The Legal Whiteboard

The GRE and the Revised US News Ranking Methodology

When I initially learned that Harvard Law would start accepting the GRE as an alternative to the LSAT, I viewed it through the prism of the US News & World Report ranking and concluded that it was a very good thing for Harvard and all of legal education. Aggressive rankings management has led to tremendous over-reliance on the LSAT. By using on the GRE, I reasoned, Harvard would have sufficient test score information to assess a candidate's intellectual capacity while also obtaining the freedom to use other admissions methods to explore the larger and more diverse universe of candidates who are destined to become great leaders and lawyers.  

My thinking is crudely sketched out in the diagram below.

Yet, in making admission decisions, did Harvard Law really feel constrained by US News?  Was the move toward the GRE motivated by something else? I failed to ask myself these questions. My thinking was too small.

If Harvard Law was trying to get around U.S. News rankings formula, the USN chief strategy officer, Bob Morse, saw it coming.  Harvard got a lot of favorable attention on March 8 when it announced its new GRE policy.  A few days later, when US News released its 2018 law school rankings, something that got zero attention was a very significant change in the USN rankings methodology. Here is the description of the selectivity factor that was previously limited to the LSAT:

Median LSAT and GRE scores (0.125): These are the combined median scores on the Law School Admission Test of all 2016 full-time and part-time entrants to the J.D. program. For the first time, U.S. News used median GRE scores in combination with LSAT scores for this indicator if they were reported for a law school's 2016 entering class. The University of Arizona was the only school that reported both LSAT and GRE scores to U.S. News for its 2016 entering class.

This is the same methodology that US News uses for colleges that admit based on both the ACT and SAT.  USN converts the medians to their percentile equivalents and weights them based on their proportion in the total enrolled student population. This year, only the University of Arizona had such a combined median. If so, which GRE median was being factored in -- the verbal, the quantitative, or both?  

Regardless, this methodology change means that the GRE strategy won't be an effective way to break free of the ranking's powerful influence on admissions decisions.  Which led me to ask, "Is Harvard Law's move on the GRE still a game-changer for legal education?"

I think the answer is yes, but for reasons that are not as obvious as a potential bump in a school's USN ranking.   The contours of a potentially powerful GRE strategy are laid out in an article I wrote for Law.com, titled "Underestimate Harvard Law's New Admissions Strategy at Your Own Risk."

New Learning Outcomes Database -- A Searchable Clearinghouse of Law School Learning Outcomes

The Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota) is pleased to announce the availability of a new, searchable, web-based clearinghouse of information regarding law school learning outcomes – the Learning Outcomes Database: https://www.stthomas.edu/hollorancenter/resourcesforlegaleducators/learningoutcomesdatabase/  

The Holloran Center has compiled all law school learning outcomes that have been published and are accessible on law school websites and is making them all available in one location.

The Learning Outcomes Database is organized in three categories structured around the language of ABA Standard 302. To the extent that law schools have identified learning outcomes more robust than the minimum required by Standard 302, each category lists the full array of learning outcomes with an identification of the law schools that have adopted such learning outcomes along with a delineation of where, within each law school’s learning outcomes, one can find the specific language associated with a specific learning outcome.

The database of learning outcomes also is searchable by law school.

The Holloran Center plans on doing quarterly updates.  The Center will “sweep” law school websites looking for more law schools with learning outcomes and checking to see whether law schools change their learning outcomes.  The Center anticipates updating the Learning Outcomes Database in May, August, November, and February.  To the extent that law schools change their learning outcomes, the Center will be maintaining an archive that will allow those interested to see how law school learning outcomes evolve over time.

 

Revisiting the Market for Transfer Students Based upon the 2016 Standard 509 Reports

This blog posting updates my blog postings of December 2014 and December 2015 regarding what we know about the transfer market. With the release of the 2016 Standard 509 Reports, we know have three years of more detailed transfer data from which to glean insights about the transfer market among law schools.

NUMBERS AND PERCENTAGES OF TRANSFERS – 2011-2016

The number of transfers dropped to 1749 in 2016, down from 1,979 in 2015, and from 2,187 in 2014 and 2,501 in 2013. The percentage of the previous fall’s entering class that engaged in the transfer market also dropped to 4.6%, the lowest it has been since 2011. In other words, there is no reason to believe the transfer market is “growing” as a general matter. It has been consistently in the 4.6% to 5.6% range for the last six years.

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Number of Transfers	2427	2438	2501	2187	1979	1749
Previous Year First Year Enrollment	52,500	48,700	44,500	39700	38600	37900
%   of Previous First-Year Total	4.6%	5%	5.6%	5.5%	5.2%	4.6%

SOME LAW SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE TRANSFER MARKET

The following two charts list the top 15 law schools participating in the transfer market in descending order in Summer 2014 (fall 2013 entering class), Summer 2015 (fall 2014 entering class), and Summer 2016 (fall 2015 entering class). One chart is based on “numbers” of transfers and the other chart is based on the number of transfer students as a percentage of the prior year’s first year class.

Note that in these two charts, the “repeat players” are bolded – those schools in the top 15 for all three years are in black, those schools in the top 15 for two of the three years are in blue.   Ten of the top 15 have been on the list all three years. The top six for 2016 have had pretty consistent transfers numbers for each of the last three years.

Largest Law Schools by Number of Transfers from 2013-2015

School	Number in 2014	School	Number in 2015		Number in 2016
Georgetown	113	Georgetown	110	Georgetown	111
George Wash.	97	George Wash.	109	George Wash	106
Arizona St.	66	Arizona St.	65	Arizona St.	66
Idaho	57	Harvard	55	Columbia	50
Cal. Berkeley	55	Emory	51	Emory	49
NYU	53	NYU	51	UCLA	43
Emory	50	Cal. Berkeley	49	Loyola Marymount	43
Columbia	46	Rutgers	45	NYU	43
American	44	Columbia	44	Florida	36
UCLA	44	Miami	44	Houston	36
Wash. Univ.	44	UCLA	43	Harvard	35
Texas	43	Texas	37	Cal. Berkeley	33
Minnesota	37	American	33	Miami	31
Northwestern	35	Florida St.	32	American	30
Harvard	33	Minnesota	31	Florida St.	30
	817		799		741
	37.4%		40.4%		42.3%

Largest Law Schools by Transfers as a Percentage of Previous First Year Class - 2014-2016

School	% 2014	School	% 2015	School	% 2016
Arizona State	51.6	Arizona State	45.5	Arizona State	30.3
Idaho	51.4	Emory	22.9	George Wash.	21.6
Washington Univ.	23.3	George Wash.	20.2	Emory	20.9
Emory	22.9	Miami	19.2	Georgetown	19.3
Georgetown	20.8	Georgetown	19	Florida St.	17.1
George Wash.	20.2	Cal. Berkeley	17.9	Houston	16.7
Cal. Berkeley	19.4	Florida St.	17	Loyola Marymount	16.0
Florida St.	18.2	Florida Int’l	16.7	Southern Cal	14.7
Rutgers – Camden	17.1	Minnesota	16.1	UCLA	14.7
Southern Cal.	17.1	Utah	16	UNLV	14.2
Minnesota	16.7	UNLV	14.3	Columbia	12.9
Utah	15.9	UCLA	13.7	SMU	12.0
Northwestern	15.3	Texas	12.3	Northwestern	11.8
UCLA	15	Chicago	12.1	Florida Int’l	11.8
Seton Hall	14.5	Rutgers	12.1	Florida	11.6

Interestingly, the number of law schools welcoming transfers representing more than 20% of their first-year class has fallen from nine in 2013 (not shown), to six in 2014, then to only three in 2015 and 2016.

Nonetheless, as shown in the following chart, we are continuing to see a modest increase in concentration in the transfer market between 2011 and 2016 as the ten law schools with the most students transferring in captured an increasing share of the transfer market, from 23.5% in 2011 to 33.3% in 2016. 

Top Ten Law Schools as a Percentage of All Transfers

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Total Transfers	2427	2438	2501	2187	1979	1749
Transfers to 10 Law Schools with Most Transfers	570	587	724	625	623	583
Transfers to 10 Law Schools with Most Transfers as % of Total Transfers	23.5%	24.1%	28.9%	28.6%	31.5%	33.3%

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL MARKETS

Starting in 2014, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar began collecting and requiring law schools with more than twelve transfers in to report not only the number of students who have transferred in, but also the law schools from which they came (indicating the number from each law school) along with the 75%, 50% and 25% first-year, law school GPAs of the students who transferred in. This allows us to look at where students are coming from and are going to and to look at the first-year GPA profile of students transferring in to different law schools. The following chart focuses on the ten law schools that have been among the top-15 in terms of transfers in for each of the last three years, presented in descending USNews ranking. It indicates the extent to which these law schools were attracting transfers from their geographic region and also identifies the law school(s) that provided the largest number of transfers to each listed law school in 2016 as well as the percentage of transfers that came from that school.

Percentage of Transfers from Within Geographic Region 2014-2016 and Top Feeder School(s) for 2016 at the Ten Law Schools Among the Top-15 for Transfers in 2014, 2015 and 2016

School	# of Transfers 2014/2015/2016	Region	Regional # of Transfers 14/15/16	Regional % of Transfers 14/15/16	School from Which Largest Number of Transfers Came in 2016	#/% of Transfers from Largest School 2016
Harvard	33/55/35	NE	6/15/13	18/27/37	GWU	3/9%
Columbia	46/44/50	NE	19/19/24	41/43/48	Fordham	6/13%
NYU	50/51/43	NE	20/15/16	40/29/37	Fordham/GWU	6/14%
Berkeley	55/49/33	CA	43/29/22	78/59/67	Santa Clara	5/15%
Georgetown	113/110/111	Mid-Atl	49/43/36	43/39/32	John Marshall	10/9%
UCLA	44/43/43	CA	31/26/25	70/60/58	Pepperdine/GWU	7/16%
Emory	53/51/49	SE	40/31/25	75/61/51	Atlanta’s   John Marshall	11/22%
GWU	97/109/106	Mid-Atl	78/70/77	80/64/73	American	51/48%
Arizona St.	66/65/66	SW	51/48/57	77/74/86	Arizona Summit	48/73%
American	44/33/30	Mid-Atl	14/6/10	32/18/33	Univ. Dist. Col.	6/20%

For these top 10 law schools for transfer students in 2016, five law schools (Berkeley, UCLA, Emory, George Washington and Arizona State) obtained most of their transfers (51% or more) from within the geographic region within which the law school is located during each of the last three years. On the other hand, five law schools (Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown and American) had fewer than 49% of their transfers from within the region in which they are located in each of the last three years. 

Moreover, two of the ten law schools had a significant percentage of their transfers from one particular feeder school.  For George Washington, roughly 48% of its transfers came from American University, while for Arizona State, 73% of its transfers came from Arizona Summit.

The chart below shows the tiers of law schools from which these 10 law schools in the transfer market received their transfer students.  Five of the ten law schools that consistently have high numbers of transfers are ranked in the top 15 in USNews, while nine of the ten are ranked in the top 25. Only five had 75% or more of their transfers from schools ranked between 1 and 99 in the USNews rankings – Harvard, Columbia, NYU, UCLA and George Washington.  Two additional schools, Berkeley and Georgetown, had at least 50% of their transfers from law schools ranked between 1 and 99.  The remaining two law schools ranked in the top 25 in USNews (Emory and Arizona State), along with American, had at least half of their transfer students from law schools ranked 100 or lower, with two of those law schools (Arizona State and American) having 85% or more of their transfers from law schools ranked 100 or lower. 

 Percentage of Transfers from Different Tiers of School(s) for 2014, 2015 and 2016 at the Ten Law Schools Among the Top-15 for Transfers in 2014, 2015 and 2016

(Bolded data indicates the modal response for each law school.)

	# of Trans 14/15/16	Top 50 # --------- % 14/15/16		51-99 # ------- % 14/15/16		100-200 # ------- % 14/15/16
Harvard	33/55/35	23/41/28	70/75/80	10/13/7	30/24/20	0/1/0	0/2/0
Columbia	46/44/50	29/30/33	63/68/67	14/10/16	30/23/33	3/4/1	7/9/2
NYU	50/51/43	41/40/35	82/78/81	7/10/8	14/20	2/1/0	4/2/0
Berkeley	55/49/33	17/15/11	31/31/33	27/26/8	49/53/24	11/8/14	20/16/42
Georgetown	113/110/111	27/30/32	24/27/29	38/30/41	34/27/37	48/50/38	42/45/34
UCLA	44/43/43	15/15/18	34/35/41	23/23/21	52/53/49	6/5/4	14/12/10
Emory	53/51/49	3/5/3	6/10/6	7/8/17	13/16/35	43/38/29	81/75/59
GWU	97/109/106	13/21/15	13/19/14	73/63/68	75/58/64	11/25/23	11/23/22
Arizona St.	66/65/66	4/0/3	6/0/5	5/6/7	8/9/11	57/59/56	86/91/85
American	44/33/30	2/0/0	5/0/0	14/1/2	32/3/7	28/32/28	64/97/93

If one focuses just on the reported GPAs from these ten schools, one quickly sees that the six law schools ranked in the USNews top-20 have a 50th GPA for transfers in 2016 that is a 3.6 or above (except for UCLA at 3.56), and a 25^th GPA of 3.52 and above (except for NYU at 3.41). Once you drop out of the top-20, however, the other four law schools have a 75^th GPA that drops below 3.5, a 50^th GPA that drops below 3.3, and a 25^th GPA that drops below 3.05 for three of the four law schools. Harvard clearly is accepting transfers who could have been admitted to Harvard in the first instance. While they make a less compelling case, Columbia, NYU, Berkeley, Georgetown and UCLA likely are accepting transfers whose entering credentials largely would have made them possible candidates for acceptance at those law schools. By contrast, Emory, George Washington, Arizona State and American are welcoming as transfers students whose entering credentials likely are sufficiently distinct from each of those law schools’ entering class credentials that the transfers they are admitting would not have been admitted as first-year students in the prior year.

First-Year Law School 75^th/50^th/25^th GPA of Transfers at the Ten Law Schools Among the Top-15 for Transfers in 2014, 2015 and 2016

	GPA 75th	GPA 50th	GPA 25th
	14/15/16	14/15/16	14/15/16
Harvard	3.95/3.98/4.0	3.9/3.92/3.94	3.83/3.85/3.88
Columbia	3.81/3.82/3.84	3.75/3.76/3.71	3.69/3.66/3.6
NYU	3.74/3.76/3.72	3.62/3.68/3	3.47/3.52/3.41
Berkeley	3.9/3.87/3.92	3.75/3.81/3.8	3.68/3.69/3.75
Georgetown	3.77/3.77/3.76	3.67/3.66/3.63	3.55/3.59/3.54
UCLA	3.73/3.7/3.67	3.58/3.58/3.56	3.44/3.46/3.52
Emory	3.42/3.45/3.41	3.27/3.3/3.16	2.93/3.06/3.02
GWU	3.53/3.46/3.45	3.35/3.32/3.26	3.21/3.15/3.14
Arizona St.	3.51/3.5/3.4	3.23/3.17/3.09	2.97/2.95/2.96
American	3.25/3.04/3.17	2.94/2.89/2.99	2.78/2.74/2.81

STILL MANY UNKNOWNS

As I noted in each of the last two years, the more detailed transfer data that law schools are now required to publish should be very helpful to prospective law students and pre-law advisors, and to current law students who are considering transferring.  The more detailed data give them a better idea of what transfer opportunities might be available depending upon where they go to law school (or are presently enrolled as a first-year student).

Even with this more granular data now available, however, there still are a significant number of unknowns relating to transfer students, regarding gender and ethnicity of transfer students and regarding performance of transfers students at their new law school (both academically and in terms of bar passage and employment).

Location, Location, Location Revisited -- Most Law Schools Have a Regional Employment Footprint

One of the first blog posts I had on The Legal Whiteboard focused on the location of employment for graduates in the Classes of 2010 and 2011.

I have now updated this data by looking at the regional employment outcomes for the two most recent classes for which results are available, the Classes of 2014 and 2015. These calculations are drawn from the Employment Summary reports for each law school, which indicate the top three states in which graduates were employed in descending order.

For both the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015 – 152 law schools saw 67% or more of their employed graduates take jobs in the state in which the law school was located or an adjacent state or states. Of these 152, more than 75% (roughly 60% of all law schools) saw 67% or more of their employed graduates take jobs in the state in which the school was located. 

 

The numbers for the Classes of 2014 and 2015 (76% in region and 60% in state) are remarkably consistent with the numbers for the Classes of 2010 and 2011 (76% in region and 60% in state). This means there has been relative stability in the geographic markets in which graduates are employed for the vast majority of law schools over the last five to six years.

The vast majority of law schools are, in fact, regional law schools in terms of employment outcomes.

For the Class of 2014, 132 law schools saw an even higher percentage -- 75% or more of their employed graduates -- employed in the state in which the law school was located or adjacent states, with 85 of those having 75% or more just in the home state of the law school. For the Class of 2015, that increased to 134 law schools and 96 law schools, respectively.

In 2014, 47 law schools, and in 2015, 48 law schools, saw 90% or more of their employed graduates employed in the state in which the law school was located or adjacent states.

By contrast, for both the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015, only 17 law schools had fewer than 50% of their employed graduates located in the state in which the law school is located or adjacent states, and 13 of these 17 law schools were ranked among the top 25 law schools in US News and World Report.

For those considering law school, geography should be an important consideration, given that the vast majority of law school graduates who find employment tend to take jobs in the state in which the law school is located or in an adjacent state.

Posted by Jerry Organ (I am grateful to Scott Norberg for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this post.)

Changes in Reporting and Classifying of Law-School-Funded Positions Result in Decline in Number of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Law-School-Funded Bar-Passage-Required Positions

This blog posting summarizes how recent changes in the definition and reporting of law-school-funded positions have impacted the number of law-school-funded positions classified as full-time, long-term or full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions for graduates in the Class of 2015. Comparisons between results for the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015 show a significant decline in the number of full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that are law-school-funded (from 831 to 398) and a significant increase in the number of full-time short-term bar-passage-required positions that are law school funded (from 184 to 277). Overall the number of law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions declined by one-third, from 1015 to 675, as a result of these changes.

Changes in Reporting Framework and Definition

In March 2015, the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved a change in the reporting of law-school-funded positions to take effect this spring with reporting of employment outcomes for the Class of 2015. Previously, law schools included law-school-funded positions within all other employment categories “above the line” and then delineated “below the line” the number of law-school-funded positions in each category. Under this approach, between the Class of 2012 and the Class of 2014, the number of full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded increased from 517 to 831, an increase of more than 60%.

With the change, however, the Council added “Employed – Law School Funded” as a separate “above the line” category such that law-school-funded positions no longer are included in other categories (e.g., Employed – Bar Passage Required or Employed – JD Advantage), although law schools are still required to provide more detailed information about the different categories of law-school-funded jobs “below the line” on the employment summary report.

In July 2015, the Council also approved a change in the definition of when a law-school-funded position may be classified as a “long-term” position, requiring that it be a position the employer expects to last at least one year with a salary of at least $40,000 per year.

Long Term. (OLD DEFINITION) A long-term position is one that does not have a definite or indefinite term of less than one year. It may have a definite length of time as long as the time is one year or longer. It may also have an indefinite length of time as long as it is expected to last one year or more.

Long-term. (NEW DEFINITION) A long-term position is one that the employer expects to last one year or more. A law school/university funded position that the law school expects to last one year or more may be considered long-term for purposes of this definition only if the graduate is paid at least $40,000 per year. . . .”

This change also took effect with the reporting of employment outcomes this spring for the Class of 2015.

An example might help explain how these changes might impact classification of a given position. Assume you have a graduate of Law School A in 2014 who took a one-year position as a lawyer with a public interest law firm as part of a “bridge-to-practice” program, working on a full-time basis and receiving a stipend of $24,000 paid partly by the law school. Law School A agreed to subsidize a portion of the stipend for a year but the law school continued to support the graduate’s ongoing effort to seek other gainful employment during the year.

In the Class of 2014 reporting format, this graduate could have been classified and probably would have been classified “above the line” in the full-time, long-term Employed – Bar Passage Required category because the job had a defined duration of one year even though the student might not be planning on staying in the position for the entire year. (This graduate also would have been listed separately “below the line” in the law-school-funded category as having a full-time, long-term bar-passage-required position).

Following the March 2015 changes, a Class of 2015 graduate in the same job, working as a lawyer with a public interest law firm on a full-time basis and receiving a stipend of $24,000 paid partly by the law school, would have been classified “above the line” in the full-time, long-term Employed – Law School Funded category and not in full-time, long-term Employed -- Bar Passage Required. (As was the case with the Class of 2014 graduates, this graduate also likely would have been listed separately “below the line” in the law-school-funded category as having a full-time, long-term bar-passage-required position).

Following the July 2015 changes, a Class of 2015 graduate in the same job, working as a lawyer with a public interest law firm on a full-time basis and receiving a stipend of $24,000 paid partly by the law school, would be classified “above the line” in the full-time, short-term Employed – Law School Funded category because under the new definition of “long-term” either or both the lack of an employer expectation that the job would last for one year or more or the lack of a stipend of at least $40,000 would mean that this job would not qualify as “long-term” and therefore would be classified as “short-term.” (This graduate also would be listed separately “below the line” in the law-school-funded category as having a full-time, short-term bar-passage- required position).

Consequences of the Change in Reporting Framework and Definition

With the ABA’s release of its Employment Summary report reporting employment for graduates of the Class of 2015 ten months after graduation, we can compare law-school-funded positions for the Class of 2015 with law-school-funded positions for the Class of 2014. The following table includes results from all law schools listed in the ABA’s Employment Summary spreadsheets for the Class of 2014 and for the Class of 2015.

Law School Funded Bar Passage Required, Full-Time, Long-Term and Full-Time, Short-Term Positions for the Class of 2014 and Class of 2015

YEAR	FTLT BPR LSF	FTST BPR LSF	TOTAL BPR LSF
Class of 2014	831	184	1015
Class of 2015	398	277	675

Full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded declined by more than 50% from 831 to 398. Meanwhile, full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded increased by roughly 50% from 184 to 277. Overall, however, law-school-funded positions that were in one of these two categories declined by 340 or by roughly 33%, from 1015 to 675.

Although it is not easy to know for sure, the most plausible explanation for these changes is that some of the jobs previously classified as full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions had a stipend or salary lower than $40,000 per year and that law schools offering such positions could not increase the salary sufficiently to continue to have such positions classified as full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions under the new regime. Alternatively, or additionally, some positions may not have been classified as full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions if the employers with graduates with law-school-funded positions did not expect that the position would last for at least one year. These possibilities would explain the shift of some positions from full-time, long-term to full-time, short-term, but they would not necessarily explain the complete loss of so many law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions.

The loss of roughly one-third of the law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions might be explained partly by the decline in the number of graduates passing the July 2015 bar exam compared with July 2014.

Additionally, a portion of the loss of roughly one-third of the law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions also might be explained by the reality that there was more perceived “value” in a law school being able to claim a law-school-funded positon as a full-time, long-term bar-passage-required position than a full-time, short-term bar-passage-required position. With the change in reporting framework and definition, some law schools may have concluded that further investment in law-school-funded positions was not justifiable, particularly given how USNews accounts for these positions in its rankings (a point highlighted by Derek Muller in his post about these changes in law-school-funded positions).

Different Responses across Different Law Schools

• The Top-25 Law Schools for Full-Time, Long-Term Law-School-Funded Bar- Passage-Required Positions for the Class of 2014

The decline in law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions was manifested most particularly at several law schools. The top-25 law schools for full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded for the Class of 2014 (those schools with 10 or more law-school-funded positions classified as full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions), are responsible for the vast majority of the decline in such positions for the Class of 2015. Across these 25 law schools, the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded fell from 676 to 295, a drop of 381 out of the total decline of 440 or nearly 87% of the total decline in such positions. Across these 25 law schools, the number of graduates in full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded increased from 11 to 213, far exceeding the actual increase in such positions (which was counter-balanced by several schools greatly reducing the number of full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded).

• 14 Law Schools in the Top-25 for Law-School-Funded Positions that Saw Significant Changes in Law-School-Funded Bar-Passage-Required Positions Between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2014

There was a subset of 14 law schools within this group that saw the most significant changes between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015, being responsible for 359 of the 440 decline in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded and being responsible for an increase from 8 to 202 in the full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded. These 14 law schools are set forth in the following table in descending order of the full-time, long-term bar-passage-required law-school-funded positions in the Class of 2014.

School	2014 LSF FTLT BPR	2015 LSF FTLT BPR	2014 LSF FTST BPR	2015 LSF FTST BPR	2014 Graduates	2015 Graduates
George Washington	78	6	0	19	584	465
Georgetown	64	35	0	53	626	678
Emory	52	0	0	20	268	308
American	44	4	0	40	460	464
Michigan	33	2	5	21	390	354
Southern California	31	7	0	20	217	213
Texas	23	11	1	1	351	354
Vanderbilt	22	0	0	12	194	185
Notre Dame	22	4	1	0	179	179
California-Berkeley	20	11	1	2	287	278
William and Mary	19	0	0	3	215	178
California-Davis	19	9	0	0	169	185
Washington Univ.	14	2	0	10	258	228
Cornell	11	2	0	1	191	183
TOTAL	452	93	8	202	4389	4252

Notably, across these 14 law schools, the total number of bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded declined from 460 (of which only eight were short-term) for the Class of 2014 to 295 (of which 202 were short-term) for the Class of 2015. At these 14 law schools, therefore, there not only was a decline of 165, over one-third, in the number of full-time, law-school-funded, bar-passage-required positions, there also was a dramatic shift in the ratio of full-time, long-term to full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions, from over 98% to less than 33%.

• 11 Law Schools in the Top-25 for Law-School-Funded Positions that Did Not See Significant Changes in Law-School-Funded Bar-Passage-Required Positions Between the Class of 2014 and Class of 2015

At the other 11 law schools among the top-25 for law-school-funded positions that were bar-passage-required in the Class of 2014 there was not a significant decline in law-school-funded positions that were bar-passage-required for the Class of 2015. These 11 law schools are set forth in the following table in descending order of the full-time, long-term bar-passage-required law-school-funded positions in the Class of 2014.

School	2014 LSF FTLT BPR	2015 LSF FTLT BPR	2014 LSF FTST BPR	2015 LSF FTST BPR	2014 Graduates	2015 Graduates
New York Univ.	36	30	0	2	479	485
Virginia	33	30	0	0	349	367
UCLA	31	31	2	0	336	335
Columbia	31	28	0	0	468	413
Harvard	24	20	1	0	586	589
Illinois	15	10	0	2	185	181
Boston University	12	12	0	0	246	208
Brigham Young	11	9	0	0	138	133
Chicago	11	6	0	5	210	196
California-Irvine	10	20	0	0	93	110
Stanford	10	6	0	2	187	195
TOTAL	224	202	3	11	3277	3212

These law schools either already had salaries of at least $40,000 for most of their law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions for the Class of 2014 or made the decision to make sure that the vast majority of their law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions for the Class of 2015 had salaries of at least $40,000, as the number of full-time, long-term law-school-funded positions that were bar-passage-required across these 11 law schools only declined by 22 while the number of full-time, short-term law-school-funded positions that were bar-passage-required increased only by eight. The ratio of full-time, long-term to full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions across these 11 law schools changed very little, from over 98% to nearly 95%.

• The Remaining Law Schools

Across the remaining law schools, for the Class of 2014, there were only 57 law schools across which there were 155 law-school-funded positions that were full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions. For the Class of 2015, there were only 46 law school across which there were 103 full-time, long-term positions that were bar-passage-required. Across this set of schools, therefore, there was a decline of 52 positions or roughly one-third in the number of full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions.

Across all the remaining law schools, for the Class of 2014, there were only 24 law schools with a total of 173 full-time, short-term bar-passage-required law-school-funded positions. For the Class of 2015, there were only 19 law schools with a total of 64 full-time, short-term bar-passage-required, law-school-funded positions. Thus, full-time, short-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded declined across these law schools by over 100.

In total, then, these other law schools saw law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions decline from a total of 328 for the Class of 2014 to only 167 for the Class of 2015, a decline of nearly 50%.

Total Changes in Law-School-Funded Bar-Passage-Required Positions

Between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015

	2014 LSF BPR FTLT	2015 LSF BPR FTLT	2014 LSF BPR FTST	2015 LSF BPR FTST
Top 25 (10 or more LSF BPR FTLT in 2014)	676	295	11	213
11	224	202	3	11
14	452	93	8	202
Other Schools with LSF	155 (57 schools)	103 (46 schools)	173  (24 schools)	64  (19 schools)
Total	831	398	184	277

(I am very grateful to Janelle Chambers for her research assistance in compiling this data and am very grateful to Scott Norberg and Bernie Burk for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this blog posting.)

Mixed Signals from the Legal Employment Market – Preliminary Results for the Class of 2015

THIS BLOG UPDATES THE EARLIER BLOG POSTING TO INCORPORATE DATA FROM THE ABA's EMPLOYMENT SUMMARY SPREADSHEETS FOR THE CLASS OF 2014 and CLASS OF 2015 AS OF MAY 3, 2016, WITH DOUBLE-COUNTED DATA FOR MITCHELL|HAMLINE IN THE CLASS OF 2015 REMOVED AND WITH ALL LAW-SCHOOL-FUNDED POSITIONS FOR BOTH YEARS REMOVED FROM THE CALCULATIONS.  THE 2015 NUMBERS NOW MATCH THOSE ON THE ABA's 2015 LAW GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT DATA SHEET RELEASED ON MAY 3 WHILE THE 2014 NUMBERS NOW MATCH THOSE FOR 2014 ON THE ABA's 2015 LAW GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT DATA SHEET ONCE LAW-SCHOOL-FUNDED POSITIONS ARE REMOVED.

The Class of 2015 employment summary reports have been posted by all ABA-accredited law schools, resulting in reporting of results for some states or regions.  The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar released the complete Employment Summary spreadsheet for all law schools on its website yesterday (May 2) and updated it today (May 3) and likely will be updating it again tomorrow (to eliminate the double-counting for Hamline, William-Mitchell and Mitchell|Hamline).

In this initial post I provide a brief summary of the Class of 2015’s employment outcomes compared with the Class of 2014’s employment outcomes based on data from these spreadsheets as of described above.

In a subsequent post (posted on May 2) I provide a summary of changes in the reported number of law-school-funded, bar-passage-required positions between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015 as a result of changes in the classification and reporting of such positions.

Changes in the Percentage of Graduates and Number of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Bar-Passage-Required and JD Advantage Jobs

Across all law schools for which the ABA has released employment summary data for the Class of 2015, the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions and full-time, long-term JD advantage positions increased from 69% for the Class of 2014 to 70.1% for the Class of 2015. This would appear to be modestly good news. When you disaggregate the two categories, the full-time, long-term bar-passage required positions went from 58% to 59.2% while the full-time, long-term JD advantage positions went from 11% to 10.9%.

Because there was a significant decline in the number of graduates across these law schools between 2014 and 2015, however, this modest increase in the percentage of graduates in these positions masks an actual decline in the number of graduates in such positions. There were 39,984 graduates in the Class of 2015 compared with 43,832 graduates in the Class of 2014, a decline of 3,848 graduates, or 8.8%. There were 28,029 graduates in the Class of 2015 with full-time, long-term bar-passage-required or JD advantage positions, compared with 30,234 graduates in the Class of 2014 with such positions, a decline of 2,205, or 7.3%.

When these totals are disaggregated, full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions declined from 25,417 for the Class of 2014 to 23,687 for the Class of 2015, a decline of 1,730, or 6.8%. For full-time, long term JD advantage positions, the total went from 4,817 to 4,342, a decline of 475, or 9.9%.

(Please note that numbers for both 2014 and 2015 exclude law-school-funded positions from both categories.  The ABA's 2015 Law Graduate Employment Data sheet compares Class of 2014 INCLUDING law-school-funded positions with CLASS of 2015 EXCLUDING law-school-funded positions, which leads to slightly different results showing a more exaggerated decline in the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required and JD advantage jobs that also results in a decline in the percentage of graduates in such positions.)

Comparison of Full-Time, Long-Term Bar-Passage-Required Positions and JD Advantage Positions for the Class of 2014 and Class of 2015

	Graduates	# FTLT BPRJDA	% FTLT BPRJDA	# FTLT BPR	% FTLT BPR	# FTLT JDA	% FTLT JDA
Class of 2014	43,832	30,234	69%	25,417	58%	4,817	11%
Class of 2015	39,984	28,029	70.1%	23,687	59.2%	4,342	10.9%
Change	(3,848)	(2,205)		(1,730)		(475)

Changes in the Number and Percentage of Graduates Whose Employment Status is Unknown or Who Were Classified as Unemployed Seeking or Unemployed Not Seeking

Looking at the other end of the employment outcomes continuum, however, both the number and percentage of graduates who had unknown employment outcomes, or who classified as unemployed seeking or unemployed not seeking, declined slightly between the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015. For the Class of 2014, there were 5,778 graduates whose employment status was unknown or who were classified as unemployed seeking or unemployed not seeking. This represented 13.2% of the 43,832 graduates. For the Class of 2015, however, there were only 5,200 graduates whose employment status was unknown or who were classified as unemployed seeking or unemployed not seeking. This represented 13% of the 39,984 graduates.

Searching for Explanations

In the coming weeks and months, there likely will be a number of commentators offering suggestions for why the Class of 2015 might have seen a decline in the number of graduates obtaining full-time, long-term bar-passage-required or JD advantage positions.

Part of the decline likely is attributable to the decline in the number and percentage of graduates passing the July bar exam, as reported by the NCBE in its annual statistics publications for each of the last three years.

Year	First-Time Bar Takers in July from ABA-Accredited Law Schools*	First-Time Bar Passers in July from ABA-Accredited Law Schools	July Pass Rate Among First-Time Takers from ABA-Accredited Law Schools
2013	47,465	38,909	82%
2014	44,282	34,333	78%
2015	39,955	29,772	75%

*Note that the NCBE’s classification of first-time takers is over-inclusive in that it reflects not just graduates from May who are taking the bar exam for the first time in July, but also graduates from a prior year who might be taking the bar exam for the first-time in a given jurisdiction even if they have previously taken the bar exam in another jurisdiction. Thus first-time bar passers includes some people who are not part of the graduating cohort in a given year.

In the two-year period, then, between 2013 and 2015, the number of first-time takers from ABA-accredited law schools taking the July bar exam who passed the exam and became eligible for jobs requiring bar passage declined by roughly 9,100 and by nearly 23.5%. Moreover, the percentage of all first-time bar takers taking the February exam rather than the July exam also increased slightly between 2013 and 2015 from 18.7% to 19.7%, which might mean slightly more May 2015 graduates might not have been positioned to accept a full-time, long-term bar-passage-required or JD advantage position as of March 15, 2016, because they may have been studying for and taking the February 2016 bar exam.

Part of the decline also likely is attributable to market conditions in some parts of the country. For example, a recent story about graduates of Texas law schools noted that the decline in oil prices and tort reform may have impacted hiring in the Texas legal market for graduates of the Class of 2015. Once the full set of employment outcomes is available, it will be easier to assess the extent to which certain states or certain regions might have seen better or worse results than other states or regions.

Part of the decline also may be a manifestation of the impact of technology on the legal services market, with the possibility that the legal services market will have slightly fewer entry level positions over the near term.

One Possible Counterpoint

If this decline in the number of full-time, long-term bar passage required positions is a manifestation of a weakening job market law graduates, then one would expect that salary data also would demonstrate weakness. Once NALP publishes its report on the employment results for the Class of 2015 later this summer, we will have a chance to assess the extent to which salary trends are consistent with a weakening legal services market or suggest that the market remains somewhat competitive. If this decline in graduates taking jobs that are full-time, long-term bar passage required or JD advantage jobs is counterbalanced by a continuation of the year-over-year modest increases in mean and median salaries in recent years for  law graduates, it might suggest that that there is less market weakness than this initial employment summary might indicate.

Concluding Thoughts

For those thinking that the recent news about the improving situation with respect to applicants to law school is the beginning of an upward trend that will gradually return law schools to first-year class sizes in the 45,000 to 46,000 range, this employment outcomes data provides a cautionary tale. The fact that the employment market for law school graduates appears to have stagnated and even declined to some extent over the last two years may mean that risk averse potential law school applicants who focus on post-graduate employment opportunities when assessing whether to invest in a legal education may remain skittish about applying, such that this year’s good news on the applicant front may be somewhat short-lived.

(I am very grateful for the research assistance of Janelle Chambers in gathering data for this blog posting prior to the release of the ABA Employment Summary spreadsheet and for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this blog posting from Scott Norberg and Bernie Burk and for the helpful insights of Debby Merritt as we worked on reconciling data in the ABA spreadsheets.)

Projections for Law School Enrollment for Fall 2016

In this blog posting I am doing two things. First, I provide a detailed analysis to estimate the likely total applicant pool we can expect at the end of the current cycle based on trends from March through the end of the cycle in 2013 and 2014 and 2015. Second, given the increase in the strength of the applicant pool, I suggest that law schools in the top 60 or 70 of USNEWS ranking will see more enrollment growth and profile stability in comparison with law schools further down the rankings continuum.

ESTIMATES OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF APPLICANTS

Reviewing the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Cycles to Inform the 2016 Cycle

The table set forth below shows the number of applicants in the admissions cycle as of early March in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 along with the projected total applicant pool (based on percentage of applicants at that point in the cycle in the previous year) and the actual total applicant pool at the end of each cycle (with an estimate of the 2016 total applicant pool).

2013 Current Volume Summary Date	Applicants	% of Cycle in Previous Year on This Date	Applicant Pool
Mar. 8, 2013	46,587	84%	55,460 Projected as of March 8 based on % of Cycle
End of Cycle			59,400 Actual
2014 Current Volume Summary Date	Applicants	% of Cycle in Previous Year on This Date	Applicant Pool
Mar. 7, 2014	42,068	79%	53,250 Projected on March 7 based on % of Cycle
End of Cycle			55,700 Actual
2015 Current Volume Summary Date	Applicants	% of Cycle in Previous Year on This Date	Applicant Pool
Mar. 6, 2015	39,646	76%	52,160 Projected on March 6 based on % of Cycle
End of Cycle			54,500 Actual
2016 Current Volume Summary Date	Applicants	% of Cycle in Previous Year on This Date	Applicant Pool
Mar. 4, 2016	42,981	76%	56,553 Projected on March 4 based on % of Cycle
End of Cycle			57,500 Estimate

In each of the last three years, a modest surge in late applicants meant the final total applicant count exceeded the March projections by more than 2000, with the amount by which the actual total applicant count exceeded the projected total applicant count getting smaller each year (dropping from roughly 4,000 in 2013 to roughly 2,300 in 2015). This “late surge” would suggest that the projection for fall 2016 based on the applicant pool as of March 4, 2016 (for just over 56,500) likely understates the end of cycle total applicant pool. To be somewhat conservative, I am estimating that the final total applicant pool in 2016 will exceed the early March projection by roughly 1,000, the smallest such increase in the last four years, resulting in an estimated total applicant pool of 57,500 (up about 5.5% from 2015). This would be the first increase in applicants since 2010.

ESTIMATES FOR ADMITTED APPLICANTS AND MATRICULANTS

The chart below shows the number of applicants, admitted applicants and matriculants over the last four years along with an estimate for fall 2016 based on the assumption above that we have a total of 57,500 applicants this cycle. With 3,000 more applicants than in 2014-15, I am assuming 2,400 more admitted applicants (roughly 80% of the additional applicants), and then assuming the number of matriculants will reflect close to the four-year average for the percentage of admitted applicants who matriculate – 87.6%. This would yield a first-year entering class of 39,150, up about 5.6% from 2015. (Using this process last April, I estimated a first-year enrollment of 36,975, 83 less than the actual first-year enrollment of 37.058.)

Estimates of Admitted Students and Matriculants for 2016 Based on Trends in 2012-2015

	Applicants	Admitted Students	Percent of Applicants	Matriculants	Percent of Admitted
2012	67,900	50,600	74.5%	44,481	87.9%
2013	59,400	45,700	76.9%	39,675	86.8%
2014	55,700	43,500	78.1%	37,924	87.2%
2015	54,500	42,300	77.6%	37,058	87.6%
2016 (est.)	57,500	44,700	77.7%	39,150	87.6%

DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT ON ENROLLMENT AND PROFILES ACROSS DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF LAW SCHOOLS

Earlier this year Ian Ayres noted that lower-ranked law schools have benefited from the rankings concerns of higher-ranked law schools. In the last few years, as higher-ranked law schools admitted fewer applicants in an effort to maintain their LSAT/GPA profiles, they left more applicants for lower-ranked law schools to admit. In this admissions cycle, the strength of the pool of applicants means things likely will swing the other way. Higher-ranked law schools likely will be admitting more students, leaving fewer students for lower-ranked law schools to admit.

INCREASES IN APPLICANTS WITH HIGH LSATs BODE WELL FOR HIGHER RANKED LAW SCHOOLS

For the first time in the last five years, we are seeing a year-over-year increase in the number of applicants with LSATs of 165 or higher. As of the April 15 Current Volume Summary, there were a total of 7,054 applicants with LSATs of 165 or higher, compared with 6,519 on April 17, 2015. Another 130 with LSATs of 165 or higher ended up applying during the balance of the 2014-15 admissions cycle, resulting in a total of 6,649. I am presently assuming there will be another 146 applicants with LSATs of 165 or higher in the balance of the 2015-16 admissions cycle for a total of 7,200. On average, over the past four years, 82.6% of these applicants have matriculated. I think it is going to be slightly higher this year as I think there are a number of top-60 or top-70 law schools dealing with revenue pressures from decreased enrollment in recent years that are going to take advantage of the stronger quality in this applicant pool to increase their first-year enrollment without seeing too much erosion in their entering class profile. Thus, I think we will see roughly 6,000 matriculants this year with LSATs of 165 or higher, an increase of nearly 500 from fall 2015.

Five-Year Trend in Applicants and Matriculants with LSATs of 165+ and Estimates for 2015

	Applicants with LSATs of 165+	Matriculants with LSATs of 165+	Percent of Applicants Matriculating
2010	12,177	9,477	77.8%
2011	11,190	8,952	80%
2012	9,196	7,571	82.3%
2013	7,496	6,154	82.1%
2014	7,477	6,189	82.8%
2015	6,649	5,505	82.8%
2016 (est.)	7,200	6,000	83.3%

In addition, the number of applicants with LSATs of 160-164 also has increased in this cycle, from roughly 6,500 at this point in 2014-15 to over 6,800 in 2015-16. This likely means that at the end of the cycle there will be at least 300 more applicants with LSATs of 160-164, which likely will generate an additional 240 matriculants (roughly 80% or the 300 more applicants) in this range than in the 2014-15 admissions cycle. Combining these categories, when this admissions cycle ends, there likely will be 740 more matriculants with LSATs of 160 or higher in the 2015-16 applicant pool than in the 2014-15 applicant pool – from roughly 11,200 to nearly 12.000.

This increase in quality in the applicant pool means law schools ranked in the top 60 or top 70 or so (those with median LSATs near or above 160), collectively could be able to welcome more than 1,200 more matriculants than last year without meaningfully impacting their profile. (If the top 70 law schools garner 600 of the 740 additional applicants with LSATs of 160 or higher, they also could admit almost as many additional applicants with LSATs below their median without impacting their profile. For top-70 law schools focused on profile AND revenue, every additional matriculant with an LSAT above 160 who helps the law school maintain its median LSAT allows the law school to add a matriculant with an LSAT of less than 160.)(Of course, not all law schools are going to have the financial strength to continue to use scholarship resources to attract top applicants, so there likely will be some variability among top 70 schools in terms of enrollment growth/decline and in terms of profile retention/erosion.)

Continuing But Slowing Declines in Applicants with LSATs Between 150-159 Likely Will Present Challenges for Some Law Schools with Median LSATs Between 150-159 

Year	LSAT of 140-144	LSAT of 145-149	LSAT of 150-154	LSAT of 155-159
2013	6114	9439	11430	10920
2014	5893	8428	10587	9919
2015	6214	8665	10518	9681
2016 (est.)	6500	9000	10400	9600

Based on the numbers of applicants with LSATs between 150-159 as of the April 15 Current Volume Summary, the pool of applicants in this range is likely to remain flat or continue to show a modest decline as reflected in the table above. If law schools in the top-60 or top-70 do take advantage of the increase in applicants with LSATs of 160 or higher to increase their enrollment, then fewer of these 20,000 applicants with LSATs between 150-159 will be available to law schools with median LSATs in those ranges. This will put pressure on law schools with median LSATs of 150-159 to admit fewer applicants or to dip deeper into the applicant pool to fill their classes. (Note that while the pool of applicants with LSATs between 150-159 is flat to slightly down, the pool of applicants with LSATs between 140-149 appears to be increasing again this year, for the second year in a row.) Once again, enrollment results and profile results are likely to vary somewhat widely across law schools depending upon their relative financial strength and their ability to continue to use scholarship assistance to compete for qualified applicants.

CONCLUSION

If the estimates regarding applicants and matriculants above are accurate we will see roughly 2,100 more matriculants in the 2015-16 cycle. The increased strength of the applicant pool and the anticipated admissions strategies and efforts of top-ranked schools dealing with revenue pressures from reduced enrollment in the last few years likely will mean that most of the increase in matriculants, perhaps as many as 1,200 or more, will be among law schools that are relatively highly ranked – perhaps the top-60 or top-70.

This anticipated increase in enrollment among top law schools likely will decrease the number of applicants in the 150-159 LSAT range available to lower-ranked law schools, particularly given that the number of applicants with LSATs of 150-159 already looks like it could be slightly smaller this year. This likely will leave law schools outside the top-60 or top-70 facing challenging decisions of shrinking enrollment further to hold profile (and dealing with further revenue declines) or accepting declines in profile in exchange for stable or larger enrollments (and the corresponding revenue).

With continued growth in applicants between 140-149 to go along with the projection of a slight decline in the number of applicants with LSATs of 150-159, many law schools ranked outside the top-60 or top-70 may find it difficult to maintain their LSAT profiles as the pool of applicants from which they can draw their matriculants will be weighted more to the lower end of the LSAT distribution.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

First, what might explain the growth in the number of applicants with LSATs of 160 or more for the first time in the last several years? This group had been the “market leaders” in walking away from legal education in recent years. Is this a one-time bounce or is this group going to continue to return to legal education in larger numbers?

Second, why is the middle group – those with LSATs of 150-159 -- not showing an uptick in applicants, when there is growth among those with LSATs of 160 or higher AND growth among those with LSATs of 140-149? The group of applicants with LSATs of 150-159 is more likely to be able to pass the bar exam upon completing law school than the group of applicants with LSATs of 140-149. With bar passage rates falling significantly, particularly from those graduates of law schools with lower LSAT profiles, one might have expected that fewer people with LSATs of 140-149 would be applying to law school (as they are most at risk of bar passage failure), but this cycle shows continued modest growth in that pool of applicants while the group of applicants with LSATs of 150-159 is flat to down slightly.

Third, will this strengthening of the quality of the applicant pool portend an improvement in bar passage results in July 2019? It is too early to answer this question. Once actual enrollment profiles are available in December, it will be easier to analyze the possible impact on bar passage results.

(I am very grateful for thoughtful comments from Bernie Burk and Scott Norberg on an earlier draft of this blog posting.)

Conditional Scholarships Reprise – Of Sticks and Carrots and Asking Questions

A few years ago the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar mandated greater transparency regarding conditional scholarships, requiring law schools that offer conditional scholarships to publicize on their webpages, and to applicants receiving conditional scholarship offers, the number of conditional scholarships awarded to students and the number that had been reduced or eliminated over each of the prior three academic years.

Applicants previously had not been aware of how many students were getting conditional scholarships and didn’t know how likely they were to keep the conditional scholarships given the law school’s grading curve. They were generally unduly optimistic about their likelihood of retaining a scholarship. The mandated disclosure was designed to ameliorate this information asymmetry and optimism bias.

I have written about conditional scholarships on several occasions over the last several years, initially noting the need for greater transparency and then analyzing the data on conditional scholarships once its publication was mandated. I posted the most recent summary in December 2015, covering the 2014-15 academic year and comparing it with the 2011-12 academic year. Notably, over the last few years, while more than two dozen law schools have shifted away from using conditional scholarships, the percentage of first-year students with conditional scholarships remained at roughly 27%, although slightly fewer first-year students saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated (7.8% down from 9.4%).

With tuition deposits due in the next several weeks, prospective law students likely are comparing the varied opportunities they may have in terms of law schools and scholarship offers.  I write at this time to highlight the need for applicants receiving conditional scholarship offers to ask questions of admissions officials regarding conditional scholarships at their law schools, both with respect to traditional conditional scholarships and with respect to a new type of conditional scholarship that apparently is being offered by at least one law school and perhaps others. Prospective students need to be proactive in combatting their own propensity for optimism bias. Pre-law advisors need to help students be more proactive in combatting their propensity for optimism bias.

The Need to Ask Questions with Respect to Traditional Conditional Scholarships that Function as a Stick

Traditional conditional scholarships operate as a “stick.” If a student doesn’t maintain a defined GPA or class rank, the student’s scholarship is reduced or eliminated.

Law schools are required to publish, and to provide to conditional scholarship recipients, the number of conditional scholarship recipients and the number whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated in each of the prior three years. This is helpful generally, but it doesn’t necessarily help specific applicants all that much.

For example, assume a law school’s published data indicates that 80 students received conditional scholarships in each of the prior three years and that 20 students saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated each year. At first blush, this makes it look like the average conditional scholarship recipient has a 75% (60/80) chance of retaining her scholarship. But who is the average conditional scholarship recipient? Assuming all students had to meet the same “condition” – perhaps maintain a first-year GPA of 3.0 -- it is likely that conditional scholarship recipients in the top quarter of the LSAT/GPA distribution for entering students at the law school had perhaps a 90-95% likelihood of retaining their scholarship, while conditional scholarship recipients near the middle or below the middle of the LSAT/GPA distribution for entering students at the law school had perhaps a 50-60% likelihood of retaining their scholarship.

Recognizing this likely disparity, conditional scholarship recipients should be asking the admissions officials at the law schools from which they are receiving conditional scholarship offers what additional information the admissions officials can provide about the extent to which a student with a comparable profile and comparable condition was likely to see his conditional scholarship reduced or eliminated. Were those at the top end of the LSAT/GPA distribution more likely to retain their conditional scholarship? Were those further down the LSAT/GPA distribution less likely to retain their conditional scholarships? How did the nature of the condition impact the likelihood that a student with a given profile retained her scholarship?

Law schools should have this information available and should be willing to provide answers to these questions.  Prospective students need answers to these questions to be best positioned to calculate the expected value of a conditional scholarship over three years so that the student can make meaningful cost-comparisons across law schools.

The Need to Ask Questions with Respect to New Conditional Scholarships that Function as a Stick and a Carrot

At least one law school, and possibly others, have what appears to be a new type of “conditional” scholarship, which can best be described as a both a “stick” and a “carrot.” In addition to reducing or eliminating a student’s conditional scholarship if the student fails to maintain a given GPA or class rank, the “carrot” approach to the conditional scholarship offers students AN INCREASED SCHOLARSHIP if the student obtains a given GPA or class rank.

For example, assume a given law school has the same published information as in the previous example – 80 students received conditional scholarships and 20 students had their scholarships reduced or eliminated.

An applicant receives a conditional scholarship for 50% tuition and is informed that the scholarship will be eliminated if she fails to maintain a cumulative GPA of 2.5 at the end of the first year. But she also is informed that the scholarship will increase to 75% if she obtains a GPA of 3.5 and to 100% if she obtains a GPA of 3.7.

This student needs to ask several questions of the admissions officials at the law school. First, she needs to ask whether, given her LSAT/GPA profile, and her renewal threshold (2.5 GPA), she has the average likelihood of maintaining her scholarship (75%) or perhaps a higher or lower likelihood of maintaining her scholarship. (If the school offers 100% scholarships with a renewal condition of 3.5 and a 75% scholarship with a renewal condition of 3.0 and a 50% scholarship with a renewal condition of 2.5, it may be that the people with 50% scholarships have a higher likelihood of retaining their scholarships then those with larger scholarships but correspondingly higher conditions.)

Second, however, the student also needs to ask how many students in the previous two or three years who came into school with an LSAT/GPA profile comparable to hers managed to get a 3.5 GPA or a 3.7 GPA. For a prospective student with an LSAT/GPA in the bottom half of the entering class LSAT/GPA distribution, it well may be that few, if any, comparable students managed to get a 3.5 GPA or a 3.7 GPA at the end of the first year.

New Creative Efforts to Play on Optimism Bias of Applicants

This “carrot” approach to conditional scholarships is simply the newest technique for taking advantage of the optimism bias of prospective students. The Standard 509 disclosure obligations do not capture this type of conditional scholarship. Thus, law schools do not have an affirmative obligation to disclose the extent to which students in various ranges across the LSAT/GPA distribution of an entering class are likely to obtain a GPA of 3.5 or 3.7 at the end of the first-year.

Indeed, this “carrot” approach could be used by any law school – even law schools that do not generally offer conditional scholarships that trigger a reporting obligation. Such a law school could offer a slightly smaller unconditional scholarship on the front end along with the “carrot” condition – the prospect of a scholarship increase if certain GPA performance thresholds are met -- and perhaps entice students who optimistically believe they are going to outperform their LSAT/GPA profile to accept the law school’s scholarship offer rather than a comparable scholarship offer from another law school that did not offer a “carrot.”

Of course, this “carrot” approach to conditional scholarships presents another information asymmetry problem and optimism bias problem. The law school would know how few students meet the GPA threshold for an increased scholarship while the prospective students would optimistically, but unrealistically, believe they are capable of meeting the threshold.

But the fact that law schools do not have an affirmative obligation to disclose the likelihood of success in meeting the GPA threshold for the enhanced scholarship award does not mean that prospective students can’t ask for very specific information about the number of students with comparable LSAT/GPA profiles who actually obtained the GPA thresholds over the prior three years. Once again, law schools should have this information available and should be willing to disclose the information.

In any of these situations, if a prospective student asks for specific information about the scholarship retention or scholarship enhancement prospects of similarly-situated students in the three prior years and a law school claims not to have the information or is not willing to share the information, this should prompt suspicion on the part of the prospective student. Law schools have this information (or should have it) and should provide answers to these questions when asked.

Comments on Proposed Revisions to Standard 501

Standard 501 requires law schools to have sound admissions policies and to refrain from admitting applicants who are not capable of being successful in law school and on the bar exam. For many years, Standard 501 has received little attention, while Standard 316 – the bar passage standard – has received more attention. Accreditors focused more on outcomes – bar passage results – than inputs – the academic abilities of students admitted to law school. With the decline in the number of applicants to law school and the corresponding erosion of entering class credentials at many law schools, however, Standard 501 has begun to receive more attention.

Specifically, due to concerns that some law schools might be admitting students whose entering credentials suggest that they are not likely to be successful in law school or be able to pass the bar exam, the Standards Review Committee (“SRC”) of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (“Section”) has proposed revisions to Standard 501. The Council for the Section will consider these proposed revisions at its upcoming March meeting.  

I am in favor of most of the suggested revisions to Standard 501 (as discussed below). I am not in favor of the SRC’s Proposal 2 which proposes an “attrition” threshold above which schools would face heightened attention. In a subsequent post, I will discuss the need for a more robust Standard 308, which addresses academic standards, as a corollary to Standard 501.

“Proposal 2” Presents Two Problems

In its Proposal 2, the SRC suggests adding a new Interpretation 501-3 – “A law school having a non-transfer attrition rate above ___ percent bears the burden of demonstrating that it is in compliance with the Standard.” (The SRC anticipated that the Council would insert a number, perhaps 10%, in place of the blank.) Proposal 2 presents two problems; it is too broad in scope, and it is unlikely to be effective in practice.

The proposed interpretation focuses on “non-transfer” attrition, when it should be focused solely on “academic attrition.”

Non-transfer attrition consists of two components – “academic attrition” and “other attrition.”

Academic attrition includes students involuntarily dismissed under a law school’s academic policies or students who leave voluntarily but would have been dismissed had they remained in school. As noted in my recent blog posting analyzing attrition data, academic attrition varies widely across law schools from zero to over 20%, particularly among law schools with relatively low LSAT/GPA profiles.

Other attrition includes students who leave law school for reasons other than academic attrition. They may have decided law school is not for them, or have had a family emergency or their own physical health concern or mental health concern that leads them to withdraw from law school. Other attrition has much less variability; at most law schools other attrition is in the 2% to 4% range.

Law schools should be able to look at historical trends regarding student performance at their law school to predict whether applicants with certain entering class credentials are likely to experience “academic attrition.” Thus, a high “academic attrition” rate may suggest a law school is admitting too many students who are unlikely to be successful. By contrast, law schools rarely are going to be able to identify in advance those students who are likely to fall into the “other attrition” category.

Accordingly, if Proposal 2 is going to move forward, I would strongly advise that it focus solely on “academic attrition” rather than on all non-transfer attrition.

(It is conceivable that the SRC chose non-transfer attrition rather than academic attrition because it was concerned law schools would opt to classify a student’s attrition as other attrition rather than academic attrition to avoid whatever threshold might be set for academic attrition. While that risk could be addressed through careful assessment of attrition data, if there is a strong desire to use non-transfer attrition, I would suggest that the non-transfer attrition threshold be set at a slightly higher percentage to recognize that many law schools regularly experience other attrition of between 2% and 4%.)

The proposed interpretation is unlikely to accomplish its intended purpose

Regardless of whether the threshold focuses solely on academic attrition or on non-transfer attrition, however, this proposed interpretation fails to account for how law schools are likely to respond to the new interpretation. The SRC may believe the proposed interpretation will make law schools refrain from admitting as many at risk students. While that is possible, it is actually as likely or more likely that some law schools will not change their admissions practices, but simply will adjust how they implement their academic dismissal policies or grading policies to keep academic attrition or non-transfer attrition below whatever threshold is established.

For example, assume the proposed interpretation set 10% as the academic attrition “threshold” for shifting to law schools the burden of demonstrating compliance with the Standard. In the 2014-15 academic year, an academic attrition threshold of 10% would have “caught” 30 law schools. One easily can imagine that a significant number of those law schools likely would simply adjust their academic dismissal policies or their grading policies so that they maintain academic attrition below the 10% threshold (even at the risk of noncompliance with the bar passage standard a few years later). (Indeed, 11 of the 30 law schools in 2014-15 with academic attrition more than 10% have an academic attrition rate between 10% and 11%, such that getting under 10% would not have been very difficult for these law schools.)

The SRC may be assuming that law schools don’t have “control” of how academic attrition actually functions. Perhaps the SRC believes that academic dismissal policies are fairly consistent across all law schools such that a given threshold (10%) would have comparable meaning and effect across all law schools. As noted above, however, academic attrition varies widely among similarly situated law schools, particularly those with relatively low LSAT/GPA profiles. This suggests that academic dismissal and grading policies differ across law schools or, phrased differently, that the way in which grading policies interact with academic dismissal policies varies widely. In reality, law schools have sufficient “local control” over their grading and academic dismissal policies that it would not be that difficult for law schools to avoid being “caught” by whatever academic attrition or non-transfer attrition threshold would get established in Standard 501.

The Other Three Suggested Revisions to Standard 501 are Generally Good Ideas

First, in Section 501(a), the SRC wants to replace “maintain” with “adopt, publish, and adhere to such that the standard will read: “A law school shall adopt, publish, and adhere to sound admission policies and practices consistent with the Standards, its mission, and the objectives of its program of legal education.” This clarifies that law schools have to have policies, have to publish policies, and have to adhere to the policies, all good things.

Second, in Section 501(b), the SRC wants to shift from a negative framework to a positive framework. The existing standard has a negative framework -- “A law school shall not admit an applicant who does not appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”   The SRC recommends shifting to a positive framework – “A law school shall admit only applicants who appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” (emphasis added) While I don’t feel strongly about this, I think it is easier to conceptualize this in the positive framework – focused on who should be admitted -- rather than on who should not be admitted. That said, it might help to maintain a singular focus on each “applicant” rather than shifting to the plural “applicants.” “A law school shall admit an applicant only if the applicant appears capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” This keeps the focus on each individual applicant rather than the pool of applicants a law school admits.

Third, in the first interpretation – Interpretation 501-1 -- the SRC recommends adding a sentence that states: “Compliance with Standard 316 is not alone sufficient to comply with the Standard.” Standard 316 is the bar passage standard. This suggested revision is designed to highlight that Standard 501 is an independent standard that is not just derivative of Standard 316. This also strikes me as a useful change.

If Standard 501 is simply derivative of Standard 316, then there is no way to assess compliance with Standard 501 in “real time.” Rather, one would only assess compliance with Standard 501 by waiting three or four years to see whether the graduates of the law school comply with the bar passage standard. Standard 501 would be somewhat superfluous.

By adding this sentence, the SRC is suggesting that compliance with Standard 501 should be assessed “presently” by looking at the LSAT/GPA profile of matriculants, the law school’s experience with attrition, and the success of the law school’s academic support program, along with the law school’s historical bar passage results. Historical attrition and historical results on the bar exam in relation to prior graduates’ entering LSAT/GPA profile and prior graduates’ law school academic performance should inform the determination of whether the law school is continuing to admit only those applicants reasonably capable of being successful in the program of legal education and in passing the bar exam. If students with certain LSAT/GPA profiles over a three-year or four-year period consistently have performed poorly in law school and experienced academic attrition, or performed poorly on the bar exam, then the law school has data that would make it challenging for the law school to demonstrate that applicants with those profiles are “capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.”

(I am very grateful for the helpful comments of Debby Merritt and Scott Norberg on earlier drafts of this blog posting.)

Updated Analysis of Attrition through the 2014-15 Academic Year

In October 2015, I posted a blog discussing attrition rates between 2010 and 2014. With the release of the Standard 509 reports in December, I now have compiled attrition data from all of the fully-accredited ABA law schools outside of Puerto Rico for the last five full academic years. I have calculated average attrition rates for the class as a whole and then broken out average attrition rates by law schools in different median LSAT categories – 160+, 155-159, 150-154 and <150.

In a nutshell, overall first-year attrition has increased each of the last four years, going from 5.81% to 7.04% over that period. This overall increase, however, results largely from increases in overall attrition among schools with median LSATs less than 150, as the overall attrition rates for law schools with medians LSATs of 150 or greater have generally decreased over this period. “Academic attrition” rates increase significantly as median LSAT decreases, while “other attrition” presents more of a mixed record.

Average Overall First-Year Attrition Rates Continue to Increase

In calculating attrition rates, I wanted to capture those students who are no longer in law school anywhere. Thus, for these purposes, “attrition” is the sum of “academic attrition” and “other attrition.” “Academic attrition” occurs when a law school asks someone to leave because of inadequate academic performance. As of the 2014-15 academic year, “academic attrition” also includes a student who left voluntarily but who would have been asked to leave because of academic performance had the student not left voluntarily. “Other attrition” occurs when a student departs from the law school volitionally without being at risk of academic dismissal. Both of these categories exclude “transfers.”

The following chart shows that despite the declining “LSAT profile” of the entering classes between 2010 and 2014, there had not been any meaningful change in the average “academic attrition” rate for first-year students through the 2013-14 academic year, but that academic attrition increased modestly in 2014-15 to over 4%. Some portion of this increase in academic attrition might be attributable to the continued decline in LSAT profile of the entering class of students in 2014. Given that there was a corresponding decline in “other attrition” (for the first time in the four-year period assessed), however, at least some portion of the increase in “academic attrition” would appear to be attributable to the redefinition of “academic attrition” described in the preceding paragraph, Roughly 80% of the increase in overall first-year attrition over this period from 5.81% to 7.04%, is due to a growth in the “academic attrition” category from 3.32% to 4.15%.

Overall First-Year Attrition for Classes Entering in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014

	Beg. Enrollment	Academic Attrition	% Academic	Other Attrition	% Other	Total Attrition	% Attrition
2010-11	50408	1673	3.32	1256	2.49	2929	5.81%
2011-12	46477	1551	3.34	1262	2.72	2813	6.06%
2012-13	42399	1461	3.45	1186	2.8	2647	6.25%
2013-14	38837	1316	3.39	1236	3.18	2552	6.57%
2014-15	37086	1539	4.15	1072	2.89	2611	7.04%

(Calculating attrition rates for 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13, is a little more complicated than one might think. For ABA reporting years of 2011, 2012, and 2013, “academic attrition” was reported separately, but “other attrition” included “transfers out.” Thus, to generate the real “other attrition” number, one needed to “subtract” from “other attrition” the numbers associated with “transfers out.” Because some schools occasionally listed transfers out in “second year” “other attrition,” this analysis should be understood to have a little fuzziness to it for years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13. For ABA reporting years 2014 and 2015, transfers out were not commingled with “other attrition,” so the calculations were based solely on the sum of “academic attrition” and “other attrition.”)

Academic Attrition Rates Increase as Law School Median LSAT Decreases

Notably, there are different rates of attrition across law schools in different LSAT categories. The following chart breaks down attrition by groups of law schools based on median LSAT for the law school for the entering class each year. For each year, the chart shows the average first-year attrition rates for law schools with median LSATs of 160 or higher, for law schools with median LSATs of 155-159, for law schools with median LSATs of 150-154 and for law schools with median LSATs less than 150. In addition, it breaks out “academic attrition” and “other attrition” as separate categories for each category of law school and for each year and then provides the total overall attrition rate each year along with the five-year average total overall attrition rate.

Average Attrition Rates by Category of Schools Based on Median LSAT

	2010-11			2011-12			2012-13			2013-14			2014-15
Median LSAT	Acad	Oth	Total	Acad	Oth	Total	Acad	Oth	Total	Acad	Oth	Total	Acad	Oth	Total	Five-Year Avg.
160+	0.6	1.7	2.3	0.6	1.9	2.5	0.4	2.0	2.4	0.3	1.5	1.8	0.3	1.3	1.6	2.1
155-159	2.9	2.6	5.5	2.2	2.8	5.1	2.1	2.9	5.1	1.7	3.2	4.9	2.0	2.6	4.6	5.0
150-154	6.3	3.8	10.1	6.2	3.4	9.6	6.0	3.7	9.7	4.2	4.3	8.5	4.7	4.0	8.7	9.3
<150	10.1	2.4	12.5	9.4	3.8	13.2	9.1	3.0	12.2	9.7	4.7	14.4	12.7	4.4	17.1	13.9

When looking at this data, some things are worth noting.

Attrition Rates Increase as Median LSAT Decreases

As one moves from law schools in the highest LSAT category to the lowest LSAT category, overall attrition increases, going from an average over the five years of 2.1%, to 5.0%, to 9.3%, to 13.9%. “Academic attrition” consistently increases as median LSAT decreases, while “other attrition” increased as median LSAT decreased in only three of the five years.

Although this analysis is focused on four LSAT categories, the trend of having academic attrition increase as median LSAT decreases continues if you add a fifth LSAT category. In 2010-11 there was only one law school with a median LSAT of 145 or less, with only 320 students. By 2014-15, however, there were 12 law schools with a median LSAT of 145 or less, with 2,826 students. The average academic attrition rate at these 12 schools in 2014-15 was 15.6 percent. The academic attrition rate at the other 24 law schools with a median LSAT less than 150 but more than 145 was 10.1 percent.

The Top Three Categories of Law Schools Saw Decreases in Academic Attrition Over Time

Over the period from 2010-11 to 2014-15, “academic attrition” generally appears to be flat to decreasing for schools with median LSATs of 160+. For schools with median LSATs of 155-159 and 150-154, “academic attrition” generally had declined from 2010-11 to 2013-14, but increased slightly in 2014-15 (although still well below levels in 2010-11). The only category in which academic attrition in 2014-15 exceeded academic attrition in 2010-11, was for law schools with median LSATs <150, where the academic attrition rate increased from 10.1% to 12.7%.

 

By contrast, “other attrition” presents more of a mixed record over time, but decreased in 2014-15 across all LSAT categories (perhaps because of the redefinition of “academic attrition” discussed above).

 
 

[If you are wondering why the average overall attrition rate has increased while the overall attrition rates for the top three LSAT categories have decreased, the answer is because of the changing number of students in each category over time. The number of students and percentage of students in the top LSAT category has declined significantly, while the number of students and percentage of students in the bottom LSAT category has increased significantly. This results in the average overall attrition rate increasing even as rates in various categories are decreasing.]

Increasing Variability in Attrition Rates

While it may make sense that “academic attrition” increases as law school median LSAT decreases, when one looks at the data within each LSAT category, there is a surprising range of academic attrition rates across law schools, with variability increasing significantly as median LSAT scores decrease. There was much less variability with respect to “other attrition.”

There were 50 law schools with median LSATs of 160+ in 2014-15, of which 37 (roughly 75%) had an academic attrition rate of 0, while the other 13 had academic attrition rates less than 5% with only four having academic attrition rates of 1% or more, topping out at 3.7%.

There also were 50 law schools with median LSATs of 155-159 in 2014-15, of which 11 had an academic attrition rate of 0 (roughly 22%), while 32 of these law schools had academic attrition rates of less than 5%, and seven had academic attrition rates of more than 5%, topping out at 8.6%.

There were 59 law schools with median LSATs of 150-154 in 2014-15, of which 10 had an academic attrition rate of 0 (roughly 17%), while 28 of these law schools had an academic attrition rate of less than 5%, 12 had an academic attrition rate of 5% to 10%, eight had an academic attrition rate of 10% to 15%, and one had an academic attrition rate in excess of 15% (17.9%).

Finally, there were 36 law schools with a median LSAT <150 in 2014-15, of which none had an academic attrition rate of 0, while seven had academic attrition rates less than 5%, 13 had an academic attrition rates of 5% to 10%, four had an academic attrition rate of 10% to 15% and nine had an academic attrition rate of 15% or more of which five were over 20%, with one at 33%.

 

This phenomenon of increasing variability in attrition rates may merit further attention. For law schools with a similar 50^th percentile LSAT and 25^th percentile LSAT for their entering classes, what can explain a range of academic attrition from 2% to 20%. Does one school have a much higher standard for academic good standing and dismissal? Does one school have a much more robust academic support program? Have the professors at one school failed to adjust their grading to reflect a significantly different entering class profile among their students?

How does this varied approach to academic attrition ultimately impact bar passage results? If we have two law schools with comparable entering class profiles in states with comparable cut scores and bar passage percentages, does the law school with a higher rate of academic attrition show a higher bar passage rate when compared to the law school with a much lower rate of academic attrition? (I hope to explore this question in a subsequent blog posting.)

Unanswered Questions

The publicly-reported attrition data does not provide any information regarding the gender or ethnicity or socio-economic background of students leaving law school. Therefore, we don’t know whether there are different rates of attrition for women as compared with men or whether students of different ethnic backgrounds have different rates of attrition. We also don’t know whether first-generation law students experience attrition at different rates than other law students, or whether students of lower socio-economic status experience attrition at different rates than students of higher socio-economic status. Similarly, at law schools with part-time programs, we don’t know whether part-time students and full-time students experience attrition at comparable rates.

We also do not know for sure who is experiencing attrition within a given law school. The data presented here would suggest that students on the lower end of the distribution of a law school’s entering class profile are more likely to experience academic attrition than students on the higher end of the distribution, but presently that is not easily verified.

Further Thoughts

This is an appropriate time to pay closer attention to attrition data. The Standards Review Committee recently revisited Standard 501 and suggested to the Council that attrition rates might be used to inform the appropriateness of a law school’s admission policies. I hope to discuss the Standard Review Committee’s proposal at greater length in a subsequent blog posting. Given that the Standards Review Committee also recommended changes to Standard 316, the bar passage standard, trying to develop a better understanding of the relationship between academic attrition and bar passage (discussed above) also makes sense.

(I am grateful to Bernie Burk and Debby Merritt for comments on a earlier draft of this blog posting.)

Changes in Composition of the LSAT Profiles of Matriculants and Law Schools Between 2010 and 2015

In late December 2014, I posted a blog analyzing how the distribution of matriculants across LSAT categories had changed since 2010 based on the LSAC’s National Decision Profiles and on law school 50^th percentile LSATs and 25^th percentile LSATs across ranges of LSAT scores. With the LSAC’s recent release of the 2014-15 National Decision Profile and the ABA’s recent release of Standard 509 data, I am posting this blog to provide an update with the 2015 data.

At one level, this is a story that has already become well understood over the last year since my blog posting, with much discussion of the relationship between declining LSAT profiles and declining median MBE scores and bar passage rates. This 2015 information indicates that the decline in the LSAT profiles of matriculants and of law schools has continued, although with some moderation.

Given that the LSAT profiles of matriculants and of law schools for fall 2013, fall 2014 and fall 2015 are less robust than those for fall 2011 and fall 2012 (the classes that graduated in 2014 and 2015, respectively), one can anticipate that the declines in median MBE scaled scores and corresponding bar passage rates in 2014 and 2015 will continue in July 2016, 2017 and 2018 absent increases in attrition (I discussed attrition rates in a blog posting in October), significant improvement in academic support programs at law schools, or improved bar preparation efforts on the part of graduates.

Tracking Changes Based on LSAC’s National Decision Profiles – 2010-2015

The following discussion summarizes data in the LSAC’s National Decision Profiles from the 2009-10 admission cycle (fall 2010) through the 2014-15 admission cycle (fall 2015).

Let’s start with the big picture. If you take the matriculants each year and break them into three broad LSAT categories – 160+, 150-159, and <150 – the following chart and graph show the changes in percentages of matriculants in each of these categories over the last six years.

Change in Percentage of Matriculants in LSAT Categories – 2010-2015

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
<150	14.2	15.7	19.3	22.5	23	23.8
150-159	45	45.3	44.3	44.1	43.6	44.2
160+	40.8	39	36.3	33.4	33.5	32

Change in Percentage of Matriculants in LSAT Categories – 2010-2015 (Visual) 

Notably, this chart and graph show almost no change in the “middle"" -- 150-159 – (blue – dropping from 45% to 44.2%), with most of the change at 160+ (green -- decreasing from 40.8% to 32%) and at <150 (red -- increasing from 14.2% to 23.8%). This chart and graph also show some stabilization between 2013 and 2014, followed by a modest decline in 2015 in the percentage of students with LSATs of 160+ and a modest increase in the percentage of students with LSATs of <150.

While I think this tells the story pretty clearly, for those interested in more detail, the following charts provide a more granular analysis.

Changes in LSAT Distributions of Matriculants – 2010-2013       

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015		Change in #		% Change in #
170+	3635	3330	2788	2072	2248	2022		(1613)		-44.4%
165-169	5842	5622	4783	4082	3941	3483	(2359)		-40.4%
160-164	10666	8678	7281	6442	6010	5743	(3923)		-36.8%
155-159	11570	10657	9700	8459	7935	7780	(3790)		-32.8%
150-154	10626	9885	8444	8163	7934	7805	(1821)		-17.1%
145-149	5131	5196	5334	5541	5158	5274	143		2.8%
<145	1869	1888	2564	2930	3203	3084		1215		65%
	49339	45256	40894	37689	36429	35191

Note that in terms of the percentage change in the number of matriculants in each LSAT category, the four highest LSAT categories are all down at least 30% since 2010, with 165-169 and 170+ down over 40%, while the two lowest LSAT categories are up, with <145 being up over 60%. 
 

Note that in the line graph above, the top two LSAT categories have been combined into 165+ while the bottom two LSAT categories have been combined into <150. Perhaps most significantly, in 2010, the <150 group, with 7,000 students, was over 2,400 students smaller than the next smallest category (165+ with 9,477) and more than 4,500 students smaller than the largest category (155-159 with 11,570). By 2015, however, the <150 category had become the largest category, with 8,358, more than 500 larger than the second category (150-154, with 7,805) and more than 2,800 larger than the smallest category, 165+ with only 5,505. Moreover, 88% of the growth in the <150 category was in the <145 category (1,215 of the 1,358 more people in the <150 category were in the <145 category).

Changes in Percentage of Matriculants in LSAT Ranges – 2010-2015

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	% Chg in %
>169	7.4	7.4	6.8	5.5	6.2	5.7	-23%
165-169	11.8	12.4	11.7	10.8	10.8	9.9	-16.1%
160-164	21.6	19.2	17.8	17.1	16.5	16.3	-24.5%
155-159	23.5	23.5	23.7	22.4	21.8	22.1	-6%
150-154	21.5	21.8	20.6	21.7	21.8	22.2	3.2%
145-149	10.4	11.5	13	14.7	14.2	15	44.2%
<145	3.8	4.2	6.3	7.8	8.8	8.8	132%

In terms of the “composition” of the class, i.e., the percentage of matriculants in each LSAT category, we see significant declines of 20% or more at 160-164 and 170+ and significant increases of 40% at 145-149 and over 100% at <145.

Tracking Changes in Law Schools by Looking at the Distribution of 50^th Percentile LSAT Scores Across Six LSAT Categories

Obviously, this change in the composition of the entering class has resulted in corresponding changes in the LSAT profiles of law schools. Based on the data law schools reported in their Standard 509 Reports from 2010 to 2015, the chart below lists the numbers of law schools reporting a 50^th percentile LSAT within certain LSAT ranges. (This chart excludes law schools in Puerto Rico and provisionally-approved law schools.)

Number of Law Schools with a 50^th Percentile LSAT in Six LSAT Categories – 2010-2015

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
165+	30	31	26	23	21	21
160-164	47	41	39	31	29	28
155-159	59	57	56	53	51	48
150-154	50	52	53	56	59	59
145-149	9	14	22	28	29	33
<145	0	1	0	5	7	7
Total	195	196	196	196	196	196

The table above pretty clearly demonstrates the changes that have taken place since 2010, with declines in the number of law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT in higher LSAT categories and increases in the number of law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT in the lower LSAT categories, although 2015 saw only modest changes from 2014 at 160-164 (down 1), at 155-159 (down 3) and at 145-149 (up 4). 

 

As shown in the chart above, the number of law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 155 or higher has declined from 136 to 97. By contrast, the number of law schools with a 50th percentile LSAT of 154 or lower has increased from 59 to 99. In 2010, therefore, there were more than twice as many law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 155 or higher as compared with the number with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 154 or lower (136 and 59, respectively), but as of 2015, those numbers were nearly identical (97 and 99, respectively).

The “mode” in 2010 was in the 155-159 category, with nearly 60 law schools, but by 2014, the “mode” had shifted to the 150-154 category with nearly 60 law schools.

Perhaps most pronounced is the shift in the upper and lower ranges. As shown in the chart below, the number of law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 160 or higher has dropped by more than one-third, from 77 to 49, while the number of law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 149 or lower has more than quadrupled from 9 to 40. In 2010, there were only three law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 145 or 146; as of 2015, there were 15 law schools with a 50^th percentile LSAT of 146 or lower, of which five were at 143 or lower, with the two lowest being 142 and 141.
 

   

Tracking Changes in Law Schools by Looking at the Distribution of 25^th Percentile LSAT Scores Across Six LSAT Categories

For those who want to focus on the bottom 25^th percentile of LSAT profile among law schools, the table below shows changes in distribution of the bottom 25^th percentile LSAT among law schools across six LSAT categories between 2010 and 2015.

Number of Law Schools with a 25^th Percentile LSAT in Six LSAT Categories – 2010-2015

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
165+	17	16	11	10	10	7
160-164	26	20	21	17	15	17
155-159	55	54	49	42	41	38
150-154	67	69	59	65	57	59
145-149	26	33	46	48	48	52
<145	4	4	10	14	25	23
Total	195	196	196	196	196	196

With respect to changes between 2014 and 2015, this table shows a little more variability, with decreases in three categories -- 165+ (down 3l 155-159 (down 3) and less than 145 (down 2) -- and with increases in three categories -- 160-164 (up 2), 150-154 (up 2), and 145-149 (up 4).

Looking at changes between 2010 and 2015, note that the four top categories have all declined, while the number of law schools with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 145-149 has doubled and the number of law schools with a 25^th percentile LSAT of <145 has more than quintupled from four in 2010 (two at 144 and two at 143), to 23 in 2015, with 13 of them at 142 and below.

 

As shown in the chart below, in 2010, the number of law schools with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 155 or higher and the number with a 25^th percentile LSATs of 154 or lower were nearly identical (98 and 97, respectively). As of 2015, however, there were more than twice as many law schools with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 154 or lower when compared with those with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 155 or higher (134 and 62, respectively).
 

Moreover, between 2010 and 2015, the number of law schools with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 160 or higher has fallen more than 40% from 43 to 24, while the number with a 25^th percentile LSAT of 149 or lower has more than doubled from 30 to 75. 

 

 

Changes in Average 75th, 50th and 25th Percentile LSATs Across Fully-Accredited ABA Law Schools

One other way of looking at this is just to see how the average first-year LSAT and UGPA profiles have changed over the last six years.

Average LSATs of Matriculants at Fully-Accredited ABA Law Schools

	75th Percentile	50th Percentile	25th Percentile
2010	160.5	158.1	155.2
2011	160.1	157.8	154.5
2012	159.6	157	153.6
2013	158.7	156	152.6
2014	158.2	155.4	151.8
2015	157.9	155.3	151.8
Overall Drop	-2.6	-2.8	-3.4

(Note that these are not weighted averages based on the number of matriculants at each school, but are simply averages across law schools.)

Notably, over this same period of time the average UGPAs have fallen modestly as well from a 75^th/50^th/25^th profile of 3.63 – 3.41 – 3.14 in 2010 to 3.6 – 3.37 – 3.09 in 2015.

Conclusion

If one focuses on the LSAT scores and UGPAs as measures of “quality” of the entering class of law students each year, then the period from 2010-2015 not only has seen a significant decline in enrollment, it also has seen a significant decline in “quality.”

The LSAC’s most recent Current Volume Report (January 8, 2016) suggests that the pool of applicants to law schools is rebounding slightly in this current cycle. With 22,662 applicants at a point in the cycle at which 40% of applicants had been received last year, one can project an applicant pool of roughly 56,600. The “quality” of applicants also appears to be stronger, with double digit percentage increases in applicants to date in LSAT categories of 165 and higher. If these trends continue in the applicant pool for the current cycle, then the fall 2015 entering class may represent the “bottom” both in terms of the number of matriculants and in terms of the “quality” of the matriculants as measured by LSAT and UGPA. Of course, we won’t know for sure about that until next December when the 2016 Standard 509 Reports are published.

(I am grateful for the helpful comments of Scott Norberg on an earlier draft of this blog.)

Conditional Scholarship Programs: Comparing 2014-15 with 2011-12

A few years ago, the Council for the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved revisions to Standard 509, requiring that law schools post a chart identifying the number of conditional scholarships given to incoming first years and the number of those scholarship recipients whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated at the end of the first year.

As a result of this requirement, there is now a much greater universe of publicly available information about law school scholarship programs. In the summer of 2013, I posted to SSRN an article entitled Better Understanding the Scope of Conditional Scholarship Programs among American Law Schools, summarizing the first year of available data on conditional scholarship programs, covering the 2011-12 academic year.

Law schools have now published this data for four years, with data covering the 2014-15 academic year having just been released as of December 15.

This blog posting highlights the smaller number of law schools with conditional scholarship programs as of 2014-15, summarizes the extent to which the number and percentage of first-year students with conditional scholarships and the number and percentage of rising second-year students whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated has changed since 2011-12, and looks at how the distribution of retention rates by decile has changed since 2011-12. It also analyzes both the prevalence of conditional scholarship programs among law schools across different rankings categories and the extent to which scholarship retention rates differ among law schools across different rankings categories.

1. Number of Law Schools with Conditional Scholarship Programs Declines

Excluding the three law schools in Puerto Rico, there were 140 fully-accredited ABA law schools with conditional scholarship programs in 2011-12. For the 2014-15 academic year, however, the number of fully-accredited ABA law schools with conditional scholarship programs had dropped by 27, to 113, a decline of nearly 20%.

2. Average Conditional Scholarship Retention Rate Increases Modestly

In 2011-12, the average scholarship retention rate across the 140 law schools with conditional scholarship programs was 69%. In total, 12,681 students who entered law school in the fall of 2011 and continued into their second year of law school at the same school entered with conditional scholarships and 4,332 of those students had their scholarships reduced or eliminated, a retention rate across individual students of roughly 66%.

For the 2014-15 academic year, the average retention rate across the 113 law schools with conditional scholarship programs increased to 73.2%. In total, 10,099 students who entered law school in the fall of 2014 and continued into their second year of law school at the same school entered with conditional scholarships and 2,880 of those students had their scholarships reduced or eliminated. Thus, the retention rate across individual students also increased to roughly 71.5%.

3. Percentage of First-Year Students with Conditional Scholarships Stays the Same While the Percentage of Rising Second-Year Students Whose Scholarships were Reduced or Eliminated Declines Slightly 

Across the 194 law schools on which I compiled data for the 2011-12 academic year, the fall 2011 entering first-year class totaled 46,388. Thus, roughly 27.3% (12,681/46,388) of the entering first-year students in the fall 2011 entering first-year class were on conditional scholarships. Roughly 9.4% (4,382/46,388) of all the first-year students in the fall 2011 entering first-year class failed to retain their conditional scholarship as they moved into the second year of law school.

Interestingly, of the 37,086 first-years who matriculated at fully-accredited ABA law schools in fall 2014, roughly 27.2% (10,099/37,086) were on conditional scholarships, almost the exact same percentage as in 2011-12. But a smaller percentage, roughly 7.8% (2,880/37,086) of all the first-year students who entered law school in fall 2014 failed to retain their conditional scholarship as they moved into the second year of law school.

Therefore, even though fewer law schools had conditional scholarship programs, those with such programs offered conditional scholarships to a larger percentage of students, such that the overall percentage of students with conditional scholarships remained roughly the same (27.3% in 2011-12 compared with 27.2% in 2014-15). Nonetheless, because there was a modest increase in retention rates, a smaller percentage of the overall population of students (7.8% in 2015 compared with 9.4% in 2012) saw their conditional scholarships reduced or eliminated.

4. Distribution of Retention Rates by Decile Shows Fewer Schools with Lower Retention Rates

The distribution of retention rates by deciles across all 140 law schools reporting conditional scholarship programs for 2011-2012 and all 113 law schools reporting conditional scholarship programs for 2014-2015 is set forth in Table 1. The biggest change reflected Table 1 is the decrease in the number of law schools with retention rates of less than 70%, falling from 73 in 2011-12 to 40 in 2014-15.

Table 1: Number of Law Schools Reporting Retention Rates by Decile Range

Retention Rate	Number		Description
	2012      2015		2012                                     2015
Less than 40%	8	6	Four of the eight were ranked alphabetically	Five of the six were ranked 100 or lower
40-49%	12	4	Six of the 12 were law schools ranked between 50 and 99	Two of the four were ranked 51-99
50-59%	23	17	18 of the 23 were law schools ranked 99 or lower	14 of the 17 were ranked 100 or lower
60-69%	30	13	23 the 30 were ranked in 100 or lower	Nine of the 13 were ranked 100 or lower
70-79%	23	23	13 of the 23 were ranked in the top 100	17 of the 23 were ranked 100 or lower
80-90%	19	24	14 of the 19 were ranked between 51 and 145	10 of the 24 were ranked 51-99
90% or better	25	26	12 of the 25 were ranked in the top 50	14 of the 26 were ranked in the top 100, five in the top 50
TOTAL	140	113

5. Differences in Conditional Scholarship Programs across Law School Rankings Categories

As noted in some of the descriptors in Table 1, there also were some differences based on the rankings of the law schools in U.S. News, using the March 2012 rankings and the March 2015 rankings. These differences are summarized in the Tables 2A and 2B and the discussion that follows.

Table 2A – Changes in Number and Percentage of First-Year Students with Conditional Scholarships across Different Categories of Law Schools Based on U.S. News Rankings for 2012 and 2015

Rank	# of Schools		# of Schools with Cond. Scholar. 12        15		% of Schools with Cond. Scholar. 12     15		# of 1Ls 12        15		# of 1Ls with Conditional Scholarships 12         15		.% of 1Ls with Cond. Scholar. 12          15
Top 50	50	51	20	10	40	20	13109	11715	1656	814	12.8	6.9
51/100	50	50	40	31	80	62	11592	8972	4179	3159	36	35.2
101/150	46	52	36	38	78	73	9293	7899	2803	2997	30.1	37.9
Alpha.	48	42	44	34	92	81	12394	8500	4043	3129	32.6	36.8
TOTAL	194	195	140	113	72	58	46388	37086	12681	10099	27.3	27.2

Table 2A shows that the percentage of fully-accredited ABA law schools with conditional scholarship programs increases as you move down the U.S. News Rankings. Indeed, of the 27 law schools that moved away from conditional scholarship programs between 2011-12 and 2014-15, 19 were ranked in the top 100. As a result, only 41 of the top 100 law schools had conditional scholarship programs as of 2014-15, while 72 law schools ranked 101 or lower had conditional scholarship programs.

Table 2A also shows that the percentage of students with conditional scholarships is basically divided into two camps. Within the top 50 law schools, only 10 law schools have conditional scholarship programs, and five of those have retention rates of 100%, such that really only five of the 51 law schools in the top 50 have meaningful conditional scholarship programs. (At these five schools, however, roughly one in three students with conditional scholarships saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated.) Across all 51 law schools in the top 50, only 6.9% of first-year students have conditional scholarships. Throughout the rest of the law schools, however, roughly 35% to 38% of first-year law students in each rankings category have conditional scholarships.

Even though the percentage of first-year students with conditional scholarships declined among top 50 law schools between 2011-12 and 2014-15, the percentage increased among law schools ranked 101 and below, such that the overall percentage of first-year students with conditional scholarship has remained almost the same between 2011-12 and 2014-15, at slightly more than 27%.

Table 2B – Changes in Retention Rates of Conditional Scholarship Recipients across Different Categories of Law Schools Based on U.S. News and World Report Rankings for 2012 and 2015

Rank	# Scholarships Not Retained 12            15		% of Scholarships Not Retained. 12           15		% of All 1Ls Who Did Not Retain Scholarship 12            15
Top 50	186	167	11.2	20.5	1.4	1.4
51/100	1452	672	34.7	21.3	12.5	7.5
101/150	1069	917	38.1	30.6	11.5	11.6
Alpha.	1625	1124	40.2	35.9	13.1	13.2
TOTAL	4332	2880	34.2	28.5	9.4	7.8

Table 2B shows that the percentage of all students whose conditional scholarships were reduced or eliminated in 2014-15 consistently climbs as one moves down the rankings categories – going from 1.4% among law schools ranked in the top 50, to 7.5% for law schools ranked 51-100, to 11.6% for law schools ranked 101-150, to 13.2% for law schools ranked alphabetically.

Table 2B shows that among law schools ranked in the top 50, the average percentage of conditional scholarship recipients whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated increased between 2011-12 and 2014-15 from 11.2% to 20.5%. (But remember, this is across a relatively small sample of 10 schools and 814 students.) By contrast, across each of the other three categories of law schools, the average percentage of conditional scholarship recipients whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated declined between 2011-12 and 2014-15, from 34.7% to 21.3% among schools ranked 51-100, from 38.1% to 30.6% among schools ranked 101-150, and from 40.2% to 35.9% among law schools ranked alphabetically.

Nonetheless, law schools ranked 51-100 were the only category of law schools which saw a decrease in the percentage of all rising second-year students whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated, as the percentage fell from 12.5% to 7.5%. For top 50 law schools, the combination of fewer students with conditional scholarships, but a higher rate at which scholarships were reduced or eliminated, meant that 1.4% of all students saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated, the same percentage as in 2011-12. For law schools ranked 101 and below, the combination of more students with conditional scholarships, but a lower rate at which scholarships were reduced or eliminated, meant that roughly the same percentage of all students saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated in 2014-15 as in 2011-12 (for law schools ranked 101-150, 11.6% in 2014-15 compared with 11.5% in 2011-12; for law schools ranked alphabetically, 13.2% in 2014-15 compared with 13.1% in 2011-12).  Because of the decrease in the percentage of students whose scholarships were reduced or eliminated in the category of law schools ranked 51-100, however, the percentage of all students who saw their scholarships reduced or eliminated fell from 9.4% in 2011-12 to 7.8% in 2014-15.

Conclusion

Even though 27 fewer law schools had conditional scholarship programs in 2014-15 than in 2011-12, the percentage of all first-year students on conditional scholarships in 2014-15 was nearly the same as in 2011-12 because the 113 schools with conditional scholarship programs, on average, gave conditional scholarships to a larger percentage of their students.

Only 20 percent of law schools in the top 50 have conditional scholarship programs and only 10 percent actually reduced or eliminated scholarships for some of their students. Outside the top 50 law schools, however, more than two-thirds of law schools have conditional scholarship programs and roughly 36.5% of all law students have conditional scholarships. This means more than one-third of first-year students in law schools ranked 51 and below in the U.S. News 2015 rankings needed to be concerned about whether they would perform well enough to retain their conditional scholarships.

Updating the Transfer Market Analysis for 2015

This blog posting updates my blog postings here and here of December 2014 regarding what we know about the transfer market. With the release of the 2015 Standard 509 Reports, we know have two years of more detailed transfer data from which to glean insights about the transfer market among law schools.

NUMBERS AND PERCENTAGES OF TRANSFERS – 2011-2015

The number of transfers dropped to 1,979 in 2015, down from 2,187 in 2014 and 2,501 in 2013. The percentage of the previous fall’s entering class that engaged in the transfer market also dropped slightly to 5.2%, down from 5.5% in 2014 and 5.6% in 2013. In other words, there is no reason to believe the transfer market is “growing” as a general matter. It has been fairly consistently in the 4.6% to 5.6% range for the last five years, with an average of 5.2%

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Number of Transfers	2427	2438	2501	2187	1979
Previous Year First Year Enrollment	52,500	48,700	44,500	39700	37900
%   of Previous First-Year Total	4.6%	5%	5.6%	5.5%	5.2%

SOME LAW SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE TRANSFER MARKET

The following two charts list the top 15 law schools in terms of receiving transfer students in descending order in Summer 2013 (fall 2012 entering class), Summer 2014 (fall 2013 entering class), and Summer 2015 (fall 2014 entering class) – with one chart based on “numbers” of transfers and the other chart based on the number of transfer students as a percentage of the prior year’s first-year class.

Note that in these two charts, the “repeat players” are bolded – those schools in the top 15 for all three years are in black, those schools in the top 15 for two of the three years are in blue.   Seven of the top ten by number in 2015 and seven of the top ten by percentage 2015 have been among the top 15 on each list for all three years.

Largest Law Schools by Number of Transfers from 2013-2015

School	Number in 2013	School	bNumber in 2014	School	Number in 2015
Georgetown	122	Georgetown	113	Georgetown	110
George   Wash.	93	George Wash.	97	George Wash.	109
Florida   St.	90	Arizona St.	66	Arizona St.	65
Emory	75	Idaho	57	Harvard	55
Arizona   State	73	Cal. Berkeley	55	Emory	51
American	68	NYU	53	NYU	51
Texas	59	Emory	50	Cal. Berkeley	49
Columbia	52	Columbia	46	Rutgers	45
NYU	47	American	44	Columbia	44
Minnesota	45	UCLA	44	Miami	44
Arizona	44	Wash. Univ.	44	UCLA	43
Northwestern	44	Texas	43	Texas	37
UCLA	41	Minnesota	37	American	33
Cardozo	38	Northwestern	35	Florida St.	32
Southern   Cal.	37	Harvard	33	Minnesota	31
TOTAL	928		817		799
% of All Transfers	37.1%		37.4%		40.4%

 

Largest Law Schools by Transfers as a Percentage of Previous First Year Class - 2013-2015

School	% 2013	School	% 2014	School	% 2015
Florida State	48.1	Arizona State	51.6	Arizona State	45.5
Arizona State	48	Idaho	51.4	Emory	22.9
Utah	34.7	Washington Univ.	23.3	George Wash.	20.2
Emory	29.6	Emory	22.9	Miami	19.2
Arizona	28.9	Georgetown	20.8	Georgetown	19
Minnesota	22	George Wash.	20.2	Cal. Berkeley	17.9
George Wash.	21.8	Cal. Berkeley	19.4	Florida St.	17
Georgetown	21.2	Florida St.	18.2	Florida Int’l	16.7
Rutgers – Camden	20.7	Rutgers – Camden	17.1	Minnesota	16.1
Southern Cal.	19.7	Southern Cal.	17.1	Utah	16
Texas	19.1	Minnesota	16.7	UNLV	14.3
Cincinnati	17.5	Utah	15.9	UCLA	13.7
Northwestern	17.1	Northwestern	15.3	Texas	12.3
Washington Univ.	15.4	UCLA	15	Chicago	12.1
Univ. Washington	15.3	Seton Hall	14.5	Rutgers	12.1

Interestingly, the number of law schools welcoming transfers representing more than 20% of their first-year class has fallen from nine in 2013 to only three in 2015.

Nonetheless, as shown in the following chart, we are continuing to see a modest increase in concentration in the transfer market between 2011 and 2015 as the ten law schools with the most students transferring in captured an increasing share of the transfer market, from 23.5% in 2011 to 31.5% in 2015.  Nearly one-third of all transfers in 2015 transferred to one of the ten schools with the most transfers.

Top Ten Law Schools as a Percentage of All Transfers

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Total Transfers	2427	2438	2501	2187	1979
Transfers to 10 Law Schools with Most Transfers	570	587	724	625	623
Transfers to 10 Law Schools with Most Transfers as % of Total Transfers	23.5%	24.1%	28.9%	28.6%	31.5%

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL MARKETS

Starting in 2014, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar began collecting and requiring schools with more than twelve transfers in to report not only the number of students who have transferred in, but also the law schools from which they came (indicating the number from each law school) along with the 75%, 50% and 25% first-year, law school GPAs of the students who transferred in. This allows us to look at where students are coming from and are going to, and to look at the first-year GPA profile of students transferring in to different law schools. The following chart focuses on the top 15 law schools in terms of transfers in for 2015 presented in descending USNews ranking. It indicates the extent to which these law schools were attracting transfers from their geographic region and also identifies the law school that provided the largest number of transfers to each listed law school as well as the percentage of transfers that came from that school.

Percentage of Transfers from Within Geographic Region and Top Feeder School(s)

School	# of Transfers 14/15	Region	Regional # of Transfers 14/15	Regional % of Transfers 14/15	School from Which Largest Number of Transfers Came in 2015	#/% of Transfers
Harvard	33/55	NE	6/15	18/27	GWU	6/11%
Columbia	46/44	NE	19/19	41/43	Wash. Univ.	5/11%
NYU	50/51	NE	20/15	40/29	Georgetown	7/14%
Berkeley	55/49	CA	43/29	78/59	Hastings	19/39%
Georgetown	113/110	Mid-Atl	49/43	43/39	GWU	11/10%
Texas	43/37	TX	27/22	63/59	Texas Tech	6/16%
UCLA	44/43	CA	31/26	70/60	Hastings	9/21%
Emory	53/51	SE	40/31	75/61	Atlanta’s   John Marshall	11/22%
Minnesota	37/31	MW	21/17	57/55	Hamline	9/29%
GWU	97/109	Mid-Atl	78/70	80/64	American	44/40%
Azizona St.	66/65	SW	51/48	77/74	Arizona Sum.	47/72%
Florida St.	31/32	SE	24/27	77/84	Florida Coastal	11/34%
Miami	29/44	SE	21/27	72/61	St. Thomas	12/27%
American	44/33	Mid-Atl	14/6	32/18	Charleston	3/9%
Rutgers*	45	NE	29	64	Widener-Delaware	10/22%

*Rutgers is a unified school as of 2015, but for 2014 reported data separately for the Newark campus and the Camden campus, so this only reports the 2015 data.

For these top 15 law schools for transfer students in 2015, 10 schools obtained most of their transfers (55% or more) from within the geographic region within which the law school is located, while five schools (Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown and American) had fewer than 45% of their transfers from within the region in which they are located.  Interestingly, 11 of the 14 law schools with data for both 2014 and 2015 saw a decline in the percentage of transfers from within the region in which the law school is located. Only two law schools in 2015 had more than 70% of their transfers from within the region in which the law school is located (Arizona State and Florida State), down from seven such law schools in 2014.

Moreover, several law schools had a significant percentage of their transfers from one particular feeder school.  For Miami, roughly 34% of its transfers came from St. Thomas University (Florida); for Berkeley, roughly 39% of its transfers came from Hastings; for George Washington, 40% of its transfers came from American; and for Arizona State, 72% of its transfers came from Arizona Summit.

The chart below shows the tiers of law schools from which the largest 15 law schools in the transfer market received their transfer students.  Ten of the top 15 law schools for transfers are ranked in the top 20 in USNews, but of those 10, only six had 75% or more of their transfers from schools ranked between 1 and 99 in the USNews rankings – Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Berkeley, UCLA and George Washington.  Two additional schools, Georgetown and Texas, had at least 50% of their transfers from schools ranked between 1 and 99.  The remaining two law schools ranked in the top 20 in USNews (Emory and Minnesota) and the other five law schools in the list had at least half of their transfer students from law schools ranked 100 or lower, with five of those law schools having 75% or more of their transfers from law schools ranked 100 or lower. 

In addition, it shows that as you move down the rankings of law schools that are large players in the transfer market, the general trend in first-year law school GPA shows a significant decline, with several schools taking a number of transfers with first-year GPAs below a 3.0, including Minnesota, Arizona State, Florida State, Miami and American.

 Percentage of Transfers from Different Tiers of School(s) for 2014 and 2015 Along With First-Year Law School GPA 75^th/50^th/25^th)

(In each column, the number on the left is the 2014 number and the number on the right is the 2015 number.)

(Highlighted cells indicate the modal response for each law school.)

(Color-coding of GPA data Reflects increases (Green) or decreases (Red) of .05 or more points.)

	# of Transfers	Rank Top 50    #              %		Rank 51-99    #              %		Rank 100+    #              %		GPA 75th	GPA 50th	GPA 25th
Harvard	33/55	23/41	70/75	10/13	30/24	0/1	0/2	3.95/3.98	3.9/3.92	3.83/3.85
Columbia	46/44	29/30	63/68	14/10	30/23	3/4	7/9	3.81/3.82	3.75/3.76	3.69/3.66
NYU	50/51	41/40	82/78	7/10	14/20	2/1	4/2	3.74/3.76	3.62/3.68	3.47/3.52
Berkeley	55/49	17/15	31/31	27/26	49/53	11/8	20/16	3.9/3.87	3.75/3.81	3.68/3.69
Georgetown	113/110	27/30	24/27	38/30	34/27	48/50	42/45	3.77/3.77	3.67/3.66	3.55/3.59
Texas	43/37	17/10	40/27	13/13	30/35	13/14	30/38	3.62/3.6	3.45/3.46	3.11/3.32
UCLA	44/43	15/15	34/35	23/23	52/53	6/5	14/12	3.73/3.7	3.58/3.58	3.44/3.46
Emory	53/51	3/5	6/10	7/8	13/16	43/38	81/75	3.42/3.45	3.27/3.3	2.93/3.06
GWU	97/109	13/21	13/19	73/63	75/58	11/25	11/23	3.53/3.46	3.35/3.32	3.21/3.15
Minnesota	37/31	4/6	11/19	12/7	32/23	21/18	57/58	3.3/3.43	3.1/3.12	2.64/2.96
Arizona St.	66/65	4/0	6/0	5/6	8/9	57/59	86/91	3.51/3.5	3.23/3.17	2.97/2.95
Florida St.	31/32	2/0	6/0	4/2	13/6	25/30	81/94	3.29/3.32	3.1/3.14	2.9/2.96
Miami	29/44	1/3	3/7	4/7	14/16	24/34	83/77	3.3/3.26	3.07/3.05	2.87/2.9
American	44/33	2/0	5/0	14/1	32/3	28/32	64/97	3.25/3.04	2.94/2.89	2.78/2.74
Rutgers	45	0	0	2	4	43	96	/3.29	/3.05	/2.75

STILL MANY UNKNOWNS

As I noted last year, this more detailed transfer data should be very helpful to prospective law students and pre-law advisors, and to current law students who are considering transferring.  This data gives them a better idea of what transfer opportunities might be available depending upon where they go to law school (or are presently enrolled as a first-year student).

Even with this more granular data now available, however, there still are a significant number of unknowns relating to transfer students.  In an upcoming post, I will touch on some questions that remain unanswered about the transfer market as well as a few other aspects of the transfer experience.

The Opaqueness of Bar Passage Data and the Need for Greater Transparency

There has been a great deal of discussion lately over at The Faculty Lounge regarding declines in law school admissions standards, declines in bar passage rates, and the general relationship between LSAT scores and bar passage. Much of this discussion is clouded by the lack of meaningful data regarding bar passage results.  In this blog posting I will delineate several questions that just cannot be answered meaningfully based on the presently available bar passage data.

The national first-time bar passage rate among graduates of ABA-accredited law schools fell significantly in 2014. According to the NCBE’s statistics, the average pass rate from 2007-2013 for July first-time test-takers from ABA-accredited law schools was 83.6%, but fell to 78% in 2014. (2015 data won’t be available until next Spring when it is released by the NCBE.)

While there might be some reasons to believe these results were somewhat aberrational given that the objective criteria of the entering class in 2011 was only modestly less robust than the objective criteria of the entering class in 2010, and given the ExamSoft debacle with the July 2014 bar exam, the results are concerning, given that the objective criteria of the entering classes in 2012, 2013 and 2014 showed continued erosion. As the last two years have seen declines in the median MBE scaled score among those taking the July bar exam, the changes in entering class credentials over time suggest further declines in median MBE scaled scores (and bar passage rates) may be on the horizon.

In 2010, there were roughly 1,800 matriculants nationwide with LSATs of 144 or less. In 2012, there were roughly 2,600 matriculants nationwide with LSATs of 144 or less. In 2014, there were roughly 3,200 matriculants nationwide with LSATs of 144 or less. Recognizing that law school grades will be a better predictor of bar passage than LSAT scores, I think it is safe to say that entering law students with LSATs in this range are more likely than entering law students with higher LSATs to struggle on the bar exam.  Because the number of those entering law school with LSAT scores of 144 or less has grown substantially (particularly as a percentage of the entering class, more than doubling from less than 4% in 2010 to more than 8% in 2014), many are concerned that bar passage rates will continue to decline in the coming years.

While there has been a great deal of discussion regarding declines in admission standards and corresponding declines in bar passage standards, this discussion is profoundly limited because the lack of meaningful bar passage data presently provided by state boards of law examiners and by the ABA and ABA-accredited law schools means that we do not have answers to several important questions that would inform this discussion.

1. What number/percentage of graduates from each law school (and collectively across law schools) sits for the bar exam in July following graduation and in the following February? Phrased differently, what number/percentage of graduates do not take a bar exam in the year following graduation?

This is a profoundly important set of questions as we look at employment outcomes and the number/percentage of graduates employed in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions. Given that only those who pass the bar exam can be in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions, it would be helpful to know the number/percentage of graduates who “sought” eligibility for such positions by taking a bar exam and the number/percentage of graduates who did not seek such eligibility. It also would be helpful to understand whether there are significant variations across law schools in terms of the number of graduates who take a bar exam (or do not take a bar exam) and whether those who do not take a bar exam are distributed throughout the graduating class at a given law school or are concentrated among those at the bottom of the graduating class. At present, however, this information simply is not available.

2. What is the first-time, bar passage rate for graduates from ABA-accredited law schools?

One might think this would be known as ABA-accredited law schools are required to report first-time bar passage results. But the way in which first-time bar passage results are reported makes the data relatively unhelpful. Law schools are not required to report first-time bar passage for all graduates or even for all graduates who took a bar exam. Rather, law schools are only required to report first-time bar passage results for at least 70% of the total number of graduates each year. This means we do not know anything about first-time bar passage results for up to 30% of graduates of a given law school. Across all law schools, reported results account for roughly 84% of graduates, leaving a not insignificant margin of error with respect to estimating bar passage rates.

People would have been flabbergasted if the ABA had required reporting of employment outcomes for only 70% of graduates. Now that the ABA is requiring reporting on employment outcomes for all graduates, there is no good reason why the ABA should not be requiring bar passage accounting for all graduates, requiring law schools to note those who didn't take a bar exam, those who took and passed a bar exam, those who took and failed a bar exam, and those for whom bar status is unknown.  (Up until recently, some boards of law examiners were not reporting results to law schools, but my understanding is that the number of state boards of law examiners not reporting results to law schools is now fairly small.)

Notably, for 2011, 2012, and 2013, the average bar passage rate for first-time takers from all ABA-accredited law schools based on data reported by the law schools was consistently higher than the data reported by NCBE for the corresponding years (2011 – 83.8% v. 82%, 2012 – 81.8% v. 79%, 2013 – 82.4% v. 81%. (Moreover, first-time takers are not measured equivalently by the ABA and by the NCBE. The ABA reporting requirement focuses on graduates who took any bar exam for the first-time. The NCBE defines as first-time takers any person taking a bar exam in a given jurisdiction for the first-time. Thus, the NCBE set of first-time takers is broader, as it includes some people taking a bar exam for the second time (having taken the bar exam in another jurisdiction previously).

3. What is the “ultimate” bar passage rate for graduates from ABA-accredited law schools?

Even though a number of commenters have noted that “ultimate” bar passage is more important than first-time bar passage, there is no publicly available data indicating the ultimate bar passage rate on a law school by law school basis for the graduates of each ABA-accredited law school. What number/percentage of graduates of a given law school who take a bar exam pass after the second attempt? What number/percentage of graduates of a given law school who take a bar exam pass after the third attempt? What number/percentage of graduates of a given law school never pass a bar exam? This information just is not publicly available at present.

While Standard 316, the bar passage accreditation standard, allows schools to meet the standard by demonstrating that 75% or more of those graduates who sat for a bar exam in the five most recent calendar years passed a bar exam, this “ultimate” bar passage data is not publicly disseminated. Thus, while first-time bar passage data is limited and incomplete for the reasons noted above, “ultimate” bar passage data on a law school by law school basis is actually not available.

The modest amount of information available on “ultimate” bar passage rates is not very helpful.  The LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study contains some analysis of "ultimate" bar passage rates, but it focused on the entering class in the fall of 1991, which it described as being “among the most academically able ever to enter” law school based on entering class statistics (page 14), a description that could not be used with the classes that have entered in the last year or two or three. It also does not contain any information about "ultimate" bar passage for graduates of individual law schools.  In addition, Law School Transparency has recently received some information from at least one law school that has requested anonymity. Much better “ultimate” bar passage information is needed to better inform many of the discussions about the relationship between entering class credentials and bar passage.

4. How can we compare bar passage results from one jurisdiction to another?

Most state boards of law examiners do not present data regarding bar passage that allows reasonable bases for analyzing the results in ways that provide meaningful insight and a meaningful basis for comparison. Fewer than one-third of states publicly provide information in which a delineation is made between first-time takers and repeat takers on a law school by law school basis and only a few of these provide information about MBE scores on a school by school basis. Accordingly, it is very difficult to make meaningful comparisons of year-over-year results in the months following the July bar exam, because data is rarely reported in a consistent manner. The NCBE does provide statistics annually (in the spring) which includes a delineation of bar passage rates by state based on first-time test takers from ABA-accredited schools, but the NCBE does not provide MBE scores on a state by state basis (although it seemingly should be able to do this).

Conclusion

There is a need for much greater transparency in bar passage data from boards of law examiners and from the ABA and ABA-accredited law schools. It well may be that some law schools would be a more meaningful investment for "at-risk" students, those whose entering credentials might suggest they are at risk of failing the bar exam, because those law schools have done a better job of helping "at risk" students learn the law so that they are capable of passing the bar exam at higher rates than graduates of other law schools with comparable numbers of at risk students. It may well be that some jurisdictions provide "at risk" students a greater likelihood of passing the bar exam.  At the moment, however, that information just isn’t available. Much of the disagreement among various commentators about the relationships between admission standards and bar passage rates could be resolved with greater transparency – with the availability of much better data regarding bar passage results.

Part IV: Alumni Surveys, The Varied Career Paths of Law School Graduates

This is Part IV of a blog series that focuses on alumni surveys based on data for Northeastern Law alumni who graduated between 1971 and 2012 (n = 833, 21% response rate).  Prior posts covered data related to the pre-law (Part II) and law school (Part III) experience.  This final installment summarizes data on the careers of Northeastern alumni. 

Varied Careers

One of the most significant post-law school findings from the Northeastern alumni survey is the sheer breadth of careers.  Sure, we all know in a general sense that lawyers have very diverse careers, yet I found the sheer magnitude of that diversity both striking and surprising.

Below is a graphic that summarizes the percentage of Northeastern alumni who have worked in a particular practice settings,by decade of graduation.

% Alumni/ae who have worked in Practice Setting, by Decade of Graduation

To interpret this graphic [click on to enlarge], it is important to understand the composition of the underlying data.  The survey question asks, “Describe your previous employment history starting with your most recent employer first.”  Some graduates have only one job to report -- the one they started after graduation; others have had many.  These jobs are then classified by practice setting and binned into the six categories shown in the above graphic.  Note that bars total well beyond 100%. Why?  Because alumni are changing not just jobs, but also practice settings—on average, at least once, but sometimes two, three, or even four times over the course of several decades.

The graphic above conveys several significant pieces of information:

General point.  Legal careers are extremely varied.  As it has tightened up, the entry level market has become an area of intense scrutiny, and rightly so because it affects early career lawyers and law school applicant volume.  In contrast, the chart above reflects the longer view. It suggests that very able, motivated people who attend law school go on to varied careers that no one could have predicted at the time of enrollment, including--most significantly--the entering student.  These generational cohorts are a versatile group that comprise a disproportionate number of leaders in industry, government, and the nonprofit world.  Law schools cannot take full credit for this; we admit people of enormous potential.  Yet many alumni tell me that their legal training and knowledge has given them an enormous leg up. One law grad who is now a successful business executive recently asked me, "Why is it JD-advantaged? Why not the advantage of the JD?" 

Northeastern.  It is somewhat surprising that for Northeastern alumni who graduated during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, 48% have worked in government.  That is a big number.  Northeastern’s mission and faculty emphasize public service. This same emphasis appears to be reflected in the careers of its graduates.

Changing Legal Ecosystem.  As noted in Posts II and III, because the Northeastern alumni survey spans multiple decades, it is possible that responses will be influenced by changes in the underlying legal economy. Stated simply, career opportunities and competition may have changed substantially between 1971 and 2012.  Such a pattern appears to be present here.  Specifically, 30% or more of graduates of the 1990s and 2000s have worked in private industry compared to 24% or less for those graduating in the 1970s and 80s.  This would be consistent with the incomplete absorption theory discussed in Part III.  See also Henderson, “Is the Legal Profession Showing its Age,” LWB, Oct 12, 2015.

Practicing versus Non-Practicing Lawyers

Another significant finding that flows from the Northeastern alumni survey are the workplace experiences of practicing versus non-practicing lawyers. 

Approximately 25% of respondents were not practicing lawyers but working, with no significant difference by decade cohort. The chart below compares these two groups based on 19 dimensions of workplace satisfaction. The question is drawn directly from the AJD Wave III:  “How satisfied are you with the following aspects of your current position?” 

Dimensions of Workplace Satisfaction, Practicing vs. Non-Practicing Lawyer

 

Choices ranged from 1 (highly dissatisfied) to 7 (highly satisfied).  The chart above summarizes the differential between the two groups.  For example, on Intellectual Challenge, we subtracted the non-practicing attorney average from the practicing attorney average.  The result is +.35 difference for practicing attorneys, meaning that they are more likely to find intellectual challenge in their work.  Likewise, the same results holds for the substance of one's work.  

In contrast, on workplace diversity, non-practicing lawyers were significantly more satisfied – on average, roughly 2/3 of a response point.  In fact, non-practicing lawyers were more likely to rate their workplaces higher on several surprising factors, including social value of work, performance reviews, work/life balance, and pro bono opportunities.

Can we generalize from these findings?

The results presented in this blog series reflect the collective experience of one law school’s alumni base – Northeastern.  There is no way to know if these results can be fairly generalized to the larger law graduate population, though there is a reasonable basis to believe that at least some of them can (e.g., the changing ecology of the legal job economy).  Yet, why speculate when the cost of collecting and analyzing the data is going down and the value of such applied research is going up?

Let me reiterate my suggestion from Part I that a consortium of law schools should begin this effort under the aegis of the American Bar Foundation (the prime architect of the AJD Project).  Northeastern has agreed to donate the survey and research tools we created as part of the Outcomes Assessment Project.   Such an initiative would enable researchers to draw stronger conclusions from these data, including potentially laudatory school-level effects that can help the rest of legal education. 

I have been researching legal education for many years.  I have spent enough time with alumni at Indiana Law, Northeastern Law, and several other law schools to gain a strong impression that law school graduates are having, on balance, important, satisfying and high-impact careers.  Further, there is strong evidence that the legal industry is undergoing a significant structural change – that is much of what the Legal Whiteboard catalogs.  This structural change topic is of great interest to prospective students, lawyers, and the mainstream press.  Yet, these two themes--the careers of alumni and structural change--are related. 

If legal education wants to influence the narrative on the value of the JD degree, it is far better to rely on data rather than rhetoric.  My sense is that data on our alumni will tell a rich, balanced story that will enable us to make better decisions for all stakeholders, including prospective law students. Further, if we don’t gather high quality facts, we can expect to get outflanked by a blogosphere and a mainstream press that are armed with little more than anecdotes.  To a large extent, that is already happening.  Now is the time to catch up.

Credits

This blog post series would not have been possible without the dedication and world-class expertise of my colleague, Evan Parker PhD, Director of Analytics at Lawyer Metrics.  Evan generated all the graphics for the Northeastern Alumni/ae Survey and was indispensable in the subsequent analysis. He is a highly talented applied statistician who specializes in data visualization.  Evan, thanks for you great work!

For other “Varied Career Path” findings, see the full Alumni/ae Survey Report at the OAP website. 

Links:

Part I:  What Can We Learn by Studying Law School Alumni? A Case Study of One Law School

Part II, Alumni Surveys, Before-Law School

Part III: Alumni Surveys, During Law School

Part III: Alumni Surveys, Responses on the Law School Experience

Part II of this blog series reported that the top motivations to attend law school have remained the same for over four decades, at least for Northeastern University School of Law (NUSL).  Alumni reported the same underlying desire: to build a satisfying, intellectually challenging career where they could help individuals and improve society. This may be an image forged by pop culture and the idealism of youth, but it is also likely sincere.  It is the better side of our human nature. 

Part II also showed two motivations to attend law school – the desire for “transferable skills” and “eventual financial security"-- that did appear to be shifting over time.  I suggested that these shifts are more likely about a changing ecosystem than a fundamental shift in the type of people applying to law school.  

A similar ecological theme can be observed in the "During Law School" data. For example, since its reopening in 1968, Northeastern Law has required every graduate to complete four 11-week cooperative placements, usually in four different practice settings (e.g., government agency, public defender, large firm, public interest organization). As noted in Part I, students can be paid during co-op because it is a university rather than an ABA requirement. Cf. Karen Sloan, “The ABA says No to Paid Student Externships,” Nat’l L J, June 10, 2014.

One series of questions in the alumni survey specifically focused on the co-op experience, including co-op quality, what was learned, and whether they were paid.  The chart below reveals a steady, four-decade decline in the number of paid co-ops.

 

In the early 1970s, essentially all four co-ops were paid.  By the mid-80s, the average was down to three. Since the 2000s, the average has been two or fewer paid co-ops.

To my mind, the above trendline is compelling evidence of a steady, systemic shift in the legal ecosystem. I have written about this pattern in the past, suggesting that the rate of absorption of law grads into the licensed bar has been going down since the 1980s.  See Henderson, “Is the Legal Profession Showing its Age,” LWB, Oct 12, 2014 (noting that between 1980 and 2005, the average age of licensed lawyers increased from 39 to 49).  

When I saw this downward trendline for the first time, I recalled my numerous interviews with NUSL alumni/ae from the 1970s. In describing their co-ops, they spoke of opportunities that were plentiful and varied. I often heard the refrain, “I paid for law school mostly with my income from co-op.”  Note that during the 1970s, graduating from college was much less prevalent than today.  Law firms were also growing, with 1970 becoming a major inflection point in the rise of the large law firm. See Galanter & Palay, Tournament of Lawyers (1991) (seminal text collecting and analyzing data on the growth of large firms).

The trendline on paid co-ops also made me rethink what I heard from NUSL co-op employers. The school has roughly 900 employers who regularly or semi-regularly participate in co-op.  I heard several regular employers express strong preferences for “third or fourth co-ops." Why?  Because third or fourth co-op students already had significant legal experience and needed less training to be valuable to the employer.  Training is costly. Even if the trainee is unpaid, the lawyer-as-teacher is expending their own valuable time.  If an employer is going to provide training, they need a way to recapture that investment. Unpaid labor for eleven weeks is one potential way; if the labor is already partially trained, that is even better.

Unfortunately, doing a great job for a co-op employer does not guarantee permanent employment or even a modest wage for temporary work.  The legal ecosystem does not reliably and consistently support those outcomes. Yet, 20, 30, or 40 years ago, the dynamics were far more favorable. 

Obviously, in the year 2015, law grads are having a difficult time finding permanent, long-term professional employment (bar passage-required, JD-advantaged, or non-legal professional jobs).  The shortage of high-quality entry level jobs has given rise to criticisms that legal education needs more practical training.  The implicit assumption is that such a change will cure the underemployment problem.  I am skeptical that is true. 

A more likely explanation for law grad underemployment is that the supply of trained lawyers is in excess of demand, partially due to demographics and partially due to the inability of most citizens to afford several hours of a lawyer's time.  This is a very difficult problem to fix. But misdiagnosing the problem does not help.

To the extent a legal employer is looking for a practice-ready law grad, Northeastern’s co-op model is as likely to deliver that outcome as anything else I have observed.  My in-depth review for how co-op affects professional development is written up in OAP Research Bulletin No. 3.  Ironically, what may be the best practice-ready model among ABA-accredited law schools is a 50-year old program that most critics may not know exists. But see Mike Stetz, “Best Schools for Practical Training,” Nat’l Jurist, March 2015 (ranking Northeastern No. 1).

The experiential education crowd will be heartened by another “During Law School” finding.  Among 833 alumni respondents, there were more than 3,200 co-ops identified by practice setting.  Alumni were asked to identify their most valuable co-op and provide a narrative as to why. 

Below is a chart that plots the difference between the baseline frequency of a particular co-op practice setting and how often that practice setting was picked as the most valuable.  The scale is in standard deviation units, with “par” meaning that the practice setting was most valuable in the same proportion as its frequency in the overall sample.

 

It is not hard to see the common theme.  Co-ops where students can observe lawyers in action – or better yet, get stand-up time in court – were rated as much more valuable.  The table below captures some of the underlying narrative comments.

For other “During Law School” findings, see the full Alumni/ae Survey Report at the OAP website. 

Links:

Part I:  What Can We Learn by Studying Law School Alumni? A Case Study of One Law School

Part II, Alumni Surveys, Before-Law School

Part IV: Alumni Surveys, The Varied Career Paths of Law School Graduates

Part II: Alumni Surveys, Pre-Law Characteristics and Motivations

Building on the introduction (Part I) of this blog series, our alumni survey of Northeastern University School of Law yielded cross-sectional data that span graduates from 1971 to 2012.  Because of the large time span, some of the most interesting responses to questions tend to fall into two buckets:

1. What is staying the same?  Here we are looking for response patterns that are relatively stable and constant across age cohorts.
2. What is changing?  Likewise, we are also interested in responses that appear to be changing as a function of time of graduation.

In the portion of our analysis that looked at pre-law characteristics and motivations, our most striking findings tended to fall into bucket #1. 

For example, below is a graphic summarizing responses to the question, “How important were the following goals in your decision to attend law school?” Responses are organized by decade of graduation.  They are ordered by most important to least important for respondents who graduated in 2000 or later.

                              Goals for Attending Law School, by Decade of Graduation

One of the most striking features is that the top three responses are essentially identical for all four age cohorts.  For each group, the desire to have a satisfying career, help individuals, and improve society were all, on average, very important in the decision to attend law school. 

Although there are differences across age cohorts, there remains relatively clear clustering by decade of graduation. (Query: would this same pattern hold true at other law schools?  One of the advantages of pooling data across schools is the ability to isolate a self-selection effect that operates at the school level.)

Yet, some factors appear to be changing over time, such as the importance of transferable skills and eventual financial security.  With each decade cohort, respondents are rating these factors progressively more important to their decision to attend law schools. Likewise, “other goals” appear to be progressively less important. 

These patterns (and others survey results I will report in Parts III and IV) suggest gradual changes in the knowledge worker ecosystem that require students to be more deliberate and focused in their decision to attend law school.  For example, costs of all of higher education are going up at the same time that the financial payoffs of traditional graduate and professional education are becoming less certain.  This is an ecological effect that is bound to have an influence on students and student decision making.  Although legal education would be part of this shift, the shift itself would not be unique to law.

This interpretation is consistent with our focus group discussions with Northeastern alumni.  This group queried whether the term “transferable skills” was even part of the lexicon when they were graduating from college.  Likewise, the group commented that the decision to attend law school during the 1970s and 1980s was not difficult because tuition was relatively low and jobs, including paid co-op jobs, were relatively plentiful. Although the legal market may be tighter and more complex than in earlier decades, the Northeastern alumni commented that the tradeoffs were changing for all knowledge workers.  

For other “Before Law School” findings, see the full Alumni/ae Survey Report at the OAP website. 

Links:

Part I:  What Can We Learn by Studying Law School Alumni? A Case Study of One Law School

Part III: Alumni Surveys, During Law School

Part IV: Alumni Surveys, The Varied Career Paths of Law School Graduates

Part I: What Can We Learn by Studying Law School Alumni? A Case Study of One Law School

Several years ago, as the legal academy was beginning to work its way through the implications of the landmark “After the JD” Project (AJD), one of the principal investigators, Bryant Garth, commented to a group of fellow law professors that “within a few years it will be educational malpractice for law schools to not study their own alumni.”

Garth had special standing to make this claim, as he had launched the AJD during his long tenure at the American Bar Foundation and then went on to serve as Dean of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. While at Southwestern, Garth taught a short 1L course about legal careers that combined AJD findings with live interviews with Southwestern alumni. Despite decades of research studying lawyers, Garth gushed at how much he personally learned from these interviews and how the narratives were often surprising and inspiring, particularly for Southwestern students filled with apprehension at what the future might hold.

I had occasion to remember Garth’s observations in early 2011 when Emily Spieler, then the Dean of Northeastern University School of Law (NUSL), suggested that I study her alumni.

Northeastern Law

Northeastern is an interesting case study because for nearly 50 years the school has required four 11-week cooperative placements (or “co-ops”) as a condition of graduation. To facilitate completion within three years, the 1L year at Northeastern is taught in semesters while the 2L and 3L years are taught over eight alternating quarters. Summer-winter co-op students take classes during the fall and spring quarters, while fall-spring co-op students attend classes in the summer and winter quarters. Because co-ops are not for academic credit – they fulfill Northeastern University rather than ABA-accreditation requirements – students can be paid for the full 11 weeks. (More on that in Part III of this series.)

Dean Spieler wanted a third party to study Northeastern because, in her experience as dean, her many encounters with Northeastern alumni suggested to her that the School’s unusual education model was accelerating the professional development of its students and enabling them to make better, more informed career choices.

Acceleration of profession development is a very difficult effect to measure, but it is certainly plausible. In fact, the entire experiential law movement is largely premised on this claim. So I signed onto a multi-year initiative that we called the Outcomes Assessment Project (OAP).

The premise of the OAP was very unusual. Through a generous but anonymous benefactor, the research tools and templates developed for the OAP would be made available to other law schools interested in studying graduates. The intent is for law schools to accumulate data using similar methods and instruments, driving up the value of the data (because it is comparable across schools) while driving down the cost of collection and analysis.

There are many phases to the OAP, including those focused on admissions, the student experience, and co-op employers. Here, however, I wanted to write about what we learned from a survey of Northeastern’s alumni.

Last fall, we sent a survey instrument to Northeastern alumni who graduated from the law school between 1971 and 2012 (~4,000 law grads for which NUSL had a current email address). The survey instrument was substantially based on the AJD Wave III survey instrument, which was sent to a representative sample of law graduates from all ABA-accredited law schools who took the bar in the year 2000.

In contrast to the AJD, which has produced remarkable knowledge about law school grads from the year 2000, the OAP Alumni/ae Survey included four decades of law graduates from a single law school. Although this is not a true longitudinal sample, which samples the same people over time, this methodology enables cross-sectional comparisons between different cohorts of graduates (e.g., by decade of graduate or pre/post AJD).

The response rate of the Northeastern alumni survey was 21% (833 total completed questionnaires), which is relatively high for a long online survey. Because the resulting sample substantially mirrored the baseline data we had for Northeastern alumni practice areas and years of graduation, we were confident that the resulting sample was both representative and reliable.

Applied Research

Similar to the AJD, the OAP Alumni/ae Survey produced enough data to keep researchers busy for several years. Hopefully, these data will eventually be archived and aggregated at the American Bar Foundation or a similar institution in order to facilitate a broader and deeper understanding of legal careers.

However, the OAP was largely set up to be applied research. What does this mean? Here, the goal is, at least in part, to obtain data that is operational in nature, thus enabling a law school to examine and test fundamental assumptions and generate insights related to its stated goals and mission. In a word, to improve.

Further, when skillfully boiled down using data visualization, the findings themselves tend to be of great interest to all law school stakeholders, including alumni, faculty, administrative staff, current students, and prospective students. Interest is particularly piqued during times of transition and uncertainty, such as now, when law schools and the practicing bar are looking to each other to provide potential answers and support.

To makes results as accessible as possible, we decided to present the preliminary Alumni Survey results in a simple three-part framework:

• Before Law School: pre-law characteristics and motivations
• During Law School: the law school experience
• After Law School: job mobility and satisfaction

This week, I am going to give a sampling of findings from all three sections – findings that will likely be of interest to a non-Northeastern audience of law faculty, practicing lawyers, and students. If you are interested in reading the entire preliminary report, it can be found online at the Northeastern OAP website.

Links:

Part II, Before-Law School

Part III: Alumni Surveys, During Law School

Part IV: Alumni Surveys, The Varied Career Paths of Law School Graduates

Is there a right way to respond to the "Law School Debt Crisis" Editorial?

Amidst all the other newsworthy topics, the New York Times editorial board made law school debt the lead editorial for today's Sunday edition. And the story line is not good.  

The editorial starts with the bleak statistics for Florida Coastal Law School -- low median LSAT scores and high debt loads, casting doubt on whether its graduates can pass the bar exam and repay their federally financed student loans.  The editorial highlights Florida Coastal' for-profit status but goes on to note that the rest of legal education is not much better. 

A majority of American law schools, which have nonprofit status, are increasingly engaging in such behavior, and in the process threatening the future of legal education.

Why? The most significant explanation is also the simplest — free money.

The editorial details changes in federal higher education finance that created the Direct PLUS Loan program, which, over-and-above Federal Stafford Loans, underwrites up to the full cost of attendance as determined by each law school.  The combination of poor job prospects and high debt have depressed applicant volume.  As the Times editorial notes, the systemic impact has been to lower admissions standards to sweep in students who will, as a group, struggle to pass the bar exam following graduation.  Virtually all of this is financed by DOE loan money.

I don't think the typical member of the legal academy understands the precarious financial condition of legal education.  The precariousness exists on two levels: (1) our financial fate is in the hands of the federal government rather than private markets; and (2) the Times editorial suggests that we have a serious appearance problem, which draws down the political capital needed to control our own destiny.  With the political winds so goes our budgets. 

I think it is important for the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) to take some decisive action in the very near future.  In this blog post, I explain where the money comes from to keep the law school doors open and why, as a consequence, we need to pay closer attention to the public image of legal education.  I then offer some unsolicited advice to the AALS leadership. 

(1) Who pays our bills?  

Over the last decade, the federal government has, as a practical matter, taken over the financing of higher ed, including legal education.  

Here is how it works.  Any law student who needs to borrow money to attend law school is strongly incentivized to borrow money from the Department of Education (DOE).  Although the DOE loans carry high interest rates -- 6.8% for Stafford Loans and 7.9% for Grad Plus -- they include built-in debt relief programs that functionally act as insurance policies for the risk that a graduate's income is insufficient to make timely loan repayments.  Law school financial aid offices are set up around this financial aid model and make it very easy for students to sign the loan documents, pay their tuition, and get disbursements for living expenses.

In the short to medium term, this is good for the federal government because the loans are viewed as income-producing assets in the budgets that get presented to and approved by Congress. But in the longer term this could backfire if a large portion of students fail to repay their full loans plus interest.  Federal government accounting rules don't require projections beyond ten years.  But already the government is beginning to see the size of the coming write-downs for the large number of graduates who are utilizing the Public Service Loan Forgiven program, which has a ten-year loan forgiveness horizon. And it is causing the feds to revise their budgets in ways that are politically painful.  With the loan forgiveness programs for private sector law grads operating on a 20- to 25-year repayment window, the magnitude of this problem will only grow.  

The enormous risk here for law schools is that Congress or the DOE will change this system of higher education finance.  For example, the Times editorial calls for capping the amount of federal loans that can be used to finance a law degree.  Currently, the limit on Stafford Loans for graduate education is $20,500, but Grad Plus loans have no limit at all.  If the DOE were to cap Grad Plus at $29,500 per year, leading to a total three-year federal outlay of $150,000 per law student, this would have an enormous adverse impact on the typical law school budget.

Law School Transparency reports that the average law school debt load for a 2014 law graduate is $118,570, but we know very little about the full distribution.  Because of the pervasiveness of the reverse Robin Hood policy, which uses tuition dollars of low credentialed students to finance scholarships for their high credentialed peers, there is likely a significant percentage of students at most law schools who graduate with more than $150,000 in law school debt.   Further, according to US News, there are twelve law schools -- including three in the T14 -- where the average law school debt load is more the $150,000.  Although there are no statistics on the percentage of law students graduating with greater than $200,000 in law school debt, law students tell me this amount is common. 

I have translated this meager public information into the chart below. The area in green is the volume of money that could disappear from law school budgets if the federal government imposed a hard limit on federally financed law school lending.

Why would this money be at grave risk?  Two reasons:

First, private lenders will be reluctant to cover the entire shortfall.  For decades, private lenders played an important roll in law school finance.  But these lenders got pushed out of the market by the changes in federal higher ed finances described above.  Unfortunately, in the intervening years, the ratio of earning-power-to-debt has gotten too far out of whack.  To come back into this market, private lenders would need to be confident that loans would be repaid.  That likelihood is going to vary by law school and by law student, raising the cost of lending.  This means that, to varying degrees, virtually all law schools would have to sweat over money.  Unlike Grad Plus, private lenders may balk at financing full sticker tuition for lower credentialed students trying to attend the highest ranked school that admitted them.

Second, private lenders will not offer the same loan forgiveness options, such as IBR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, currently offered by the federal government.  With the curtailed scope of these functional insurance programs, some portion of prospective law students will likely be unwilling to sign loan documents in excess of the federal lending cap.  Even very elite schools will feel the pain here.

(2) An appearance problem in the world of politics

I would bet a lot of money that law faculty have been emailing the Times editorial to one another, criticizing its lack of nuance.  But here is our problem.  We are not in a court where a judge will listen to our elegant presentation of facts and law.  Nor are we in the world of private markets where we can expect people to reliably follow their own economic self-interest.  We are in the realm of politics where sides get drawn based on appearance and political expediency.  To make matters worse, the legal academy just got lambasted by the paper of record on the left.

It is hard to argue that a cap on federal funding of legal education would be bad policy for students, the legal profession, taxpayers, or broader society.  Such a change would:

1. Reduce the number of law grads going into a saturated labor market;
2. Reduce the number of low credentialed students admitted to law school who will one day struggle to pass the bar;
3. Reduce the risk of nonpayment of students loans currently borne by US taxpayers;
4. Put in place serious cost-containment on legal education.

For law schools, however, such a change would produce layoffs and pay reductions.  And that may be the fate of the luckier schools.   It is widely known that most law schools are running deficits.  Central universities are looking for ways to wait out the storm.  But the cliff-like quality of a federal cap on law school lending would call the question of how much support is too much.  

What's the solution?

Legal education has a cost problem, but so does the entire higher ed establishment. Here is my unsolicited advice.

The leadership of the AALS needs to take a very strong public position that the trend lines plaguing higher ed need to be reversed.  This is not risky because it is so painfully obvious.  The AALS should then, in conjunction with the ABA, send a very public delegation to the Dept of Education. The delegation should be given a very simple charge:  Help the DOE

1. Outline the systemic problems that plague higher education 
2. Articulate the importance of sound policy to the national interest
3. Formulate a fair and sustainable solution. 

I have faith that my legal colleagues would do a masterful job solving the problems of higher education.  And in the process, we'll discover that we have become the architects of a new system of higher ed finance that will be fair and equitable system for all stakeholders, including those employed in legal education.  That's right: act decisively to ensure a fair and equitable deal.  The only drawback is that it won't be the status quo that we'd instinctively like to preserve. 

Part Two - The Impact of Attrition on the Composition of Graduating Classes of Law Students -- 2013-2016

In late December 2014, I posted a blog entitled Part One – The Composition of the Graduating Classes of Law Students – 2013-2016.  That blog posting described how the composition of the entering classes between 2010 and 2013 has shifted.  During that time, the percentage at or above an LSAT of 160 dropped by nearly 20% from 40.8% to 33.4%.  Meanwhile, the percentage at or below an LSAT of 149 increased by over 50% from 14.2% to 22.5%. 

But this reflects the composition of the entering classes.   How do the graduating classes compare with the entering classes?  This depends upon the attrition experienced by the students in a given entering class.  This much belated Part Two discusses what we know about first-year attrition rates among law schools.

I have compiled attrition data from all of the fully-accredited ABA law schools outside of Puerto Rico for the last four full academic years.  I have calculated average attrition rates for the class as a whole and then broken out average attrition rates by law schools in different median LSAT categories – 160+, 155-159, 150-154 and <150.

In a nutshell, overall first-year attrition increases as the median LSAT of the law school decreases.  Over the last few years, while “academic attrition” has declined for law schools with median LSATs of 150 or greater, “other attrition” has increased modestly, particularly for law schools with median LSATs <150, resulting in a slight increase in overall first-year attrition between 2010 and 2013.

Overall First-Year Attrition Rates Have Increased Slightly

In calculating attrition rates, I wanted to capture those students who are no longer in law school anywhere.  Thus, for these purposes, “attrition” is the sum of “academic attrition” and “other attrition.”  “Academic attrition” occurs when a law school asks someone to leave because of inadequate academic performance.  “Other attrition” occurs when a student departs from the law school volitionally. Both of these categories exclude “transfers.”

The following chart shows that despite the declining “LSAT profile” of the entering classes between 2010 and 2013, there has been no meaningful change in the average “academic attrition” rate.  The modest increase in overall first-year attrition over this period, from roughly 5.8% to roughly 6.6%, is largely due to a growth in the “other attrition” category from roughly 2.5% to roughly 3.2%.

Overall First-Year Attrition for Classes Entering in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013

	Beg. Enrollment	Academic Attrition	% Academic	Other Attrition	% Other	Total Attrition	% Attrition
2010-11	50408	1673	3.32	1256	2.49	2929	5.81%
2011-12	46477	1551	3.34	1262	2.72	2813	6.06%
2012-13	42399	1461	3.45	1186	2.8	2647	6.25%
2013-14	38837	1316	3.39	1236	3.18	2552	6.57%

 (Calculating attrition rates for 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13, is a little more complicated than one might think.  For ABA reporting years of 2011, 2012, and 2013, “academic attrition” was reported separately, but “other attrition” included “transfers out.” Thus, to generate the real “other attrition” number, one needs to “subtract” from “other attrition” the numbers associated with “transfers out.” Because some schools occasionally listed transfers out in “second year” “other attrition,” this analysis should be understood to have a little fuzziness to it for years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.  For ABA reporting year 2014, transfers out were not commingled with “other attrition,” so the calculations were based solely on the sum of “academic attrition” and “other attrition.”  Beginning with reporting this fall, “academic attrition” will include both involuntary academic attrition as well as voluntary academic attrition (students who withdrew before completing the first-year, but were already on academic probation).)

Academic Attrition Rates Increase as Law School Median LSAT Decreases

Notably, there are different rates of attrition across law schools in different LSAT categories.  The following chart breaks down attrition by groups of law schools based on median LSAT for the law school for the entering class each year.  For each year, the chart shows the average first-year attrition rates for law schools with median LSATs of 160 or higher, for law schools with median LSATs of 155-159, for law schools with median LSATs of 150-154 and for law schools with median LSATs less than 150.  In addition, it breaks out “academic attrition” and “other attrition” as separate categories for each category of law school and for each year and then provides the total overall attrition rate each year along with the four-year average attrition rate.

Average Attrition Rates by Category of Schools Based on Median LSAT

	2010-11			2011-12			2012-13			2013-14
Median LSAT	Acad	Other	Total	Acad	Other	Total	Acad	Other	Total	Acad	Other	Total	Four-Year Average
160+	0.6	1.7	2.3	0.6	1.9	2.5	0.4	2.0	2.4	0.3	1.5	1.8	2.3
155-159	2.9	2.6	5.5	2.2	2.8	5.1	2.1	2.9	5.1	1.7	3.2	4.9	5.2
150-154	6.3	3.8	10.1	6.2	3.4	9.6	6.0	3.7	9.7	4.2	4.3	8.5	9.4
<150	10.1	2.4	12.5	9.4	3.8	13.2	9.1	3.0	12.2	9.7	4.7	14.4	13.1

 

When looking at this data, some things are worth noting. 

First, across different LSAT categories, overall attrition increases as you move from law schools with higher median LSATs to law schools with lower median LSATs, going from an average over the four years of 2.3% for law schools with median LSATs of 160+, to 5.2% for law schools with median LSATs of 155-159, to 9.4% for law schools with median LSATs of 150-154, to 13.1% for law schools with median LSATs of <150.  “Academic attrition” consistently increases as median LSAT decreases, while “other attrition” is mixed. (Although this analysis is focused on four LSAT categories, the trend of having overall attrition increase as median LSAT decreases continues if you add a fifth LSAT category. In 2010-11 there was only one law school with a median LSAT of 145 or less, with only 320 students.  By 2013-14, however, there were nine law schools with a median LSAT of 145 or less, with 2,075 students.  The overall first-year attrition rate (encompassing academic attrition and other attrition) at these nine schools in 2013-14 was 15.9 percent.  The overall attrition rate at the other 24 law schools with a median LSAT less than 150 was 13.6 percent.) 

Second, over the period from 2010-2013, “academic attrition” generally appears to be flat to decreasing for schools in all LSAT categories except for 2013-14 year for law schools with median LSATs <150, where it increased slightly (largely because of the larger number of schools with median LSATs of 145 or less).  By contrast, “other attrition” presents more of a mixed record, but generally appears to be increasing between 2010 and 2013 for schools in most LSAT categories.  Nonetheless, average overall first-year attrition is lower in 2013-14 for law schools in the top three LSAT categories.

Third, if you are wondering why the average overall attrition could be increasing while the overall attrition rates for the top three LSAT categories are decreasing, the answer is because of the changing number of students in each category over time.  As noted in Part I, the number of students and percentage of students in the top LSAT category has declined significantly, while the number of students and percentage of students in the bottom LSAT category has increased significantly.  This results in the average overall attrition rate increasing even as rates in various categories are decreasing.

Thoughts on Attrition Rates

It makes sense that “academic attrition” increases as law school median LSAT decreases.  It seems reasonable to expect that law schools with median LSATs of <155 or <150 will have higher “academic attrition” rates than those with median LSATs of 155-159 or 160 and higher. 

It may make less sense, however, that “academic attrition” generally decreased across all four categories of law schools between 2010-11 and 2013-14 (with the exception of law schools with a median LSAT <150 in 2013-14), even as the LSAT profile of each entering class continued to decline.  With an increase in the number and percentage of law students with LSATs of <150, particularly those with LSATs of <145, one might have anticipated that the average rate of “academic attrition” would have increased, particularly among law schools with median LSATs of 150-154 (who might have seen an increase in the number of students with LSATs less than 150) and among law schools with median LSATs of <150, given the increase in the number of law schools with median LSATs of 145 or less. 

Cynics might argue that from a revenue standpoint, law schools are making a concerted effort to retain a higher percentage of a smaller group of students.  But this assumes a degree of institutional purposefulness (coordination among faculty) that is rare among law schools.  Moreover, my sense is that there are much more benign explanations.

First, if law schools have not adjusted their grading curves to reflect a different student profile, then the standard approach to first-year grading – which involves a forced curve at most schools -- is likely to produce a similar percentage of “at risk” students year over year even though the objective credentials of each entering class have declined. 

Second, with the decline in the number of applicants to law school, one might surmise that those choosing to go to law school really are serious about their investment in a legal education and may be working harder to be successful in law school, resulting in fewer students facing academic disqualification, even though the credentials for each entering class have been weaker year over year.  This may be particularly true in law schools with robust academic support programs which may be helping some students on the margin find sufficient success to avoid academic attrition.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, however, is the reality that “academic attrition” and “other attrition” are related.  Indeed, that is why I have reported them together in the charts above as two components of overall attrition.  Some students who might be at risk for “academic attrition” may decide to withdraw from law school voluntarily (and be classified under “other attrition” rather than “academic attrition”). In addition, it is possible that other students, particularly at law schools with median LSATs <150, may be voluntarily withdrawing from law school because they have decided that further investment in a legal education doesn’t make sense if they are performing relatively poorly, even though the law school would not have asked them to leave under the school’s policy for good academic standing. 

The fact that the percentage of students in each entering class with LSATs of <150 and even <145 has increased substantially between 2010 and 2013, while the rate of overall first-year attrition has increased only modestly over this time period, suggests that the composition of graduating classes (based on LSATs) will continue to weaken into 2016 (and probably 2017 if attrition patterns did not change in 2014-15).  As a result, the declines in the median MBE scaled score in 2014 and 2015 could be expected to continue in 2016 and 2017.  Some law schools also are likely to see bar passage rates for their graduates decline, perhaps significantly, in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Unanswered Questions

This analysis focuses on first-year attrition.  There continues to be attrition during the second year and third year of law school, generally at lower rates, perhaps 2-3% of second-year students and 1-2% of third-year students.  (On average, the number of graduates in a given class has been around 90% of the entering class.)  It is not clear yet whether attrition among upper level students follows similar patterns across different categories of law schools.  The publicly-reported attrition data also does not provide any information regarding the gender or ethnicity or socio-economic background of students leaving law school.  Therefore, we don’t know whether there are different rates of attrition for women as compared with men or whether students of different ethnic backgrounds have different rates of attrition.  We also don’t know whether first-generation law students experience attrition at greater rates than other law students, or whether students of lower socio-economic status experience attrition at greater rates than students of higher socio-economic status. 

(I am very grateful for the insights of Bernie Burk and Scott Norberg on earlier drafts of this blog posting.)