The College Fix

Dear prospective law student,

You’ve been thinking about it for a while now. And now, maybe, you’re ready to take the plunge and apply to law school. You’ve signed up for the LSAT. You’ve been researching potential law schools you might like to attend.

In other words, you’re doing what millions of twenty-somethings have done in recent years.

Before you get too far along the process, however, let me offer a few words of advice. Two, words, to be precise: BUYER BEWARE.

As Paul Rahe recently explained in a post at Ricochet.com, you might be surprised at just how poor a job some law schools do at preparing their students to actually become lawyers:

Consider the Southern California Institute of Law, which, in February, filed a lawsuit in federal court against its accreditor, which requires as a condition of accreditation that, on its website, SCIL provide a link to a page indicating the bar-passage rate of its graduates.

Now, you cannot blame the SCIL for fighting this requirement. In 2012, not one of the 43 graduates of the school who took the California bar examination managed to pass; and, in the years stretching from 2007 to 2012, the failure rate was 93%.

Can you imagine? A law school where not one single graduate was able to pass the bar exam?

Unfortunately, the story here is not all that unique among law schools in the U.S.

Many law students are shocked after graduation to find that they can’t pass the bar exam. Or, if they do pass it, they are shocked to find that there are few, if any, good jobs in the legal field in today’s job market.

A couple hundred grand in student loans must be a hard pill to swallow for someone who can’t pass the bar and has no job prospects.

Not only are well-paying legal jobs more scarce than most applicants realize. But many schools have an atrocious record when it comes to students passing the bar exam. That’s why it’s doubly heinous that schools like the Southern California Institute of Law, mentioned above, want to fight regulations that make it easier for potential students to see the pitiful track record these schools have.

On the other hand, it’s ultimately students’ responsibility to educate themselves. And this information is out there, if you make the effort to look for it.

If you are thinking about law school–you should know what you’re buying before you take out a small fortune in educational loans.

But when the law school is fighting against making this information more easily available, it’s really a pitiful thing to see.

If more students knew the truth, no doubt law school applications would decline dramatically.

For now, it looks like the professors and administrators of Southern California Institute of Law are the only beneficiaries of that institution’s existence. It certainly hasn’t done anything to improve the lot of its debt-ridden, unemployable graduates.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

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