No, Valpo Law is just taking an admissions year off, looking for alternatives:
Valparaiso University announced Thursday that is [sic] suspending admissions to its law school and exploring alternative possibilities related to the "severe financial challenges" it's been facing for a number of years.It's a Chapter 11, not a Chapter 7. Sure, Chapter 11 is often a gateway drug to Chapter 7, but hold your cheers, sadists; these law schools are going to hang on for dear life as long as they possibly can.
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The school mentioned several other options: It could affiliate Valparaiso's law school with another law school or relocate it to a place where the demand for a law education is higher. The school also is preparing plans to allow its current law students to complete their degrees.
We could have all sorts of fun with this, like picking new affiliations (Cooley? Infilaw? Yale-West?) or locations (Alaska? Florida? Fort Wayne?). We could also ask how and why anyone would merge with Valpo.
But let's think of the students a second. The school mentions fairness and plans to allow current students to complete their degrees. But a school clinging dearly to life while facing "severe financial difficulties" and imminent closure isn't doing its students any favors.
What on Earth is the advantage of graduating from a low-tier law school that's closing? The alumni network moving forward will be disadvantaged, they'll be no career services support, and lawyers everywhere - hiring or otherwise - will mark you as one who went to that school that shuttered.
Wouldn't it be a better service to all but administrative egos to shutter outright? You can help your better students - the ones who are capable of passing a bar exam - transfer to decent schools where they'll have a better alumni network with future support. Plus, you might give the bottom rung a shot at a closed school discharge.
This Hail Mary, hoping that the dead parrot flies again, that grandma comes off life support, that your kid actually goes back to college after taking a year off, this failing to throw in the cards when the operation is a sinkhole not assisting in meeting any public demand, isn't just institutional egoism, it's harmful to the very people this "non-profit" has historically claimed to assist.
Isn't this the worst possible outcome for the students? If Alpo closed, wouldn't the student loans be canceled?
ReplyDeleteHow long can they suspend operations, and can current students - especially those in their first year - wait this out, to see if it does close up shop? I don't imagine any students will just wait around a year or two. They'll see if another TTTT will accept them, which of course they will.
ReplyDelete—— The school also is preparing plans to allow its current law students to complete their degrees.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, Valpo is going to close its doors. A school with a serious hope of staying alive does not set about "preparing plans" that can only be linked to closure.
Indiana Tech, Whittier, Charlotte, one of Hamline and Mitchell (I don't remember which), a campus of Cooley, and now Valpo. I accurately predicted that many law schools would be gone well before the end of the decade. Appalachian may well be next, or perhaps one of the two remaining InfiLaw scam-schools.
TJLS possibly.
Delete—— or relocate it to a place where the demand for a law education is higher
ReplyDeleteWhy not move it to Valparaíso, Chile? The school already has the name, minus the acute accent.
They will likely merge what is left with someone, like the Hamline/Mitchell deal, which is basically a closure without saying so.
ReplyDeleteI guess they won't say "we are closing" because they want to keep going to the last breath? Kind of like the T-1000 death scene in Terminator 2.
Hamline and Mitchell were in the same city. Valpo isn't near any other law school.
DeleteAlso I find it dubious they are considering moving somewhere else. Is there any part of the US where there is an unmet need for yet another law school? As it is, at least half of them should be shut down.
ReplyDeleteThat's for public consumption. They want to be seen as viable. If they have to close (as they will), they'll point to economic conditions. That's far more palatable to the Valpo scamsters than a frank admission of shittiness.
DeleteAnywhere else that's proposed would have to be justified by a feasibility study that's intellectually honest. And I would be shocked to no end if there's any region in the United States that would show unmet demand for 60+ students.
DeleteAlaska, by itself, has 700,000 people. It currently imports all of its attorneys to the 2nd most remote state in the union and its feasibility study showed demand for like 30-35 students a year. Fort Wayne has 300k with easy access to Chicago, Detroit, Ohio, etc., and they couldn't draw more than 20-25 a year.
The only plausible areas I see from a population approach would be southern or western Texas, but I wouldn't even get on board with that unless there was a closure in Texas.
No way should any new law school be opened anywhere in the US. Already, as was said above, there are far too many. People from Alaska or remote parts of Texas who want to study law can go to law school elsewhere. There are about 200 choices (roughly 190 too many), every one of which gives access to the bar in Alaska, Texas, and the rest of the US.
DeleteAnd please don't feed me any bullshit about armies of intellectual superstars in Bumblefuck, Texas, who cannot go more than twenty minutes from home. We all know where that lie, framed as a "feasibility study", landed Indiana Tech.
They have probably made scholarship offers/tuition waivers to many of the existing students which is a reason many of the students would want to stay at Valpo for the full three years. Most law schools won't accept 2L transfers, which would mean the existing 2Ls would have a problem finding a new school for their third year (especially at discounted tuition) without Valparaiso finishing the course of instruction. Simply shutting down like Charlotte was deeply unfair to the existing students. I think it's an honorable move to let the students who want to finish to do so.
ReplyDeleteCompliance with the ABA's minimal rules is not honorable. InfiLaw's sudden closure of Charlotte with only a few days' notice, however, was decidedly dishonorable. Although Charlotte had to close because of the loss of its license, it didn't have to play tacky games that showed utter disregard for the students. But of course the law-$chool $cam, especially its commercial branch, is all about money.
DeleteMost, probably all, Valponians would be better off with a closure that both ended their prospects of a JD and erased their debts. A toilet-paper JD from Valpo would not serve them well. Ten months after graduation, 30% of the class of 2015 were unemployed, almost 20% were in short-term or part-time positions, and most of the rest were in non-legal jobs, tiny firms, or other shabby positions. Expect even worse figures for the classes of 2017 and 2018. A degree from a soon-to-be-defunct toilet law school will impart a distinctively fecal odor to a résumé.
Transferring into third year? Why not? That's quite possible in the age of the decline and fall of the law-school scam. When Indiana Tech sank to Davy Jones's locker, plenty of other toilet schools eagerly scooped up its jetsam, including its 2Ls. Amusingly, however, one school accepted a "transfer" student from Indiana Tech without transferring any academic credit; the student had to start from scratch in first year.
When I review attorney resumes, I generally treat a Valpo degree as largely identical to all the third-fourth tier law schools in the area (Northern Illinois, John Marshall, Southern Illinois, Cooley). I'm pretty sure most small and midsize firms in the area use the same sorting procedure. I also was under the impression Valpo was giving out large tuition discounts after the ABA censure to increase the quality of the entering class. My thinking is that if a student has a full scholarship to Valpo (or something close to it) it's a lot better to finish at Valpo at a steep discount than have to transfer to John Marshall to finish at close to full price.
DeleteMaybe I'm getting old, but I always thought transfer after the 2L year was only as a visiting student (that was the only option open to me when I transferred from U of Minnesota to U of Chicago in my third year). However, that was twenty years ago, so maybe things have changed.
I foresee a merger with John Marshall (Chicago) (ala Mitchell/Hamline).
ReplyDeleteIt's more likely one of the Indiana schools does that and uses it as a satellite campus to cover the east Chicago area the way, for example, Purdue has a branch there. But there's not much strategic reason in having a campus in northwest Indiana, so I can't see any takers, save maybe Cooley being Cooley.
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