Law Schools, Layoffs

This Law School's Enrollment Is Down By Almost 80 Percent

How will this struggling law school be able to survive?

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Earlier this week, we brought our readers news about Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School, a law school whose enrollment had dropped by 52 percent since 2010. Cooley Law is perhaps better known as the worst law school in the nation, so its failures were generally celebrated by those in the legal profession.

Today, we’re going to profile another law school that’s desperately flailing in terms of enrollment. Have you ever heard of the Appalachian School of Law? These days, it doesn’t seem like anyone has — the school recently enrolled just 32 first-year students.

This, of course, is a stark decline from the school’s heyday back in 2011, when it was able to enroll 145 first-year students. In those heady days when recent college graduates were unable to find jobs, anyone and everyone was applying to and enrolling in law school, which in turn led to the drastic unavailability of jobs for recent law school graduates. Appalachian Law’s enrollment has dropped by 78 percent since that time.

To stave off its demise, the school has conducted wave after wave of faculty and staff layoffs, some of which we’ve covered in these pages. Appalachian Law has lost 62 percent of its faculty since fall 2014 — including its Director of Academic Success and Bar Preparation. (Dismissing someone in this role was a clear mistake, as only 25 percent of first-time test-takers from the law school passed the July 2014 administration of the Virginia bar exam.) According to Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, faculty members who were laid off have been replaced by visiting and adjunct professors.

In terms of entering admissions stats, Appalachian has gotten a lot less picky about the students it allows to pass through its doors. The school’s median LSAT score dropped from a 147 in 2010 to a 144 in 2014, while its 25th percentile LSAT score crashed from a 146 in 2010 to a 141 in 2014. Not to be cruel, but perhaps its students’ apparent difficulties with logical reasoning explain why so few of them are able to find employment as lawyers.

Take a look at Appalachian Law’s depressing employment report for the class of 2014:

Nine months after graduation, only 35.8 percent of the law school’s graduates are working in full-time, long-term positions where bar passage was required. What speaks volumes about Appalachian Law is that after nine months out in the world, 21 percent of the class of 2014 was still jobless. When the second-largest portion of your most recently graduated class is unemployed, you’ve got some very serious problems as an institution.

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Per WCYB, Appalachian School of Law is due for an ABA review of its accreditation in spring 2016. While we’d say that it looks like the school has only a slim chance of survival under the ABA’s watchful eye, we all know that isn’t true in the slightest.

For those 32 brave souls about to embark upon their journey through a world of what we expect to be pain at this struggling law school, we can only wish you luck at this point — but what we really wish was that you had done your research before banking your hopes, your dreams, your money, and your life on a law school that’s not long for this world.

Appalachian Law School Enrolls 32 1Ls, Down 38% From 2014’s 52 1Ls (And Down 78% From 2011’s 145 1Ls) [TaxProf Blog]
The Appalachian School of Law looks ahead [WCYB]

Earlier: Another Law School Lays Waste To Faculty Through Layoffs

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