Public money down private toilet: Appalachian Law School to get $3.4M

We at OTLSS have been following the decline of über-toilet Appalachian Law School for years. Now the discordant notes of its swan song resound far from Grundy, Virginia.

A week and a half ago, the supervisors of Buchanan County voted 5–2 to give Appalachian Law School $3.4 million out of the public coffers. This handout still requires approval from the county's Industrial Development Authority, although it appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with industrial development. Half of the money will be disbursed in early March if the IDA agrees and Appalachian tenders financial records that it has previously refused.

Leading this campaign, apparently, within the county government was Supervisor Trey Adkins, who ever so coincidentally "was recently appointed to the law school’s board of trustees". Can you say conflict of interests? Might this little appointment have been a little quid pro quo? How happy will the public be to know that their board of supervisors just voted to hand dying Appalachian 6% of the county's $59M annual budget?

Not very, according to Supervisor Roger Rife—himself a former trustee of Appalachian. Reluctantly voting to give Appalachian "one more chance", he lamented: "What we’re creating is going to come back to bite us." Specifically, he expects the county to raise taxes just for this piece of lagniappe. 

Yes, even some of the board members who voted in favor of this pork-barrel graft are anything but sanguine about Appalachian's prospects. Supervisor Craig Stiltner observed that no bank would lend money to an institution perenially swimming in red ink. Appalachian never repaid a $6M loan extended by the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority in 2016. 

Adkins promoted this rip-off of the public coffers as an endeavor vital to the survival of Grundy, which happens to be the county seat. Forty-one jobs at the über-toilet depend on it—22 of them held by natives of Buchanan County. In the vulgar expression of Adkins, the IDA would "tear their arm off" to save 22 jobs at the trifling price of $3.4M.

Well, before so dramatic a performance of self-mutilation, the IDA might like to do a bit of arithmetic, if anyone there is up to the task. That sum is more than $150k per job—for the next two or three months. That vastly exceeds the value of those 22 jobs to the county. 

Over the past ten years, Buchanan County has lost almost half of its population. As one might guess from the name Appalachian, the county is situate in an area historically devoted to coal mining. In a remote, mountainous county with no economic prospects, whose very geography militates against anything industrial and whose population lacks the education for learned professions (even if demand were present), a law school stands out like a sore thumb, its gleaming brick building and manicured lawn clashing with the scarred, black hillsides and piles of slag that typify the landscape. It does not serve the largely impoverished population that will soon see its taxes go up to pay for a predatory über-toilet that gives Cooley stiff competition for the title of lousiest law skule in the US.

Appalachian can do nothing to help. It turns out to be in dire financial straits: without $2.5M in a big hurry, it will not see the end of the semester. Long-term survival, according to the dean, will require an infusion of some $10M.

Now, if you have just read that paragraph and are still thinking of enrolling at Appalachian, please stop and read the paragraph again. This so-called school had to go begging just to survive for the next two months. It was prepared to shut up shop in the middle of the semester. And if it does get this money for the second half of the current semester, where will it get enough money for the next semester and the one after that? Do you really want to take the evidently high risk of having your über-toilet law school bolt its doors on you in the middle of the term, leaving you to hold an empty bag?

Enrollment, at 184 students, is far below the level of 300 that, in the words of dean David Western, would be needed to sustain Appalachian. Indeed, OTLSS estimated some years ago that a law school cannot survive over the long run with fewer than 75 students per class—and right now Appalachian has only 61. 

I admit that Appalachian, evidently because of millions of dollars in welfare payments, has survived longer than I had expected during the wave of shutterings of toilet law schools that started ten years ago. I predict, however, that Appalachian will soon be the seventeenth institution in law-school-scam history to close its doors for good. And when it does, good riddance.

Five million visits

On February 9, 2026, OTLSS achieved its 5 millionth visit. Thanks to our valued readers for their support.

Unfortunately, the law-school scam has regained strength in recent years. Despite the abundance of anti-scam literature here and elsewhere, lemmings keep rushing headlong into scam-schools, usually using federally guaranteed student loans that bear high interest and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Until the scam, and its monetary underpinning, have been eliminated, our work will not be done. 

Exceptionally bitter?

A little anonymous discussion on the Internet labels Old Guy "an exceptionally bitter 40-year-old T14 law student". The person who started the discussion refers to OTLSS as

mostly the bitter ranting of a blogger ("Old Guy") who attempted to go to law school over 30: despite going to a top-ranked school and securing a federal clerkship, he seemingly had so much trouble securing gainful employment that it left him profoundly contemptuous of all forms of legal education. In his worldview, going to law school is the very worst thing you can do: law schools, even many T20s, are predatory "toilets" that exploit naive students with dreams. His writing is crisp, socially progressive, and yet sneeringly elitist somehow. ¶ Reading this blog, he's so over-the-top in his bitterness that it almost discredits him a bit.

A few other people chime in triumphantly with reports of well-paying jobs obtained on the strength of a JD from some inferior law school, often with poor grades to match:

And then There is me, getting a 6 figure job offer after graduating from a T-30-50 school (depending on the year) getting average grades all because the partner ran into my LinkedIn profile and emailed me asking if I wanted to apply.

Same but from a T-150 (b-50; aka bottom 50) with grades in the bottom 25%. Work hard and don’t be insufferable, you’ll be fine.

I went to a non-elite law school, had less than stellar grades, needed to take a 1 year break due to family stuff, graduated without employment, still eventually ended up working at a great firm, and now have a great career. It is possible, you may just need to hustle a bit harder than others.

Some blame or disparage Old Guy:

Reading his blog, you see why he's had trouble getting a job.

If you have work experience, went to a top school and clerked and you cannot get a good job, that is 100% on you lol

Judging by his writing style and blog content, he’s probably a perpetually negative asshole. Those kind of people don’t do well in any industry.

If you go to a T14 and have a federal clerkship and then cannot find a job, you or your expectations, are almost certainly the problem 

Why does he always write in third person. This guy seems like a drip. Every story has a “that definitely happened” energy to it. I don’t know how anyone can read it and believe they’re getting the whole story.

Low self esteem issue. Sometimes, what passes for “elitism” is a manifestation of low self esteem. No one with a law degree should complain about unemployment. Graduating from law school, even if it’s from Oxford or Cambridge, and expecting that someone will hand you your dream job is naïve. Part of intellectual maturity is the ability to have plans A,B, and C, before even contemplating law school. ¶ The question is always what are you willing to do to be successful with your legal education, even if you have to defer your immediate financial expectations? ¶ If you’re lucky to get your dream job immediately after law school, splendid. If not, it means you have to apply the critical thinking skills you learned in law school to make adjustments and pave your own way. ¶ It’s important to understand that not everyone graduating from law school will start off making a six-figure salary. That’s part of the intellectual maturity required to face reality. Some, including those who have achieved their professional goals, never achieve that maturity and it manifests itself in different ways. . . .

Others take a contrary view:

I wouldn’t pay sticker to go to any law school in America (unless you are fully committed to PI and they have some loan forgiveness program that you fully understand)

The 30-35 year olds of my T14 were in higher demand than the 20 year olds, but it dropped off sharply. No over-35 year old in my class of 330 found Biglaw employment and no over-40 year old found any type of law firm employment. ¶ This was at a T14, I doubt it gets better outside of that. Anyone who will graduate over 35 should be prepared for reality.

Yes if you want a big law job and don't have connections you absolutely need to go to a top law school and a bunch of other things (including age) will absolutely disqualify you. But if you want to hang out your own shingle or work as a PD or DA in an average jurisdiction any law degree will do.

Yeah I think law practice is so much about perceived years of experience that being a first-year associate at age 40 really works against you.

[Answering the question of why a big law firm would hire a 40-year-old:] They're like 20 years from retirement, likely set in their ways, and unlikely to want to listen to people either their age or younger who may be in positions above them.

Rather than responding myself, I shall open this topic for your views. 

Medicine and law: apples and oranges

Comparisons are often drawn between law and medicine, mainly because they are viewed as learned professions with high potential incomes. The differences, however, render such comparisons quite deceptive, to the advantage of the law-school scam. 

To study medicine, one must first pass a range of difficult courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, as well as an exam (the MCAT) that covers substantive material in all of these fields and in medicine itself. One must also complete a stint of volunteer work in a medical setting, typically a hospital. All of this is required for admission to medical school.

To study law, by contrast, one need only complete a bachelor's degree in any field, even underwater basketweaving. Not a single course is required. Nor is any work in a legal setting, and most law students have no such experience. Traditionally the LSAT—a mere test of logical reasoning and reading ability, unrelated to the substance of law—was required for admission, but recent years have seen it pushed to the side, with the possibility of substituting the GRE or another test of questionable relevance. And even the bachelor's degree isn't necessary in some places: the state of Michigan, for instance, accepts two years of university (a fact exploited by Cooley).

Do not suppose that completing the requirements will get you into a medical school. Admission is highly competitive, with many being turned away everywhere. Practically nobody, however, fails to get into a law school. Many law schools draw most of their students from the bottom 50% on the LSAT, and it is not unknown for a person with a score in the bottom 10% to get in. Indeed, a score below the fiftieth percentile may well attract a "scholarship" (a discount on tuition) at a number of predatory law schools. 

Once admitted, medical students must complete a challenging program of study and pass various exams; they can be expelled for failure. The courses are almost all directed at practical needs. Training in the practice of medicine is an essential component of the program. Almost all professors are practicing physicians.

Law students are lucky to get a glimpse at practice, which professors disdain. They take a few basic courses on contracts, constitutional law, criminal law, torts, and the like, all of them based on some appellate cases that come up over and over again. After those courses, which occupy the first year, they take two years of electives that may well have no meaningful application, such as "Law and Popular Culture", "Critical Legal Pluralism", and "Hip-Hop and the US Constitution". Professors use this fluff to burnish their alleged intellectual credentials, and in many cases as cover for their lack of competence as practitioners. Rare indeed is the law professor who practices law; many are not lawyers at all.

Medical graduates are not yet ready for practice: they must still complete a residency and possibly more training in a specialty before they can become qualified as physicians. Law graduates, however, can go straight into practice after passing a fairly easy exam, even though they have never seen the practice of law before and have not even studied it. Most of them, including those from élite schools, freely admit that they do not know what they are doing as junior lawyers.

Good jobs for medical graduates are abundant: everyone who is serious and not too particular or demanding can get a well-paying job as a physician. Graduates of law schools face a very different reality: many cannot find work as lawyers ever, even if they are admitted to a bar, or get only short-term or low-paying (or even unpaid) work. The law-school scam promotes "JD-advantage" jobs as an alleged consolation prize for the many whose JD is not needed. Few lawyers make anything like the income of a physician, though the handful at the top garner the bulk of the attention.

Physicians tend to stay in medicine; lawyers tend to leave law, with most lasting less than five years. Many physicians teach medicine part time, but lawyers are ordinarily excluded from the academic ranks, which are peopled with young aristocrats with academic doctorates and little to no experience in the practice of law. A practicing lawyer cannot expect to get more than a position as an adjunct, teaching a single class for some such payment as $3000—perhaps enough to cover the cost of travel, with no office or secretarial support or even access to the law school's library. This sort of work is done as a labor of love, because the paltry fee is around the minimum wage.

This little exercise should show the folly of comparing law to medicine nowadays. 

Have yourself a scam-free little Christmas

We at OTLSS wish you the best for the holidays and the coming year. If you are unemployed on account of the law-school scam, remember that Santa Claus shares your plight:

 

The law-school scam has gained its second wind, with high levels of applications after a long period of decline. Law school remains a bad choice for almost everyone, whatever the fawning media may say. Stay away from law school if you don't want to get a lump of coal in your stocking for the rest of your life. 

Cooley given a pass, yet again

Just as we expected, the scam-enabling ABA has once again given rotten Cooley a pass by finding it to be in compliance with a so-called standard requiring that 75% or more of those who take a bar exam within two years of graduation pass one in order for the law school to retain accreditation. Reportedly Cooley achieved this feat, just barely, after multiple extensions of the deadline over a period of years. 

Odious scam-dean James McGrath gloated in the following words: 

I am pleased to report that 76.2 percent of Cooley’s 2024 graduates who have taken a bar examination within two years of graduating have passed, putting us in compliance… Cooley Law School is a trusted institution where law students are empowered to become future-ready leaders who think critically, communicate effectively and are well equipped to navigate and make an immediate impact in today’s complex and ever-changing legal landscape.

When 76.2% eventually pass, 23.8% never do. Thus scamster McGrath, presiding over the very poster child of über-toilets, is "pleased" to see almost a quarter of those who attempted an exam fail to pass one as long as two years after leaving Cooley's allegedly hallowed halls. That figure, by the way, excludes those who never did attempt a bar exam—and let's not forget that über-toilets have been known to use coercion and even bribery to keep students out of the examination halls for those two crucial years (after which the schools drop their hopeless alumni like a hot potato). Of course, it also excludes those who never graduate.

Critical thinking, effective communication, and capable work in the "legal landscape" will be conspicuous by their absence from the ranks of bottom-feeding Cooleyites. Dredged from the depths of the 140s (if not lower) on the LSAT, they just aren't cut out for any of that. Nevertheless, thanks to Uncle Sugar, they get to borrow the full Cooley-estimated cost of attending their über-toilet, which is $78k per year in Lansing and $81k per year in Tampa. Many will not graduate; a quarter of those who do graduate and do write a bar exam will never pass one, at least within two years of graduation. Yet they'll be saddled with almost a quarter of a million dollars of debt, plus the accruing interest. Many of those loans, of course, will never be repaid, so the tax-paying public will ultimately pick up the tab for scam-school Cooley.

You can thank the ABA for this. For more than five years, it extended deadlines so that Cooley could strive to slip just under the wire, while it was far from the mark—almost 20 percentage points below the mark as recently as last year. Apparently Cooley made itself marginally more "selective" long enough to raise the chance that a few more of its dolts would pass, and perhaps it also discouraged—so to speak—the worst graduates from trying. Now, with the ABA's rubber stamp of approval, it may well be emboldened to sink into the 55% range again and milk its undeserved accreditation for several more years before the ABA pretends to take action.

Dumping the ABA?

Texas is going to let its top court, not the ABA, decide which law schools' degrees graduates are eligible for admission to the bar. Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee are considering similar proposals for wresting control of accreditation from that private entity called the ABA. 

Here at OTLSS, we have said for years that the ABA is unsuitable as accreditor. It does a shitty job, always favoring scam-schools even when they fail year after year to fulfill the ABA's frightfully weak standards. 

But accreditation by a court is unlikely to improve the situation, and quite likely to make it worse. Apparently the move to brush the ABA aside is driven by a wish to permit schools that even the ABA would not take. It also seems improbable that the courts or other entities would undertake a proper investigation of the various things that call themselves law schools. 

This new effort to seize control of accreditation may well send us out of the frying pan and into the fire.