Only about 1 out of 4 law school graduates passed the California Bar Exam last February

Much like the Lusitania, legal education steams full speed toward its ultimate destruction, while law school deans and professors sip California wine and contemplate their retirement portfolios.

Earlier this month, the California's State Bar announced passage rates on the California bar exam, administered last February. Only 27 percent passed the exam--the lowest pass rate in almost 70 years. Think about that-- almost 3 out of 4 law-school graduates failed the California bar exam, which means they cannot practice law in the Sunshine State.

Most of these unlicensed lawyers borrowed money to go to law school--a lot of money. Even public law schools are expensive. University of Texas School of Law, my alma mater, charges students $35,000 a year to attend. And the bottom-tier, for-profit law schools are almost as expensive as top-ranked public schools. According to Law School Transparency, the total cost of attending Florida Coastal School of Law--a bottom-of-the-barrel law school--is $256,939! The total cost to attend the University of Michigan's law school,one of the best schools in the country, is only slightly more expensive--$288,395.

What's going on? First of all, the demand for newly minted lawyers has declined drastically. Smart people have figured that out, and fewer bright young men and women are choosing law as a career.

Many law schools lowered admission standards to keep their classes full, which led to lower bar passage rates for law graduates. A few states (Nevada and Oregon) lowered the standards for passing their bar exams to get their passage rates up. But most states have tried to maintain high standards, which means thousands of poorly qualified but heavily indebted law-school graduates aren't passing the bar and can't work as lawyers.

Then--as law school enrollments went down--Congress enacted the Direct PLUS program, which removed the cap on the amount of federal loans students can take out to go to graduate school. In response, law schools jacked up their prices and students began borrowing more and more money to pursue careers that became increasingly illusive.

A few colleges have done the honorable thing and stopped admitting students. Whittier College will close its law school after its current students graduate, and Valparaiso Law School announced last November that it will not admit new students.

Belatedly, in my view, the ABA began putting the squeeze on the most mediocre law schools in an effort to get them to raise their admission standards. But some of these schools have sued the ABA--Thomas M. Cooley and Florida Coastal, in particular.

I don't see a happy ending to this saga. All across the United States, second- and third-tier law schools have lowered admission standards, thereby watering down the quality of the legal profession. The ultimate result, in my opinion, will be the erosion of the nation's legal system as fewer and fewer of our nation's brightest and most honorable young people pursue legal careers as attorneys and judges.

We see it now. The corruption, deception, and manipulation that characterizes our national politics can be laid at the feet of our political class--and most of these creeps are lawyers.

Whittier Law School is closing: "They shoot horses,don't they?"

Whittier Law School is closing. And well it should.

Whittier Law School, which a Daily Caller writer described as "one of America’s crappiest law schools," has a crummy record by almost any measurement. In 2016, 174 Whittier graduates took the California Bar Exam, and only 40 passed. That's a 22 percent pass rate, compared to a 62 percent pass rate among California law-school graduates as a whole.

And Whittier Law graduates are having a hell of a time finding jobs as lawyers. Less than 30 percent of Whittier's class of 2016 landed long-term jobs as attorneys ten months after graduating, according to an article published in abovethelaw.com. And only 2 percent found jobs in large law firms, which generally pay the highest salaries.

Yet, in spite of low employment rates and  a dismal bar-passage record, Whittier charges its students a lot of money. It cost $45,000 a year to attend Whittier Law School in 2016, not including books and living expenses. On average, Whittier's 2016 graduates left school owing $179,000 in student-loan debt.

Clearly it was time to put Whittier Law School out of its misery before it attracted another class of students who would graduate with massive debt and little chance of getting an attorney's job that would pay enough to justify $179,000 in student loans.

Of course, the law-school faculty objected. In fact some of them filed a lawsuit in an unsuccessful effort to persuade a judge to stop the law school from closing.

Law-school dissenters even trotted out that old bromide about the law school's commitment to diversity. The law school's web site avowed that it sought to provide "a high quality education to students of diverse backgrounds and abilities--students who might not otherwise have been able to receive a legal education and who are now serving justice and enterprise around the world."

What a load of bull!

It is true that U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Whittier as the nation's second most diverse law school. A majority of its students are nonwhite and a majority are women. But a law school that leaves its graduates with an average of $179,000 in student loans and little prospect of a lawyer's job is not doing anything positive toward promoting diversity.

I commend the Whittier Board of Trustees for having the courage to close Whittier Law School. Other universities need to do the same--at least two dozen by my reading of data compiled by Law School Transparency.

There are simply not enough law jobs for people who graduate from second- and third-tier law schools, and the cost of attending these schools is more likely to leave graduates with a lifetime of indebtedness than a lucrative career as an attorney.

After all, as Jane Fonda's character said in an old movie about endurance dancing, "They shoot horses, don't they?"

"They shoot horses, don't they?"

References

Sonali Kohli, Rosanna Xia, and Teresa Watanabe. Whittier Law School is closing, due in part to low studentachievement. Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2017.

Elizabeth Olsen. Whittier LawSchool Says It Will Shut Down. New York Times, April 19, 2017.

Eric Owens. FINALLY! One ofAmerica's Crappiest Law Schools Is Closing Its Doors. Daily Caller, April 23, 2017.

Staci Zaretsky. Whittier Law School Will Close, Leaving Disaster In Its Wake. abovethelaw, April 20, 2017.

California bar exam pass rate hits 32-year low, but law-school graduates who fail the bar exam must still pay off their student loans

Last July, 7,737 people sat for the California bar exam, and only 3,332 test takers passed--a 43 percent pass rate. A total of 4,405 people--57 percent of test takers--failed the exam, the lowest pass rate since 1984.

In all 50 states, J.D. graduates cannot practice law until they pass a bar exam pass.  Thus, the 4,405 law graduates who failed the California bar exam last July suffered a major setback in their professional careers.

They also suffered a financial catastrophe. The average J.D. graduate leaves law school with more than $100,000 in student-loan debt; and that debt must be paid regardless of whether the graduate passes a bar exam or ever gets a job as a lawyer. Without a doubt, a majority of the people who failed the California bar exam last July have student-loan debt.

Obviously, the risk of failing the bar is not equally distributed among test takers. People who graduate from ABA accredited law schools have higher pass rates on the California bar exam than people who attended a law school that is only accredited by the state of California. Sixty percent of test takers who graduated from out-of-state ABA accredited schools passed the July bar exam, while only 21 percent of people who attended state-accredited schools passed.

And people who fail the bar exam the first time they take it have a lower pass rate than overall test takers if they retake the exam. Among exam repeaters, only 17 percent passed the California bar exam last July. Pretty bad odds.

The California bar exam results are just another indication that the future for many law-school graduates is bleak. The legal job market has less than six  lawyer's job for every ten new law graduates, and it offers no law jobs for graduates who cannot pass the bar. People who graduate high in their class from a prestigious law school such as Harvard or Stanford are eminently employable, but people who graduate in the bottom half of their class or who attend bottom-tier law schools may never obtain a job that will justify the student-loan debt they piled up to get a law degree.
So if you are thinking about going to law school, here's my advice.  Read Paul Campos' book titled Don't Go to Law School (Unless). And heed Campos' warning; unless you have family connections or are admitted to a top-tier law school, you probably should not take out student loans to pursue a legal career.

And if you went to law school, can't find a law job, and are unable to pay off your student loans, you should consider bankruptcy. But if you go that route and try to get your law-school loans discharged, you must educate the bankruptcy judge about the terrible job market for lawyers.

Now if we can just find a job.

References

Paul Campos. Don't Go to Law School (Unless). 

Kyle McEntee. Law Grads Still Face Tough a Job Market. Bloomberg  Law, May 4, 2016.

Noam Scheiber. An Expensive Law Degree and No Place to Use It. New York Times, June 17, 2016.

Ann Yarbrough. Bar exam pass rate dips to 32-year low. California Bar Journal, December 2016.