The Board of Governors of Florida's State University System has warned Florida A&M that its law school may be closed down soon unless performance improves substantially. In particular, despite a target of having 80% of graduates pass a bar exam on their first attempt, the figure for last year was only 41% and was even lower than the previous year's figure.
Programs in health-related fields are also threatened with closure, but it is the law school at Florida A&M that seems to be doing the worst. Readers of OTLSS will not be surprised, since Florida A&M is a notorious über-toilet that draws it students heavily from the 140s (perhaps even lower) on the LSAT. Such unpromising students can be expected to fail bar exams in large numbers, and of course they do.
We at OTLSS urge the Board of Governors to acknowledge immediately that Florida A&M is sunk hopelessly in the mire of toilet-grade students and that it simply is not going to achieve, or even approach, that 80% standard. The merciful course of action is to pull the plug now. "Give us five years" is bullshit: we see time and time again that über-toilets fail even to come close to a respectable standard despite years of dispensations. Shut Florida A&M down.
Gotta ask: with bar passage so low, where was the ABA in all this? Here's a guess: MIA.
ReplyDeleteThree years ago, the ABA cheerfully reported that Florida A&M was in compliance with the ABA's so-called standards:
Deletehttps://www.abajournal.com/news/article/four-more-law-schools-found-to-be-in-compliance-with-bar-passage-standard?
More time, more time (and money) is a huge part of the overall scam. At the individual level it starts out just get that BA or BS and you'll be 'golden'. I used to hear that term a lot 'golden', The BA isn't working out just get that MBA. Oh the market is flooded with state college MBAs? Just get a JD, combined with the MBA you'll be golden. Oh, passed the bar on the first but government agencies or law firms aren't interested, just get an LLM in some arcane specialty and you'll be golden. It never ends.
ReplyDeleteNew report about state-accredited law schools in California, for anyone who cares:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abajournal.com/web/article/california-bar-examiners-approve-state-law-schools-face-shifts
A 150 lsat minimum outside of a exceptional GPA or compelling need would fix a lot of these problems
ReplyDeleteReally, 150 is rather low—just under the 50th percentile. But it's a hell of a lot better than the scores in the low 140s and even lower—down into the 120s even at the faux-prestigious Univershitty of Texas—that get people into many law schools.
DeleteAnd "exceptional GPA or compelling need" is just the sort of excuse that the scamsters crave for admitting anyone who can fog a mirror. Any minimum score would necessarily be arbitrary, but that doesn't mean that it would be wrong. Sorry, but at some point we have to say that enough is enough. Entire law schools depend on people with 150 or worse.
Florida F&M serves a crucial role in the state as a law HBCU. Without it, there wouldn’t be crucial black representation of clients and in the profession. Every state should have a school like this.
DeleteThat "crucial black representation" doesn't seem to be working out very well, with that abysmal result on the bar exam. And even the graduates that do become lawyers are probably shitty.
DeleteWhen did law become a free-for-all? It is generally accepted that not everyone is cut out to be a professional football player or a physician, yet widely believed that any moron can and should become a lawyer.
I would give a guy with a 147 lsat and a 3.8 GPA shot. I think that guy probably passes the bar. And yeah, it's low but I am proposing it as the near absolute floor for admission so it needs to be low enough to get anyone worth having while also preventing 130 lsat dipping like Cooley did.
DeleteYes but UnFlorida and UnMiami don’t accept black applicants and they have to go somewhere.
DeleteExcuse me, but are you living in the 1950s? Certainly the U of Florida and the U of Miami—themselves toilets—admit Black people.
DeleteAnd, no, people of whatsoever racial category do not "have to go somewhere" for law school. It has been a recurring theme of this Web site that law school—and here we include Harvard—is a bad idea for the great majority of people.
The comments above are just unscrupulous promotion of über-toilets, without regard to any standards at all. Never mind how poorly prepared or incapable the so-called student, we're told; never mind how dreadful the outcome, how high the cost to the public.
Crucial role? When 59% of your grads flunk the bar, the only thing the A&M is doing is saddling its grads with massive debt and wasting three years of their lives. 83% borrow an average of $62k....with the inability to pass the bar, that's all dead weight for those students.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing "crucial" about A&M is its function as a loan conduit.
And the minority that manage to pass the bar exam are hardly likely to be great lawyers. The bar exam represents the bare minimum; it is not a standard of excellence.
DeleteThere's a reason for which wealthy people and large corporations don't retain counsel from über-toilets.