Alabama has now joined Texas and Florida in eliminating ABA accreditation as a requirement for admission to the bar, and Tennessee may soon follow.
Under Alabama's new rule, graduates of five law schools in Alabama are admissible to the bar, as are graduates from otheir law schools if they are admissible in the state in which the law school is located. Thus all graduates of ABA-accredited law schools are still admissible, and now so are graduates of various state-accredited and even unaccredited law schools in some states.
Meanwhile, the ABA today cravenly acceded to the federal government's demand that it revoke its rule requiring accredited law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity in admissions and hiring. Suddenly the spineless ABA is singing from the oppressive régime's songbook, condemning the already tame requirement as an error. The ABA has been warned, however, that its status as accreditor may still be withdrawn despite its dutiful revocation of the rule respecting diversity.
We at OTLSS have long taken the position that the ABA should lose its status as accreditor. But there seems to be no coherent strategy for replacing it. Will we end up with a free-for-all? inconsistent policies from state to state? another arbitrary accrediting body with no real standards?
The ABA has been losing credibility for many years, for a variety of reasons. I expect the trend of states allowing law schools and students to ignore it, and still be allowed to sit for the Bar Exam, and get a law license to continue. To me the real problem is student loans. As long as people can easily take out huge amounts of student loan debt to finance law school, they will. Many college grads already use law school as a three-year all-expenses paid vacation, and why not? Many refuse to repay their student loans after graduation, with little or no consequences. When you have a bankrupt Federal Government that believes it can just print-and-spend money forever, scams like this become very common.
ReplyDeleteWe have always taken the position that the ABA is the bitch of the law schools, as is shown by its failure to do anything about the worst of them. Yes, on one or two occasions it has posed as taking some minor action against a law school that was obviously about to fold anyway. Note, however, how it went on waiving its own "rules" for years and years until Cooley finally met one of them (allegedly). Far from being a serious regulator, it is a rubber-stamping body controlled by the very law schools that it purports to regulate.
DeleteStudent loans do remain the key problem, but they interact with accreditation, since they're available only for attendance at accredited law schools. It seems hard to believe that fifty states' governments or court systems will effectively manage accreditation in a coordinated way: much more likely, lax management somewhere will cause problems elsewhere.
An interesting development would be that either The National Lawyers Guild (progressive) or The Federalist Society (conservative) (or both!) offers their "services" as a law school accreditor.
ReplyDeleteAre we getting close to the point where any college graduate will be able to take the bar? Pick up some books after graduation, study and pass.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before and I'll say it again OG: To my knowledge, there has never been any proposal to strip the ABA of accreditation authority that has been motivated by anything other than a desire for MORE toilets, not less. That's why the unaccredited schools always attack ABA on antitrust grounds; their beef with ABA is that it is TOO selective, not that it is not selective enough.
ReplyDeleteIn short, my view on ABA is this: "If you thought you hated the problem, wait until you see the solution." There is zero question in my mind that getting rid of ABA will only mean EVEN MORE toilets, as understandably hard as that may be to believe.
That's my fear. The one effort in the right direction, perhaps, was an attempt by the Department of Education a few years ago to strip the ABA of its accrediting function on the grounds that it was doing a lousy job. But that didn't last long.
DeleteThis is undoubtedly the result of lobbying from the Birmingham School of Law. That place is the poster child of toilet schools--they had a 28% bar pass rate this past february.
ReplyDeleteCalls for elimination of the bar exams, or exemptions from them, stem from the same wretched sources.
DeleteSince 180+ law schools are dumpster fire scams, isn’t it a good thing if they stop preying on minorities with student loan access? If you limit DEI in admissions, you limit the number of BIPOCs indebted in student loans forever with zero prospects of a legal job.
ReplyDeleteI'm more than happy to get rid of the scam schools, which, as you said, are 90% or more of the schools in existence. But shutting them down for lousiness is the way to go about it. Banning affirmative action will have a whitening effect on the Harvards and the Yales.
DeleteIf these efforts prevail-and they probably will-forget crypto; establish a local law school. You'll make bank by promising all grads that they'll be AI-proof and enjoy the cash. Sure it will last only a few years until folks realize that law isn't AI-proof, but that's the whole point of snatch and grab investing: take the money and run.
ReplyDeleteSo this effort will be a further lifeline to the scam.
Now there's a proposal to open a law school in Wichita. What next: Paducah, Kentucky?
DeleteThey opened one in Paducah years ago. It didn't last long.
DeleteThere was one in Paducah 20 years ago or so. It didn't last long. I think it was called the American Justice School of Law.
DeleteI'll be damned. I just made that up; i didn't know that there once was a fly-by-night law school in Paducah. Thanks for the information.
Deletehttps://www.abajournal.com/news/article/grads-of-non-aba-accredited-law-school-can-sit-for-washington-state-bar-exam
ReplyDeleteNo longer have to be from an ABA-accredited school to sit for the Washington state bar exam.
après moi, le déluge
DeleteState Bar Accreditation is actually an advantage to students attending them rather than a lower tier ABA accredited toilet. A toilet ABA Accredited law school charges the same tuition as Harvard but state Accredited schools are much cheaper. So the alumni who never find employment graduating at a state Accredited school at least will not suffer from the debt as much as the unemployed alumni from ABA Accredited toilets when they are all working in retail or hospitality non-legal jobs.
ReplyDeleteAn article published many years ago pointed out that those state-accredited and unaccredited law schools in California are often predatory, taking the money that people have for study from military or other sources. I'd sooner see someone get training as a welder than flush funding down a state-accredited or unaccredit über-über-toilet.
DeleteThe state accredited schools are really only cheaper because they don't have access to federal student loans. If the department of education strips the ABA of accreditation authority they will, in all likelihood, find it easer (not harder) to gain such access.
DeleteThe picture that gets painted is that the ABA imposes all these high costs that force the schools to charge more. I don't really think that's true, as if the schools are mission-driven true nonprofits that want to charge as little as they can. False. The schools charge what the market will bear, like any other business except for the fact that loan availability distorts what students are willing and able to pay. The minute a currently unaccredited school gains access to that same distorting force, its tuition will go through the roof accordingly. It has nothing to do with schools that currently avoid ABA passing the savings along - it's that they cannot charge more cuz their students can't pay as much.
That's why I think ED action to recognize some other accreditor than ABA would probably backfire. Student loans create a strange distortion where more schools = higher price, instead of the usual downward price pressure that competition exerts. When someone else is cutting the check, all the schools just get into lockstep and charge whatever people are willing and able to borrow. Look at stats on average undergrad indebtedness. It is no coincidence that it tracks so closely with the Stafford loan limits.
I was looking at the prices of tuition at Fordham Law, Cardozo Law School and Brooklyn Law School. The cost of attendance at Fordham Law school is around $82,000 per year and the cost of attendance at Cardozo Law School is $77,602 and the cost of Brooklyn Law is $77,762.0 per year.
ReplyDeleteMultiply that by three, add the cost of living for two summers, and tack on interest at a high rate,. Voilà: a degree from one of those toilet schools costs $300k.
DeleteHas anyone mentioned this yet:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.tourolaw.edu/abouttourolaw/news/2489
Touro to open new bybrid law school in Montana
Touro is such a low ranked toilet. I believe that it was included in Old Guy's appalling tier 6 category. No one will take a Touro law degree in Montana seriously. There is no shortage of attorneys in Montana, there is just a lack of a need for legal work. What kind of legal work seriously takes place in Montana? Maybe one can find a simple DUI defense and the occasional family law case. Either way, there is already a local law school that is more than sufficient to cover the paltry need for legal work in Montana.
DeleteYes, Touro is firmly in Tier 6 (the lowest tier). It is just ridiculous for an über-toilet on the other side of the continent to operate a law school remotely in Great Falls, Montana. Of course, the argument will be that the one law school in Montana is far from most residents and therefore every little village in that large but thinly populated state needs a law school of its own. Bullshit.
DeleteAnd in a state without a single city, whose capital is such a down-at-heel dump that it should be called HELLena, there can hardly be much legal work other than divorces and criminal charges and similar shit that occurs everywhere. Don't expect to be negotiating billion-dollar corporate mergers from a skyscraper in Bozeman.
A lot of people who have a degree in biology attend law school as an alternative to medical school. They often chose law school as a backup if they can't get into law school or chose law school because it requires less time and money than medical school.
ReplyDeleteI was one such biology grad. I started law school in 1999. I applied with a 168 LSAT which was good enough for 97th percentile back in the day. I attended a school ranked 14-19 (one of Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Texas, UCLA, USC). I passed on a chance to do my masters in biology at Stanford to give you an idea of my academic credentials when I made the decision to go to law school. It was NOT because I couldn’t get into any med school. That said, going to law school would prove to be a financially disastrous decision for me. Even though my GPA was slightly above class average and I was what one might call conventionally attractive, physically fit, I never received a job offer from a big law firm. In our third year 9/11 happened and many job offers even from big law were rescinded. The combination of the tech bubble bursting, 9/11, and ensuing recession created a nightmare for graduates in the 2002 class which I was in. Eventually, I lucked into a job in finance through connections and have worked almost 23 years now at the same private equity company. I could have done all this with a simple finance undergrad. Neither my B.Sc(H) from a top school nor my top-20 JD helped in any regard getting started or keeping my employment. It goes without saying, I never recommend to any prospective student to attend law school, unless, it is at Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. Anywhere else there is risk involved. Once you are applying to schools ranked at 8-14 the risk increases to moderate and at 14-20 the risk is excessive. Nobody should ever attend any law school ranked outside the top 20 as these are essentially negative wealth compounders.
DeleteI am sorry that you fell for the law school scam and wasted a lot of time and money on law school. That said, I don't think you ever understood what you were getting into in the first place. You say that "Even though my GPA was slightly above class average and I was what one might call conventionally attractive, physically fit, I never received a job offer from a big law firm." Having a "slightly above class average GPA" will never open any doors for a job at a large, prestigious, high-paying law firm. You might get such a job if you graduate from Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, but that will be based on the -school you attended, not the grades you received there. At the great majority of US law schools, large law firms are only interested in interviewing candidates who are in the top ten percent of their class (top five percent for very grade-conscious firms like Cravath) and preferably on the Law Review. The folks who say "sure, I wasn't top ten percent/Law Review, but I WAS top 1/3 & Space Law Journal, so that's pretty much the same thing" . . .the people who say that are utterly deluded. There are no prizes for second place in law school.
DeleteNo surprise you didn't practice law even with a top 20 ranked law school. I know in my community a guy who graduated a top 10 law school in 2009 and never found employment so filed bankruptcy and still lives in his mother's basement unemployed.
DeleteI personally know a guy who graduated from a top 20 law school many years ago and never found legal employment and since graduating law school has lived in his mother's basement and even filed for bankruptcy unable to pay his credit card debts. So not even the top 20 are safe investments. Just Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are safe. The rest are risky gambles.
DeleteSlightly above average is little better than failing out at any school other than Harvard or Yale (maybe two or three others). Here's how it goes:
DeleteHarvard and Yale: nearly all, but some will be jilted
About four other schools (NYU, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago): most
A few more (Michigan, Virginia, Duke, and the like): the top half, maybe less
Everything from Vanderbilt to Colorado (in quality, not geography): top 10% may get interviews
Everything else: only if you're a trust-fund baby
That 10% figure is a big part of the law school scam. For many decades non-elite law schools have been luring in applicants, telling the students (and their parents, often) that "some of our graduates land very high paying-jobs with large, prestigious law firms". . .and it is not until the poor student is well into his or her first year, fully committed to an education that may well cost over $200,000, along with the missed income from three years out of the workforce, that he finds out that 9/10 law students at his or her school will never get so much as an interview for a summer job with such a law firm, in their entire life. And, of course, firms like Cravath may only be interested in the top 5%, meaning that there is a 95 percent chance a student at that school will be entirely out of the running for even an interview at such a firm. It's a massive scam. A business selling a product with a 90-95 percent failure rate would be swiftly shut down and possibly jailed for fraud, but law schools have been getting away with this for decades. . ..
DeleteOn the one hand, it is clear that tens of thousands of people each year sign up for law school without making a sensible assessment of the wisdom of the decision, notwithstanding the abundance of information available from this and other sources. It might therefore be said that they need to be protected from themselves because of their incompetence and that they should not be eligible to borrow money for the ill-fated venture.
DeleteOn the other, people who go into law school fancy themselves members of an intellectual élite. Perhaps they should be stuck with the consequences of their own conceit and folly.
@1:44 Was big law the only option that you considered? I find it hard to believe that someone attending a top 20 law school with a mid class rank couldn't find some alternative. Whether it be a federal or state agency, smaller firm or some such other path. I say this because some of the people from my 4th tier toilet went on to reasonable careers. Either joining or creating firms. One of my classmates who I though was a complete idiot was in my alumni magazine class notes and is the director of a federal agency in Washington, DC. Another is partner of a firm. At least three others just in my class are judges. Granted, I suspect many of them had family connections.
DeleteConnections trump ability any day of the week. Shitheads in prominent places abound. Yes, you can get a cushy job with your Mickey Mouse JD from an über-toilet if your father is Daddy Warbucks. But you get it because of Daddy Warbucks, not because of the Mickey Mouse JD.
DeleteABA standards are toothless. The protocols are just window dressing. Look at the standards for robust career services. You call law school career services "robust" when graduates have high unemployment? And don't forget once the 10 month employment reporting deadline to the ABA passed, career services door slams shut on all the graduates who didn't find employment and they are on their own. If they didn't find employment within 10 months their resume is viewed as stale to prospective employers and so the unemployment gap will continue to widen.
ReplyDeleteAnd their unemployed plight will never be counted by an NALP mandated survey so career services has no incentive to help them. The promise of social mobility by the law school scam will actually be downward mobility saddled with student loan debt.
I bet you a community college autotech program has a more robust career services than most ABA accredited law schools
Yes, the law skules drop their graduates as soon as the ten-month period has lapsed. Even if they continued to offer "services", however, they wouldn't achieve much. How is some "career-development office" supposed to help scores of unwanted graduates to find jobs?
DeleteTrue story: my then top 50 now working its way to triple digits law school's placement office literally prohibited me from applying for any OCI. All jobs posted were for top 10% only(sometimes requiring top 10% and law review). I was neither, but kept submitting my resume(hey, I was paying tuition, too) until the day arrived I was confronted by the "dean" of the woefully mis-named "career development office" and told I was banned.
DeleteThat lasted about a week; I kept submitting my resume...and shockingly enough never got an interview. But once I graduated-yep, lots of phone calls from the law school asking for money.
And that's the reality: it's all a money-driven racket.
I'm sorry that you ended up at yet another money-grubbing bullshit law school. Perhaps it's cold comfort to know that Old Guy's élite bullshit law school treated him like dirt even though he was up at the top of the class—yes, with law review and the rest. The mother-fuckers never have had the courage to ask Old Guy for a penny; if they did, they'd get an earful of very pointed profanity.
DeleteT14 law schools are hardly a panacea for anyone either. A lot of graduates who end up a t14 work in a biglaw firm for three years, burn out and then often become stay at home parents or work for a non-profit.
ReplyDelete