Valparaiso Law School Will Stop Accepting New Students, May Wind Down (Updated)

Will more law schools close in Valparaiso’s wake?

UPDATE (5:00 p.m.): Valpo has reached out to inform us that it’s not closing, but rather suspending admissions of a Fall 2018 class, working to move current students to other schools, and exploring affiliating with another law school or relocating. The school’s full statement is available on the next page.

Yet another law school will likely be closing its doors. We all knew it would happen eventually, but it was just a matter of which one it would be. Today, Valparaiso University School of Law, located in northwestern Indiana, announced that it will not enroll an incoming class this fall. Valparaiso is the second fully accredited law school in the country to throw its hands up in defeat and shut its doors, and the second Indiana law school to do so in the last year.

This is a law school that was publicly censured by the American Bar Association in November 2016 for being out of compliance with accreditation requirements that it have “sound admissions policies and procedures” and admit only applicants who “appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” Funnily enough, earlier this week, the ABA announced that Valpo was no longer under censure after the school provided “substantial evidence” that its admitted students were capable of graduating and passing the bar exam.

In August, we’d praised Valpo Law for raising its expectations and admitting its “tiniest class ever” — just 29 people had enrolled — but as it turns out, that tiny class is the reason why the law school has chosen to shut its doors. In fact, the law school’s enrollment declined so drastically that in February 2016, tenured faculty members were offered buyouts. Today, it’s not just faculty who will be left without a home. The law school’s 237 remaining students aren’t sure if they’ll be able to complete their degrees there. Here’s some additional information from the Wall Street Journal:

Valparaiso University President Mark Heckler said Thursday that for a time, the law school thought it was immune from the trouble other schools faced. “When it hit us, it came fast,” he said.

The law school has been operating at a deficit for two to three years and ran through its reserve, Mr. Heckler said. As applications decreased, it faced increasing competition from the five other law schools in the broader Chicago region, he said.

University officials will look for a possible affiliation with another law school and other options for the law school faculty, and said they are committed to ensuring the 237 existing students complete their degrees.

Check out this table to see what happened when the trouble “hit” Valpo Law:

Sponsored

If these students would like to continue their legal education, they ought to look into seeing if any of their credits will be transferrable to another law school. If not, we implore them to immediately do some research on closed school loan discharge — you can trust in the fact that if there’s anything worse than having tens of thousands of dollars of law school debt hanging over your head, it’s having law school debt from a school that abandoned you in the middle of your education.

Will more law schools close in Valparaiso’s wake? Other law schools certainly hope so. There’s a lesson to be learned here for students: If you continuously hear negative things about your school, perhaps it’s time to get out, before it’s too late.

Valparaiso Law School to Close, Citing Plummeting Enrollment [Wall Street Journal]
ABA removes Valparaiso Law School censure [Indiana Lawyer]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Sponsored