The American Bar Association is responsible for guaranteeing high educational standards at accredited law schools in the U.S., but, are they any good at that?
Some would say no!
Is the ABA Meeting Its Standards?
In nearly half of all ABA-accredited schools in 2023, less than 75% of grads pass the bar exam on their first try. The statistics are even more grim when you examine whether those graduates end up using their law degrees in their careers. It’s apparently so bad that there’s now a fight brewing over whether the ABA needs to exercise greater control over law schools’ curricula. And this is all happening in the wake of a new ABA rule that could make it even harder to maintain educational standards at law schools.
Of course, no one expects to get the same legal education at the Regional Law School for Clowns and Bozos that one would get at the American Law School for World-Historic Geniuses. But if the Regional Law School for Clowns and Bozos is ABA-accredited, the students who pay a small fortune to attend said good law school will expect to be reasonably prepared to pass the bar exam and get a job as a lawyer. Whatever the results of the ABA’s new standards, recent history suggests that the ABA can’t always meet those reasonable expectations.
So, if the ABA won’t protect you from a substandard legal education, who will? Well, for better or worse, that job will fall to you. [But we can help!]
Future law students often spend so much time researching what they need to get into law school that they overlook some of the tools that can show what they’ll get out of law school. This includes what makes a good law school versus a “bad” one.
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Why Researching Law Schools is Critical
But first, a quick reminder on why researching law schools is so important. Law school is incredibly expensive. Gone are the days when merely attending a law school guaranteed a lucrative job after graduation. Outside of the top national and regional schools, your odds of making a return on your investment are probably higher if you’d bet the six figures you would’ve otherwise spent on a legal education on a properly played hand of blackjack. Employment prospects are low-ranked schools are well below 50%. If you don’t take the selection process seriously, you can find yourself in a lot of debt without a good way of paying back the money you owe. Make sure you’re investing wisely.
How To Research Law Schools
Fortunately, there are plenty of online resources to help you research the law schools you’re considering attending. Researching law schools go beyond searching for “good law schools to apply to.”
ABA Required Disclosures
If you want to go straight to the source, the ABA publishes its accredited schools’ required disclosures, which include each school’s bar passage and employment figures. The site is barebones, as one would expect from a “.org,” and it shoots out the data in slightly chaotic Excel spreadsheets. Nonetheless, the data is accurate and updated regularly.
Law School Transparency
Much more user-friendly is LST, Law School Transparency. Using the Law School Transparency reports, you can analyze a specific school, survey a list of all the schools in a state, or pick certain schools and compare them head-to-head. LST provides employment scores, under-employment scores, bar passage rates, and the costs for law schools around the country. It also shows how these figures have changed over time.
All this information is invaluable — seriously, check it out before making any decision on which law school to attend. It will help to perform a more fulsome cost-benefit analysis in deciding how much you’re willing to pay for increased job prospect security and a chance at a higher salary. As a bonus, it now integrates with your LawHub account to help you figure out where you should apply.
Law Hub
Speaking of LawHub, it now compiles many of these stats on its Law School Trends page. While LawHub lacks the visual panache of LST, it offers plenty of stats for you to peruse. Of special note is its chart of law schools’ “debt-to-income” ratios — a too often overlooked stat when researching law schools.
National Association for Law Placement
If you want to go deep on employment prospects, you can check out NALP, the National Association for Law Placement. NALP makes you pay for the full breakdown of each law school’s employment statistics. However, the site also features plenty of free articles that can give you a decent sense of new lawyers’ employment chances, salaries, and locations.
Law School Reddit Forums
I would also consider looking at Reddit law school admissions forums, such as r/lawschooladmissions. While such forums can involve the blind leading the blind, many well-intentioned attorneys and law students provide additional perspectives on schools, firms, and job markets. Try to ignore the negativity and anxiety that can often crop up in posts (and try to forgive the posters for some of the least funny memes you’ve ever seen), and you’ll find some useful information here.
Researcher Beware
However, there are certain sources you shouldn’t put a tremendous amount of stock in. For example, the U.S. News & World Report rankings are not the end-all, be-all of the law school selection process. Additionally, law school websites and presentations are not necessarily going to give you an unbiased perspective on the relative strength of the school, for obvious reasons.
Final Thoughts
But, as we covered, there are plenty of other resources — especially LST — that can help you make informed, intelligent decisions about where you’ll attend law school. If the ABA can’t always protect you from bad law schools, a little bit of research today can promote a better educational experience tomorrow.
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