Who Should Go To Law School Today?

Who Should Go to Law School Today?

At the MAPLA conference in late October, which I have covered in several postings, Washington University School of Law Dean Kent Syverud described three things:

• Who should go to law school today;
• Who should not go to law school today; and
• Which school a student should pick. 

Who Should go to Law School Today?

You should still go to law school, despite the debt-to-annual income ratio, if you:

• Care passionately about obtaining the skills needed to change the world;
• Will make sacrifices to earn the J.D. degree;
• Will be astute at figuring out how to get an affordable education;
• Will be flexible and adaptable to the changing career landscape; and, 
• Will be adaptable to obtaining new skills as that landscape changes.

Who Should not Go to Law School Today?

Dean Syverud also advised that you should not go to law school if:

• You don't know what else to do;
• It only helps college or university career office statistics; or
• You plan to make a lot of money. 

On this last point, data assembled from Illinois and Missouri lawyers about a decade ago shows that the average lawyer makes an income of about $110,000.  That number may have changed a bit, but I suspect it is reasonably accurate even today.  I'll provide the links when I get back from my trip this coming week.






Which School is the Best Fit for Today's Student?

Finally, Dean Syverud identified the best school for today's prospective law student. It should:

• Have utmost integrity and deliver on its promises;
• Deliver key skills in a quality way;
• Have every member of its administration, faculty, and staff helping graduates find jobs in this tough job market; and,
• Offer an affordable education for that student.

Using Pre-Law Advisors:

In this difficult time of transition, Dean Syverud suggests that the role of the pre-law advisor is coming back. He said 70 percent of students have not talked with a pre-law advisor about whether to attend law school, which school to choose, and how to keep the cost affordable.  Instead, prospective students rely on:

• Websites;
• Blogs;
• U.S. News rankings; and 
• Law school publicity. 

Several of my postings have looked at the cost of law school, the job market, the value of a law degree, and whether I'd go to law school today.  As I have noted earlier, I believe deeply in informed decision-making. After my experience with the midwest pre-law advisors,  I agree that pre-law advisors should play an important role in the decision-making of prospective law students.

Dec. 14, 2013 Update:  LSAC data on law school applicants for 2010 to 2014.  In light of it, law schools will compete even more heavily on price.

Graduate School Bubbles Bursting Across all Professions?

Graduate School Bubbles Bursting Across all Professions?

One of my colleagues forwarded this story appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine.  The story provides an answer to the following question: "Are we in a medical education bubble market?"

The authors answer that question in the last paragraph of the story and suggest a difficult future for other professional schools.

Although it seems unlikely that we're in a bubble market for medical education, we may already be in one for veterinary medicine. That bubble will burst when potential students recognize that the costs of training aren't matched by later returns. Then the optometry bubble may burst, followed by the pharmacy and dentistry bubbles. At the extreme, we will march down the debt-to-income-ratio ladder, through psychiatrists to cardiologists to orthopedists . . . until no one is left but the MBAs.

It explains:

In medicine, students buy their education from medical schools and residency programs . . . . This education is transformed into skills and credentials that are then sold to patients in the form of services. So long as it is believed that patients, or whoever purchases health care on their behalf, will keep paying more and more for physicians' services, students and trainees should be willing to pay more and more for the education that enables them to sell those services. 

A simple measure of this market economy is the ratio of the average debt of a graduating

student to the average annual income in the profession on entry into the workforce. There are more precise ways to measure the return on investment in medical education — for example, the net present value of the stream of cash flows out (for education) and in (for services). But that value isn't very intuitive for most prospective students. In contrast, debt-to-income ratios reflect what students must borrow rather than what they must pay and, given whatever other assets they may have, how much in the hole they have to go. Thus, these ratios may better reflect how students actually feel about buying education.

It concludes that graduates can still expect to pass on debt costs to patients, except in two fields of medicine: primary care and psychiatry.  It then suggests:

[A]s high as the debt-to-income ratios may be for primary care and psychiatry, they are even higher for some other fields — notably, veterinary medicine, optometry, pharmacy, and dentistry. [Chart omitted.] For veterinarians, incomes have risen slowly even as student debt has exploded. [Citation omitted.] 

In short, the adjustments law schools are now making to respond to the decreasing volume of law school applicants predict adjustments other professional schools will likely face.

And, this generation of college graduates have no good, affordable, choices, it seems, if they want to obtain professional training that leads to a predictable middle-class lifestyle.

So, where are the stories about why professional school got so expensive across the board?  What role did the U.S. News ranking system play in the run-up in costs?  Did the professional school accreditation process contribute to the escalation of costs?

At the MAPLA conference, Washington University School of Law Dean Kent Syverud noted that legal education "has never been better."  We saw a period of extraordinary demand for a legal education that attracted domestic and foreign students.  The academy offered "terrific" teaching and research.  The best scholars in the world migrated to US law schools from abroad because U.S. law schools offered opportunity and stature.  Very qualified students entered law school with aspirations to change the world.  Law schools built "amazing" buildings with broad professional functionality. Law schools offered "stunning" services to students.

He suggested that dozen of current law schools now offer an education equal to the education offered only by the top 10 schools 25 years ago.  I believe that.

He called it a "Golden Period."  But, schools did not compete on price, but on U.S. News ranking.  (I thought as much.)  It came during an era of abundance with readily available student loan money, low default rates, and plenty of jobs for graduates.  He said (as closely paraphrased as I can get): "That world is gone.  We face dramatic change."    

Nov. 23, 2013 Update:  For more on the dental school analogy, see http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2013/11/the-dental-school-analogy.html.

Nov. 1, 2014 Update:  More on the dental school analogy.

Back to School: Lowest Tuitions for a Private Law School

The Appalachian School of Law has one of the Lowest Tuitions of any Private Law School East of the Mississippi River

Appalachian School of Law, given our mission and the population we serve, has worked to keep tuition affordable.

For the 2012-13 year, we charged $31,000 per year.  And, we lock that number in for the remaining two years of law school.  This number does not reflect scholarships or tuition remission many students obtain.

As a private law school, we rely on tuition and donations to operate the school. We get no state tax monies (as far as I know) or infusion of capital from a university parent.

A recently updated comparison of 106 private law schools, provided by Regent Law School, shows that the Appalachian School of Law joins seven other private law schools with tuition costs below $31,000. Only three of those schools are located east of the Mississippi River.  Their tuition costs range from $29,360 to $30,450 for the 2012-13 year -- so not far off from ASL's tuition.

Cornell University is the most expensive private law school on the comparison list at $55,220.   Brigham Young University is the most affordable law school on the list at $22,900.  Brigham, no doubt, receives subsidies or donations from the Mormon Church to help keep its tuition so affordable.

The ABA reports that average tuition for private law schools in 2012 was $40,834, showing a 4 percent increase over the previous year.  For 1986 to 1993, schools increased tuition, on average, by 8 percent to 11 percent.  For 1994 to 2008, schools increased law school tuition, on average, by 5 to 7 percent.

The recession clearly affected tuition by reducing the average annual increase to 4 or 5 percent since 2008. For the same period, U.S. consumer price inflation rates fell to .01 percent in 2008 to a high of 3 percent in 2011.  For 2012, the rate was 1.7 percent, substantially below the 6 percent increase in average law school tuition rates implemented at the start of that academic year.

In 1980, I entered law school at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.  I recall paying $6,000 a year in tuition, which an online inflation calculator indicates would be equivalent to $16,718 in 2012.  The Regent Law School comparison list shows that this top-ranked school now charges $46,710 per year in 2012-13.

Many of the scambloggers have speculated about why we have seen increases in tuition that exceed cost-of-living inflation rates.  I don't have any empirically proven answers.  I suspect that the U.S. News Ranking system caused many schools to incur costs in their attempt to achieve a better ranking.  Maybe they bought fancier buildings, bigger name professors, and students with higher entry level statistics. Interestingly, U.S. New and World Report began ranking law schools in 1989, when law schools began imposing significant increases in average tuition costs, as the ABA report cited above shows.  

Changes in ABA accreditation standards have also played a role, I think.  For instance, our library collection and related costs represent about one-sixth of our budget.  From my perspective, the ABA standards, which resist the conversion of collections from hard copies to eBooks and online services, play some role in the expense we incur in that category.  The ABA accreditation standards also limit the number of credits a student can earn using distance learning, which allows schools to reach more students at affordable rates.

The downturn in applications to law school will likely put appropriate pressure on administrators to find inefficiencies and reduce costs so they can make law school more affordable to students.  Several schools are freezing or lowering tuition this year.

For more information, contact our Admissions Office at 276-935-4349 and here.

For information about our generous scholarship program, see here.

$100,000 in Debt? Would I go to Law School Today?

Appalachian School of Law is one of the most affordable private law schools in the U.S.  Based on the data I have, it is one of the most affordable private law schools east of the Mississippi River.  Even so, our tuition this coming year is about $31,000 per year. Living expenses in excess of tuition -- of about $20,000 per year -- make law school a significant investment in a student's future.

If a college graduate asked me whether to go to law school today, I'd say "yes."  But, here's how to do it.

Do not apply to a school that is likely to admit you to fill the bottom of the class. You will pay full tuition to claim that spot. Instead, apply to law schools that will happily admit you to fill the top ten percent of their classes -- they will be one or two tiers lower than your stretch school.  Look at the LSAT quartiles for each school for a hint at how you fit in each school's entering class profile.  Disclose the admission package offered by the better school to the admissions office of the lower-tiered school.  Use it to get the lower-tiered school to sweeten the scholarship offer they've made to you.

By the end of the recruiting season, if you are a skillful negotiator, you could get a 50-, 75-, or 100- percent ride at a good school.  You will graduate with less debt and still find a decent job at graduation.  Often private schools offering good scholarship packages can be price competitive with state schools.

I have three other pieces of advice.  First, be cautious if any of the schools admitting you have not posted --as required by the ABA -- current data on scholarship retention rates.  That school may be employing a bait-and-switch tactic.  If so, you may get a great deal during your first year of law school, but then lose the scholarship and face paying the regular tuition rate for the remaining two years of your education.  Or, you may need to transfer to a more affordable school.

Second, if the school does post its current scholarship retention rate, be cautious about going there if the rate falls below 50 percent.

Third, also be cautious if a school tells you it will give you a nice scholarship, but if you disclose it to any other school, you face the risk of losing the scholarship.  Clearly, the school is hampering your ability to negotiate a better deal at another school.  In the end, is this the kind of school you really want to attend?  

Students graduating with $100,000, or more, of educational debt have bought the equivalent of their first house.  The decision to attend law school involves many factors, as I have discussed in many recent postings on the economic value of a law degree.  A student must ask:  "What else would I do if I don't get and use a law degree in my career planning?"

Similarly, when I bought my first house, I asked:  "Do I want to pay rent for the rest of my life?  Do I want to live with the limits my landlord imposes in a lease?  What are the benefits of owning my own home?"

When I bought my first house, I was in my mid-30s.  I immediately painted the interior walls in bright colors of yellow, green, and coral.  I got two dogs. I replaced the wood flooring. I had laundry facilities in the basement, a dedicated parking spot, a nice deck, a covered front porch with a porch swing, and a fenced yard.  I quickly added a perennial garden and then dramatically landscaped the front yard.  As a renter, I would not have had many of these features or freedoms.  Without my law degree, I would not have had the income to live so independently.

When I sold my house -- even in the down market following the 9/11 attacks -- I made enough profit to live very comfortably for a year in a two bed-room condo during graduate school.  Later, I put a $20,000 payment down on my second house in Grundy.

My second house -- also in the $100,000 range when I bought it --  has the same features my St. Louis house had.  I can't imagine living without them in the same way I can't imagine my life without a law degree. In fact, I now have three dogs!

If I were making the decision to attend law school today, I suspect I would still find a way to do it.  Then, I'd pay off the student loan just as quickly as I paid off my 15-year mortgages.

Nov. 27, 2013 Update:  Last week-end I finished reading Brian Tanamaha's book called Failing Law Schools.  He devotes several chapters to student loan debt.  I strongly recommend that students considering law school read those chapters to appreciate the risks they assume by accumulating too much student debt.