ABA trivially raises standard for accreditation; toilet law schools wage war against bar exams

Overriding strident opposition from its scamster-dominated House of Delegates, the ABA has finally forced through a namby-pamby amendment to its Standard 316. The former standard provided various means by which a law school could retain accreditation, notoriously among them "having at least 70% of its graduates pass the bar at a rate within 15 percentage points of the average first-time bar pass rate for ABA-approved law school graduates in the same jurisdiction for three out of the five most recently completed calendar years". Under the revised standard, at least 75% of those of a law school's graduates who take a bar exam must pass within two years. A law school that fails this standard has two years in which to come into compliance.

The new standard takes effect immediately.

This weak change may perhaps drive a few schools to stop scraping the bottom of the barrel for students. But it has already sparked reactionary struggle. Yesterday, presumably in anticipation of today's revision of Standard 316, various high officials from the following 13 ABA-accredited law schools wrote to ask the ABA to "convene a task force to work toward an appropriate outcome standard to determine fitness for the practice of law" and to offer to serve on the task force themselves:

Cincinnati
Cooley
District of Columbia
Elon
Irvine
North Carolina Central
Northern Kentucky
Oregon
South Dakota
Southern University Law Center
Texas Southern University
Thomas Jefferson
Western New England

The list reads like a veritable Who's Who of toilets and über-toilets. What do these exalted scamsters propose? They assure us that they "express no consensus view on an appropriate standard or outcome". Yet they add the following:

The precipitous decline in bar pass rates of graduates of ABA-accredited law schools in almost every state in the last ten years signals that the exams, themselves, may be faulty, that scoring may be improperly designed, or that other methods of determining fitness for the practice of law should be studied. We think an examination of how best to determine fitness for the practice of law will be fittingly complemented by the work of the NCBE Testing Task Force that is looking at the bar exam itself to determine whether it is “keeping pace with the changing legal profession.” While decline in bar pass rates might be addressed through a modified bar exam, additional solutions can be identified through an ABA task force studying the broader issue of an appropriate standard to determine fitness for the practice of law.

And there we have it. They blame the bar exams themselves for that "precipitous decline", and they propose to identify "an appropriate standard"—apparently the modification or outright replacement of the bar exams. Never do they suggest that the law schools could be responsible for any part of the decline. Well, the bar exams haven't changed much over the past decade, but the quality of the students at many an über-toilet has indeed declined precipitously. Consider the following illustrative data, which show for each year the LSAT scores (at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles) and the rate of success on the state's bar exam for those graduates who took it in the year in question:

Cooley
2010: 144/146/151; 84.5%
2017: 139/142/146; 58.8%

Elon
2010: 153/155/159; 79.3%
2017: 145/148/150; 46.9%

Thomas Jefferson
2010: 149/151/153; 55.9%
2017: 142/144/147; 26.5%

On the other extreme, we have the following very different results:

Columbia
2010: 170/172/175; 97.7%
2017: 169/171/173; 97.7%

Harvard
2010: 171/173/176; 98.0%
2017: 170/173/175; 100.0%

Yale
2010: 171/173/176; 97.1% (New York, not Connecticut)
2017: 170/173/175; 98.3%

These data, admittedly not exhaustive, suggest a correlation over time between a school's LSAT scores and its rates of success on the relevant bar exam. If it be objected that the two groups of schools represent different states and therefore different bar exams, I can happily substitute the U of Michigan (same state as Cooley), Duke (same state as Elon), and Stanford (same state as Thomas Jefferson): the results are similar. And they offer no support for the groundless allegation of "faulty" bar exams or "improperly designed" scoring.

Now, it is true that correlation does not imply causation. But the data above give at least grounds for suspicion. Any serious investigation would look at the cohorts themselves and ask whether the well-established decline in the quality of the students at many lousy law schools had anything to do with the plummeting of those cohorts' rates of success on the bar exams. Common sense suggests that it did, and the data back that up. But of course the scamsters who live large off toilet law schools won't do anything that might jeopardize their fancily paid sinecures. Instead, they want to abolish the exams that expose their schools' utter lousiness—all while purporting to act in the public interest.

Appointing a "task force" packed with a baker's dozen of toilet law schools would be tantamount to setting foxes to guard the henhouse. With at most three exceptions, those schools are utter disasters. Why the hell should they get to decide on "an appropriate standard"? They have no meaningful standards! They certainly should not be able to springboard themselves into compliance with Standard 316 by supplanting the bar exams with some low threshold that even their sub-marginal cohorts might be able to cross.

While they scheme to neutralize requirements for maintaining accreditation, the über-toilets have almost three years to bring their graduates' rates of passing up to the 75% mark. Some of them might succeed by imposing a minimum LSAT score of 150 or more. That, however, would entail reducing enrollment to a small fraction of the current level, and many über-toilets could not survive so drastic a reduction. I therefore anticipate open warfare against bar exams, the LSAT, and other objective standards that lay bare the irremediable shittiness of many dozens of toilet law schools.

Louisiana and Texas may each be getting another unneeded über-toilet law school

During the past three years, eight law schools have announced their closure: Indiana Tech, Whittier, Charlotte, a campus of Cooley, Savannah, Hamline, Arizona Summit, and Valpo. Three more closures appear to be imminent: those of Western State (no longer receiving money from student loans; embroiled in trouble over the disappearance of millions of dollars in federal funds; barely escaped sudden closure in the middle of the semester that just ended), Thomas Jefferson (only 59 first-year students enrolled last year; did not admit students this spring; big financial problems; operating in reportedly non-functional office space), and Florida Coastal (only 60 first-year students; out of its building; the last of the InfiLaw chain of über-toilets). Many others, from Appalachian to Concordia, may be standing on the brink of the grave.

The states of Louisiana and Texas are not deterred. Just this week they announced plans to consider a new branch of Southern University Law Center to be built in Shreveport and a law school for the Río Grande Valley.

Louisiana already has four law schools, none of them worthy of the name. Southern University Law Center, located in Baton Rouge, is one of the foulest über-toilets, second only to Cooley in the department of low LSAT scores (though admittedly Appalachian, Texas Southern, and others are not far behind). If another law school were needed in Louisiana, Southern University Law Center would be totally unfit to operate it.

The proposed law school for the Río Grande Valley is supposedly justified because the region "has been neglected for decades when it comes to educational opportunities", according to Rep. Armando Martínez, who appears to be the project's chief proponent. The state would require a "feasibility study". Perhaps the scamsters behind this dumb proposal should dust off the one for Indiana Tech and recycle it mutatis mutandis. In the meantime, they have already estimated a few of the costs of opening their über-toilet, including more than $50 million for a building and $800k for a dean and three support workers in the first year. All that for a school that, in their pie-in-the-sky dreams, would attract a hundred students in its first year. Indiana Tech too thought that it would get that many, but only about thirty enrolled.

At least the state of Tennessee had the sense to reject a proposal to let Middle Tennessee State University acquire Valpo: even the price tag of $0 was correctly deemed too high. Let's hope that similar sanity will nip in the bud the patently foolish proposals to create law schools in Louisiana and Texas.

Analysis of 2018 Bar Passage Rates

H/t to David Frakt:

While there is a tendency to assume that law schools with bad bar pass rates are "bad law schools" in the sense of having bad teachers, or having an insufficiently rigorous curriculum, or having inadequate academic support and bar preparation programs, this is not necessarily the case.  Rather, the primary factor is the school's admissions policies, not the quality of legal education offered by the school.  As you can see on the table, with the exception of four California law schools, University of San Francisco, Southwestern, McGeorge and Cal Western, every law school on the bottom 25 list had very high risk admissions policies in place for their fall entering class of 2015 (when most of the 2018 first-time bar takers matriculated into law school).  By very high risk, I mean that at least 25% of the students that matriculated were at very high risk of failure, and at least 50% were at high risk of failure, based on the LSAT Risk Bands table I first published in 2014, and which has been repeatedly validates since.  I have argued that admitting any significant percentage of extremely high and very high risk students is unethical, irresponsible and violates ABA Standard 501.  At the very least, it is a recipe for disastrous bar passage rates.  Perhaps not surprisingly, as the chart also depicts, many of the schools on the list have either gone out of business, been placed on probation, or been sanctioned or had some form of remedial measures imposed upon them by the ABA at some point since 2015 (although some schools were later found back in compliance).  

This pretty much says it all, although there is a nice summary chart below the fold.  Is it any wonder that Whitter, Valpo, and Arizona Summit are closed/closing?  That Appalachian, Golden Gate, Cooley (sorry, Western Michigan) and Texas Southern have been sanctioned?

Does it run in the Lamparello family?

Regular readers of OTLSS may recall Adam Lamparello, whose "snotty poor-little-me memoir about his disillusionment with practicing law, hookers, cocaine, his church, his frat, his girlfriends, and his alleged eating disorder" was featured here six years ago. He was one of the most, er, renowned professors at the late and unlamented Indiana Tech Law School. What he is doing now I cannot say, though I have information on two of his former colleagues, for anyone who cares to know: Peter Alexander is now "Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Visiting Professor of Law" at the notorious über-toilet law school of the University of North Texas, and André Douglas "Dougie Fresh" Pond Cummings—now with capital letters!—has a new position at private über-toilet St Thomas University.

The name Lamparello was recently in the news: just days after the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris, a Marc Lamparello was arrested and charged with second-degree attempted arson, second-degree reckless endangerment, and trespassing for going into midtown Manhattan's famous St Patrick's Cathedral with two jerry cans of gasoline, two bottles of charcoal-lighting fluid, and two long-handled butane lighters. It turns out that he was also about to leave for Rome on a "one-way ticket" that had cost him $2800. Unless he was in first class, he paid an awful lot. Probably he bought the ticket at the last minute. Since the items that he was carrying upon arrest are not allowed on airplanes, presumably he planned to stop at a Roman gas station on his way from the airport to St Peter's Basilica.

It seems that Marc Lamparello and Adam Lamparello are brothers. Adam made typically asinine statements to the press about this incident, and both Adam and Marc live in the small town of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. But they have more in common: both of them have a theoretical claim to being professors. Marc is listed on a book as "a Boston College-educated philosophy professor", though he has no PhD (that's in the works at CUNY). Apparently the "philosophy professor" has merely taught a couple of courses as an adjunct at a few institutions in the general vicinity of New York City.

Also, the brothers Lamparello share a penchant for self-promotional scribbling. Marc may not yet have discovered the advantages of tell-all vulgar memoirs but "is currently working on two other book-length projects, including a witty dialogue on arguments for and against the existence of God, and a series of essays on the epistemology of practical motivation". The "witty dialogue" reminds me of the sickening "Rodrigo chronicles" that come out of the ass of hackademic poseur Richard Delgado. As for "practical motivation", I don't even know what it is. Is it contrasted with impractical motivation?

Marc Lamparello has published a book, Reason and Counterpoint. "Presented in the form of aphorisms and paragraph-length insights"—prime vehicles for serious philosophical discourse—the book asks "What is the nature of the a priori?". (That it is a priori.) Also, "Can we really rely on our own cognitive architecture in distilling the nature of moral-practical motivation?" (If we can't rely on our own cognitive architecture, then on what, exactly, shall we rely? Coin tosses?)

In any event, Daddy is awfully proud of dear Marc: "His writings — other professors can’t even understand his writings." That's because they're shite, idiot. What's the use of incomprehensible writing?

Marc and Adam also share a certain self-image that might remind one of Narcissus. The article reports that Marc "Lamparello is a frequent poster on the Reddit community 'AmIUgly,' where users ask for their appearance to be rated. In recent years, Lamparello has replied to dozens of women with critiques." What sort of person would frequent a Web site for people who are concerned about being perceived as ugly? and send dozens of women critiques of their appearance? Last August he wrote "I’m going through a phase. After not giving a shit about my appearance for 20 years, I’ve swung in the opposite direction. Now, I’m very vain and appearance-obsessed." I don't ordinarily think ill of other people's appearance, but after reading that I had to look at his pictures again. For someone who is "very vain" (nice that he admits it) "and appearance-obsessed", he certainly has far to go. That bushy beard only accentuates the receded hairline. Decent clothes, instead of those tatty-ass T-shirts, would also help.

Apparently with no success at all, Marc has been "going for in-shape women who are a little attractive, and have a few nice features". Assessing people as "attractive" or "nice" solely by their appearance is terribly shallow—not what one would expect of a brilliant philosopher. Pathetically, Marc seeks the solution to his problems in plastic surgery: he is saving his pennies for procedures that will take him "from a 4/10 to a 7.2-7.3/10". He'd do better to keep his money and address his wretched personality. He published the following: "All I know is, if the French dislike us for something, we must be doing something right. They think they’re so much more sophisticated and culturally alluring than us. But secretly, they’re jealous of us and want to be us. Never forget that, fellow Americans." Yes, that's straight from the pen of sophisticated, culturally alluring Marc Lamparello.

Back to the scene of the crime. When Marc was caught in flagrante delicto (I couldn't resist the pun), he had parked his minivan in front of Saks Fifth Avenue. I'm not aware of any legal parking along Fifth Avenue at that busy location. The vehicle would have been towed quickly enough, but apparently Marc didn't intend to stay long. Anyway, in statements to the police (didn't his brother Adam, allegedly a great lawyer, advise him against making a statement?), Marc claimed that the vehicle had run out of gas and that he was merely cutting through the cathedral in order to get to Madison Avenue. Now, how much sense does that make? His vehicle was found not to be out of gas after all. He had taken two jerry cans of gasoline out of his vehicle and was taking them elsewhere. Why didn't he pour the gasoline into the tank, if that was the issue? Why was he going to Madison Avenue? Not to get gas: there is no gas station on the island of Manhattan within dozens of blocks. Is it even possible for the general public to cut through the cathedral in order to go between Fifth and Madison? Who the hell would do that rather than walking, say, along 50th Street? Especially with hands full of inflammable materials, just days after a fire at another cathedral. And why was he carrying fuel inside a vehicle? Not smart.

The police have nonetheless reported that "[i]t's hard to say what exactly his intentions were". Oh, come on! In the wake of that fire at Notre-Dame, he walked into a cathedral heavily laden with jerry cans of gasoline, bottles of charcoal-lighter fluid, and long-handled lighters (two of each—maybe he was playing Noah's Ark). What could his intentions have been, if not to burn the building down? To replenish the church's generator and then grill some hot dogs on the altar? Without wishing to convict him on the strength of the story given here, I find it hard to see a source of reasonable doubt about attempted arson.

Perhaps the police meant that they could not immediately tell whether Marc Lamparello was driven by malevolence or psychosis. I certainly cannot comment on that. One thing is clear, though: the Lamparellos of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, never fail to surprise.

Brief Update: Applicants up 1.4% Compared to Last Year

Well, what began as a strong start for the Cartel, near 2012 levels of applicants, quickly morphed back to near-repeat of 2018.  While it is good news that we are still nowhere near 2012 levels of applicants, there has been a slow, steady march upwards from 2015 ever since.  For the friends of the scamblogs, this is a disturbing trend.  

2019 Projected, with Past Data

It appears that we will be clocking in around 62,000 applicants for the 2019 cycle given current projections.  Hopefully a significant number of these will be encouraged to move on to something else, as sometimes rejection only looks good in hindsight - ask some of the commentators here who realized after the fact they dodged a bullet.  Here's hoping that those who do remain have good prospects on the other side, though we here at OTLSS won't be holding our collective breath for that - with the Cartel stroking egos and selling snowflake-dreams, it is a siren-call difficult to dismiss.    

JD-Disadvantage, Part X - The Truth Comes Full Circle

I've been writing about the illusion of "JD-Advantage" in particular for some time now.  The reasons why are essentially two-fold: (1) JD-Advantage is indeed farcical and plain-old bunk at an objective level, and (2) I have first-hand experience in the same, so that makes me somewhat of a subject-matter expert.  I've included a handy summary of posts on the subject over the years at the bottom should anyone need a cure for insomnia or delusions of grandeur, either one.

As we all know, a data set of one is not a data set.  So before everyone starts chiming in saying "but your experience is relative and not representative, because you are just one person, and forget about your dumb posts, anyway," here is some additional information in support of the Truth(tm):

There are a number of problems with the JD Advantage category as defined.  One is (or perhaps two are) its breadth and pliability.  They almost certainly cause some outcomes to be reported as JD Advantage that it would make no sense ex ante to attend law school to obtain (because there are much cheaper and easier ways to achieve the same result), and thus should not be considered placement successes (in my terminology, Law Jobs).  Worse, the definitional flexibility may inspire some administrators to stretch the category beyond any reasonable scope, rationalizing some “demonstrable advantage in either obtaining or performing the duties of the position,” in order to report an outcome they can claim as successful, especially in hard times. 

Bam. Yessir, and a voice from the academy, no less.  But wait, there's more:

For example, is paralegal or law clerk (not for a judge, but as an unlicensed assistant for other lawyers) a JD Advantage position?  To be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these jobs; they are valuable, honest work, and skilled besides.  But you sure wouldn’t plan to spend 3 years and $150,000 in law school in order to get these jobs—in fact, you can get a paralegal certification in one year at many inexpensive community colleges, and you don’t even need that to get an entry-level job as a paralegal.  And yet the ABA’s 2019 Employment Protocols for the Class of 2019 provide that both paralegal and law clerk are presumed to be JD Advantage placements by dint of job title alone.  (See here at pp. 26, 67.)  In the same publication, the ABA says legal secretaries are presumed to hold a “Professional” rather than a JD Advantage position (here at p. 68), though (in my experience, at least) their work in many if not most cases is as highly skilled and law-related as paralegal work, especially at smaller firms. 

Ah, the good ol' ABA, looking out for the little person.  Anyway:

(more below the fold):

Purchased admission to university

Dozens of rich people and their collaborators have been arrested for fraudulent schemes to have already very privileged young people admitted to allegedly élite universities. Some parents bribed proctors of the SAT or the ACT so that a child could take the test with, shall we say, a little help. Others bribed coaches and others to pass their children off as recruited athletes deserving of extra attention and, of course, lower standards at the admissions office. Reportedly much of the money went through a charitable organization, and some of the people involved took tax deductions for their "donations".

I fully concur that the acts alleged are contemptible and that they should be punished aggressively. But does anyone really believe, as the prosecutor claimed, that "there can be no separate college-admissions system for the wealthy"? A separate system for the wealthy has existed for decades, and much of it is perfectly legal. Read Daniel Golden's book The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—And Who Gets Left outside the Gates. (Golden, incidentally, wrote the article cited above.)

Is Junior uncompetitive for Ivy? Call the "development" office and work out a donation, maybe a couple of million dollars, that may ever-so-coincidentally come to the attention of the people down the hall in admissions. As long as there is no formal quid pro quo, you should even be able to deduct the donation. Of course, this strategy works only if you have that much money and can afford to part with it—in other words, if you're filthy rich.

You may not have to go that far: your name may be enough. When it discovered that it had rejected a British princess, "horrified" Newcastle University back-pedaled and admitted her after all, blaming an "Italian" admissions officer for failing to consider that Her Disgrace "may have had more significance for the institution than another applicant"—than some poor slob like Old Guy, that is. US universities likewise fall all over themselves to welcome the scions of the rich and the prominent (usually one and the same).

If your own name doesn't command attention, you can have a well-placed person pull strings with the university. This ploy works especially well if you happen to be friends with the golfing partner of the university's president. Not many of us, however, can claim that distinction.

Or, if you yourself attended the university in question, or your spouse or another relative of your child's did, then your child counts as a "legacy" and gets special consideration. Again, this strategy doesn't work for people like Old Guy who are "legacies" of nothing in particular.

Those are just a few of the ways in which one can exercise direct influence over the admissions office. Indirect influence takes thousands of forms, many of them requiring money but all of them considered perfectly legitimate: aristocratic and expensive private schools, music lessons, élite sports (think polo and lacrosse—no competition here from the kid at East Bumblefuck High School), foreign travel, costly tutors for the SAT, even costlier "admissions consultants".

The tactics listed in the last few paragraphs may not strike you as fraudulent, unlike the purchasing of SAT scores or the bribing of the university's personnel. But they prove the existence of a "separate college-admissions system for the wealthy", one that takes up spaces that might otherwise go to lowly commoners.