.9% decline is overall applicants is not to be trusted, bump or no bump.  LSATs taken continues to decline across the board, and to think that happy days are here again for the Cartel is dubious at best.

Athornia Steele, head of LSAC, described the scambloggers as "wicked witches of the west."  The truth can cut both ways, however.  I submit that anyone who values brains, heart, and courage will find common-cause with the (green-skinned) scambloggers long before joining LSAC's merry traipsing down the yellow-brick road that is no doubt paved with "good intentions"...and hefty, non-dischargable student loans.