Law-school scam surges ahead

March 2022 has been a terrible month for the anti-scam movement, and we still have eleven days to go. Four major setbacks have come to our attention here at OTLSS.

The first was the announcement, reported in the previous article, that privately owned Jacksonville University plans to open a law school and has even obtained the required funding from the municipal government.

Soon after that, privately owned High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, announced that it too is going to open a law school, possibly within two years. As if that weren't foolish enough, the university also plans to open a school of optometry, a school of nursing, and a school of entrepreneurship (whatever that means), while spending $400M—about $70k per student—on construction. How it's going to pay for all of that I don't know, but I certainly am not offering to underwrite the loans. But the law school cannot possibly be needed. North Carolina already has six law schools (seven before the Charlotte School of Law went tits up), only one of them possibly worth attending in Old Guy's assessment. All of them are in the north-central part of the state, from Durham to Winston-Salem. One could drive to all six of those law schools in two hours or so. High Point University is only about twenty minutes' drive from two other law schools: Wake Forest, in Winston-Salem, and Elon, in Greensboro. Why the hell should another goddamn law school be built in that area? If it sees the light of day, it will certainly be another über-toilet, with not even accreditation to offer to new students. Like Indiana Tech, it will fold soon enough.

The third setback is the absorption of Law School Transparency into the Law School Admission Council. As the article states, "Law School Transparency was a thorn in the side of law schools when it launched in 2009, criticizing what it said was misleading graduate employment data and calling for changes in how schools report student outcomes". LST did good anti-scam work. Now the LSAC, which coordinates applications to law schools, produces the LSAT, and thus greatly promotes the law-school scam, has taken LST over. In exchange for surrending LST, Kyle McEntee, its director and founder, has been hired as "senior director"—perhaps one should say scamster-in-chief—of the LSAC. Et tu, Brute? 

And recently the LSAC has announced plans to introduce its "Legal Education Program" as an alternative to taking the LSAT. Until the past few years, law schools in the US and Canada (other than some non-English-speaking localities), and even a few in other parts of the world, required the LSAT of all applicants. A few schools introduced the GRE as an alternative, and many others followed suit even though it had not been approved by the American Bar Association (the scam-leading organization in charge of accreditation of law schools in the US). Now the LSAC will let applicants take a couple of years of courses in lieu of writing the LSAT. Billed as "equally valid", this new approach will serve mainly to confuse the data so that it will become impossible to assess student bodies objectively. Whatever its flaws (and Old Guy thinks that they are greatly overstated, mainly by scamsters and people who score poorly on the test), the LSAT provides a consistent measurement of applicants' ability to think logically and to understand English text. A few cotton-candy courses on "the skills necessary for success in law school", "the legal profession and law school experience", and "strong support networks" will not. 

The two proposed über-toilets aren't of great concern: they can be expected to shut down as quickly as they open. But the LSAC's little coups revitalize the law-school scam. Let's hope that they encourage the federal government to curtail access to student loans, without which the scam could not endure.

Jacksonville loses one über-toilet, will gain another

Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida, has announced its intention to open another goddamn law school. Florida Coastal, also located in Jacksonville, survives only to give its last few students another year to finish their studies and collect a Mickey Mouse law degree from the last über-toilet of defunct scam-chain InfiLaw.

As usual, the stated justification is geographic. The mayor of Jacksonville reported that his is the largest city in the US that does not have a law school. (He said nothing about the one that is shutting its doors after having enrollment of almost 4000 students not many years ago. Might it be that Jacksonville just doesn't need a law school?) Of course, he also alluded to the supposedly vast numbers of local people who can't possibly get off their asses and go to any of the twelve law schools that already exist in Florida—such as the U of Florida, only about an hour and twenty minutes away—or for that matter to any of almost two hundred more distant law schools, practically all of which have more to offer than an upstart.

This would-be über-toilet is to be housed "in a downtown office building", rather like Thomas Jefferson School of Law and other whopping failures. Already the city of Jacksonville has pledged $5 million, curiously enough the very amount that the university expects to spend on opening its vanity project. Initially there will be only four professors, not exactly enough to offer Law 'n' Hip-Hop or a range of certificates in Global Leadership—nor even to inspire confidence in the university's commitment to sustaining the dump long enough for the first class to graduate.

Targeted enrollment for the initial class is 20 to 30 students. Within two years the university wants 150 students—whether per class or for the entire school is not clear. Nor is anything said about the important question of costs. Still, Old Guy has seen quite enough to advise resolutely against signing up for three years at an ill-considered über-toilet that may not last that long. Even a horrible shithole like Cooley is marginally better than this big if. Expect another Indiana Tech or worse.

Über-toilet coming to West Virginia?

A new bill before the West Virginia House of Delegates would establish a law school at Marshall University.

Now, Old Guy had never heard of Marshall University, but he can say that this proposal is even more ridiculous than the proposal to open a law school in Shreveport, Louisiana. West Virginia is declining in population. The largest city, Charleston, does not have even 50,000 people. Pretty though its mountains can be, the state is the very poster child of illiteracy and backwardness. (Q: What does a West Virginian girl say when she loses her virginity? A: "Cut it out, Pa; you're crushing my Marlboros.") This rural, retrograde state absolutely does not need even the toilet law school that it already has, let alone another one.

Even Brad D. Smith, the president of Marshall University, has expressed polite doubts. He points out that he and his colleagues have not "seen or conducted a market study for the development of a law school". Indeed, Mr. Smith, a sensible person would start there! Especially after the Indiana Tech catastrophe. But don't expect much sense in the West Virginian legislature.

How little sense? Have a look at this:

A law degree is one of the most versatile degrees, [Delegate Matt] Rohrbach said. Many corporate CEOs and other corporate leaders hold the degrees to help them better fulfill their roles without ever stepping [sic] foot in a courtroom, he said.

First of all, as we have said countless times, a law degree is actually one of the least versatile degrees. It's useful for practicing law—and just about nothing else. And it's not even very useful for that, because there are two graduates for every entry-level job. 

Second, we've also exposed the fallacy of concluding that the fact some "corporate leaders" or other supposedly prominent people have a degree in law implies that the degree contributed significantly to their professional attainment. Many "corporate leaders" own a set of golf clubs, but it does not follow that by buying a set of golf clubs you will stand a decent chance of becoming a "corporate leader".

Third, a new law school at Marshall University would only ever be an über-toilet, and anyone who wants an idea of what would await its graduates can have a look at the many über-toilets that see fewer than half of their graduates working in law ten months after graduation—and then usually in low-paying positions. An über-toilet in West Virginia could expect to fare even worse than its established counterparts in more urbanized states, because whatever demand there is for lawyers in West Virginia is amply met by the one law school in the state and others in the region. 

In a manner strikingly reminiscent of Indiana Tech's "feasibility study", Rohrbach maintained that his proposed law school would "fill[] the need in the Huntington, Charleston, Beckley market. There's [sic] a lot of people with a need, but they can't really quit what they're doing and move to Morgantown for three years" in order to study law at West Virginia University.

Why does that recall Indiana Tech? Because there too we were told of the vast numbers of people stuck in Fort Wayne who couldn't move their asses to attend one of several law schools within a two-hour drive. But the bogus "feasibility study" could not change the facts. What Indiana Tech found was that the local market consisted of a couple of dozen people at most—by no means enough to run a law school. And hardly anyone moved to Fort Wayne for the privilege of studying law 'n' hip-hop at Indiana Tech. The über-toilet was gone in four years, and the parent university lost much of its endowment on the disaster. The same fate would surely befall a law school at Marshall University, except that Fort Wayne—which is quite a bit bigger than Huntington, Charleston, and Beckley combined—would look downright promising in comparison to southwestern West Virginia.

Mr. Smith, take it from Old Guy: resist every effort to saddle your institution with a law school. 

No merger of Akron and Cleveland State

Toilet law schools University of Akron and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (Cleveland State University) contemplated a merger, but now those plans are off. It seems that each of the toilets wanted to maintain its campus.

Old Guy never saw anything to be gained from pretending that Cleveland and Akron, a good 45 minutes apart, offered fertile ground for this endeavor. He remains of the view that both law schools should close down—as indeed should all nine law schools in Ohio. The best of the lot is Ohio State University, which ridiculously insists on styling itself "The Ohio State University"—a mediocrity where more than a quarter of the class ends up not working in law after graduation. Far better law schools than this can be found nearby in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ontario. Down in the depths of über-toiletry lies dreadful Ohio Northern University, which, with only 59 students in the latest entering class, is likely to dry up and blow away. More than two-thirds of the class gets discounts ranging from 50% to 100+% (that's right, outright bribery occurs at the top), while 40% of the graduates find themselves not working in law (and usually not working at all) ten months after graduation.

Despite its undeniable charms, the Buckeye State just does not need a law school at all, let alone a reformed or reconstituted Akron–Cleveland hybrid. The entire region spills over with law schools from Tier 2 to Tier 6. How exactly a large state like Ohio has managed to assemble an assortment of law schools ranging from humdrum to shitty is a good question for historians of the law-school scam, but in practice all nine should go. Never mind that it is a big state; never mind that under more propitious circumstances it might have pulled off a respectable law school: it has not done so, and now is certainly not the time to try.

If you live in Ohio or Indiana, your nearest choices of decent law schools are Michigan, Chicago, Northwestern, Penn, and probably a couple of schools north of the Great Lakes. Do not go to any Buckeye or Hoosier law school.

ABA's 509 disclosures are out

Today the ABA published the disclosures that all ABA-accredited law schools have made this year under Standard 509:

https://abarequireddisclosures.org/Disclosure509.aspx

Read all about your (least) favorite law school. Feel free to post analyses here.

The newest über-toilet is coming—to Shreveport

Southern University Law Center, which gives Cooley stiff competition for the rank of lousiest accredited law school in the US, is going to open a branch in Shreveport in January 2022.

We here at Outside the Law School Scam discouraged this particular piece of folly. Law School Truth Center wrote a feasibility study on the creation of another über-toilet in the Pelican State. But of course the scamsters were undeterred by such inconvenient party-poopers as rationality.

Were there a need for a law school in Shreveport (and there isn't a need for a new law school anywhere in the US), Southern University Law Center would be very ill placed to run it. At least a quarter of the incoming students last year scored no better than 143 on the LSAT (the highest score at that level in more than a decade). A "school" that bad should clean its own shit up before branching out.

Who are the students in the first cohort? Eight students at Southern University Law Center who decided to complete their last semester by moving from the main toilet in Baton Rouge to the outhouse in Shreveport. After a single semester, this ridiculous "law school" is going to close until it can find a few students next winter to pull the same stunt. Optimists might suppose that the new über-toilet is being built prudently from modest beginnings. Old Guy is more inclined to deal with reality: for the reasons carefully explained in Law School Truth Center's feasibility study, the Shreveport area just cannot support a law school, and that fact would become perfectly clear if this laughable branch of one of the very worst two or three law schools in the US threw open its doors and tried to operate as a full-blown Indiana Tech (with or without the four specializations in Global Leadership™ and such).

Indeed, the students are all from the area, although they completed most of their studies in Baton Rouge: "The inaugural class will be eight Southern University Law students who have roots in Northern Louisiana and felt an early move back to the region could help secure post-graduation employment." The only people who wanted to go to that branch in Shreveport were people who were from that part of Louisiana. And they are still looking for work as their time in law school draws to a close. They're desperately hoping that the declining Shreveport area will want graduates like themselves (assuming for the moment that they'll ever pass a bar exam), even though their ridiculous eight-student campus cannot offer meaningful support for finding local employment.

A propagandist for this bullshit Southern University Law Center said "I meet people all the time who say I want to go but all of the law schools are in southern Louisiana". Old Guy is unsympathetic. If you live in a small or bleak place like Shreveport, you cannot reasonably expect to have the facilities of New York City at your doorstep. Grow the hell up and move a couple of hours away if you're interested in law. Old Guy had to move far from his home town of Bumblefuck (much smaller than Shreveport) in order to go to university. People who have to wait for a law school to be brought to them don't deserve access to federally guaranteed student loans.

Charleston School of Law: Failures at the bar exam exceed successes

Back in 2015, when Old Guy was more inclined to indulge his muse here, he wrote the following song to the Charleston School of Law:

♪ Charleston, Charleston,

Made in Carolina.

Some sham, some scam,

You'll take it up the vagina

Down in Charleston, Charleston,

Lord, how they can swindle!

Ev'ry time they pull

O'er your eyes the wool,

Don't believe their bull:

They've made pocketsful.

Damn sham, flim-flam,

Will be a back number;

But at Charleston, yes, at Charleston,

That scam school's surely a comer!

Some time they'll bilk you one time,

The scam school called Charleston,

Made in South Carolin'. ♪

Law School Truth Center posted this little twelve-year history of Charlatan Charleston. Largely accurate, it did go astray with the prediction that Charleston would be the second law school to shut up shop. Since LSTC's article came out, fourteen law schools have gone tits up, but unfortunately Charleston isn't among them.

Recently Charleston gloated about a proposal to charge no tuition. While its scamsters dream on, its graduates keep failing the bar exam: this year only 46% of those taking South Carolina's exam in July received a passing score. That's the lowest rate achieved by the graduates of Charleston since 2008, when Law School Transparency started to keep records.

Scamsters will trump up excuses galore, but the fact remains that a class drawn from the 140s on the LSAT can be expected to fare poorly on a bar exam. And when the law school is a bullshit unneeded upstart from the present century, it doesn't compete with Harvard for students. 

Will the ABA do anything about this shit pit by the sea? Let's just say that Old Guy isn't waiting with bated breath. Earlier this year, just months after Charleston missed a new nominal standard for maintaining accreditation, the ABA cheerfully conferred its rubber stamp of approval on the über-toilet. Expect the scam-fostering ABA to exercise its "discretion" in the direction of covering up for this would-be InfiLaw scam-school and all of its peers in über-toilet territory. 

In the meantime, O aspiring toileteers, if you are ass enough even to consider applying to this stinky dump, tell us one thing: what exactly do you plan to do if you get your Mickey Mouse degree only to find, like so many of your fellow Charlatans, that you can't pass any bar exam?