Law Schools

Law Schools With Low LSAT Medians Have Absurd Academic Attrition Rates

These law schools must be reined in by the American Bar Association as soon as possible.

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Maybe you shouldn’t have gone to law school…

Due to the impacts of the Great Recession upon the legal academy — namely, extremely reduced enrollment numbers — many law schools lowered their admissions standards in order to fill their classrooms and meet their budgetary demands. LSAT scores sank quickly at some law schools, with medians dropping below 150. As likely could have been expected, schools that enrolled first-year students with subpar entering statistics witnessed an increase in nontransfer, academic attrition for several years.

Just how bad have things gotten? Professor Jerry Organ of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota provides the details in his new study of law school attrition data at TaxProf Blog. Here’s the gist of his work:

[O]verall first-year non-transfer attrition increased each year until the 2016-17 academic year, going from 5.81% to 7.33% through 2015-16, before dropping back to 6.46% in 2016-17. This overall increase, however, results largely from increases in non-transfer attrition among schools with a median LSAT less than 150, as the non-transfer attrition rates for law schools with a median LSAT of 150 or greater have generally been in a downward trend over this period. Interestingly, one point reflected in this data is the inverse relationship between median LSAT category and attrition rates. “Academic attrition” rates increase significantly as median LSAT of law schools decreases; for four of the last five years, “other attrition” rates also increase as median LSAT decreases.

Professor Organ goes on to note that perhaps 2016-17 would have looked different if Charlotte Law had not been excluded due to its closure. Even so, he writes, “taking into account the ‘Charlotte’ factor, 2016-17 still shows the first decline in overall nontransfer attrition in the last several years.” That having been said, let’s get back to those academic attrition rates. Stephanie Francis Ward of the ABA Journal has a great breakdown of Professor Organ’s new research:

At law schools with median LSAT scores between 155 to 159, the average academic attrition rate for the 2014-2015 school year was 2.0 percent. For the 2015-2016 school year, it was 1.8 percent.

For law schools with median LSAT scores between 150 to 154, academic attrition for the 2014-2015 school year averaged out to 4.7 percent, and 4.6 percent for the 2015-2016 school year.

At law schools with median LSAT scores below 150 but above 145, academic attrition went from 12.7 percent for the 2014-2015 school year to 14.3 percent for the 2015-2016 school year.

And among law schools where the median LSAT score was 145 or lower, the average academic attrition rate for the 2015-2016 school year was 25.3 percent. Comparatively, the average academic attrition rate 2014-2015 school year at law schools within that 145-or-lower LSAT range was 15.6 percent.

With these numbers — especially the numbers at law schools where median LSAT scores were below 145 — it’s really easy to see how many students enrolled in law schools and reaped no benefit whatsoever. The only beneficiaries here were the law schools, which happily took their student loan dollars to keep the lights on.

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Professor Organ notes that in the 2015-16 academic year, 42 schools had median LSAT scores below 150, and none of them had an attrition rate of zero. “[T]en had an academic attrition rate less than 5%, 10 had an academic attrition rate of 5% to 10%, eight had an academic attrition rate of 10% to 15%, and seven had an academic attrition rate of 15% to 20%,” he writes. “[S]even had an academic attrition rate of more than 20%, including one at 42.1%.”

Law schools that are purposefully enrolling students who won’t succeed need to be reined in by the American Bar Association as soon as possible. When almost half of the class at your law school fails out, you know you’ve got a problem — and that problem isn’t the students, but instead, your administration. They may look like dollar signs, but these are people. Their lives don’t need to be ruined because your law school is strapped for cash. Do better. End law student suffering at your own hands.

Updated Analysis Of Law School Attrition Data — 2018 [TaxProf Blog]
Is sweet spot for avoiding academic attrition at law schools a median LSAT of at least 150? [ABA Journal]

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.

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