The Great Law School Brain Drain Is Why More People Are Failing The Bar Exam Than Ever Before
Shockingly, the worst is yet to come in terms of bar exam passage lows.
For the past two years, alarming headlines have followed in the wake of the scoring of the summer administrations of the bar exam. The first drop in nationwide bar exam scores in July 2014 prompted Erica Moeser, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, to declare that test takers were “less able” than their predecessors. Law school deans protested Moeser’s harsh categorization of their graduates, but when the stunningly subpar results of the July 2015 bar exam were announced, she was proven correct. Per Moeser, this wasn’t “unexpected” — after all, since the law school crisis began, students with lower qualifications who “may encounter difficulty” on the bar exam were being admitted in droves. Law school administrators were sorely mistaken if they thought that this would result in a happy ending.
Now that the effects of the great law school brain drain are on display for the world to see, it’s time to take a look at exactly what caused this phenomenon to occur. Professor Jerry Organ of the University of St. Thomas School of Law has been tracking LSAT profiles of law school matriculants for years, and the results of his analysis are shocking.
Research has shown that LSAT scores correlate with scores on the bar exam. Take a look at these changes in matriculant LSAT data from 2010 to 2015, and then you’ll see one of the reasons why fewer law school graduates have passed the bar exam in recent years:
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While the percentage of matriculants with LSAT scores between 150-159 has remained relatively stable, the percentage of matriculants with scores of 160 or greater has slowly declined, and the percentage of matriculants with scores of 150 or lower has continued to increase year after year. If that’s not scary enough for you, check out this line graph:
This is what happens when law schools are so desperate for cash that they’ll admit anyone with a pulse. Last spring, when asked about the law school brain drain, Professor Organ noted that “[t]he top is eroding and the bottom is growing.” Almost one year later, he says the brain drain will have lasting effects for years and years to come:
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Given that the LSAT profiles of matriculants and of law schools for fall 2013, fall 2014 and fall 2015 are less robust than those for fall 2011 and fall 2012 (the classes that graduated in 2014 and 2015, respectively), one can anticipate that the declines in median MBE scaled scores and corresponding bar passage rates in 2014 and 2015 will continue in July 2016, 2017 and 2018 absent increases in attrition, significant improvement in academic support programs at law schools, or improved bar preparation efforts on the part of graduates.
The worst is yet to come in terms of bar passage lows. Years from now, when society searches for the culprits behind the dumbing down of the legal profession, all fingers will point to the law school administrators who allowed this to happen on their watch.
Changes in Composition of the LSAT Profiles of Matriculants and Law Schools Between 2010 and 2015 [The Legal Whiteboard]
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