Coming to a State Bar near You ¬– Beggar Thy Neighbor

In my last post on the Massachusetts Bar Association’s underemployment report, I was flying blind because the link to the report was broken, and it wasn’t readily available on the MBA’s Web site. It’s up today, so I can give it a fairer read, and I was surprised to find two endnotes to the LSTB. [...]

No Massachusetts, Law School Should Not Be More Like Medical School

Lisa van der Pool, “Report: Law school should be more like medical school,” in Boston Business Journal. van der Pool is given the task of reporting on what the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Task Force on Law Schools, consisting of 14 lawyers, thinks needs to be done about “Law, the Economy and Underemployment.” Task force co-chair [...]

Give Credit Where Due

Rachel M. Zahorsky, “Law School Closings and Changes to Student Loan Bankruptcy Laws May Be Ahead, Says Former Dean,” ABA Journal. Former law school dean at Nebraska and Houston, Nancy Rapoport, favors bankruptcy reform for student debtors. This is important because law professors are usually more interested in discussing the need for reforming legal education [...]

‘What the Numbers Don’t Say: Law School Applicants Are Getting Older, Not Dumber’ on the Am Law Daily

“What the Numbers Don’t Say: Law School Applicants Are Getting Older, Not Dumber“ So I saw the first Softies show in 12 years. It was a real treat. I was so inspired that I started banging chords on my guitar. Then I realized that Jen Sbragia has something I don’t: talent. But when it comes [...]

Fewer Quality Law School Applicants in 2012

The LSAC updated the “members only” section of its Web site recently, which for some reason is available to all who deep link to it. Of interest is its “ABA Fall 2012 Applicant and Application Counts,” which it updates weekly. As of March 30, 60,693 people applied to law school, 91 percent of the total [...]

There Was No LSAT Surge

Readers of the Wall Street Journal Law Blog were likely confused by a few statements in a recent post “Whither the LSAT Takers?“ Author Joe Palazzolo writes, “Recently released LSAT stats show a steep slide in the number of tests administered. The roughly 130,000 tests in February were the fewest in more than 10 years.” That 130,000 figure is the total [...]

March 2011: Economists Discover Tuition Increases

It’s really not as glamorous as it sounds. The main impetus for the discussion is the November election. Candidate Obama said: “We’re putting colleges on notice: you can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year … If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each [...]

New York Spared a 16th Law School, for Now

Emily Melas, Daniel O’Connor, and Nate Fleming, “Plans for law school tabled by BU officials,” in Pipe Dream (State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton newspaper) It appears SUNY Binghamton’s law school has gone wherever law schools go when they’re tabled indefinitely, like Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania. “There are law schools right now who are not filling [...]

Center for College Affordability and Productivity Study Calls Out Law Schools

The CCAP published its revision of the explanation—called the “Bennett Hypothesis”—of why higher education institutions increase tuition. Looking at CPI data, higher ed. costs have soared above inflation and other notable goods and services over the last 34 years: (Source: BLS) The original Bennett hypothesis is named for former Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett, [...]

‘Clever Plans to Reform Legal Education Won’t Make Legal Services Any Cheaper’ up on Am Law Daily

It’s a revised version of my post from a couple weeks ago, “WSJ Op-Ed Reaches Acceptable Conclusion on False Premises.” Link is here: “Clever Plans to Reform Legal Education Won’t Make Legal Services Any Cheaper“ Hopefully this will inspire better proposals from reformers.