Readers Speak Out On The Closing Of Whittier Law School
Was the closing of the law school a "mercy killing"?
While Whittier Law School isn’t officially dead, as it will “teach out” those students who remain, readers have commented on Whittier’s decision to close the law school. Here are some of those comments, responding to my column last week about my alma mater.
One alumni friend, who graduated Whittier in the early 1990s and is now a successful, well-regarded lawyer here in So Cal, says:
I forwarded [your column] on to my friend and fellow WLS alum (the one I told you “isn’t proud” of her degree). I haven’t talked to her yet about The News, but I bet she’ll say “good riddance!” To me it is not only sad, but a breach of trust since the school is certainly devaluing my JD degree. Does it matter? Probably not at present, but it could matter if I wanted to go in-house or to another firm and was forced to say “my school closed – no, I can’t get my transcripts.” But that begs the question: what does the school owe me? Anything? Arguably nothing, but had I known they were not in it for the long haul I might have decided to spend less money somewhere else, like Southwestern. One assumes that Whittier College being a hundred years old is stable…. All water under the bridge now.
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Another alumni friend, a 2006 Whittier graduate and successful litigator and IP lawyer also here in So Cal, says:
I have mixed feelings about the closure of WLS. Watching my school go from ok to bad to barely sustainable over the course of a decade has not been pleasant. One could argue that Whittier College is to blame. They made the decision to cut tenured professors, sell the campus, etc. One could also blame the Law School, which started accepting students with lower LSAT scores and was increasingly focused on being “profitable.” This led to our now infamous 22% bar passage rate and 37% post-graduation employment rate. Either way, let’s face it, Whittier Law School’s reputation quickly dwindled. I have been told the Law School received a shockingly small number of applicants for what would have been the 2017 1L class. Maybe it is selfish to feel this way, but I am slightly relieved to hear the school is closing. I would rather stop the bleeding than continue to place Band-Aids on a problem the College and the Law School could not or would not properly address.
So, which is worse: keeping the school open with both its dismal bar passage rates and post-bar employment rates, or pulling the plug — a sort of mercy killing, if you will? You tell me.
A Duke Law graduate of my dinosaur vintage commented:
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Most law schools became loaded with faculty members who taught little but cranked out plenty of research of dubious value. To pay the increasing costs, administrators felt the need to admit more and more students. Retaining them became crucial, so grades were inflated and subjecting them to withering criticism was frowned upon. The schools grew fat and glitzy during the good years in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, but now they’re suffering for it.
One of my classmates can speak to “withering criticism.” In our first year, we wrote many practice essays. The professor returned one of his practice essays with the comment that perhaps he should consider another career. He declined to take the advice, learned how to write, and still has a thriving practice more than forty years later. He taught substantive law school classes on the side and remembers that his students disliked having to write every week, but they learned how to write and they passed the bar.
Another “old lady lawyer” graduate of Whittier, a few years after me, wrote to say that she was a night law student with no undergraduate degree. She was grateful then and is still grateful now that the school took a chance on her. She landed a position in Biglaw back east where she found the “caste system” less pervasive. The legal education she received “back then worked very well for me and [I’m] really sad that it hasn’t for students in later years.”
A reader recalled her days at a law school in the Northeast when it finally began to dawn on the school that it needed to introduce “real-world law” into its curriculum. She remembers that “not all the faculty was on board.” A contracts professor taught students game theory, rather than contract law. One evidence professor taught only the FRCP, but the state had motions in limine, and the professor was completely clueless about it. She said that her law school “has become very focused in making sure students can actually practice law the day after they pass the bar, especially since so many of new graduates aren’t finding traditional jobs any more.”
Some law schools in California are now arguing that the pass score for California is too high, second only to Delaware. Recent letters to the editor of the Los Angeles Times don’t think that’s a problem and pointed out that the trend of “blaming the victim” that is extant in the land exists in law schools too. Didn’t pass the bar? Bad students. Why do law schools admit students if they don’t think they can pass the bar? Profit? What responsibility, if any, does a law school have to its students? Is there a crossover bar question here?
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A retired Whittier law professor took issue with my column, calling it “offensive.” (Thank you for sharing.) He correctly pointed out that the average MBE rate for Whittier law students was good and said he, along with other faculty, had worked hard to prepare students for the bar exam.
However, the problem at Whittier has not been the multi-state. It is the written portion of the bar exam where Whittier students have failed. Students need to show that they can think like lawyers, spot issues, provide the applicable rule(s) of law, and then analyze the fact pattern in light of the issues and rules. They need to be able to write clearly, cogently, analytically. If they can’t do that on the bar exam, then how can they expect to be successful in practice? How can they function in litigation where everything is done “on the papers”?
How many faculty at any law school have required students to write on a regular basis and then spent the time, effort, and energy to critique those writings so that the students can improve? How many bar-flunking graduates would have appreciated that help? How many law students would appreciate that help? There are too many raised hands to count.
The question remains: what is the purpose of a law school? As one reader noted, “Without the primary function to practically educate students on how to practice law, schools sadly turn out highly educated individuals who cannot adequately do the job of being a lawyer.” At the end of the day and at the end of the school, Whittier’s bar passage rate has proved the truth of the doctrine we learned in torts: res ipsa loquitur.
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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
