Law Schools
GAO Puts Blame on US News Rankings for High Law School Tuition
Posted Oct 27, 2009 7:13 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Updated: Law school tuition has been rising since 1994, reaching as much as $50,000 per year when combined with fees at law schools such as Yale and the University of California at Hastings.
But don’t blame the ABA. A new report (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office says accreditation requirements by the ABA appear to play a minor role in the rising cost of law school tuition.
Instead the report says the key reasons for higher costs are competition for higher rankings and "the move to a more hands-on, resource-intensive approach to legal education,” according to Inside Higher Ed and TaxProf Blog.
Law school officials told the GAO that schools are competing to increase their U.S. News and World Report rankings. Schools may pay higher salaries to attract the best professors, and offer diverse courses to attract the best students. The competition also affects cost because rankings are partly affected by per-student expenditures, student-faculty ratio, and library resources.
The report summarized the average annual increase in tuition and fees from the 1995 academic year to the 2007 academic year. In-state tuition at public schools rose by an annual average of 7.2 percent over that time period, out-of-state tuition rose by an annual average of 4.8 percent, and private tuition rose by an annual average of 3.8 percent.
The median tuition and fees for the 2007-2008 school year, in 2009 dollars, was $14,461 for in-state students at public universities, $27,383 for out-of-state students at public universities, and $33,042 at private universities.
Meanwhile, the average debt for graduates of private law schools has risen from around $75,000 in 2001-02 to $91,506 in 2007-08. In the same time period, the average debt for graduates of public law schools rose from around $50,000 to $71,436. The figures were adjusted to 2007 dollars.
TaxProf Blog recently reported on plans by the University of California at Hastings to increase tuition and fees to $50,310 for nonresidents in the next academic year. TaxProf blog listed tuition and fees listed on websites for other top law schools. All charged more than $43,000. Yale topped the list with charges of $50,140, followed by Columbia and Northwestern, both charging more than $49,000.
UC Hastings cited state budget cuts for its decision to increase costs. The GAO report cited decreases in state funding as a contributor to higher tuition costs.
ABA President Carolyn Lamm said in a statement that the report rightly recognizes that accreditation standards "play only a limited role in increasing cost and are not barriers to diversity." The impact of law school rankings, however, may need to be re-examined, she said.
Lamm noted the report found that tuition and fees at law schools, and the debt load taken on by students, compare favorably with costs and debt loads for students attending medical, dental and veterinary schools.
"The ABA is committed to ensuring that the cost of attending law school does not become an increasingly insurmountable barrier for many individuals," Lamm said. "We are mindful of the importance of making legal education as accessible to as broad and diverse a community of students as possible. In that respect, the ABA urges Congress and the administration to lift the cap on federal loans to finance law and other professional schools so that all students with talent and desire can attend law school—not only those of economic means."
Updated on Oct. 28 to include comments from ABA President Carolyn Lamm.
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Comments
cteagle
Oct 27, 2009 7:50 AM CST
The law school scam industry loves to set up US News as the boogey man. If only a magazine could have that much power.
The problem is limitless educational loan credit offered by the federal government. Combine that with the ABA which will accredit any fly by the night profit seeking diploma mill and you have a real problem.
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James
Oct 27, 2009 8:09 AM CST
Maybe they do. What if US News made “affordability” and debt upon graduation count for 35% of the law school’s ranking. Schools would trim the fat to become cheaper.
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Bean Counter
Oct 27, 2009 11:12 AM CST
@2 has a good point. Why not rank the top 10 or top 50 most affordable law school.
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Bean Counter
Oct 27, 2009 11:15 AM CST
What do you call a medical student graduating from a tier 4 medical school? Doctor.
Somehow, ranking does not affect the healthcare industry.
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Esq.
Oct 27, 2009 12:31 PM CST
http://www.abajournal.com/news/review_of_accreditation_standards_likely_to_bring_sea_change_to_how_law_sch/
“For months, the ABA’s law school accrediting body has quietly been working on a comprehensive review of its often-controversial standards governing legal education.
But as word spreads about the scope of the review by the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, some new proposals are sure to cause a stir.
So what’s most likely to spark debate?
The most significant change in the Standards for Approval of Law Schools is likely to be a move away from evaluating law schools on the basis of criteria that measure “input”—such things as faculty size, budget and physical plant. Instead, the Legal Education Section would evaluate law schools more heavily on the basis of “outcome” measures.
The essential difference is that outcome measures would focus on what students actually take away from their educational experience at a particular law school rather than what the school teaches, and how, explained E. Christopher Johnson Jr.
Johnson was one of three members of the Accreditation Standards Review Committee of the ABA’s Legal Education Section who gave a status report on the committee’s work at a program held in Chicago on Friday during the 35th ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility.
Johnson, who directs the graduate program in law and finance at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Auburn Hills, Mich., and the other committee members participating in the panel said the shift in focus from input measures to outcome measures could have a major effect on how the Legal Education Section evaluates law schools.
“It is a sea change to tell law schools you should focus more on outcomes as measures,” said committee member Steven C. Bahls, the president of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. He chairs the outcome assessment subcommittee.
The accreditation standards contain a provision providing that they undergo a comprehensive review every five years. The most recent review was initiated in 2003 and completed in 2006. The U.S. Department of Education also urges accrediting agencies to review their standards on a regular basis.
The Department of Education recognizes the Legal Education Section as the official accrediting agency for law schools in the United States. Currently, 200 law schools have been accredited by the section.
Other key issues the Standards Review Committee will look at include “security of position” for law school professors and other teachers, which will encompass the tenure structure. The committee also will consider ways to make the law school accreditation and review process more transparent.
The Legal Education Section’s accreditation standards have come under criticism at times from segments of the law school community and, in a few cases, the Education Department.
Shifting to an emphasis on outcomes rather than input is essentially a done deal, said committee vice chair Margaret Martin Barry, a professor at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. In an interview with the ABA Journal this week, she explained that a special study committee, backed by the council of the Legal Education Section, urged that the change in emphasis be incorporated into the accreditation standards.
The Standards Review Committee’s schedule calls for the proposed provisions on outcome measures to be drafted by the end of this summer. “That’s the hope,” said Barry, “but it might be ambitious. We’re beginning to move into drafting a few things to see how they look, but this is going to be the hardest nut to crack.”
Changes drafted by the committee are submitted to the section council, which then decides whether to authorize that they be circulated for comment from law schools and other interested parties. Barry said any major proposed revisions to the standards probably won’t be released for comment until at least early 2010.
Speaking on Friday’s panel, Barry and her fellow committee members said the greatest challenge is to determine the best ways to measure outcome. They said bar passage rates of a law school’s graduates will likely be just one measure.
“Knowledge, skills and ethics are the key pillars to a legal education” Johnson said. “The question we’re asking is, does a traditional legal education do the best job on these?”
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LS
Oct 27, 2009 12:36 PM CST
I’m convinced of the over proportional influence that U.S. News exerts on the legal profession. One reason is the near idiotic obsession with prestige among prospective students and thereby law schools - I can’t exactly speak to firms. Another is the difficulty to obtain real information as a prospective, in large part created by schools’ borderline false advertising about job prospects. As a result, students are willing to take on silly amounts of debt, while only a decreasing fraction will get the monetary payoff.
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James
Oct 27, 2009 12:43 PM CST
Comparing Law to Medicine does not work. Medical schools are expensive to start up and often require millions of dollars to operate so that only universities can really operate them successfully. Law schools on the other hand do not require a large investment and any idiot with some money to burn can start one. Many t3 and t4 laws schools aren’t even associated with a university. The other issue is competition and the marketplace. Medicine limits its graduates by making it very difficult to get into a medical school. You can be a dolt with a 2.5 and a 141 LSAT score and there is some open admissions diploma mill out there that will take your money, get you a degree, and unleash you onto the world. Also anyone notice how the private T4 schools are more expensive than the public schools. I honestly love it when people say something “akin to let’s let everyone go to law school and have the market determine who is better.” I’m all for market competition, but I’d rather it take place before spending $150k on an education which may or may not pay off.
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Nando
Oct 27, 2009 1:41 PM CST
The ABA is to blame for accrediting more law schools, in a country that already produces about 45,000 fresh JDs annually. Did USN≀cause the ABA to accredit more law schools?
USN≀is not blameless for the high costs associated with law school, but the ABA is certainly more to blame than US News. It is the ABA that does not require independent audits of law schools’ self-reporting employment and salary figures. It is the ABA that accredits schools which admit students with 2.92 GPAs and 149 LSAT scores. And why should the schools and ABA let the rankings drive their decisions?!
Look at the American Dental Association. They do not allow USN≀to rank their ADA-approved dental schools. This is a trade association that actually cares about its reputation, its current and future practitioners, and - for the most part - its customers.
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Overpaid
Oct 27, 2009 6:44 PM CST
Paying these professors big money to teach 1-2 classes per year and publish a bunch of useless research in law reviews has lead to the big increase in tuition. No attorneys in practice read all this BS in law reviews, so why pay for it?
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inventor of piano key necktie
Oct 28, 2009 12:47 AM CST
It’s getting mighty confusing here…
First, you have one guy (bean counter, #4) pointing out that rankings don’t seem to affect the medical school tuition. But hasn’t medical school tuition also risen much faster than inflation?
Then, a second guy (James, #7) argues that medical schools can’t be compared to law schools because they’re all attached to a university. Perhaps. Although, I would point out that many D.O. schools (sometimes referred to as second-tier like institutions) are not attached to actual universities. I respect D.O.‘s, but don’t let names like “A.T. Still University” fool you into thinking they’re actual full-range universities. They’re basically free-standing medical schools. If you want to only count M.D. programs, try Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. It’s a relatively prestigious hospital (in the area) and the “university” is pretty much just the medical school.
The same commenter then argues that he is in favor of marketplace competition, but wants it to occur before anything is paid for. How does that work? Can the market decide anything before things are bought? For example, letting the market decide which cars are crappy cars would entail people actually buying the cars to decide which ones are crappy, right? How does the market decide which products are crappy before those products are even bought? I will, however, concede that the marketplace in regards to law schools doesn’t seem to efficiently pass down information from old buyers to younger buyers.
Lastly, a third commenter (Nando, #8) blames the accreditation of too many law schools for higher tuition. Where is the cause and effect here? If anything, accrediting more law schools would lead to a tuition decrease. The borderline fraudulent employment stats are a legitimate possibility allowing law schools to increase tuition.
This same commenter asks “Why should law schools and the ABA let rankings drive their decisions?” apparently arguing that rankings have no effect. Yet, he goes on to praise Dental Schools for not allowing rankings, seemingly saying rankings might have a negative effect.
Am I the only one seeing contradictions? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!!
The only comment I can fully agree with is #9. Tuition is high because professors are paid large sums.
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B. McLeod
Oct 28, 2009 1:50 AM CST
My old alma mater has lost some very good professors the last few years, due to the economy and its limited ability to compete on salaries. A number of other faculty members have taken reductions due to the budget picture.
However, these are unusual times. Ordinarily, quite a number of law professors in any Tier 1 school are going to have BigLaw backgrounds. Students coming to the school with BigLaw aspirations (as many do) want and need that, because they need information on how the world of BigLaw works, information on how to attempt entry, and the networking connections former BigLaw faculty members can provide. (The irony, often missed by the students, is that all of the faculty who have these connections are at the law school because they left BigLaw).
The need to attract faculty with large firm experience (at least in normal times, though arguable currently) requires the high salaries. That is the salary driver. Schools also want faculty with name recognition and a strong publication history, and that, too, involves salary competition.
When it comes down to it, the high law school prices are the result of the high salaries in the large firms, and the resulting faculty cost to staff whole law schools for the benefit of the fraction of the class that is trying to hit the BigLaw lottery.
When I started school (as I have said before), there were no US News rankings. You had whatever market research you did on your own, plus an informational publication called “Prelaw Handbook, The Official Guide to U.S. Law Schools,” which was published by the Law School Admission Council and included several hundred pages of comparative data on the library/facilities, basic study program, special programs (clinics), student activities, typical class composition, admission standards, financial aid and placement for the various ABA-approved law schools. For those with enough money to have options, that data (plus whatever one gleaned independently by research, inquiries or correspondence) was the basis for the selection back then, I have to say that it does not appear to me that the rankings students use today provide any better data. They allow the decision making to be lazier and sloppier, which seems to me not to be particularly beneficial to the students of today.
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ashamed.
Oct 28, 2009 8:09 AM CST
This is a joke, right?
How else could one explain this GAO report? Once the US news report came out, the law school deans—some of the brightest and best to pursue academic careers—had no choice but to follow them, and prospective law school students had no choice but to go to law school. After all, we don’t live in a market economy where one is free to choose their profession. Right?
This isn’t to say that the rankings don’t have an influence on schools and prospective students, but it is the classical network effect—its influence is only measured by how much each player is willing to let the ranking influence their decision. What’s odd is that 2 years ago, when student debt loads were not that much different, we weren’t hearing about how law school students and deans were victims of the ranking system but how wise the students were to invest in a legal education. To say something isn’t working because the end result is not desirable is incorrect by any economic analysis.
I am ashamed to be part of a profession of whiners and victims. Law school deans make conscious choices and students make conscious decisions. The real story should be if those choices are educated and well informed or not.
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sms
Oct 28, 2009 8:15 AM CST
Very true B. McLeod. Thanks for that great post.
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 9:21 AM CST
Dear god. If a site full of lawyers can’t understand the problems in the above article, then there really is no hope for the profession:
1) Like those famous employment figures, the numbers cited for tuition increase percentabes and total debt load are AVERAGES. They include the students with full scholarships and rich parents, as well as a large number of the T3-4 schools which started with tuition in the high 20s, and now have tuition in the 30s. This is a small percentage increase, but a large number. Get it? If you didn’t, you don’t get to criticize pre-law students who didn’t see through the misleading employment figures.
2) Even the misleading resulting percentage tuition increase of 7.5 percent is well above inflation for the same period.
3) McLeod, law schools are paying law firm salaries to professors, who THEN CAN"T EVEN TEACH THE MATERIAL ON THE FLIPPING BAR EXAM. What else is law school FOR, exactly, but to prepare us for the legal profession? Yet no one questions the fact that law students graduate without either the skills necessary to practice, OR the knowledge required to pass the only certification process necessary to become a member of the profession? Students at my top-25 school were strongly encouraged to borrow an extra $10,000 in order to pay for Bar Bri prep courses. After we’d already paid $105,000 to sit ifor THREE YEARS in classes taught by McLeod’s exalted former Big Law professors making a quarter of a million a year?
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PFB
Oct 28, 2009 9:54 AM CST
Back to comment #1. The easy loans have increased the costs of all post secondary education. The loans have also made law schools profit centers for the schools that open them. The basic program has low over head. Books, a room and a teacher. Even reasearch is on line and much less costly then 25 years ago - at least case law research.
The rigors of a legal education are commendable and should be a part of every undergraduate liberal arts program. In other countries law is an undergraduate program with legal apprenticships that pay something after that.
Our educational system is a luxury and business that people/students/youths cannot afford and must be changed.
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B. McLeod
Oct 28, 2009 10:12 AM CST
Please, Liz. I think we have exchanged enough comments that you can call me “B.”
I love the paragraph where you are channeling Ellen. I should add that when I was in school, the school itself offered a non-credit Bar Prep. course, which was very reasonably priced (to the extent I can’t even remember now what it cost, but I am sure it was hundreds, not thousands). It was handled mostly by the regular faculty, with some guest faculty, using the outlines and materials they had prepared specifically for the review. There was some kind of expensive, commercially available alternative at the time (I don’t know if it was Bar Bri). I did not spend for the expensive one, and as a result, found some aspects of the multi-state exam a bit worrisome. Specifically, there were several questions seeking the “most wrong” choice of a range of wrong answers, where one had to make a value judgment abouth whether “most wrong” meant most legally wrong, in an academic sense, or “most wrong” in terms of the relative damage the advice would cause the client. I answered those with the latter value assumption, but do not know if I was scored right or wrong on those questions. I have assumed over the years that examinees who paid for the expensive commercial review had the benefit of some tips on such matters. Of course, a pass is a pass, but for their money, my classmates who went through the commercial program may have had less worry over some of the questions. If I was doing it again today, maybe I would take the Bar Bri, or, maybe I would find a new lawyer who successfully sat for the most recent prior exam, and pay them for a few hours of their time to brief me on odd little issues like that. That might get an examinee to about the same readiness, with a lot less than $10,000.
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True Observer
Oct 28, 2009 11:58 AM CST
You’ve got to be kidding right?
There is never anything the feds get their hands on that doesn’t wind up costing more.
If the government didn’t hand out the pell grants and the low interest loans, the schools wouldn’t jack up the tuition.
Why do you suppose the house prices went strtospheric? Same reason. The government guaranteed worthless loans.
There is a price/earnings ratio to everything.
The cost of education far exceeds earnings capabilities.
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 1:32 PM CST
Um, yeah, it was the government out there FORCING the law schools to hike tuition, the lenders to make taxpayer guaranteed loans at 8.5% interest, and the developers to run up the cost of housing 87% in some areas of the country.
For someone who claims to be all about personal responsibility, you’re surprisingly willing to let people off the hook.
And B, thanks for the privilege, but “You could buy a cheaper bar study program to supplement the $105,000 education you’ve already paid for, but which somehow still didn’t prepare you,” isn’t really addressing my point, now is it?
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FailedAtLife
Oct 28, 2009 1:51 PM CST
The government did not FORCE the law schools to hike tuition. But the greedy law schools had no reason NOT to hike tuitions, because federally backed loans for students would allow the students to take money out to hand to the schools, for a worthless piece of paper. Without the federally backed loans, then students would not necessarily have been able to take out the loans to pay the law schools.
If loans were not as freely available, or to demonstrate- if an idiot law student attending New York Law School went to Citibank and asked for $40,000 for three years, without federal guarantees, Citibank would not have been stupid enough to give that money to the student. If this student an others like him did not have the money to pay the tuition for a worthless degree then the school would have to either lower tuition or better yet the market would force it and other garbage schools to shut down.
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True Observer
Oct 28, 2009 2:32 PM CST
Um, yeah, it was the government out there “FORCING the law schools to hike tuition, the lenders to make taxpayer guaranteed loans at 8.5% interest, and the developers to run up the cost of housing 87% in some areas of the country. “
Looks like Adam Smith was skipped in econ class.
The invisible hand “forces” the law schools to jack up the tuition.
Bill Cosby spoke at a graduation ceremony and was paid $50,000.00.
If the government wasn’t handing out the money, he would have charged $1 for the honor of being able to speak at a graduation ceremony.
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 3:32 PM CST
You didn’t read Adam Smith, if you think the invisible hand makes everyone a cheater. Wealth of Nations supported government action to curb gouging, exploitation, and actions which hurt the free market.
You’re not being specific about the situation. Taxpayers provided profit to a private actor, while assuming all the risk associated with the transaction. The problem isn’t that government money was available for student loans. The problem is that government money was available to private lenders, at exorbitant interest rates for students, guaranteed by the tax payers, and the whole thing was completely unregulated. The rationale was that private companies would be more efficient than the government, so it would be cheaper. That rationale was soooooo stupid, and could have been fixed, but wasn’t because people like you didn’t want the government to intrude.
Government should NEVER take on a private company’s risk. That’s not at all the same thing as government providing services. If it didn’t do some things, why would we bother to be in a society at all, isntead of all living on compounds?
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True Observer
Oct 28, 2009 4:55 PM CST
“You didn’t read Adam Smith, if you think the invisible hand makes everyone a cheater.”
No one even implied that anyone was cheating.
What was said is that they will charge what they can get away with.
I will take you back to yesteryear -
Once upon a time, maybe 40 years ago, before the federal government really got into it:
1. Everyone had health insurance through their employer or could easily afford it.
2. People graduated from undergrad and even law without being burdened by years of loan repayments. Many paid tuition from their work.
To make a long story short, everything worked great until the politicians started to buy votes by handing out grants and entitlements which just jacked up the price.
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 5:03 PM CST
Sorry, but you are exactly wrong.
Government didn’t “hand out grants” to buy votes from the populace. Government gave private companies strings-free taxpayer funds to buy campaign donations, and law schools knowingly played along.
The problem was not that government was too nice to the regular folks. The problem was that the government specifically left the tab to the rest of us. Government. Should not. Take on private risk. For lenders.
It has nothing to do with entitlements. You may disagree that the government should encourage an educated population, but the problem here wasn’t the goal, it was the means.
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True Observer
Oct 28, 2009 5:34 PM CST
“but the problem here wasn’t the goal, it was the means.”
The problem started in high school english.
English is a universal language because it is so versitile.
Grants, loans, third parties, what’s the difference?
It’s still the feds handing out taxpayer money one way or the other and thereby increasing the cost.
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 6:04 PM CST
It’s a really big difference, and if you think there’s no difference, you’re being disingenuous, or deliberately misunderstanding.
The difference between a grant and a loan is:
1) A grant to a student does not saddle that student with debt on graduation.
2) A loan to the student, made with taxpayer funds, does.
3) A private company making a risk-free loan, of taxpayer funds, then charging 8.5%, is making a killing at taxpayer expense.
4) My school loan administrator was on the board of one of the private lenders. I think it’s safe to say the schools knew who was making money, and what kind of debt load students were graduating under.
5) Despite this, law schools made no real effort to teach the skills necessary to succeed in the profession, and they don’t even teach the bar.
6) Students are now paying $1,000 and up monthly loans. Families are sinking under the burden. The economy is strained. And law schools and lenders are pretending the whole thing was just an opportunity that didn’t work out.
The problem has nothing to do with government handouts. We should be so lucky that the government threw money at students. This whole mess never would have happened.
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B. McLeod
Oct 28, 2009 6:53 PM CST
I am sure that the resources to prepare students do exist at the vast majority of accredited law schools. To take full advantage, students may need to do more than simply go to class and take notes. I can recall many instances during school where I visted faculty offices with short lists of questions I had collected related to the subject matter. Some of the faculty (perhaps, in particular, my Legal Writing, Civil Procedure and Business Law professors) probably had a sense of being haunted. I also put in considerably more time than most of my classmates in the clinical programs. I knew that the goal was to prepare for practice, but I think most of my classmates stopped with the shorter objective of polishing their transcripts, assuming they could land a job and training with a firm. All law students should approach their studies with awareness that the law firm job and training may not be there. That means going to whatever lengths one must to acquire the necessary tools, not just doing what it takes to get the classroom grades. It should not be a passive exercise (the faculty members are not going to venture outside the syllabus if a student does not ask).
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Liz
Oct 28, 2009 7:11 PM CST
B., law school costs $100,000, not including opportunity costs, bar exam prep, and the bar itself, which costs thousands.
Why are schools charging students this much? Why would you look at this situation, where schools and lenders made so much money, while students and taxpayers were left with the bill, and think, “A little lecture to students about taking responsibility for their own education is what’s in order?”
There is no way an after class visit and a clinic can justify the price tag. Besides, I did two clinics and harassed my poor professors.
The problem is there are no jobs, and law school is just a really expensive hurdle that, once cleared, allows you to qualify to buy your own bar prep course, which, once passed, allows you to fight 40,000 other grads each year for a $35,000 position where you might learn something about the profession.
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B. McLeod
Oct 29, 2009 11:29 AM CST
If there continue to be insufficient jobs, the market will (slowly and painfully) correct, as all economic markets eventually do. That will not be very helpful to those caught on the leading edge, who will have to find their own solutions. I am afraid that being angry and casting blame at the establishment will not prove to be the solution.
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Liz
Oct 29, 2009 12:23 PM CST
Leading edge? That’s a stretch.
According to you, anger at the establishment won’t help, but blaming students for believing the establishment is somehow productive?
Emotions are besides the point, B. I won’t accept this system because it is stupid. Be offended if you must, but schools and lenders have cheated the American taxpayer out of a lot of money. I’m not ready to start a tea party over it, but I think a little attention to the situation is more than appropriate.
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Liz
Oct 29, 2009 12:43 PM CST
Actually, I’m honestly curious: Why do you think it’s ok that law school costs $150,000 in tuition, doesn’t teach professional skills or the bar, and leaves students with $1,000 a up monthly payments, while provding entry into a profession where most entry level jobs are both extremely competitive and pay $35,000 a year?
Really, you look at this, you see school administrators and professors paid $250,000 a year, you see students struggling under debt, and you see the taxpayer guaranteeing loans which are a profit for the private lenders? And you think, what, exactly?
Your suggestions so far have been: Remember professors could make more money in private practice, take clinics if your school offers them, and complaining won’t help. What do you think will help?
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B. McLeod
Oct 29, 2009 10:19 PM CST
The market. Which will correct. It will change all the things you are upset about. Slowly, of course. Too slowly, actually, to help you, I am afraid. So, you will have to find alternatives. And, as I say, anger will not help. It will only diffuse your focus, which should be upon finding solutions. Nobody is going to do this for you (sad reality), so you are going to have to lace up your boots and sling your pack. Longest journey. . .first step, etc..
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Ethan S. Burger
Oct 30, 2009 4:17 AM CST
Law schools are like designer clothing, people feel that if they are paying more, they are getting more—which of course is often not the case.
Employers feel some level of comfort hiring the person with the best “pedigree,” since when the Harvard grad does not “work out,” the hiring committee doesn’t get heat from their management.
If the individual hired from Texas Tech or Hofstra were not to work out, the committee would be criticized for taking a risk. Law school faculty recruitment largely follows suit and this adds to the problem.
As a result, students and their families feel they have to pay for the school with the “Best Name,” irrespective of quality or value. They may ruin their lives in the process by piling up use debts and limiting their career choices. Of great import is a study comparing the careers of U of P and Penn State graduates which indicated that they did similarly well professionally in life.
Students from the “top schools” almost always had job offers before graduation, while the same was not true from the “lesser” schools.
Of course, academic performance has little to do with success in the workplace. Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College, Richard Nixon to Whittier, and Harry Truman [and Winston Churchill dd not attend college].
Mario Cuomo attended St. Johns (a school with an outstanding faculty)—he also had a hard time finding a job after graduating from law school. St Johns’ graduates usually have a harder time finding well-paying jobs than those from Columbia and NYU (both are excellent and expensive law schools).
Today, until recently, the “top” law firms in order to compete with the investment bankers decided they had to offer a competitive salary. Law firm partners wanted to make as much money as investment bankers. More students were willing to pay to attend the schools from which these employers recruited and hired.
Law schools are businesses and will charge what the market will will bear, Perhaps the financial crisis will have a positive effect. Students and their families will be unable to pay ridiculously high tuition nor will potential employers. I would hope that law schools would be forced to lower their tuition as a result, otherwise only the wealthy could attend law school.
Those law (and other schools) that are able to give grants and make loans to students who cannot pay top dollar are to be applauded (as are schools with loan forgiveness programs for graduates who join public interest groups upon graduation).
The financial crisis will not help things. Real unemployment exceeds 10%. The cost of quality legal services are beyond the means of most Americans.
Yes, the profligate schools deserve a great deal of the blame, but this countries electorate who is allergic to taxes and let politicians reduce the highest tax brackets. Whose interest do they represent. One needs only one bed to sleep in at one time.
If recent events prove anything, it i that nothing has any inherent value (e.g. housing, cars). The American people have learned to wait for the sales from retail stores. American law schools will experience the same thing. Perhaps Walmart will open a law school.
Unfortunately, as the job market becomes more competitive for law school grads, a school’s
prestige level may be viewed as even more important.
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Inga Sorensen
Oct 30, 2009 4:27 AM CST
Comment removed by moderator.
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saa
Oct 30, 2009 7:04 AM CST
I don’t get it. Why in the world would anyone get themselves into such debt, just to join a profession? People make bad choices and that’s too bad for them, but let’s not blame the system entirely. After undergard, grad, and law school I have about $40K in debt and if going to law school would have added $100K+ I would have NEVER went. Government loans, while seemingly unending at first do have to be paid back and it’s this simple truth that people forget when they get admitted to a school. Quite frankly I was admitted to a tier one school, but went to a locally well known, but only a tier two school. I couldn’t be happier with my work and debt load.
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Chris M
Oct 30, 2009 7:28 AM CST
I think #2 has it right - cost isn’t very important to a law student - at least while s/he is in school - because the government is there to supply all the cash that’s needed. If the ability to obtain the cash needed to fund a law school education were more scarce, tuition rates would have to adjust.
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Chris M.
Oct 30, 2009 7:30 AM CST
Sorry - meant #1 had it right (not #2)
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observer
Oct 30, 2009 7:36 AM CST
Am I the only one who thinks “hands on” and “research intensive” are inherently contradictory?
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Joe Momma
Oct 30, 2009 7:40 AM CST
Liz, you have to calm down a bit. Not all law schools costs the rates you’re saying and not all put you in a position to fail on the bar exam.
With the costs, there are ways out there to reduce or pay off these costs if you are willing to sacrifice something. I went into the military when I was younger and between the GI Bill and an act (the Hazelwood Act) in Texas available for all honorably discharged veterans, came out of law school completely debt free.
Once the GI Bill expired, this act paid for all tuition and some fees but it only applied if you were going to a state university. At the end of the day, I was paying more for books per semester than courses.
If you have to have an Ivy League, Stanford, etc…degree, then you will have to pay, but everyone knows this so there isn’t anything being hidden or some scam happening with prospective students.
As far as bar passage goes, again here in Texas this information gets published so if a school’s students are passing the bar 30% of the time, the folks applying to the law school must take note of this.
I think what happens more often than not is people who are probably not fit to be attorneys go to these law schools because they are the only ones who will accept them, then after incurring large debts and not being able to pass the bar; blame the school, the bar, everyone else for their failings when the truth is they were not up to par to perform in this profession from the get-go.
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HP
Oct 30, 2009 7:41 AM CST
For all the talk about law school being a scam it’s nothing compared to Ph.D. programs in the humanities, social sciences, and, even, to an increasing extent, the natural sciences.
There are jobs for lawyers. Not as many as there are law graduates, and the entry-level salary is relatively low for all but a few (for which few it is absurdly high). But I’d wager that the ratio of law graduates who eventually find work as lawyers is better than 2/3.
It’s not as high as medicine, where probably 99% of graduates find work as doctors. But it’s certainly not as bad as say, having a Ph.D. in sociology, where the chances of becoming a sociology professor are maybe 10%.
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Hadley V.Baxendale
Oct 30, 2009 7:53 AM CST
I must be old. I forget what my tuition (UConn. ‘71) was, but I know it was in the hundreds. Something is wrong when law shool tuition reaches $50,000. However, I don’t think the ratings battle is the proximate cause.
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JEE
Oct 30, 2009 7:54 AM CST
It appears to me the problem began when the States all began to require a J.D. for admission to the bar. Before that, law school was a luxury for the wealthy, and everyone else became “apprenticed” to a practicing lawyer, read the law and then took the bar exam. Changing the state bar admission requirement, combined with freely available student loans (thus removing the cost barrier to a law school education), caused a massive spike in demand for the J.D. Moreover, the States don’t merely require a J.D. They require a J.D. from an ABA accredited law school. ABA accreditation limits the supply of law schools. What happens when you have very high demand and a limited supply? Prices skyrocket. This process doesn’t necessarily happen over night; as such, the market is still seeking equilibrium. Once supply hits demand, or vice versa, prices will cease rising faster than inflation. However, if the Federal Government does as the ABA suggests, and removes the cap on student loans, that will cause another massive shift in the balance between supply and demand, and will only result in law schools raising their tuition ever higher and faster. The only way to end up with lower law school tuition is to reduce demand in some way other than higher prices, such as limiting the amount of money available to pay for law school, or convince the States to remove the J.D. requirement from state bar admission and allow the profession to go back to its apprenticeship roots. That way, none of would even need to go to law school, and would actually get paid for learning to love the law, rather than becoming indentured servants to the student loan industry.
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KenHouston
Oct 30, 2009 7:57 AM CST
My tuition 30 years ago was $1,500 per semester at a first tier private law school. Today, the same tuition there per semester is 10 times that. The school’s US news ranking hasnt changed that much. My law school is just spending more money because they know they can charge it given the way the media falsly glorifies law practice to undergrads as a quick path to living he high life.
Every industry where the workers have been featherbeded - auto workers, airline workers, truck drivers, computer workers, and steel workers and paid for hours not worked - and given raises not on merit have seen their once cushy featherbeded salaries trimmed. Sooner or later, the same is going to happen to law professors who are basically receiving full pay for retirment consulting. With $100K per year salaries disappearing for graduates that can’t pen a structured argument or find the court house, this change will come soon. It wold help if the government wasnt so quick to loan unlmited sums of money to immature undergrads who think law school is the pathway to their new BMW.
Professionalism will go up when the ABA stops accrediting every 7-11 and forces law schools to really do due diligence on the character, inteligence and commitment to the profession of every applicant. Right now the law schools are just managing by the numbers, whether its US News rankings, LSAT scores or checkbook balances. We have seen the benefits of managing by the numbers on Wall Street.
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Disillisioned
Oct 30, 2009 8:04 AM CST
Let’s not overlook the involvment of BigLaw in this mess. They use the rankings to recruit from the top tier schools, so they can justify their exhorbitant hourly rates for recent graduates who can’t even perform at the level of a good paralegal. Meanwhile, they force these associates to crank out 2,500 billable hours or more so they can bring in 3 times as much revenue as they are getting paid, with the balance split about evenly between law firm overhead and partner profits. When a firm markets itself to Fortune 500 companies (the only clients who can afford these rates), you can be sure they’re using the rankings. Meanwhile, only the small percentage of students who get these high paying jobs can afford the huge debt loads, so they are enslaved to chase the dream of more money and the elusive lure of partnership, only to have the door to partnership slammed in their faces after they’ve given up family life for years.
I used to think I’d be proud if one of my daughters wanted to go to law school, even (God forbid) a lower tier school so she could pursue public service. When the youngest mentioned it as a possibility after her upcoming graduation, I found myself encouraging other options, much to the amazement of my wife. But how can I in good conscience encourage her to take on that kind of debt with little chance of being able to manage it?
A sad state of affairs for the profession.
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Unemployed 2009 Grad
Oct 30, 2009 8:04 AM CST
Amen to the GAO. I’m not prepared to forgive the ABA for not taking steps, but US News is irresponsibly deceptive. I just graduated this year. I don’t come from a family of lawyers and didn’t have an insight into this industry. I relied on their job and salary data to my peril. Not to mention that the rankings are very subjective and even though we all know that, firms continue to assign it importance when hiring. For everyone having an economic argument, a perfect market depends on perfect information. Market corrections DEPEND on quality of information, and this information is going to continue to distort the demand for law school (to the school’s benefit and the industry’s loss) until the sentiments expressed here are so loud and pervasive as to reach would-be students.
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Liz
Oct 30, 2009 8:19 AM CST
“The market. Which will correct.”
What I’m telling you is that it’s NOT a market. The only path to become a lawyer, in this country, is through law school. The law schools can, and have, charged whatever they want while providing no value for a good half of all students.
The schools should not be excused because 20% of students obtain Big Law jobs (which helps the school’s rankings, incidentally) because that still leaves 80% who paid $100,000 to compete with too many other students for jobs that pay $35,000 a year.
The only way the market can correct that is if no one wants to become a lawyer. So the profession which has meant so much to this country would be trashed, because a few law school administrators saw a ponzi scheme opportunity, and took taxpayers for a ride?
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David
Oct 30, 2009 8:24 AM CST
I agree with comment 9. Tenured professers get paid large salaries for doing very little that relates to educating law students. The same is true for tenured professors at top colleges. The scholarly articles they produce are nice, but don’t significantly contribute to anyone’s legal education.
The reason this can exist is that the top schools are mini-monopolies. For example, only Harvard can issue a Harvard diploma. And monopolies are notorious for having no incentive to be cost efficient or inventive. As long as graduates of the top top tier schools continue to land better jobs than graduates of lower tier schools, this will continue prevail. This will change some day when upstart schools find a way to recruit top legal educators and students, at below market tuition, and these students are able to find good jobs. At that point, you will finally see the top law schools forced into being competitive on the cost side.
As to ABA accreditation, a liberal accreditation policy keeps tuition costs down, because it means there is a low barrier of entry for new schools, and therefore does not create artifical shortages which would allow schools to charge even higher tuition.
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Michael
Oct 30, 2009 8:31 AM CST
I’m trying to understand the argument that because the ABA allegedly works to increase the number of law schools in play that in turn causes prices to go up. Isn’t the usual notion that increasing supply DECREASES prices?
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B. McLeod
Oct 30, 2009 8:37 AM CST
It is a market. Clearly the point of the article is that the schools are fiercely competing to raise their standing in the rankings, in order to attract students. If “there are no jobs,” potential students can (and eventually will) decide in some numbers not to enroll. Obviously, a top-25 ranking, but without real placement opportunities, would come to be seen as a poor prospect. It is likely that lower tier schools with reasonable placement will pick up market share. In states that provide for it, it is likely that firms will begin to establish apprenticeship programs in competition with all the schools. Competitive pressures and declining demand (and declining endowments, linked to declining placement) will force changes.
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Law Professor
Oct 30, 2009 8:42 AM CST
I am a law professor. I think I know whereof I (and #9) speak. Why do law professors teach so little? My third tier school recently lowered the teaching requirements from 4 courses per year to 3 so that we would have more time to write law review articles that would help improve our USNews rankings. And of the courses we still do teach (and the stuff we publish) most of it is highly theoretical, of no value to the average practitioner (which is exactly who is attending third, and I might add second and most first tier law schools).
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Liz
Oct 30, 2009 8:42 AM CST
“I think what happens more often than not is people who are probably not fit to be attorneys go to these law schools because they are the only ones who will accept them, then after incurring large debts and not being able to pass the bar; blame the school, the bar, everyone else for their failings when the truth is they were not up to par to perform in this profession from the get-go.”
This is what you think happens, based on your experience with a government-funded education? And a government-provided job at graduation?
The rest of us, who weren’t bailed out by the government, must be losers?
I respect your service, but I really can’t believe you would compare your government funded experience to anyone else’s. You do realize that minimum LSAT scores and bar scores are MUCH higher now, right? Also, I don’t know if you’re aware, but the government and the Army aren’t hiring many non-top grads. They pretty much have their pick of students from the top now.
Times have really changed,, and you’re showing a lack of respect for the other people in this country who allowed you to achieve success. You earned the right to a free education, but I don’t understand your entitled attitude at all.
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