Yes, it is true. Law schools have been playing by the rules. Which means since they are full of people who know enough to ask what “it” means, they understand the loopholes. Robert Morse, the editor at U.S. News & World Report in charge of college, graduate, and professional school rankings, has discovered that there is gambling going on and he’s shocked.
America’s law schools, inevitably competitive as are so many segments of American culture, are constantly concerned about how they are perceived by potential applicants, their current students, alumni, faculty, and all other stake holders including the board of trustees, the president, and benefactors. They want to be seen to be as good as they can possibly be, and maybe even a little better. At least 20 of them believe they are in the top 10.
So, they have been “fudging” a little on the data they have been submitting to U.S. News & World Report. But doing it while celebrating the nuances of the criteria. In other words, they followed the rules even if they didn’t exactly honor them. What am I talking about?
One of the data points used by the magazine to determine the rankings, so-called quality and standing of law schools vis-à-vis each other is the LSAT test scores of entering students. The examinations actually have some validity. They are useful predictors of how students will do during their first year of law school. Not necessarily how they will do in law school over the three years, not necessarily how they will do in practice or in life, but they do tell us a little something. Better than nothing. With that information, presumably along with undergraduate grades, letters of recommendation, information about other accomplishments, law schools compose their entering classes. She’s in. He’s out.
Some law schools have evening divisions. It turns out that under the rules laid out by U.S. News & World Report, the LSAT scores of the students in the evening program don’t count in the rankings. Seeing an opportunity, some law schools have directed some of their applicants to these alternative opportunities: These are students who have otherwise persuasive life histories suggesting they are going to make good lawyers but who may suffer from non-competitive LSAT scores. If the students are successful in the part-time evening program they can subsequently transfer into the full-time program, if they wish.
Some transfer, others don’t. Some are perfectly happy to earn their law degrees going part time while holding down jobs and then getting on with their lives after receiving their JD degree. There is much to be said for this process, although it does take four years rather than three. A student can exit without much debt, having worked and paid one’s bills while also studying. One has had work experience as well as academics at the end of the process.
In any case, Mr. Morse is now dismayed and proposes to bolt the back door. He’s proposing that the LSAT grades of the evening students be counted along with those of the day students in calculating the rankings. This is a bad idea.
Evening law programs, usually found at urban schools, have a long meritorious history and serve an interesting mix of students. A ladder that has allowed access by blue collar and other students to study law for generations, they are a way of earning one’s way into the professional classes. Students with fewer resources find this means of becoming an attorney more accommodating than the full-time law school path. The night law school is a socio-economic leveler, a genuinely democratic component of the university world.
As Daniel Polsby, dean of George Mason University School of Law in Virginia recently said in an article in the National Law Journal: “At every law school I know with a part-time program you are talking about [students who are] older, racial or ethnic minorities, people with jobs and families, people with interesting life experiences that kids who are just past adolescence can’t be expected to have. Their college records are many years in their past and a less impressive measure of the law student he or she will be.” Many haven’t taken a standardized test for years and don’t score as well as younger more practiced test takers. Their “smarts” however may be equal.
The truth be told, some of the best law students and lawyers have been educated in a night program. We all know it. The classes are identical, the degree equal, they have to pass the same bar examination taken by the conventional-path students. Where’s the beef? Mr. Morse, no harm, no foul. (And, for those of you who kindly keep an eye on my posting grammar and spelling, no fowl, as well.)
I have always been a fan of these programs, in part because they provide a pathway for nontraditional students (those who are more mature, more ethnically and socio-economically diverse), who enrich the law schools at which they matriculate and the profession. Most night-program students remain in the evening classes by choice: Their personal lives are best served by this arrangement. Only a minority transfer to the day program, and only after demonstrating their academic capacity, making the relevancy of the LSAT no longer meaningful and, therefore, of no possible interest to U.S. News & World Report except if someone is annoyed at having been gamed and wants to show the law schools who’s boss. Robert Morse is too big a man for such sentiments.
If the old family recipe is changed, some law schools neurotic about their rankings might be tempted to stop offering evening law degrees. This would be an unfortunate consequence of an unnecessary course of action. I urge all to leave things as they are. It is an imperfect world. We need to live with it.
However if U.S. News is determined to have the final say, then they should follow the suggestion of Fred Lawrence, dean of the George Washington University Law School, who provided this alternative: “We encourage U.S. News to compare full-time programs with full-time programs and part-time programs with part-time programs.”
A proffered settlement: apples to apples.
