After Golden Gate announced its closure, disgruntled students and alumni sued for an injunction requiring the über-toilet to continue its operations. Unsurprisingly, they lost. Golden Gate is part of law-school-scam history.
As for the various claims arising from alleged breach of contract, "plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on any of them" (at 3). Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the bench.
With this decision, Golden Gate is the sixteenth ABA-accredited law school to close since 2016:
Cooley (one campus)
Hamline (merged with Mitchell)
Indiana Tech
Whittier
Charlotte
Savannah
Valpo
Arizona Summit
Cooley (a second campus)
Thomas Jefferson (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)
La Verne (relinquished ABA accreditation in favor of state accreditation)
Concordia
Cooley (a third campus)
Florida Coastal
Penn State Law (probably)
Golden Gate
Which law school will be the next to close?
Hard to believe there was a time there were enough lemmings to support FIVE+ Cooley campuses. Anyone ever meet someone from the FL campus? Always a mystery how it is doing while the MI alums are easily found.
ReplyDeleteCooley also tried to open a campus in Kalamazoo. That never went very far. I was beginning to wonder whether it was going to litter the Upper Peninsula with branches of its franchise…
DeleteI can't claim to know much about the campus in Florida. It's a weird outpost of a Michigander-dominated chain. Yet it has outlived 3½ of the campuses in Michigan, so it must be sufficiently lucrative for the time being.
A decade or so ago, Cooley had almost 2000 students in all campuses combined. The three InfiLaw über-toilets were almost as big; all three are long gone, as is InfiLaw itself.
One law school failing is a step in the right direction. Realistically, the US needs 40-50 to supply the entire country. Defund the bottom one hundred to start cleaning house. All the lazy boomer law professors getting paid 200k-400k a year to do nothing need to go along with the lemmings bankrupting themselves when they are just going to fail the bar exam.
ReplyDeleteCooley graduate here. I graduated way back in the 1990's as a first generation law student in my family. Nobody in my family even went beyond high school. So nobody could tell me the risks and I had no network on the legal industry. And there were no scam blogs back then to warn about the risks of law school either. You figured if it's ABA approved you eventually will find legal employment.
ReplyDeleteWas I dead wrong. Biggest mistake of my life. Never found employment so just let my law license lapse since it's not worth paying for continuing education to keep the law license.
Had to actually sell cars at a car dealership and most salesmen only have a high school diploma.
A sad story. It is understandable that you, with no background in law and nobody to advise you (Old Guy was in the same boat), would end up at Cooley. Thirty years later, however, there is no excuse for anyone to attend that horrible über-toilet.
DeleteAnd you did better than the many Cooleyites who are expelled or fail to pass any bar exam.
LOL I find it hilarious that these plaintiff students (and the alumni association for some reason) tried to not only sue on breach of contract, but demand specific performance (which is the part that'd keep the school open). The court didn't see any likelihood of success on the breach of contract claim and so it didn't need to much reach the specific performance issue, but even if they had, I don't see how the plaintiffs wouldn't have had an adequate remedy at law (money damages).
ReplyDeleteThat is also a remedy that prevents harm to your classmates. For example, should any of your classmates be wise enough to turn down the teachout entirely, they get a closed school discharge of all their loans. Do these people have any idea how many toilet grads would kill for a mulligan like that? Or how awful it'd be to deprive ALL the students of that mulligan via a court order forcibly "unclosing" the school?
Heck, if you're that dead-set on finishing you can just apply to other schools on your own and see how much transfer credit they'll give. So long as it's not under the formal teachout plan, you can get a discharge. https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/closed-school.
The claim of specific performance was downright laughable. As you said, these ridiculous plaintiffs sought to compel the über-toilet to go on operating so that they could finish their worthless degrees. They can't even make out a breach, still less an unusual remedy.
DeleteYou're quite right: if arguendo there had been a loss, the remedy would have been compensation for transferring to some other law school. Any number of über-toilets would have taken them. When Arizona Summit went tits up, the U of North Dakota offered admission to every single Summitoid, and many accepted the offer. Wouldn't Appalachian or Ohio Northern. to name but two, be tickled pink to soak up dozens of people locked out of Golden Gate?
You're also right to observe that transferring after this ill-advised venture would be foolish. If these people had any sense, they would leap at the opportunity to get out of their student loans. Yet they're trying to force their wretched über-toilet to stay open for their sake!
And why was the alumni association involved in this? Just to avoid the disgrace of representing the graduates of a defunct institution? How can this be any of the alumni association's business?
I wonder if they do graduate from their teach out program if they should get a discount in tuition because the law school being closed soon afterwards the career service office will be non-existent and the tuition money was paying for that service they are not receiving?
DeleteThat would surprise me. Being trapped by their own stupidity, they have little negotiating power. Also, lemmings don't show an inclination to shop around—probably because they are spending other people's money, not their own. Thus we find über-toilets that charge about as much as Harvard and Yale.
DeleteIndeed, OG. And that very same "shopping around" is what the teachout plan avoids, but at a great cost in terms of discharge eligibility. Thus, I think it important to note the difference between transferring and the official teachout plan.
DeleteIf you take the teachout, you're guaranteed admission at whichever of the two schools agreed to the plan. Your degree still ultimately comes from the closed school, but the school where you're technically a "visiting student" can't turn you down, and they agreed to charge whatever the closed school was getting and no more. You would also, most importantly, be ineligible for a closed school discharge.
If, on the other hand, you actually do transfer (as opposed to teachout) then the new school gets to choose whether to accept you, how much to charge, and they will also decide how many of your credits they'll accept in transfer. And your degree comes from the new school, not the old, unlike the teachout. Doing that legwork on your own means you actually are still eligible for a closed school discharge of the loans for the first school.
So there's an important distinction between transfer and teachout, with the former carrying a significant reward for the shopping around which would basically amount to getting at least your 1L year for free. Of course, it'd still be better not to go back at all and just do something else, but if someone is absolutely dead-set on finishing their JD it will STILL behoove them not to use the school's official option!
The degree comes from the closed school? I'm far from the toileteers' mindset, but I should have thought it preferable to get the degree from the new school. Then again, keeping the old school might improve some conversations:
DeleteQ: How did you Arizona Summit? Didn't that place close down a few years ago?
A: Well, yes. I started there but finished my last year or two at the U of North Dakota.
Q: Why the hell did you go to the U of North Dakota for law school when you had spent your whole life in Flagstaff?
A: i started at Arizona Summit, but its collapse left me high and dry, and I got stuck with the U of North Dakota for the rest of my courses.
You must be right: the "teach-out" plan leaves those who take it as "visiting" students. Even though they're "visiting" from a defunct toilet law school, they're still technically that school's students. I hadn't thought about the implications of accepting the "teach-out" plan, since it is so manifestly a bad idea that I didn't bother to work out just how bad.
Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. What you say makes sense: anyone foolish enough to persevere with law school after being jettisoned by some failed über-toilet should look around for a new school. Sometimes the "teach-out" option might turn out to be better than whatever else can be found, but that should be determined from evidence (not the long suit of law students, or even of lawyers…).
How does "teach-out" interact with discounts that the dead school had offered? I doubt whether the adoptive school is forced to offer the same discounts. Even if it does, someone who was getting a big discount from an über-toilet that went tits up should be able to get a comparable discount from another über-toilet.
But this discussion is of merely theoretical interest. If you are lucky enough to see your law school go down the drain while you are there, for god's sake take the damn discharge and count your blessings!
Whoops: should read "How did you graduate from Arizona Summit?"
DeleteTuition at the teachout school, far as I know, is a matter of contract between the receiving school and the closing one. USUALLY, the contract does say that the receiving school will accept the same tuition as the student was paying. Pretty sure that was an advertised part of this one, and one which the ABA likes to see in approving these plans. But yes, the degree does come from the closed school, unlike a transfer you arrange on your own. Closed schools, like any other business, have a wind-down process. If doing an "orderly wind-down," a skeleton crew remains to wrap things up and issuing degrees to teachout students is one of those "last one out, turn out the lights" type things, right along with selling assets paying off creditors and all the various things all businesses do in wind-down.
DeleteThen, when all is truly said and done, they turn over all the academic records, usually to a state department of education or its contractor. These regulators hold the transcripts for all the closed schools in that jurisdiction so that people who went there can still get transcripts and whatnot.
PS: Yes, your ultimate point is the right one: "For God's sake take the damn discharge!"
DeleteOne sentence in the above link from the feds regarding closed school discharge: "You are NOT eligible for a closed school discharge if... You're completing or have graduated from a TEACH-OUT AGREEMENT at another school APPROVED BY the school’s accrediting agency and, if applicable, the school’s state authorizing agency."
Contrast this with the FAQ, further down the page, where it says "can I get a discharge if I finished a comparable program at another school?" and the answer is just "yes" with a link to the application form. So you want to either not finish at all, or finish a "comparable program." You do NOT want to be under a "teach out agreement approved by the state and the accreditor" because that distinction makes you categorically ineligible for loan discharge.
That one rule, right there. Finish via comparable program transfer = defunct school loans gone. Finish via a formally approved teachout agreement between the two schools = no discharge. That's why the teachout option is the worst of the three options (transfer, teach out, or give up) these kids have. A transfer you arrange on your own would not be an arrangement created by the defunct school that is "approved by the state and accreditor." On the contrary, it would be the specifically allowed "completion of comparable program" rule.
Thus, teachout is a trap. Most students should either give up on what was always a foolish endeavor, or try to arrange a transfer to any law school OTHER than the ones with which the school has a formal teachout plan. Unless, as you said, they were on a full ride or something and part of the teachout contract is that the receiving school gives the same.
Someone who was getting free tuition from an über-toilet gone tits up will probably not have loans to discharge and thus will not have to worry about that. But an agreement from the adoptive law school to maintain free tuition could still be advantageous. The same deal would be difficult to arrange elsewhere, since schools usually offer free tuition to students starting from scratch—the only students that count for the purposes of "rankings". As we've discussed here many times before, fat discounts are just a way to buy LSAT scores that can bolster "rankings". A school would hardly be inclined to offer a large discount to a transfer student, whose LSAT score, however high, wouldn't affect the "rankings" one jot. So maybe the only way to keep free tuition would be to go to the U of North Dakota or whatever else was on offer.
DeleteWell even with free tuition, you might still have loans for cost of living. Most students borrow for their rent too, and declining teachout would get rid of that too. But that's probably still less than actually having to pay tuition AND rent at some other school so you're right, if you had a free ride and the teachout school is bound to offer the same, that'd be the only time I'd take a teachout, and even then only if dead-set on finishing even though going to a toilet is not a good idea in the first place.
DeleteI am actually surprised these schools are closing. Yes, it's a good thing, but I don't understand it. The Federal Government is still cheerfully providing an unlimited amount of money to law schools, through its student loan program, and not making any meaningful effort to collect the debts after the students graduate. So, the school gets a guaranteed payday of $150,000-$200,000 from each "student" for 3 years of tuition, and the students get an all-expenses paid three year vacation, with loans for tuition, books, and "living expenses" It seems like a great deal for both the students and the law schools, what's the downside?
ReplyDeleteBloated budgets, mainly for overpayment of scamsters. Some über-toilets are tiny, without even 100 students.
DeleteSuppose that an über-toilet collects $50k per "student", with 100 students. That's $5M in a year. Scam-professors insist on a "working" schedule whereby they teach two courses in one semester and one in the next, so probably 30 or so professors are needed. At $150k each, they'll eat up nearly all revenue. The school still has to pay other staff, maintain (or even rent) its buildings, pay for other overhead, fund a library…
In reality, an über-toilet will take a lot less than the nominal tuition, because it has to offer discounts (incorrectly called "scholarships") just to put asses into seats. If nominal tuition is $50k, the average per student may be $30k or $20k—so a couple of million dollars a year. It won't take many overpaid scam-professors to eat that up.
This is why so many über-toilets are collapsing financially.
Yeah, but it's not all expenses paid. It's loans. Too many won't apply to these schools anymore because they don't think it will lead to a legal career. And law schools need a certain number of students to operate.
Delete"Loans"? Please. Most students never bother to even pay the interest, let alone the principal, on their student loans after graduating. Why should they? The government doesn't make much effort to collect them, though it does have all kinds of "loan forgiveness programs". One guy I knew sailed through 4Y of college, all paid by "student loans", and then came home, moved in with his parents, and got a crummy, low-paying job. After a while he decided that he didn't like working for a living, so he took an all-expenses-paid 3Y vacation to warm sunny Florida instead. He called it "law school" but didn't even bother to sit for the bar the summer he graduated, why should he? He had a lot of fun a the expense of the taxpayer, like college students and law students nationwide. That is part of the reason inflation is surging, when you just print up money backed by nothing and give it away, that's what happens to your currency.
DeleteMy bet for the next closure is on Ohio Northern. My reasoning is based on its many similarities to Valpo. No 1970's money grab, like Valpo it has roots in the nineteenth century, although both were outstripped by younger schools in terms of quality and admissions standards long ago. Both universities are private institutions affiliated with Protestant denominations and, like many university-affiliated law private and public law schools, Ohio Northern has most likely morphed from being a reliable cash cow to being a money pit. ONU's endowment is $160M+/- compared to VU's $255+/-. Valpo had to compete against two state supported law schools (one for every 3,392,500 people) while Ohio Northern is facing off against against five (one for every 2,357,000 people).
ReplyDeleteI have posted many times on this blog that I had once expected that the independent law schools would be the first to go but I now see that my reasoning was flawed. The most vulnerable schools are those affiliated with smallish universities where a board of trustees can grow weary of constant subsidies and eventually pull the plug. See, e.g., Whittier and Hamline. At least the dismissed law faculty will still be in the parent school's retirement plan. At the indies the scamsters are answerable to no one but themselves and have every incentive to preserve their own incomes and accumulate retirement savings for as long as possible, the lemmings be damned.
Which brings us back to Golden Gate Law which was founded in 1901, one of numerous YMCA evening law schools founded in that era. They were founded for a noble purpose which was to open the profession to people who had to work during the day and no means to become a full-time student. But history is littered with the wreckage of organizations founded for a noble purpose which is gradually forgotten as later generations of leadership focus on lining their own pockets.
I too think that Ohio Northern has one foot in the grave. A few years ago, I posted an article here about the minimum level of enrollment needed for viability. My estimate was 75 students per class. Ohio Northern isn't far above that level, and Appalachian is below it. As you said, Ohio Northern has a long heritage, unlike some InfiLaw-type scam-school founded about five seconds ago. But age alone won't save a failed über-toilet. Valpo did indeed fold a few years ago despite being one of the oldest law schools in the US, and it ultimately couldn't even give itself away (the government of Tennessee rejected the Trojan horse).
DeleteI just don't see anything that can save Ohio Northern. Unlike the many schools that have tried to seem more "competitive" (by pitching their LSAT score at the 25th percentile around 146 rather than 142) at the cost of reduced enrollment and concomitantly reduced revenue, Ohio Northern has whored itself out by lowering its "standards", notably with a considerable drop in its already abysmal LSAT scores. Still, it has failed to attract students: enrollment has fallen by a third over the past decade or so.
Yes, Ohio has other state-funded law schools with more to offer than Ohio Northern. On top of that, Ohio Northern is within a few hours of plenty of other law schools in Michigan, Indiana, and elsewhere. All of those schools can attract away the students from that region who might consider Ohio Northern.
Many of us once thought that the independent law schools were the most vulnerable. (Didn't Paul Campos make that statement years ago?) As you said, we were wrong. Independent schools are particularly vulnerable because they have no good source of money on which to draw. But they can also be run right into the ground. That's what happened to InfiLaw's trio: they were milked as long as possible, then dumped. Appalachian is a good example: it's independent, with major financial problems and unsustainably poor enrollment; yet it lingers on. It won't last much longer, but maybe there's still some money to be wrung from it.
Very different, as you correctly observe, is a school that tries to continue year after year at the expense of a parent university. Indiana Tech is the poster child of that (it lasted for four years before the university pulled the plug), but even the U of Minnesota is sick of subsidizing its faux-prestigious law school.
Indeed, OG: Standalone law schools have long been seen as most vulnerable, and they also tend to be seen as low-hanging fruit for the regulators to yank accreditation. Sacrificial lambs, if you will, so that the ABA can show it is doing something without interfering too much in the affairs of the big university members (think AALS members) it cares most about.
DeleteI think that both Campos and this new analysis is right, the different schools are just vulnerable for different reasons. Standalone law schools (especially for-profit ones) are more vulnerable to being FORCIBLY shut down, e.g. by accreditor action. But schools with a parent university are more prone to closing VOLUNTARILY, because a parent university expects these things to be cash cows. Not only something they don't have to subsidize, but something that throws off a healthy dividend every year.
Now of course, Infilaw and its ilk expected its schools to be cash cows too, but they'd be far more willing than a big university to strip mine the place to make it profitable, as they have no broader reputation to worry about. Private equity will pay itself a dividend before it pays the electric bill. University parents have to worry about a toilet law school both reputationally and on the balance sheet. Heck, private equity will even take on debt to pay a dividend! There's even a special term for it: "Dividend recapitalization." Why a lender would loan money knowing the company will just use it to pay investors and not to expand or otherwise generate revenue to pay it back I don't know, but they do. It's why PE portfolio companies are always in debt up to their eyeballs, and then they either spin the company off to the next PE firm and use the sale price to pay it off, or they put the thing in bankruptcy if they can't find a buyer. It's PE's whole business model. Now sure, some of those same decisions are the very ones that get them in trouble with regulators. But they don't have to care if accreditation gets yanked, so long as they've made an acceptable ROI before it happens.
SO bottom line: I still think standalone law schools tend to be more likely to get in trouble with ABA and shut down for that. But I think university ones are more likely to get shut down simply because they aren't profitable, but it'll be voluntary because they'll shut it down before they'd make the kind of accreditation-jeopardizing decisions that a standalone school owner might make.
Now and then the ABA has to pick on some school or other, just to appear to be fulfilling its mission as accreditor. The easiest target is usually a stand-alone school. There are very few of these (Vermont and Appalachian come to mind), and many of them are headed for financial collapse anyway, so the ABA may as well pick one of them off under the guise of "doing something" even though it would have achieved the same result by doing nothing. Going after a law school with institutional backing is another story: it implies a threat to the many other similarly placed law schools.
DeleteWhether by tacit understanding or otherwise, the ABA avoids going after any but the runts of the litter. And even that it does very reluctantly. Look at the indulgences granted time and time again to Cooley and loads of other scam-schools.
True that, OG. They're running out of the proverbial low-hanging fruit.
DeleteIn fact, one thing that is closely correlated with being standalone is being for-profit, and really western state (now part of the for-profit westcliff university) is the only one of those left that is ABA. There are two others (Charleston and John Marshal) but they're both trying to convert to nonprofit status and will presumably pursue some kind of university affiliation as well if they can find someone who will have them.
Heck, even Cooley tried it with a loose deal with Western Michigan University, which appears to have been nothing more than a license to use the name and logo, and even that eventually fell through. So the schools definitely know what the low-hanging fruit is and try to get themselves back under the radar by trying to get nonprofit status and/or attach themselves to a university.
DeleteThis is the list of stand alones per ABA
ALBANY LAW SCHOOL
APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF LAW
ATLANTA'S JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL
AVE MARIA SCHOOL OF LAW
BROOKLYN LAW SCHOOL
CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW
CHARLESTON SCHOOL OF LAW
COOLEY LAW SCHOOL
FLORIDA COASTAL SCHOOL OF LAW
MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW
NEW ENGLAND LAW| BOSTON
NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL
SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW HOUSTON
SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL
VERMONT LAW SCHOOL
9:32 here. The 2024 You-Ass News rankings list six schools with full-time enrollment below OG's 225 MSE (minimum survivable enrollment), these, however, include Golden Gate which now belongs to the ages. The others are Cooley-Lansing (106), University of D.C. (153), Appalachian (146) Ohio Northern (148) and Western New England (214). BUT, two of the five do not have a part-time program: Appalachian and Ohio Northern. This makes sense, part time students are commuters with day jobs and neither Grundy, Virginia or Ada, Ohio is likely to offer many of those. The latter has a population of 5,300 and the nearest town with a five figure population is Lima, population 35,500, 16 miles distant. Ada is far from any interstate or other controlled access highway. It's 65 miles to Columbus, 75 to Toledo and 94 to Fort Wayne (remember how part-timers swarmed to the law school they had there?) WNEU's part-timers converted to full-time equivalent numbers no doubt put it over 225. Some time when I am really bored I'll look up how many part-timers the other two have. I submit this evidence as further proof that the most vultures are circling over Ohio Northern and Appalachian.
ReplyDelete9:32 again. I got really bored and checked up on part-time enrollment at the three schools with <225 full-time students that offer a part time program. My imperfect methodology in analyzing the numbers is that because the ABA requires that a JD be finished in no more than 7 years I used 5 years as a sort of average between a FT 3 years and the outer PT limit of 7. As I say, imperfect but the data for a more exact figure is not available to me and, as you will see, the numbers are close enough for my purposes . $100.00 of tuition over 3 years is $33.33/year. Over 5 years it's $20.00/year, so I figure the annual economic contribution of a PT lemming is 60% of that of a FT lemming so in a head count I count a PTer as 60% of a FTer. If all PTers at a school took the full 7 years it would be 43%. Enrollment numbers are from the 2024 You Ass News rankings.
DeleteSo, WNEU FTers are just under OG's 225 (214 to be exact) but it's got 94 PTers so add 56 to get 270 and they are viable in terms of enrollment.
Cooley - Lansing has only a measely 106 FT enrollment, but a whopping 459 PT enrollment. Even at 43% they are over 300 in FT and FT equivalent.
Last up is University of D.C. with 153 FTers and 95 PTers. At the 60% equivalency rate they're at 210, a little shy of OG's 225. At 43% they're at 194. A marginal case. Lofty Georgetown has a PT program so there are probably others among D.C.'s law schools making UDC the PT school of last resort.
So yes, "The Run for the Closes" looks to be between ONU (196 FT) and Appalachian (161 FT). Interesting matchup. 19th century-born school v. economic development project that started classes in 1997. University-affiliated school v. Indie. I suppose the smart horseplayer would make a win/place combination bet on their favorite.
And OBTW, I made an analysis of ONU's proximity to the kinds of population centers you need to make a PT program viable. It was surprising for such a well-populated state, but the isolation of Grundy, VA (pop. 875) is incredible. Mileage to larger cities:
Charleston, WV 126
Knoxville, KY 186
Winston-Salem, NC 190
Greensboro, NC 217
Charlotte, NC 239
Charlottesville, VA 286
Richmond, VA 354
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. You must have meant Knoxville, TN, not Knoxville, KY. Still, your analysis makes a lot of sense as a reasonable approximation and confirms my long-standing view that Appalachian and Ohio Northern are slated for closure.
DeleteGrundy, Virginia, is indeed astonishingly isolated, being several hours from any city of even modest size. With the possible exception of Charlotte, none of the cities that you mentioned can be called large. One might expect that degree of isolation in a western state such as Wyoming but not in an eastern state such as Virginia. Incidentally, Vermont Law School is also quite isolated: the nearest grocery store is a half-hour's drive, in New Hampshire.
9:32 yet again. OG, you are, of course, right about Knoxville. I was dealing with too many mileage figures at once. And your use of the word "astonishingly" was on the mark. As I assembled those mileage figures I kept thinking how shocking it was that such isolation could exist east of the Mississippi other than in the far northern reaches of Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin. What were they thinking? All I could think of, and it doesn't totally satisfy me, is that Appalachian was an economic development gambit and that such a small, isolated place must have only a handful of movers and shakers who are, due to their low numbers, particularly susceptible to groupthink.
DeleteI also wonder whether Appalachian offers student housing. How many rental units can there be within a 25-mile radius of Grunby?
Time was when a law school was practically a sure bet, thanks to abundant student loans. One could open a law school in an isolated place and still bring in loads of money. That's why there are law schools in places such as Grundy, Virginia. Now those law schools are failing.
DeleteI think the golden age for the return on so called higher education was from around 1945 - 1975. Thereafter, it went into a long and steady decline.
DeleteActually, OG, most of the 1970's money-grab schools were opened on that premise and that was long before tuition started to go vertical on the graph in the second half of the 1980's. Loans were around back then but weren't as big a source of revenue as they are now. And law schools had
DeleteUntil the mid-1970s or so, a person with a bachelor's degree in anything could easily get a job in some corporation, doing low-level management or sales or whatever, just because a bachelor's degree was a mark of distinction. Today it's a mark of nothing.
DeleteA few years ago, I posted a potted history of education in the US that showed that less than fifty years passed from the time when less than half of the population had access to high school to the time when everyone was being herded into universities and tuition was monstrous. The children of the 1940s and 1950s simply had it made. Those of us who were born a couple of decades later were screwed.
And I still hear so called financial advisors on the radio constantly positing that a bachelor's degree will 'on average' result in an addition $1 million in lifetime earnings. It's always $1 million and that figure has been consistent for years. The research into that is always left unexplained.
DeleteThe real question that should be asked by the applicant student is how this degree, in this program, at this institution will translate into a successful career for me.
Over a forty-year career, a million dollars is $25,000 a year. There are people who do get that sort of return, probably by getting additional degrees or otherwise benefiting from special advantages. There are also people who get a negative return, especially after accounting for the cost of the expensive degree. The idea that any dolt who gets a bachelor’s degree will thereby make much more money is absurd.
DeleteOld Guy, I read where Penn State is going to merge its two schools into one, with the Carlisle location being the one (although tgere still will be students located in State College). I'm guessing that counts as a closure.
ReplyDeletePS Keep up your great work!
Wasn't that announced a couple of years ago? I certainly agree that it counts as a closure, just like the closure of most of Cooley's campuses.
DeleteGuess what, I have heard that Alaska is going to open a new school. It will be a hybrid program run by Seattle University. Accessing to the publication, Above the Law, it will allow people in the “legal dessert” of Alaska to attend law school. Alaska only has around 700,000 people, I really don’t think that state has such a pressing need for attorneys.
ReplyDeleteOh, for pity’s sake! Ages ago, Alaska did a study that found that there was no need for a law school in the state, nor any justification for one. Now, with law schools closing left and right, Alaska is going to open one of the damn things?
DeleteOutside Anchorage and Fairbanks, most of Alaska is isolated, inaccessible by road. There is indeed very little need for a law school there.
It would seem justified to establish a law school in Alaska for geographical reasons, but there are probably enough surplus lawyers in the lower 48 that are willing to make the move there.
DeleteOld Guy - When does a law firm determine there is sufficient demand to add another associate? Or do they even add additional associates?
The feasibility study done in Alaska many years ago showed that no case could be made for a law school there. You are welcome to read it and see the analysis.
DeletePeople from Alaska go to Washington State and other places to study law. Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but one does not have to have a law school next door in order to study law: one can shift one’s ass and go to a place that has a law school. And anyone who lives in remote Alaska should be familiar with not having everything that one might want nearby. That indeed is part of the attraction of living there.
It makes sense. From watching Alaska reality shows it seems that they even have to go to Seattle for medical care beyond basic first aid. And they are always reluctant to do so.
DeleteUnfortunately, the message about the scam isn't getting through; law school applications are up significantly:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lsac.org/blog/its-early-days-2025-application-cycle-robust-start#:~:text=Application%20Volume%2C%20Year%20to%20Date%2C%202021%2D2025&text=The%20proportions%20of%20men%2C%20women,diverse%20applicants%20are%20up%2019%25.
The scam will continue until grown ups take over legal education. A good first start would be shutting down 100 law schools and completely ending federal student loans. The entire program is a failure.
DeleteI wouldn't end federal loans completely, but I would repeal GradPLUS (which unlike Stafford, has no borrowing limit) and repeal BAPCPA's extension of federal loan bankruptcy-proofing to private lenders so they don't just step in and lend more, and declare it an unfair trade practice to require cosigners for private student loans as well (to ensure, consistent with the BAPCPA change, that the lenders bear the bankruptcy risk and underwrite accordingly if someone is dumb enough to go to them).
DeleteWe already see median undergrad debt in the 30ish-k range. It's no coincidence that this is right around the Stafford cap for a dependent student. The schools find a way to live on what the gov is willing to lend. The current limit for both undergrad AND grad combined on Stafford is 140k, so maybe bump that some to account for the loans paying for living expenses too but ultimately, you can control what the schools charge if you can control what the students can borrow. These so-called charitable institutions should be subsidizing that with state appropriations if public or with endowment funds if private, so they can do that if they truly need a law school in that community. Or they can close.
Many countries offer free, or practically free, university education. The US could do that but doesn't. Ordinary people borrow enormous sums; rich people just pay cash. When a degree does not lead to work, the whole cost falls on the student, who is ill placed to pay.
DeleteWith the immense rate of defaulting on student loans, free education might well be cheaper.
If there are not enough lawyers in a state/region/Native-American reservation, it is usually not because there is not a law school nearby. It is because those areas are unattractive to attorneys, often because they cannot make money there. So if the state government of Alaska thinks the state needs more lawyers, why not just provide financial incentives for attorneys who are already looking for work to practice there? That would certainly make more fiscal sense that spending tens of millions of dollars to open an upstart (initially unaccredited) law school, waste assloads of federally guaranteed student loan money, then see it go tits-up in a few years because no one wants to try to practice law in a state where there are just not that many people who need legal services, or can afford legal services if they need them.
ReplyDeleteAnd the argument that "our state's legal system is different" does not fly with me. They could put together a crash course on the procedures and statutes that are unique to their system and offer it as continuing education credit.
I've commented on here before that building a medical school in a medically underserved area makes sense because, even if most of the graduates do not stay and practice in that area, the faculty and residents there provide medical services to the community. Not so with law school. And there would be no incentive for a law school graduate to stay and set up a shingle in an area where there is just not enough business to sustain a law practice.
Of course, even if policy makers accepted that logic, those promoting a new law school would just simply pull the DEI card and sell it as a way to bring marginalized demographic groups into the legal profession even if graduates of such a stinkhole would be unlikely to find employment as attorneys.
The bottom line is that, for the most part, law schools are largely unnecessary. There is no compelling reason that law cannot be an undergraduate degree, like architecture or engineering. Those wanting to go into legal hackedemia with money to burn could then advance to the post-graduate level.
Alas, the law school scam lives on, as the higher education scam lives on.
We have seen exactly what happens when a state tries to attract lawyers into rural or otherwise desolate areas: practically no one wants to go. South Dakota tried and got hardly any takers. Not for nothing is there a dearth of lawyers in these thinly populated, penniless places: there just isn't much need, nor is there money to be made.
DeletePeople living in remote locations simply have to go elsewhere for many of their needs. They know that East Bumblefuck, South Dakota, cannot provide much in the way of culture, services, even shopping. Commonly they go a long distance once or twice a year just to buy things. If they need a lawyer, they don't expect to find one nearby: they may well have to go to Sioux Falls even if they live on the other side of the state. Realistically, they are less likely than urban denizens to need legal services beyond the occasional will. They are also less likely to be able to pay a lawyer at standard rates.
For law students, the case for a law school in every whistle-stop is even worse. A graduate who wants to practise in rural South Dakota can move there after attending law school somewhere else, perhaps in Minnesota or farther still; there need not be a law school in South Dakota at all. Speaking of Minnesota, it has been known for years that the law school at the U of Minnesota is in financial trouble. We are expected to believe that Alaska, having found years ago in a carefully reasoned report that no case could be made for a law school there, suddenly needs one, and cannot make do with the many in other places that are desperate for students?
Law school takes a thin curriculum and passes it off as a course of professional training. Given my choice, I would raise the quality of the students admitted and the demands on them, so as to produce better lawyers. That won't happen, however, in this climate of admitting absolute garbage and wasting the alleged educational opportunity on so-called scholarship of zero value. A law school in Alaska would become another über-toilet with useless, effete professors and even worse students. It would also fail quickly, after burning through shitloads of money.
There is one thing, and pretty much only one thing, that law school actually teaches you to do, and that would be arguing issues of pure law in the context of appellate or motion practice. That's why you spend nearly all of law school studying appellate decisions and answering hypothetical "fact patterns" which have been designed to potentially go either way on the law, but never to deal with disputed facts except in entirely optional clinics. And its why your 1L LRW class always has you writing simulated appellate briefs.
DeleteOf course, more cases are more factual than legal, and you'd need a whole lotta nuts and bolts before you got to the point of an appeal or dispositive motion. So it's a bit like learning to fly a plane that is already in the air without being taught how to take off or land, but there is that one practical component of law practice that law school actually does teach, and it is essentially appellate practice, or perhaps motion practice in the trial court on an issue of pure law.
How many lawyers devote all or substantially all of their practice to appellate issues? Because replacing them as they retire would give you roughly the number of law schools actually needed for the way they currently teach.
Most students, however, don't learn appellate practice. Most lawyers won't touch an appeal with a bargepole. (Old Guy is one of the rare ones that prefer doing appeals.)
DeleteThe idea behind teaching law through appeals is to show how the law develops. But few students can manage even simple law, never mind sophisticated arguments and subtleties.
lol I can't imagine why lawyers shy from it. Appeals are the best! Not only is it actually what we were trained to do for once, you get to just sit in an office writing. The record is the record. Oral arguments maybe, but most stuff is just on the briefs.
DeleteI went to law school because I like to write and because journalism wasn't working out. I didn't see very many theater majors there, so I don't know why people would prefer to go into fact-intensive things. If it's because you love whodunits or something, then go become a cop lol, or an adjuster or used car salesman if your passion is haggling (which is what most civil lit really is, given that most everything settles).
A bit off topic, but am posting this about how arbitrary law marking can be. Here are two answers from law professors on what a good law exam answer is (below taken from an article in the WSJ from 2009):
ReplyDeletePaul Secunda: Marquette: A good law exam answer . . . gets to maybe. By that I mean that too many law students have an undergraduate mentality and seek to figure out the one "right" answer for the question. The point of the law school exam is not necessarily to test for right and wrong answers, but to see whether the student is utilizing critical reasoning skills to understand all the possible issues that the question presents. The more you arrive at a "maybe" in your law exam, the more likely you are seeing all the sides of the question in your answer and will then receive the most exam points."
Heather Gerken, Yale: A good law exam answer is . . . evaluative. Too often, students walk through each answer as if all arguments are created equal. They don't tell me which arguments are strong and which are weak, which facts matter and which don't, which cases provide strong support for their claims and which ones are distinguishable. And they throw everything into the answer rather than think hard about what belongs and what doesn't. Good lawyers don't just know the substantive law; they also have good legal judgment. The mistake students make is not to exercise their own legal judgment in answering a question.
Is it just me, or do the two answers above contradict each other?
I see why you think so, but actually there is no contradiction. I do prefer Gerken’s position: "maybe" is not enough; evaluation is needed. It is true that questions seeking analysis will not likely have definitive answers, but that doesn't mean that waffling will suffice.
DeleteSometimes in legal work I can give a straightforward answer that is uncontroversially correct. Much more often, I can only give a more cautious and complex answer, supported by analysis. People who think that every legal question has an easy answer are very naïve about the law.
I don't find the answers to be contradictory either. I never practiced law but I do remember in the legal composition course preparing a Memorandum of Law and a Legal Brief. A Memorandum of Law is objective and strives to determine how a court would most likely rule on a case. This is important to analyze how strong a particular case is. A Legal Brief involves advocacy. You are presenting the strongest case for your client. The case precedents cited should be the same for both the Brief and the Memorandum but the analysis will differ. The public is usually unaware of this feature of the legal system and when they are aware usually sees it as a contradiction and assume that lawyers are only capable as thinking as zealots for one side of an issue.
DeleteThat's a good illustration of the difference between advising on a legal matter and advocating a position. I may write a confidential letter in which I assess the likely outcome of a matter and advise on what to do. If it goes to court, I adopt the client’s position fully and present it zealously. It would be quite wrong to give one-sided advice and equally wrong to dilute advocacy by presenting countervailing arguments. (I do, of course, have to answer arguments made by the opposing side, and that is easiest when I have anticipated them.)
DeleteOk, but one answer the lawprof says you should say maybe and be tentative, the other one says you need to actually evaluate which are the stronger arguments.
DeleteI get that you should avoid the extremes of saying either (a) this is the one right answer or (b) just waffling endlessly through various possibilities, but the two responses by the lawprofs do seem to somewhat contradict each other.
Secunda seems to focus on not expecting a definitive answer to every question; Gerken, on reaching a conclusion rather than leaving the question unanswered. I prefer Gerken’s view. There are issues with definitive answers, such as whether the requirements of a statute are satisfied. When these arise, it would be foolish to answer "maybe". The point is that exams will usually be more involved than that, at least at a decent law school. So, for instance, there might be one issue of whether a limitation period has lapsed, which would be straightforward, and quite a few issues that were not so clear. You would give the definitive answer to the first and move on quickly to the rest.
DeleteThey don't really contradict, because both of those profs are basically acknowledging the fact that law school hypothetical fact patterns have been designed to be things that could go either way.
DeleteGerken's isn't contradictory, but it is different. She wants you to comment more on the weakness or strength of the different arguments and on the ultimate likelihood of one side or the other's success. So while her exams presumably are still designed to be things that could go either way, maybe she doesn't design them as so evenly matched that the outcome would be essentially a coinflip like most I saw when I was in school.
But most profs (who are looking for objective ways of scoring, and unlike Yale, are doing so on a rigid curve) are scoring based on IRAC and issue spotting. They have a list of issues each problem presents, and the first step is to see how many you identify. Then on each issue they're seeing if you state the rule, apply it to the facts, and reach a conclusion that would result if that argument is accepted.
In other words, in my experience, most profs are mostly putting you in your place on the curve based on how many "issues" you "spotted" in the fact pattern and how many you either missed or didn't appropriately analyze. This particular prof wants commentary on the relative strength or weakness of the various issues that are there to spot, but I suspect she may be in the minority on that and indeed, she may be in a better position to grade more subjectively at a school that does not have grades or class rank because everyone who is good enough to get into Yale is good enough to clerk or work at biglaw.
Most profs want to be able to more objectively defend a grade at schools where grades matter so much more, and in my experience they primarily do so using the "issue spotting" (or "issues missed") approach.
IRAC is simplistic. I have never used it, as a student or as a lawyer. Issues don't often have a straightforward, definitive answer.
DeleteSuppose that the question is whether a particular party has breached a contract. Doubt might exist about the facts of the alleged breach, the interpretation of the relevant contractual provisions, and any possible acquiescence by the allegedly injured party. A good student would discuss these issues and then offer an opinion on the likely outcome (breach or no breach).
How do you not use IRAC in legal writing? Do just list all of the issues presented and then black letter law where you deem it appropriate? And then sort of a loose analysis of the issues?
DeleteIRAC might be simplistic but I found it to be an useful method for structuring an legal argument.
it depends on the type of legal writing, but my analysis is never loose. IRAC is often clumsy and presumes a straightforward rule for each issue, something that is not realistic for much legal work. How would you apply it to a question on which the law was unsettled, or one with a novel legal issue requiring you to recommend new law?
DeleteHandy-dandy formulae don't foster thinking, which is why they are popular at über-toilets.
I'm certain that your analysis is never loose or free wheeling. But I would argue that there is always a statute or case precedent that is closest to the issue that would serve as the rule. The analysis will determine whether the issue being analyzed aligns with that rule or not. But I would agree that most SCOTUS justices do not and have not historically utilized IRAC in their opinions. Just read one of Sandra Day O'Connor's rambling opinions.
DeleteNow that the LSAT has eliminated the Logic Games, it is far easier, and more people are taking it, and applying to law school. This will likely give some failing toilet law schools new life, at least for a while. "Lending" people billions each year for worthless degrees is just one more way the US wastes trillions. Sooner or later, I expect this to all end in a hyperinflationary Dollar Collapse, as has happened to so many other nation's currencies, so many times before. I remember reading about how it takes a stack of bills inches high to purchase a hamburger in Venezuela. Don't think that it can't happen here. The Law School Scam is just one symptom of the problem, that may lead to a genuine currency collapse, followed by mass chaos.
ReplyDeleteLike every other empire, the US will fall. Hungary had the world’s worst inflation, in the 1940s; Germany wasn't far behind. People would pay when ordering food in a restaurant because the price would go up by the end of the meal. A wheelbarrow full of cash might buy a loaf of bread. Some people used worthless banknotes as wallpaper.
DeleteThe destruction of Venezuela’s currency, and Zimbabwe’s before that, was the handiwork of the US, yet another of its criminal stunts. But those chickens will come home to roost.
Already many countries are moving away from the hegemony of the Yankee dollar, and I don't blame them.
The Logic Games were dropped because they put blind people at a real disadvantage. Someone complained, reasonably enough. Unfortunately, that did make the test easier: those games were the pons asinorum that kept many people out (or relegated them to über-toilets). Sure, the test was rescaled; but other efforts to circumvent the LSAT, including the substitution of the GRE, have also breathed new life into the law-school scam.
ReplyDeleteYes, beyond question the Logic Games (really the Analytic section) was much harder than the rest of the LSAT. No doubt a deliberate dumbing down to turbocharge more law student applications.
DeleteI considered them easy, but I am not typical.
DeleteOld Guy, I cited you in an academic article: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5008518 footnote 79.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for the citation. I've been cited before under my real name, but I'm happy to be cited as Old Guy. Also, I look forward to reading your article.
DeleteLSAT not long for this world at toilet schools: https://www.reuters.com/default/no-lsat-get-into-law-school-aba-opens-door-bypass-standardized-test-2024-11-11/?trk=feed_main-feed-card_feed-article-content
ReplyDeleteSo toilet law schools are working harder than ever to accept unqualified applicants, who can then coast for 3Y on student loans they will never repay. I get it. But I think that all of that is about to change, due to our recent national elections. Considering the commitment to cost-cutting and slashing of government spending by the incoming Presidential Administration, I am quite certain that the Government Student Loan Program will be scrutinized and slashed. We don't need 11 law schools in Florida, 10 in Pennsylvania, 8 in Virginia and so on. All our new political leaders need to do is say, well, we will authorize ONE law school in each of those states to participate in our Student Loan Program. If a student is talented enough to get into the best law school in the state, he or she can borrow what he or she needs for their education, and a much smaller amount for "living expenses" and upon graduation, will in all likelihood have little difficulty getting a job and actually repaying these loans. As for the other schools, hey, if you can convince wealthy people to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for tuition, books, and 3Y out of the work force, great. If you can't, time to go out of business (remember, these schools are, after all, businesses, out to extracts loads of money from students, no matter how loudly they protest this fact). Private loan companies are not going to want to finance such a dubious education, or, in the alternative, will do so at very high interest rates that detract potential borrowers. Elections have consequences.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the political will to do that? It has not happened yet.
DeleteRight. If anything, the incoming administration is actually a big fan of the for-profit colleges which under democratic administrations tend to get singled out. So I don't see either side reigning in the actual ability to borrow, and the new administration may even increase it in the sense that there'll be even less of the already minimal scrutiny of the institutions getting paid.
DeleteWhat I do see on the right is more hostility to income-driven repayment plans, but at least one of those (IBR) is statutory and thus cannot be rescinded by mere rulemaking. So while the administratively-created repayment plans may get less generous or go away altogether, I doubt they'd have the votes to scrap statutory options, especially with the filibuster intact. And even if they did, repayment comes long after borrowing and the kinds of people who go to bad law schools for a 3 year vacation probably aren't looking that far into the future anyway.