Sunday, November 3, 2013

LSATs administered continues to drop

The number of LSATs administered continues to drop - a good thing for all parties except the law schools.  According to TaxProf, who calls the news "grim," 2013 June LSATs administered is down almost 5% from last year, and Octobers numbers are nearly 11%.

This shows that the least informed law school cohort, the 0L's, are becoming increasingly aware of the bad value that law school has become.  One might've thought that "law school scam" fatigue would have hit major newspapers such as the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, but they have continued to report on it, and law school blogs have continued to thrive.  This, along with word-of-mouth, has led to the increased drop of LSATs administered, which in turns leads to smaller incoming classes at the majority of law schools, which finally leads to law schools taking desperate measures in order to stay afloat.

Despite the drops, most law schools seem to be, at least on the surface, remarkably intact.  There are cracks in the foundation, such as Vermont's law school woes and University of Iowa's tiny first year class, and most recently the New England law school faculty buyouts, but you don't see the mass law professor layoffs or the law school closures that some of us have been expecting.

Stay tuned.

34 comments:

  1. it'll take 2-3 more years for the ramifications to permeate through the LS complex

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    1. I agree, the law schools will take a few more years to start closing. Still too many lemmings + many schools are sitting on pikes of cash to carry them over for a while.

      Id like to see 55-60 in the entire country--one public school in each state plus the top 5-10 private schools.

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    2. Or maybe 150 schools and much smaller enrollment?

      Or maybe all the 200 or so schools stay in business but only operate with very small enrollment?

      Maybe it doesn't work that way.

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    3. No 55 schools, each with much smaller than present enrollment.

      A crash diet is the only thing that's going to save the profession, and by extension the administration of justice.

      The free market must be an educated market in order for the principles to work. Keep up the good work.

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    4. Remember, even some top institutions, such as Harvard and Northwestern, have decided to cut admissions in order to maintain their cognitive standards. I think downsizing in every tier is going to define the new environment. Any institution--maybe NYU?--that tries to stay the same size is going to see some serious decay in its prestige, upon which its market dries up forever.

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  2. Thank God. This is great news, heartwarming news, for everyone except the scammers. It means fewer victims with enormous debts and no way to repay them. In addition, it means easier admissions for the few students who have what it takes to be practicing attorneys. And ending the absurd overproduction of attorneys can, over time, change the sociopathic behavior of BigFirm partners and of the petty sadists within their firms.

    So this is in every way a heartwarming piece of news.

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  3. Oh, those poor professors.

    I'm sure that some of those Socratic geniuses are going to get terminated in one way or another. But the worst outcomes may be for the HYS resume-crafters that Professor Campos wrote about in February. The market for new prestige won't recover for another ten years. There are so many existing high-paid positions to suck off the meager remaining tuition revenues.

    That heady new-car aroma is going to be surpassing scarce in the corridors of scamdom for another ten or even fifteen years. Anyone with a JD and a humanities PhD had better find another career path. The current professors don't care whether they get jobs or not, and won't move a finger to assist them in any way. You can count on that.

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    1. I love it.

      Oh those poor underpaid professors!

      You know, the ones who say they gave up soo much to do the noble work of teaching. And they could be making soo much more in private practice.

      How will the Poor Dears make their monthly mortgage payments on their McMansions? How will they be able to afford the latest luxury model Lexus?

      What able their kids' college? And the yearly vacation to the Caribbean?

      And the latest and greatest toys for the home?

      Oh my, my..

      Yeah, they're fine sending their students out into the cold, saddled with $120-150k in debt though. Gotta work your way up, right?

      And they do support all the right causes, after all. They're "good" people.

      Limousine Liberal scum.

      I wish them the worst in the coming years. It's been great watching the slow-motion implosion and this isn't even the beginning.

      The shoe will soon feel very good - or perhaps not? - on the other foot.

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  4. I am getting very concerned about the decline of subject-verb agreement in our society.

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    1. I'm far more concerned about the absence of genuine subjects in our society.

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    2. I noticed that too. I guess the OP was treating "tests administered" as one number, not as more than one test. I'd prefer something on the order of "Number of tests administered continues to drop." Or even better, to turn it around as "Test numbers continue to drop."

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    3. That's one of my weaknesses. Where did I miss it?

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    4. The pedant is attacking the title.

      I actually don't believe it is improper. "LSATs administered" is a single statistic, so it's the equivalent of saying "The number of LSATs administered continues to drop." The test itself isn't dropping anything; and saying "LSATs administered continue to drop" leaves an ambiguity that maybe you are referring to individual LSAT test scores. In fact, I would argue treating LSATs are a plural subject would be improper.

      You can leave a subject implied in a title. It doesn't make it improper.

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    5. Pathetic quibbling. As per Anon at 6:06, perfectly OK to treat "LSATs administered" as a singular category. Especially in a headline.

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    6. Everyone knows that we can't comment on the debt-funded tuition scam if we don't phrase everything with correct grammar and perfect precision. Otherwise, some humanities professor who's profiting from the scam can make us appear to be ignorant fanatics.

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    7. Well, I'll add my own pathetic quibble here-- the word "administered" is missing an "i" in the title.

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    8. Aquila non captat muscas.

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    9. Yes, just as "Westminster" is missing a second "i"... It's funny how these things work.

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  5. If most law profs earned $70-90,000 per year, would the law school scam even exist?

    They demand double and triple this, and they demand students pay their salaries. In exchange, law professors provide a pack of lies about bright career prospects and useless training.

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    1. They get away with it by focusing on you, the student. There is no one but you.

      To get you to attend, they convince you that you have no competitors. Hundreds of jobs are waiting just for you, and you can take your pick. Then, in your third year in their depression factory, they turn it against you. If you haven't secured a job, it can't be because they promised the same thing to 150,000 other students. No, it's because you're inadequate.

      That's how, at every turn, they divert your attention away from the rotten, unjust system they've created to profit from their inferior product. When there's a bad outcome, they just count their money and get you to hate your own image, your own identity. They think that has to be enough to keep you quiet. It worked before, didn't it? It's worked in other contexts for the past 50 years, hasn't it?

      And then you read about how dirty the system is, and you won't back down any more. So they pretend you're crazy, and they try to harass you any way they can. And it's okay, because you're crazy, so you're not human. Then you stand up for your rights, refuse to accept an inferior position in society, and focus again on the unjust system of deception, debt, and bondage.

      That's when admissions testing drops by 50% in 3 years, and they start to do some serious sweating aboiut their future.

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    2. I think if LawProfs made $75-125k over the bulk of their careers (not saying there is no room for higher salaries, but it would be a slow climb), and half the students were accepted from now on, then the scambloggers would probably all go home for the most part.

      As it stands, making these paltry salaries would relegate LawProfs to the (DUM DUM DUM! *ORCHESTRA PUNCH CORD*!) Middle Class (GASP!), so no, don't look for it to happen anytime soon.

      These folks have standards to maintain, you see. And standards don't pay for themselves.

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    3. It's funny and ironic that those debtmongering creeps often have huge mortgages on their own homes. For them, it isn't enough to make huge amounts of money. No, they have to pretend that they make even more.

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    4. It's becoming obvious that those professors have standards, but not academic standards. Theirs are the standards of conspicuous consumption, of buying things not because they want them but because their peers and neighbors want them.

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    5. Op back. Here's the thing, a law prof making 80,000 could likely - if he or she tried, had a brain, etc - make extra money consulting or working on the side. Of course, a prof couldn't do this with "law and the open road" studies, but in other ways more related to practice. Even with lower salaries, profs could still be quite well off if they did a little side work - that's my point.

      Anyone have any idea how much law profs can make if they tried side work?

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    6. LawProf and Mack (and probably many others) have long said that law school needs to cost half as much and graduate half as many students than the current amount (so 22.5K instead of 45K). If it did, students would graduate with less than $100K debt and almost everyone who passed the bar would be able to find some sort of legal job.

      I would argue that the debt-load is still too high for the 40-60K jobs that most graduates would get in such a hypothetical future, but that goes to show how unacceptable the current situation is.

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    7. I know a T10 law prof who sends his kids to exclusive private schools, takes exotic vacations with his children and drives the latest Japanese and European sports sedans. He works at a public law school, and I looked up his salary once. In 2007 it was $250K. I don't know what it would be now.

      He has a lot of free time, and I know he personally despises his students. He thinks of them as lazy, slobby and personally entitled.

      Oh, and he has a Yacht. Not just a 22 foot boat. A real Yacht. A 50+ footer with navigation, air conditioning, 4 bedrooms, a full kitchen, everything.

      So you future Lemmings really need to think about whether you want to continue to subsidize this man's lifestyle or whether your talents and energies would be better spent in some other profession.

      Don't think you will wind up like him because the vast (95%+) majority of you will not never make anything close to what he makes.

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    8. Economists, etc. can make a literal fortune in the expert witness field. Other than Tax Consulting by legal experts in that field, I really can't think of anything that a Law Prof would have to sell in the expert witness field. After all, legal issues are typically resolved by Judges, not fact-finders, so their legal "opinions" have no relevance in a Court Room. So how would they make extra money unless they were actually allowed to practice law on the side?

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    9. "He has a lot of free time, and I know he personally despises his students. He thinks of them as lazy, slobby and personally entitled."

      Yep. This.

      Meanwhile, he contributes nothing. Takes from a large base of people. That's where his salary comes from. All the Little People. And is building a pension to boot. It's wonderful they think they are above the public, all those people who pay their salary and the students. He's a net Taker on society (big) and yet thinks he's some God who, if he was in private practice, couldn't handle the hours, the work, or the stress.

      Teaching is Welfare for T10 grads. And the Lemmings are subsidizing jerk-offs just like him every day.

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    10. I posted at 08:57 and everything I said was true. He really has no clue how bad it is for the rest of us. That's not meant as a defense. I think a lot of these "people" are like the ostrich. I knew some of them at my TTT. They mostly hated their students while greedily sucking down their money. I suspect that's the experience many of us Toileteers had.

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  6. I really need for LSAT administrators bring back the "LSAT for watch-makers." Cause, really, that's what this is now tantamount to. "Got to a Nationally Ranked School and be practice-ready to fix pocket watches and chains when you graduate." This whole thing is like watching the dinosaurs look at the sky wondering why the sky is dusty and darkening...

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  7. This is excellent news, as the general public is starting to catch onto the law school scam. Thank all of you for your involvement in getting the message out to lemmings.

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  8. The more the sun shines, the more we all get to see how truly dark the system is/was. If only there were more decent people, the changes would happen much quicker.

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  9. Good work. Keep spreading the truth.... which is that the 'problem' is profession-wide. It's not just BigLaw suffering because of the Great Recession. It's not simply recent grads who "can't get first jobs".

    The law schools overproduced for so long that it's created a situation in which it's unsustainable to earn a living. That runs throughout the legal 'profession' and ruins lives across the spectrum. The 50-year old lawyer is equally adversely affected by the law schools as the 25-year-old.

    Law Schools have so much to answer for. Depriving them of many naive young victims is a good start. But the remedy must be far, far more potent.

    Any of the so-called "top 100" law schools today that has not voluntarily trimmed its enrollment by at least 33% in response to today's market is both (a) scamming and (b) undermining the administration of justice. These schools are destroying our fellow citizens and destroying the system of justice in our country at the same time. Treat them accordingly.

    The gloves should start coming off. Comparing them to human waste and toilets was kind. That's all biodegradeable. This is radioactive waste.

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  10. Law professors are human filth.

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