Law School Transparency, LST's 2025 Vision

On the heels of the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Education Report, comes another important report on legal education from Law School Transparency: LST's 2025 Vision.

LST summary: "When law schools price potential contributors out of the profession, they jeopardize the pipeline of students who want and can afford to protect the rule of law, deliver quality legal services, and narrow the justice gap. Myriad factors stand between good intentions and meaningful reform, but more accessible, affordable, and innovative law schools can become the new normal if we devote additional energy to changing the structural barriers that hold schools back.

On the one hand, the regulatory landscape needs change. The law school accreditation standards need to be stricter in some places and less restrictive in many others. On the other hand, the incentives landscape must also change. Schools and students alike rely on the U.S. News rankings as the pinnacle benchmark for quality and prestige. The incentives the U.S. News ranking system creates and the hierarchy it reinforces complicate even the most basic reform conversations within law schools.

This report outlines very specific plans and proposals that address these challenges. It's easy to complain, but LST and its partners from throughout the profession will lead the way.

It's quite a long report. For that reason, we kept the intro very short and also led with a summary of the plans and proposals. That is all on pages 5-11. The balance of the report gets into the details."

(Scott Fruehwald)