Recently, I suggested that the ABA House of Delegates should reject the June 17 Report of the Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education. The task force was supposed to tackle the crisis of massive student loan debt that is subsidizing marginal law schools. Its report not only fails to fulfill that mission, but also ignores the central problem of a dysfunctional legal education market. As a consequence, it offers superficial recommendations that will accomplish little.

Doomed from the Start; Flawed at the Finish

As I observed when the ABA announced the creation of the task force in May 2014, no one should have reasonably expected its chairman, Dennis Archer—who is also chairman of the national policy board for Infilaw—to point his group in the direction of true market-based reform that would jeopardize revenues at marginal law schools. After all, Infilaw is a private equity-owned consortium of three for-profit law schools with dismal full-time long-term J.D.-required employment outcomes: Arizona Summit, Charlotte and Florida Coastal.