On Friday, law.com posted a story on a recently filed lawsuit against St. Thomas School of Law in Miami. The plaintiff, a former student who is seeking to certify the suit as a class action, alleges that several St. Thomas administators violated federal anti-racketeering laws by admitting a disproportionately large 1L class with the intention of flunking out approximately 25 percent the following year (students with less than a 2.5 GPA).
The school purportedly benefitted from this scheme by (a) collecting first year tuition from more 1L students, and (b) improving its anticipated bar passage rate for feature classes because students with low 1L grades are much more likely to struggle on the bar. A St. Thomas official quoted in the story disputes the high attrition rate (only 40 of 330 1L's were dismissed) and called the revenue theory "illogical" because early dismissals reduce the school's income.
Setting aside the speculative nature of the lawsuit (and note that the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar has been named as a defendant on a negligent supervision theory), such a scheme would deliver clear economic benefits to many lower ranked schools.
Specifically, St. Thomas is a non-prestigious law school operating in Florida, which has lots of other law schools. According data published in the ABA-LSAC Official Guide, the bottom quartile of entering class at St. Thomas is--relatively speaking--academically weak: 147 LSAT (12th lowest out of 190 schools) and 2.58 UGPA (lowest of out 190 schools). Although these number bode poorly for bar passage statistics, this outcome can be mitigated by flunking out the bottom of the class after the 1L year. After all, law school performance is a better predictor of bar passage than an LSAT/UGPA admission index. Higher bar passage statistics could increase U.S. News rankings and applicant volume, thus setting in motion a virtuous upward cycle. Moreover, the plan becomes revenue-neutral if the 1L entering class is significantly increased--a fact alleged by the St. Thomas lawsuit.
This system represents a return to the past, albeit the economic drivers are quite different. As the modern law school hierarchy took shape in the second half of the twentieth century, one of the achievements celebrated by law school administrators was the very low 1L attrition. The reason was simple; the LSAT had effectively identified those students who lacked the aptitude to become lawyers. Prior to the LSAT, law schools relied upon the Wigmore method of trial and error, which winnowed classes based on first year exams. See John H. Wigmore, Juristic Psychopoyemetrology--or How to Find Out Whether a Boy Has the Makings of a Lawyer, 24 Ill. L. Rev. 454, 463 (1929).
Unfortunately, the Wigmore system seems destine to rise again as the number of ABA-approved law school continues to climb (+12 since the first complete U.S. News rankings in 1992), the applicant pool remains relatively flat or on the decline, and states continue to increase bar cut scores (at least a dozen states have done so in the last 15 years). Indeed, I have heard of second-tier law schools meddling with 1L cut-offs in order to improve bar passage results. Two observations:
- Where is the disclosure? One of the dangers here is that law schools don't bear the cost; rather, it is borne by former students who incurred the time and expense of attending one year of law school before getting the boot. At a minimum, academic attrition should be part of the data collected and disclosed by the ABA on an annual basis. If the market is going to sort out this significant risk, it needs adequate information.
- Can curricular innovation improve bar passage? An outsider to legal education might ask why curricular innovation is not the first line of defense for low bar passage. Actually, there is data that this approach might actually play large dividends for struggling law students. See Jellum & Reeves, Cool Data on a Hot Issue: Empirical Evidence that a Law School Bar Support Program Enhances Bar Performance, 5 Nev. L. J. 646 (2005) (exerpt reprinted in The Bar Examiner).
Perhaps the St. Thomas lawsuit will serve a catalyst for these two issues.
Steve Pirates has it all wrong - CWSL has a 30% atrittion rate for their first year students (you can verify this at LSAC.org. They started a policy in 2003 that denies *any* appeal by a first year student of their grades or their exams, for ANY REASON. There is no appeal allowed for any reason? That doesn't make you even a little suspicious?
According to one dean I interviewed, even in the case of a person getting into a car accident on the way to finals, he/she could not appeal the 0% that would be given for missing the exam!!
And the $3M per year additional income the school gets is a mighty big incentive for everyone there - larger pay, bonuses, school facility upgrades, etc...
Posted by: Big Vent | 13 January 2009 at 12:10 PM
California Western has about a 10% attrition rate. Not the 33% attrition rate suggested above. The curve requirements quoted by Mr. Vent are accurate, but are on a per class basis. The "Curve-Out" is based on a cumulative GPA after the first year. A below-74 in one class does not necessarily equate to a below-74 cumulative grade average. It is true enough that a third of the students attending will get at least one sub-par grade. But one bad grade does not an expulsion make.
For Mr. Vent's math to work, the professors would have to give poor grades to the same third of the student body over and over. And frankly, if a student is failing all of their classes, then perhaps law school isn't the right place for them.
Posted by: Steve Pirates | 11 October 2007 at 06:59 PM
Woops. I did the math wrong. At 30k per year per student, if 100 of 300 1Ls are dismissed under CWSL policy, CWSL gains 3 million dollars a year (not $300,000) in tuition from students who will never earn a JD from CWSL.
Posted by: CWSL_Students_vent | 30 November 2006 at 02:28 PM
California Western School of Law in San Diego might have a similar scheme. In fact, the very issues raised in the law suit above have been debated at CWSL for some time.
While the school does not come out and directly disclose to students that it will fail out a percentage of 1L students, that information is buried in two separate sections of a thick handbook that is presented to students after they begin lawschool.
It's academic policy 7.21 tells students that they need to maintain a GPA of 74 to remain in school. Then elsewhere, in its academic policy 6.02, it describes that in all first year courses, constituting that GPA, that professors must gives 25-35% of first semester 1Ls a grade lower than a 74 and 20 - 30% of second semester 1Ls a grade lower than 74.
Students only need do the math to find that CWSL's scheme is designed to only send about its top 2/3 to the CA Bar exam to inflate its bar pass rate (which doesn't seem to be working anyway). The scheme also allows, if 100 of 300 are dismissed, the school take in an additional $300,000 per year (30k/student) from students who will never earn a CWSL JD.
Posted by: CWSL_Students_Vent | 29 November 2006 at 09:50 PM
Bill, thanks for your comment. I really like the fact that the legal profession is open to people without sterling credentials. For many aspiring attorneys, hard work and perseverance are all that is needed to succeed.
But I just want to make sure that we are dealing from the top of the deck: Disclosure the risks! Also, I think the legal academy need to re-engage on the issue of the bar examination. It is not a particularly good test, and it is a significant barrier for many students.
Posted by: William Henderson | 07 September 2006 at 01:41 PM
Bill:
You raise a very interesting set of issues. But there are a number of other factors that make any assessment more complicated. Many schools with bar passage issues are historically "schools of opportunity". GGU, where I teach, arose as part of the early 20th century backlash against exclusionary practices in the legal profession and legal education--to serve as a point of entry to a profession that was (is?)unresponsive to the needs of immigrants, people of color, women.
At GGU, we admit some students with lesser gpa and LSAT indicators, realizing that these are imperfect predictors of success at school or on the bar exam. We get a very mixed class of students--some who will do well anywhere (e.g., night students with Ph.D.s in biochemistry who want to become patent lawyers--and who are very interesting to teach!), and some who turn out not to be prepared for the unforgiving nature of law pedagogy and exams. It's hard to tell who will end up where by gpa and LSAT alone. As one colleague of mine reminds me, we don't admit people to the bottom half of the class. Some students with low numbers thrive, others do not.
Plus, a large number of students who matriculate do have academic problems early on, and we have a duty not to let them stay enrolled if they will not have a realistic chance of success in school, on the bar, or as lawyers. And an equally large number of students who do well in our first year classes end up transferring to more elite law schools who rejected them initially (and do very well there!)So we (and they) are clearly doing some things right.
I don't think many schools, mine included, are driven to accept students solely to take their tuition dollars for a semester or two before dumping them for academic deficiencies. Most schools like GGU have in place (or are developing) extensive academic support programs that are aimed at providing students with skills necessary to succeed, even if a significant number will not make it. And a number of schools are also implementing the kinds of programs that the study you cite (with data from U.Richmond SOL)has put in place.
One thing that amazes me is the dearth of solid empirical evidence regarding what is and what is not effective in teaching law. My wife teaches first grade, and those folks have decades of research findings to guide their understanding of, say, what is effective in teaching reading or math skills.
Thanks for publicizing what looks to be an important study for law teaching, and for raising some important issues.
Bill
Posted by: Bill Gallagher | 05 September 2006 at 03:20 PM