One Law School's Change In Fortune

This dean's comment on the issues at hand defies all the evidence.

The New York Times chose to highlight Southern Illinois University when it reported on our investigation into law school admissions late last month. I objected to the focus on SIU because it had relatively affordable tuition, above-average job rates, and a very high bar passage rate in 2013. With many more egregious examples to choose from, I didn’t think SIU merited special attention. Still, July 2015 bar exam outcomes drive home why SIU found its way into our report in the first place, and why high bar pass rates from even a couple of years ago can be very deceiving to prospective students. It also demonstrates that even respectable state schools are not immune to the pressures that have driven so many law schools to admit far too many at-risk students.

Between 2010 and 2014, as with many law schools, the school’s admissions profile changed drastically. The school earned an “extreme risk” label for its 2014 entering class based on a bottom quartile LSAT score of 144 (22.9 percentile). The chart below plots SIU’s LSAT numbers for each of the last five entering classes for which we have data. The 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile LSAT scores are plotted on top of the national LSAT distribution curve. From this you can see that the school’s 75th percentile in 2014 was its 25th percentile in 2010.

In other words, SIU’s weakest students five years ago would now be at or near the top of SIU’s talent pool.

SIU had strong job outcomes at a relatively affordable price for in-state students starting in 2010 and 2011. Overall, those entering classes only lost 2-3% of students to involuntary academic attrition. In July 2013 and July 2014, the remaining students achieved a first-time July passage rate of 91.3% and 86.7% in Illinois, respectively.

However, the story starts to change with the class enrolled in 2012. First, the school’s risk profile at each quartile increased by one level. The 25th percentile went from modest to high; 50th percentile from low to modest; and the 75th percentile from minimal to low. Second, involuntary academic attrition increased to 6.3%.

Despite increased attrition, the school’s July 2015 bar passage rate was 67% in Illinois. This is likely just the beginning of the downward trend for SIU.

For the entering class in 2013 (July 2016 bar exam), SIU’s LSAT scores continued to drop across the board, moving from the top of the band to the bottom of the band at each of the three quartiles. Oddly, the school failed out a quarter as many 1Ls from this class as compared to the previous class.

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In 2014 each quartile increased at least one additional risk level. The bottom quartile went from high risk to extreme risk. Whether the school failed students out at a higher or lower rate is not yet known.

The New York Times article came out in advance of the July 2015 bar exam results, but in it the school’s associate dean discussed SIU’s declining admissions standards and some of the steps the school is taking to mitigate risk.

“Our experience has been that someone with a 147 score could pass the bar and someone else with 160 could fail, so we don’t think that there is necessarily a relationship between the test and people’s ability to pass the bar,” said Christopher Behan, the school’s associate dean. … To help students pass the bar, the school offers a free summer bar preparation course as well as a separate course in the spring. It also added another bar preparation course during the current fall semester.

Dean Behan’s comment defies all the evidence. Of course students with a 160 LSAT occasionally fail. Quite a few 147s pass too. But to suggest that there is no correlation between the LSAT and bar passage is simply false. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between an LSAT score of 147 and one of 144 or below.

How well SIU’s initiatives work remains to be seen. The LSAT is not nearly the only thing that matters, but its relationship to bar exam outcomes is unambiguous. If SIU — or any school for that matter — is able to buck this trend and raise or even maintain bar passage rates with students who look a lot weaker on paper, we hope that they will share their secrets. With bar passage rates trending downward nationwide, it would be a great service to share empirically validated methods that help at-risk students succeed.

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Study Cites Lower Standards in Law School Admissions [DealBook / New York Times]