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.

The Rooster Bar: Why Won't the ABA Shut Down Bottom-Tier For-Profit Law Schools ?

John Grisham's latest novel, titled The Rooster Bar, tells the story of Mark Frazier, a law student who attends a for-profit institution called Foggy Bottom Law School. By the time he is a senior, Mark has accumulated $195,000 in student loans and concludes he made a bad investment.

FBLS's bar pass rates are embarrassing low, and few of its graduates obtains jobs that justify their enormous student-loan debt. By the time FBLS students are seniors, their morale has plummeted, and some even spare verbally with their professors in class. In fact:

To varying degrees, almost everyone Mark knew believed that (1) FBLS was a sub-par law school that (2) made too many promises, and (3) charged too much money, and (4) encouraged too much debt while (5) admitting a lot of mediocre students who really had no business in law school, and (6) were either not properly prepared for the bar exam or (7) to dumb to pass it.

Foggy Bottom Law School is a fictional for-profit law school, but it closely resembles the real ones. Infilaw, owned by an equity group out of Chicago, runs three for profit law schools; and all three are in trouble. Charlotte School of Law closed in August after it lost its license to operate. Arizona Summit Law School was placed on probation last March by the American Bar Association, and the ABA warned Florida Coastal School of Law in October that it was "significantly out of compliance" with the ABA's accreditation standards.

Not surprisingly, Infilaw wants to sell its two law schools that are still open. But why did the American Bar Association ever accredit these schools in the first place? The answer is illusive, but here is a key fact. In the 1995, when Bill Clinton was president, the U.S. Justice Department sued the ABA, claiming it was in violation of federal antitrust laws.  The suit was settled in 1996, and the ABA agreed not to deny accreditation to a law school solely because it was a for-profit entity.

That same year, a law professor named Don Lively started Florida Coastal Law School in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2004, Lively sold out to Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private-equity firm. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sterling created Infilaw as a holding company for the law schools and lined up additional investors, allegedly including Harvard University's endowment fund.

By almost any measure, all three Infilaw law schools are sub-par institutions. If you want to see the data, visit Law School Transparency's web site.  All three schools charge high tuition rates similar to reputable law schools like Harvard and Yale. Yet these three schools have low bar pass rates and very few graduates find law jobs that justify the enormous student-loan debt they accumulated to get their law degrees.

The for-profit advocates say schools like the Infilaw trio offer opportunities to minority students who are often rejected by reputable schools because of mediocre undergraduate GPAs and low LSAT scores. But the top-tier schools bend over backward to attract minority students and have plenty of scholarship money to recruit them. Too often the people who enroll at for-profit law schools are not academically prepared to study law and often fail their bar exams.

As has been often reported in the media, the job market for recent law graduates is terrible; and the bottom-tier law schools are producing lawyers who run a high risk of failing the bar while facing dismal job prospects.

In short, the integrity of legal education has been seriously undermined by a herd of poor-quality law schools, including the Infilaw schools and several public law schools as well.  Apparently, even Harvard University contributed to this train wreck, although Harvard wouldn't confirm that its endowment fund invested in Infilaw's schools.

The American Bar Association is primarily responsible for this disaster, but is it taking steps to shut down the bottom-feeding law schools? No it is not. In fact, the ABA is considering a measure that would allow law schools to make LSAT scores an optional criteria for law school admission. The purpose of that action, perhaps, is to make it harder to measure just how low some law schools' admission standards really are.

References

John Grisham. The Rooster Bar. New York: Doubleday, 2017.

Andrew Kreighbaum. ABA Backs Testing Choices on law Admissions, Inside Higher Ed, November 7, 2017.

Andrew Kreighbaum. Report: For-Profit Looking to Sell 2 Law Schools. Inside Higher Ed, November 29, 2017.

Josh Mitchell. The Rise and Fall of a Law School Empire Fueled by Student Loans. Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2017.

Law School Transparency web site.

Angela Morris. GRE or LSAT? ABA Council's Latest Move Could Nix Tests Altogether. Law.com, November 3, 2017.

United States v. American Bar Association, 934 F. Supp. 435 (D.D.C. 1996).

 

The Unfortunate Case of Mark Tetzlaff, a law school graduate with more than a quarter million dollars in student loans. Bankruptcy is the only reasonable option.

One would have to have a stone-cold heart (or no heart at all) not to feel some sympathy for Mark Tetzlaff.  Tetzlaff obtained a law degree from Florida Coastal School of Law in 2005, but so far at least, he has been unable to pass a bar exam.

In 2012, Tetzlaff filed an adversary proceeding in a Wisconsin bankruptcy court, seeking to discharge more than a quarter of a million dollars in student loans.  Tetzlaff had actually paid off his law-school debt but he had incurred $260,000 in student loans to pursue various other degrees.

During his adversary proceeding, Tetzlaff tried to explain why he had been unable to find steady employment. "He introduced evidence showing that he is a recovering alcoholic, that he has been convicted of several misdemeanor offenses and that these convictions have hindered his ability to find a job." Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 521 B.R. 875, 877-878 (E.D. Wis. 2014), aff'd, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015). He also introduced evidence from a psychiatrist that he suffered from narcissistic personality disorder, anxiety and depression.

In addition, Tetzlaff attempted to introduce testimony from a forensic psychologist that he had serious memory problems that prevented him from passing the bar. He also had a vocational counselor lined up to testify that his memory problems were serious enough to hinder him from finding a well-paying job.

An unsympathetic  bankruptcy judge refused to allow Tetzlaff's forensic psychologist and vocational counselor to testify because Tetzlaff he had not disclosed these witnesses by the deadline established in the court's pretrial order. But the judge allowed Educational Credit Management Corporation, Tetzlaff's student-loan creditor, to introduce its own forensic psychologist to testify.

ECMC's psychologist tested Tetzlaff to determine whether he was feigning his psychological symptoms. Not surprisingly ECMC's hired gun concluded that Tetzlaff was a malingerer and that he was feigning his symptoms.

The judge herself concluded that Tetzlaff had not made good faith efforts to find a job and that most of "[Tetzlaff's] energy over the last several years has been directed at making excuses for his failure . . . rather than securing employment." Id. at 880. Accordingly, the judge refused to discharge Tetzlaff's student loans.

Tetzlaff appealed the bankruptcy court's decision to a federal district court, which upheld the bankruptcy judge's decision. And he appealed again to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which also upheld the bankruptcy judge. And then he sought review by the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear his appeal.

Over the years, Tetzlaff has taken the bar exam at least five times--twice in Illinois and three times in Wisconsin. He failed the exam all five times.  In July 1917, he sued the Illinois Board of Admissions, demanding extra time to take the bar exam along with the right to consult written materials and to take the test in a semi-private room free of distractions.  Tetzlaff claims he is entitled to these "reasonable accommodations" under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Tetzlaff is now in his late fifties. Twelve years after graduating from law school, he still cannot practice law. Somewhere along his life's journey, he also picked up an MA degree and an MBA; and he is currently pursuing a LLM degree from Temple Law School.

What are we to make of this saga?

First, I believe the bankruptcy court was wrong to deny Tetzlaff a discharge of his student loans. Tetzlaff graduated from a bottom-tier law school, which has very low admission standards. It should not be surprising that he failed the bar exam multiple times. Numerous graduates of Florida Coastal School of Law have failed the bar.  And, as Paul Campos pointed out in his book Don't Go To Law School (Unless), many people who graduate from mediocre law schools will never earn an income that will justify the enormous debt load they take on to get their JD degrees.

Second, I understand why the bankruptcy judge refused to allow a couple of Mr. Tetzlaff's witnesses to testify. Parties to litigation are expected to comply with pretrial orders; and apparently Tetzlaff was granted several extensions to list his expert witnesses before the judge ruled that she would not hear their testimony.

But what kind of justice system do we have that permits a well-heeled creditor like Educational Credit Management Corporation to bring in paid experts to testify that a distressed student-loan debtor is a malingerer? Expert witnesses are hired for one purpose and one purpose only--to help their clients win their cases. ECMC is hounding student debtors in bankruptcy courts all over the United States, and it has almost unlimited resources to hire experts to testify against people who are penniless. Is that fair?

Finally, Mr. Tetzlaff's story illustrates the crazy system of higher education we have constructed in this country that allows an individual to borrow money to obtain multiple degrees when it is clear that this money will never be paid back. Mr. Tetzlaff is a case in point. According to news accounts, he has four academic degrees--a J.D., an MA, an MA, and a BBA--and is pursuing a fifth degree--an LLM.

Let us face facts. Bankruptcy relief is the only sensible option for someone like Mr. Tetzlaff. Even if he eventually passes a bar exam and practices law, it is highly unlikely that he will ever pay back $260,000 in student loans (along with accruing interest).

Mark Tetzlaff (seated on the left) (photo credit Bruce Vielmetti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

References

Mike Brown.  Student Loan Plaintiff Mark Tetzlaff Sues Illinois Board of Admissions to the Bar. Lendedu.com, July 31, 2017.

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 521 B.R. 875, 880 (E.D. Wis. 2014), aff'd, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015).

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015),  cert. denied, 2016 U.S. LEXIS 61 (U.S. Jan. 11, 2015).

Bruce Vielmetti. Waukesha man sues for double the time, and an open book, to take Illinois bar exam. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 26, 2017.

William Vogeler. Law Graduate Sues for Open-Book Bar Exam. findlaw.com, July 27, 2017.

Unemployed Lawyers with Student Loan Debt: The Law Schools Should Be Forced To Bear Part of The Cost of Law School Loans

Recently, I wrote about Anna Alaburda, who sued Thomas Jefferson School of Law, her law school alma mater. Alaburda spent  $150,000 to attend TJSL. After graduating in 2008, she was unable to find a remunerative law job; and her student loan debt grew to $170,000. She claimed she was induced to enroll at Thomas Jefferson by the law school's false assertions that most of its graduates got well-paying legal jobs.

Alaburda's case went to trial, and this week a jury ruled against her.  Alaburda's loss is the latest in a string of defeats by unemployed or underemployed law school graduates who sued their law schools for fraud or misrepresentation.

Some unemployed or underemployed lawyers have filed for bankruptcy to discharge their student loans, but they've had mixed success. Michael Hedlund, a graduate of Willamette Law School, succeeded in getting a partial discharge of his law-school debt, but he endured ten years of litigation before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rendered a decision in his favor in 2013.

More recently, two heavily indebted law-school graduates were denied bankruptcy relief. Mark Tetzlaff, racked up thousands of dollars in debt to pursue post-secondary studies; and he eventually received an MBA and a law degree from Florida Coastal School of Law, a bottom-tier law school. Tetzlaff actually paid off his law school debt, which he was required to do in order to get Florida Coastal to release his transcripts. But he never obtained a good job as an attorney, and he was unable to pay off other student loans. When he filed for bankruptcy in 2012, he owed $260,000 in student-loan debt.

The Eighth Circuit was not sympathetic to Mr. Tetzlaff's plight and refused to discharge his student loans in a decision released last year. And the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal.

Likewise, a bankruptcy court in California ruled against Mark Lilly in 2013. Like Mr. Tetzlaff, Mr. Lilly took on a massive amount of student-loan debt, including debt he acquired to obtain an MBA and a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, which is not a top-ranked law school. His request for bankruptcy relief was denied, but he never found work as a lawyer.

This is the tragic reality: the legal job market has imploded, but law schools have not reduced enrollments sufficiently in response to the shrinking demand for lawyers. Law schools continue to pump out far more attorneys than American society needs, and many law schools have lowered their admissions standards just to get students in the door. For people like Mark Tetzlaff and Mark Lilly, who graduated from mediocre law schools, there are virtually no jobs. In California, for example, there are now 2.5 law graduates for every job opening.

Thus far, law graduates have borne most of the suffering created by a shrinking job market, especially graduates who received their degrees from nonprestigious law schools like Florida Coastal, Thomas Jefferson, and McGeorge. On average, law graduates who borrow to finance their studies acquire $140,000 in student-loan debt. Graduates of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where Anna Alaburda obtained her degree, now graduate with an average debt load of $180,000! Many simply can't find jobs that will allow them to pay off their student loans.

In my view, some of the suffering experienced by unemployed law graduates should be shifted to the law schools, which have charged students exorbitant tuition and are graduating more students than our economy can absorb. These schools purport to maintain the highest ethical standards, but in reality, many of them are making admissions decisions based on their revenue needs and not the welfare of their students.

Whether or not they are guilty of misrepresentation, as Ms. Alaburda asserted  against TJSL, many law schools are certainly guilty of behaving contrary to the public interest. Surely, these schools should help their unemployed graduates pay back massive student-loan debt that was acquired to obtain degrees that are virtually worthless.

References

Hedlund v. Educ. Resources Inst., Inc., 718 F.3d 848 (9th Cir. 2013).

Lilly v. Illinois Student Assistance Comm’n, 538 B.R. 45 (Bankr. S.D. Cal. 2013).

Elizabeth Olsen. Law Student Gets Her Day in Court. New York Times, March 6, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/business/dealbook/court-to-hear-suit-accusing-law-school-of-inflating-job-data.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015). Accessible at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1708687.html

Thomas M. Cooley Law School v. Kurzon Strauss, LLP, 759 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2014). Accessible at http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/14a0139p-06.pdf

Gary Warth. Jury rejects fraud claim against law school. San Diego Union-Tribune, March 24, 2016. Accessible at http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/24/thomas-jefferson-law-school-verdict/

Joshua Wright. The Oversaturated Job Market for Lawyers Continues and On-the-Side Legal Work Grows. EMSI blog, January 10, 2014. Accessible at: http://www.economicmodeling.com/2014/01/10/the-oversatured-job-market-for-lawyers-continues/

Thomas Jefferson School of Law is being sued for misrepresentation by Anna Alaburda, a TJSL graduate. Let's hope she wins

Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Anna Alaburda, one its graduates. The case may go to trial this week.

Alaburda, who received her JD from TJSL in 2008, sued the law school in a California state court, claiming the school misrepresented the employment statistics of its graduates. Alaburda argues that she enrolled at Thomas Jefferson based partly on the school's representations about its graduates' job prospects, but that the school dispensed misleading information. Since graduating, Alaburda has not found a full-time attorney's job.

As a New York Times story reported, Alaburda is not the first law school graduate to sue her alma mater, but she is the first to get her case to trial. Judges in Illinois, New York and Michigan have dismissed similar suits based on the grounds that the plaintiffs enrolled in law school "at their own peril," and that they were sophisticated enough to realize that they might not find an attorney's job after they graduated.

Thomas M. Cooley Law School was sued under a theory similar to the one put forth by Alaburda, but a Michigan court dismissed the case. Less well known, however, is the fact that Cooley Law School lost a defamation suit against the attorney who brought the misrepresentation suit. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Thomas M. Cooley was a public figure for the purposes of a defamation claim and could not prevail  unless the school could show the lawyer had communicated his accusations maliciously, which it had not done.

I hope Ms. Alaburda wins her lawsuit. As Paul Campos and others have written, the market for lawyers has imploded. There is now approximately one law job for every two law graduates. Law school admissions are down by about 20 percent, and many law schools have lowered their admission standards just to get tuition-paying students through the door.  Meanwhile, the average newly minted JD graduates with more than $100,000 in student-loan debt.

Many students at the second- and third-tier schools do not pass the bar exam after they graduate and are not able to earn an income that will allow them to pay back their student loans. Some have filed for bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, the bankruptcy courts have not always been sympathetic. A few months ago, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Mark Tetzlaff, a graduate of  Florida Coastal School of Law, was not eligible for bankruptcy relief, in spite of the fact that Tetzlaff failed the bar exam, had serious health problems, and hadn't found employment as a lawyer.  In a 2013 decision, a California bankruptcy judge ruled against Mark Lilly, another law school graduate who never found employment as an attorney.

Job prospects for graduates of second- and third-tier law schools are terrible; and thousands of law graduates are burdened with six-figure debt.  In fact, in Don't Go to Law School, Unless, Paul Campos advised students attending down-market law schools to drop out after the first year if they don't excel academically rather than borrow money to continue their studies  In Campos' view, it often makes more sense for a law student to drop out rather than double down and acquire more debt to get a JD degree that won't lead to a high-paying job.

In my view, the law schools have acted irresponsibly to the deteriorating job market for attorneys. Many did not cut their enrollments in response to the plummeting demand for lawyers.  Instead, they lowered their admissions standards in order to keep generating tuition. And according to some law school graduates, at least a few law schools lured people to enroll by misrepresenting the job statistics of their graduates.

If Alaburda wins her case, Thomas Jefferson will appeal. But if she ultimately prevails and gets a money judgment, law schools all over the United States will quake with fear. The law schools have had a good run. They jacked up tuition prices unreasonably and raked in millions of dollars. And students went heavily into debt on the bet that they would get a good lawyer's job that would justify their investment.

But the party is over.  Thousands of unemployed and heavily indebted lawyers deserve some relief. If they are victims of fraud or misrepresentation, I hope they find relief in the state courts. And if they are unable to find remunerative employment as attorneys, I hope they find sympathetic bankruptcy judges who will relieve them of their oppressive student loans and give them an opportunity for a fresh start.

References

Elizabeth Olsen. Law Student Gets Her Day in Court. New York Times, March 6, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/business/dealbook/court-to-hear-suit-accusing-law-school-of-inflating-job-data.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

Lilly v. Illinois Student Assistance Comm’n, 538 B.R. 45 (Bankr. S.D. Cal. 2013)

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015). Accessible at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1708687.html

Thomas M. Cooley Law School v. Kurzon Strauss, LLP, 759 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2014). Accessible at http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/14a0139p-06.pdf

Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation: The Seventh Circuit made a mistake when it refused to discharge a quarter of a million dollars in student-loan debt owed by an umemployed 56-year old man living on his mother's Social Security check

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals got it wrong when it affirmed a lower court ruling against Mark Tetzlaff, an unemployed 56 year-old man who tried to discharge $260,000 of student-loan debt in bankruptcy. Mr. Tetzlaff filed a petition for certiorari in October with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to have the Seventh Circuit's decision overturned. I hope the Supreme Court agrees to hear his case.

The Seventh Circuit applied the Brunner test too harshly.

In ruling against Tetzlaff, the Seventh Circuit determined that requiring Tetzlaff to repay more than a quarter of a million dollars in student-loan debt would not cause him "undue hardship." To reach this bizarre conclusion, the court applied the three-part Brunner test, which required Tetzlaff to show:

1) [He could] not maintain, based on current income and expenses, a minimal standard of living . . . if forced to repay [his] loan;

 2) additional circumstances exist indicating that this state of affairs is likely to persist for a significant portion of the repayment period;

3) [he] made good faith efforts to repay the loans. 

 At the time Tetzlaff filed his adversary hearing, he was 56 years old, unemployed, and living with his mother. Both he and his mother subsisted entirely on his mother's Social Security check. Thus, the court admitted that Tetzlaff met the first prong of the Brunner test: he could not pay back his student loans and maintain a minimal standard of living.

But the Seventh Circuit panel ruled that Tetzlaff had not meet the second prong of the Brunner test.  According to the court,Tetzlaff was required to show "the certainty of hopelessness" concerning his financial future.  In essence, the court predicted that Tetzlaff's financial situation will probably improve. After all, the court noted, "he has an MBA, is a good writer, is intelligent, and family issues are largely over" (quoting the lower court's opinion).

Moreover, in the Seventh Circuit's view, Tetzlaff had not made good faith efforts to pay back his loans, a requirement of the Brunner test's third prong.

Although Tetzlaff may not have made sufficient efforts to repay the $260,000 he was trying to discharge in bankruptcy, he had also borrowed money to attend Florida Coastal Law School; and he had paid back his law school loans. Tetzlaff argued in court that his successful effort to pay off his law-school loans showed his good faith,

But the Seventh Circuit did not buy Tetzlaff's argument.  In the court's view, Tetzlaff had not made a good faith effort to repay the $260,000 he owed to Educational Credit Management Corporation, the agency that was fighting Tetzlaff's bankruptcy discharge. Thus he failed the third prong of the Brunner test.

Where the Seventh Circuit went wrong: Low Job Prospects for Law Graduates

In my view, the Seventh Circuit erred when it refused to discharge Tetzlaff's student loan debt. 

First of all, a 56-year old man who is unemployed and has significant mental health issues (as he testified in court) will never pay back more than a quarter of a million in student-loan debt--a debt that is growing larger by the day due to accrued interest. The court would have ruled more realistically and more compassionately if it had applied the principle laid down by the Ninth Circuit's Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in its 2013 Roth decision: "[T]he law does not require a party to engage in futile acts." 

It is true Tetzlaff holds an MBA and a law degree, but these credentials are no guarantee of a good job, particularly given his age, his employment history, and his mental health issues. In fact, Tetzlaff's law degree may be almost worthless.  

As Paul Campos wrote in his 2012 book, Don't Go To Law School (Unless), the job market for lawyers is terrible. Indeed, Campos observed, "[L]aw schools are now producing more than two graduates for every available job."

And Tetzlaff's prospects for a legal job are especially dire since he failed the bar exam twice. In addition, he graduated from Florida Coastal Law School, one of the nation's bottom-tier law schools with very low admissions standard. According to Law School Transparency, a public interest group, 50 percent of Florida Coastal's 2014 entering class were at extreme risk of failing the bar exam based on their LSAT scores.

Law School Transparency pointed out that graduates of law schools with low admission standards have a much harder time obtaining employment than graduates from more prestigious law schools. "Legal job rates are considerably worse at the serious risk schools," Law School Transparency's report stated. "A serious risk school is 4 times as likely to have a below average legal job rate. Nearly three-quarters of schools with employment rates below 50% were serious risk schools."

Law School Transparency's recent report shows that borrowing money to attend a law school with low admissions standards is not a good bet. "Based on available salary data from serious risk schools, graduates from these programs cannot service their debts without generous federal hardship programs."

Nevertheless, Tetzlaff was wise to pay off his law-school debt first, since the law school would not release his diploma to him unless he paid that debt. And without a diploma, he would be unable to take the bar exam. In fact, Tetzlaff had no real choice in prioritizing his law school debt over his other student loan debt.

It is truly unfortunate that the Seventh Circuit showed both lack of compassion and lack of understanding by penalizing Mr. Tetzlaff for making the only sensible financial decision he could make.  He simply had to make paying his law-school debt a priority in order to have any hope of ever practicing law.

The Court Should Not Have Allowed ECMC to accuse Tetzlaff of being a malingerer

Educational Credit Management Corporation, perhaps the nation's most heartless and ruthless student-loan debt collector, opposed the discharge of Tetzlaff's student-loan debt, and it hired Dr. Marc Ackerman, a forensic psychologist, to bolster its case. Ackerman performed tests on Tetzlaff and testified that Tetzlaff "'scored very high on several malingering scales,' indicting that Tetzlaff was perhaps feigning his psychological symptoms."

I find it outrageous that Educational Credit Management Corporation's hired a forensic psychologist as a means of suggesting Tetzlaff is a malingerer. ECMC has fought bankruptcy relief for distressed student-loan debtors all over the United States, and its chief executives have grown rich in the debt collection business. For ECMC to force an unemployed man in his mid-50s to take a psychological exam in a bankruptcy proceeding to determine whether he is a malinger is detestable.

It is true that Tetzlaff introduced testimony about his mental health issues, but I don't think that gives ECMC license to use an expert witness to essentially attack his character. In my opinion, the bankruptcy court should have excluded the forensic psychologist's opinion on the grounds of common decency.

And if we are going to be looking into people's mental health, let's check the mental health status of the ECMC officials who opposed bankruptcy relief for Jane Roth, a 68-year-old woman with chronic health problems who was living solely on the income of a $774 Social Security check. Anyone who would persecute Jane Roth must have serious mental health problems--let's call it chronic undifferentiated greed.

Conclusion: The  Seventh Circuit committed a grave error in deciding the Tetzlaff case

The Tetzlaff decision was a bad decision. Mr. Tetzlaff should be commended for trying to improve his economic prospects by obtaining graduate education, and he should not be penalized because some of his educational choices may have been misguided.

Mr. Tetzlaff probably made a mistake when he borrowed money to attend Florida Coastal Law School.  But he should not suffer a lifetime penalty for mistakes he made in his good faith efforts to obtain an education. And people in bankruptcy should not be required to take psychological tests to determine whether they are malingers.

The Department of Education needs to rein in Educational Credit Management Corporation by insisting that it not oppose bankruptcy relief for people like Mark Tetzlaff. Unless it does that, DOE simply cannot continue to say with any credibility that it is trying to relieve the distress of millions of people who are unable to pay back their student loans.

References

Paul Campos. Don't Go To Law School (Unless). Self-published, 2012.
Roth v Educational Credit Management Corp, 490 B.R. 908, 920 (9th Cir. BAP 2013).

Law School Transparency. 2015 State of Legal Education. Accessible at: http://lawschooltransparency.com/reform/projects/investigations/2015/
John Hechinger. Taxpayers Fund $454,000 Pay for Collector Chasing Student Loans. Bloomberg.com, May 15, 2013. Accessible at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-15/taxpayers-fund-454-000-pay-for-collector-chasing-student-loans.html
Tetzlaff v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 794 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2015). Accesible at: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=900247726541956067&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

Anything to make a buck: Many law schools should be closed

Law School Transparency, a public interest organization, issued a report containing some alarming information about law school enrollments. Anyone thinking about going to law school needs to read this report, including the information it contains about individual law schools.

LST reports that law-school enrollments have declined 28 percent since 2010, which has caused a budget crunch for law schools because they are heavily dependent on tuition money to keep their doors open.

As a result of declining law-school applications, many law schools have lowered their admission standards to attract more students, particularly students with low LSAT scores. As LST points out, LSAT scores are the best predictor of whether law graduates will pass or fail their bar exams. Thus, declining LSAT scores for American law students promises to bring a higher failure rate on bar exams.  Obviously, a student who borrows a significant amount of money to attend law school and then fails the bar exam will experience a financial catastrophe because that student cannot practice law.

LST broke down LSAT scores into categories that measure the risk of failing the bar exam, and it identified law schools that are admitting a significant number of students with LSAT scores so low that they run a high risk of failing the bar exam after graduating from law school.

The picture LST paints is not pretty.

In 2010, 30 law schools admitted at least 25 percent of  their students with LSAT scores so low that those students ran a significant risk of failing the bar. By 2014, the number of law schools admitting high-risk students had more than doubled--from 30 to 74 in just four years.

In 2014, 37 schools "admitted classes consisting of at least 50% at risk students . . ." In other words, based on their LSAT scores, at least 50 percent of the students at 37 law schools were at risk of failing the bar exam once they graduated.

LST went on to report:

Every for-profit law school enrolled classes consisting of at least 50% at-risk students. The Infilaw-owned schools [Florida Coastal School of Law, Charlotte School of Law and Arizona Summit Law School] enrolled classes consisting of between 75% and 100% at-risk students. For-profit school graduates have lower bar passage rates, worse job rates, and more debt. For-profit schools also graduate a higher percentage of students with debt and receive more total federal student loans on a per-school basis than public or private schools.

(emphasis added)

"Based on available salary data from serious risk schools," LST observed,  "graduates from these programs cannot service their debts without generous federal hardship programs." Moreover, "[e]ven top earners at the more affordable schools face economic difficulty; the rest range from economic difficulty to catastrophe."

What, in a nutshell, is the LST report telling us? Less prestigious law schools, including the for-profit law schools, have lowered their admission standards in an effort to counteract declining enrollments. On average, tuition at many of these schools is almost as high as the tuition rates at more elite schools, so students who attend many of these lower-tier law schools are borrowing almost as much money as students who take out loans to attend a Harvard or a Stanford.

I have three comments to make about LST's report:

1)  Given the imploding demand for new attorneys, it is utter madness for the government to continue propping up for-profit law schools with federal student-loan money. Many people attending these schools will face a grim financial future when they graduate: poor job prospects and crushing student debts.

2) Based on a review of LST's report, it's not only the for-profits who are admitting students with low LSAT scores. A number or public universities have low admissions standards. According to LST's data, one out of four students at several public law schools have LSAT scores so low that they are at "extreme risk" of failing the bar exam.  These schools include: Southern University, Texas Southern University, Ohio Northern University, University of North Dakota and the University of South Dakota.

3) Law schools that are admitting students with low LSAT scores are not only doing their students a disservice. They are also lowering the overall quality of the nation's legal community. Many of these students will fail the bar, but many marginal ones will pass it. This country doesn't need an oversupply of minimally qualified attorneys.

In short, this state of affairs cannot continue.  Law schools with low admission standards need to be closed, and the students who accumulated massive amounts of debt to attend them should have their loans forgiven.

References

Law School Transparency. 2015 State of Legal Education. Accessible at: http://lawschooltransparency.com/reform/projects/investigations/2015/