Law School Reality Archives

The Law-School Scam

The Atlantic: “For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and socialized losses. But for their debt-saddled, no-job-prospect graduates, they can be a nightmare. . . . lorida Coastal is one of three law schools owned by the InfiLaw System, a corporate entity created in 2004 by Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private-equity firm. InfiLaw purchased Florida Coastal in 2004, and then established Arizona Summit Law School (originally known as Phoenix School of Law) in 2005 and Charlotte School of Law in 2006.”

See also “The Canary in the Law School Classroom.”

Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal

Rolling Stone: “The federal government has made it easier than ever to borrow money for higher education – saddling a generation with crushing debts and inflating a bubble that could bring down the economy. . . . But the dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal – the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008. . . . Tuition costs at public and private colleges were, are and have been rising faster than just about anything in American society – health care, energy, even housing. Between 1950 and 1970, sending a kid to a public university cost about four percent of an American family’s annual income. Forty years later, in 2010, it accounted for 11 percent. Moody’s released statistics showing tuition and fees rising 300 percent versus the Consumer Price Index between 1990 and 2011.”

California Law School Sues to Keep Confidential Its Bar Pass Rate

Wall St. Journal: “Southern California Institute of Law is suing bar association officials for requiring that it include information on its website advising students where they can view exam passage rates online.” 43 SCIL grads took the California Bar exam in 2012 and all of them flunked. Wow! How does a school like that stay in business?

Starting Salaries For Law Grads Drops Significantly

ABA Journal:

New law grads in private practice are no longer taking home median paychecks in the six figures.

The erosion in BigLaw jobs is depressing the salaries for all class of 2011 law graduates, according to new statistics from NALP–The Association for Legal Career Professionals.

Law grads from the class of 2011 are earning median pay of $60,000, a 5 percent drop from 2010 and a 17 percent drop since 2009. Average pay is $78,653, a 15 percent drop since 2009. The figures are for grads who found full-time employment in jobs lasting at least a year.

The drop in starting pay is even more pronounced when only private practice jobs are considered, according to a press release. Median pay for 2011 law grads in private practice is $85,000, an 18 percent drop from 2010, when the median was $104,000, and a 35 percent drop since 2009, when the median was $130,000. Average pay in private practice is $97,821, a 15 percent drop since 2009.

Record Low Number of Law Grads Have Job Requiring Bar Passage

ABA Journal: “New statistics from NALP paint a bleak picture of the job market for 2011 law grads.

The overall employment rate nine months after graduation was 85.6 percent, the lowest it has been since 1994, according to a NALP – The Association for Legal Career Professionals press release. But the employment rate doesn’t tell the whole, dismal story.

Among law grads whose employment status was known, only 65.4 percent were in jobs requiring bar passage, the lowest percentage ever measured by NALP. The number has fallen nine percentage points since 2008. Only 60 percent were working full-time as lawyers in jobs that required bar passage.”