Do Not Trust Deans Bearing Versatile Juris Doctors

After NALP and the ABA released the results of their class of 2011 survey data, The Wall Street Journal interviewed deans of law schools whose graduates did not fare well—an unenviable experience for the deans. One defense the deans offered was to blame the economy, which of course carries some weight, but the more interesting defense of legal education they gave is also the one that’s hardest to substantiate: that a juris doctor is worth obtaining because of its “versatility.” For example, the WSJ said of Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL) dean Rudy Hasl:

“[H]e advises prospective students to consider the law degree a long-term investment. ‘The law degree is something that allows you to move in so many directions,’ he says.”

So shocking were the results of the NALP survey that Valparaiso dean and former ABA Section of Legal Education Accreditation Committee chair Jay Conison wrote an article defending the JD on The Huffington Post titled, “What Is Legal Education Good For?” Dean Conison cautioned against looking solely at the percentages of graduates employed in nonlawyer positions and supplied readers with an anecdotal list of some of the nonlawyer careers that Valparaiso graduates have chosen over an unspecified number of years, opining:

“The irony of this list is that law schools have long said that they prepare people for this range of business, government, and other professional careers. Law schools emphasize their expertise in developing highly versatile skills and competences—in particular, critical reading, analytical reasoning, persuasive writing, and problem solving—that are valuable in an enormous range of jobs, fields, and business settings. One commonly hears it said—emphasizing this versatility—that a J.D. is at least as useful as an MBA, if not more.

Yet the message about the strength and versatility of legal education seems forgotten once the conversation turns to actual jobs and careers. This has unfortunate consequences.”

According to the ABA’s data, as of February 2012, 32 of Valparaiso’s 181 graduates were categorized as unemployed but seeking work; another 10 did not respond to the survey at all. Importantly, only six were in full-time, long-term, nonlawyer professional positions. As for TJSL, 74 of its 236 graduates were unemployed and seeking work as of early this year. Clearly, the depressed economy is affecting these law schools’ graduates’ outcomes badly, but that’s not all: These two schools and others haven’t been doing well for a while, even when applications were up between 2008 and 2010. These facts alone give us an opportunity to question the credibility of those who defend the versatility of the juris doctor.

Using the data for full-time applications, acceptances, and matriculations contained in my previous article, I toyed with a new metric: the number of matriculants per 100 applications by law school, which I’ll sometimes refer to as the “matriculant/application ratio.” Higher ratios indicate the law school in question accepts applicants who are willing to attend, lower ratios indicate that either the law school rejects many applicants who would otherwise attend or accepts applicants who then choose not to attend. Charted against the acceptance rate, this is what the matriculant/application ratio has looked like on average between 2004 and 2010. One would think that the distribution would resemble a bell curve, with more selective schools accepting fewer applicants and accommodating schools accepting many applicants who ultimately choose not to matriculate, but the comparison is actually quite linear. However, recently it has become less so, as applicants are sending out more applications than in the past, which increases the number of acceptances law schools hand out and lowers their matriculant/application ratios.



The average matriculants per 100 applications over this period is 10.0, and the average deviation is 3.4. This means, for example, that the highest average scoring law schools like Liberty University (27.2) and Regent University (24.9) are really out there.

A quick comparison between TJSL, Valparaiso, and the mean matriculant/application ratio shows that both schools’ application cycles changed dramatically over the seven-year period covered by available editions of the Official Guide. Bear in mind that 2004 was the previous peak year for law school applications, 2007 the trough year, and 2010 the last and likely final peak.



What happened here is that TJSL saw its applications fall by a third between 2004 and 2007 yet didn’t regain any due to the Great Recession, as we’d normally expect. Meanwhile, Valparaiso saw its number of applications drop by one-half between 2007 and 2010, meaning that it actually performed worse when most other law schools were performing better. This isn’t to say that neither of these law schools had problems filling their classes—in fact, they both had larger incoming classes in 2010 than in 2007—but fewer applications means fewer high-quality applicants, which harms reputations and positions these law schools for a serious crisis when fewer people decide to apply to law school overall. The graduate lawsuit against TJSL probably won’t help it much either. It may be the case that these law schools’ fortunes reversed in 2011, but that’s doubtful because applications to all law schools began falling that year.

Thus, you can see why the deans of law schools that have not been doing well when times were relatively good are more assertively defending a law degree’s versatility when so many of their graduates neither end up in legal careers nor professional careers at all.

Although I’d like to discuss the substance of the “versatile juris doctor” argument, the real question is, “What other law schools did poorly between 2007 and 2010?” because the answer suggests which law schools will face serious applicant shortfalls this fall, a timely topic because scamblogs have recently started accepting bets on it. So, I’ll put the versatile JD argument on hold for a later post, and answer the more relevant question instead.

Recall this chart of full-time application data:



The thing we want to know is which law schools saw matriculant/application ratios increase while their acceptance rates also rose to prevent an enrollment shortfall. Taking the annualized rate of change between the two years for both statistics, we get the following chart:
 

To interpret this scatter/splatter plot, a majority of law schools (118) in this period saw a decline in their matriculant/applicant ratio, and in a time of increased matriculants and applications, this means most law schools did well, as we’d expect. So which law schools are way out there in the upper right? Going from right to left:

•    Valparaiso (+37 percent acceptance rate, +31 percent matriculation/application ratio)
•    Toledo (+29 percent, +15 percent)
•    Rutgers-Camden* (+28 percent, +34 percent)
•    Quinnipiac (+17 percent, +24 percent)
•    Appalachian (+16 percent, +5 percent)
•    Nebraska (+13 percent, +15 percent)
•    North Dakota (+11 percent, +11 percent)
•    Northern Illinois (+10 percent, +10 percent)
•    Liberty (+9 percent, +7 percent)
•    Western State (+9 percent, +14 percent)

* Although the rumor is that Rutgers-Camden is not expected to do well this fall due to only 107 applicants paying seat deposits as of June 10 and a proposed merger with Rowan University, it should be noted here that (a) Rutgers-Camden does not divide full-time from part-time applicants in its Official Guide submissions, distorting direct comparisons between it and other law schools, and (b) its number of applications for 2007 is curiously double what it was in previous and subsequent years, suggesting a typo that might mean it doesn’t really belong on this list at all.

Again, that these schools buck the trend doesn’t mean they had trouble filling their classes in 2010, it just shows that for the most part they received fewer applications and chose to accept more applicants to maintain or increase their class sizes. For instance Quinnipiac in particular tolerates widely fluctuating incoming class sizes, sometimes double what they were in other years. The point is to note which law schools break from the overall trend and see how they fare when that trend takes a turn for the worse, something to pay attention to when the 2013 Official Guide is finally available. Until then—and until fall 2012 plays out—don’t be surprised to see more deans from wavering law schools defending the versatility of the juris doctor.