Los Angeles. (Photo: Shutterstock.)

Yet another law school is under threat of closure.

Trustees at the University of La Verne are scheduled to determine the fate of the Ontario, California, law school when the board meets on Nov. 18. Earlier this month, the board tasked two separate committees with evaluating the school's financial sustainability and future.

If the board votes to close the campus, it will become the sixth law school to shut down since 2017. (That figure does not include branch campus closures and mergers.) And it would also be the second law school to wind down within the Los Angeles area—where a number of lower-tier law schools have struggled amid legal education's downturn. Ontario is about 40 miles east of Los Angeles in what is known as the Inland Empire.

About 40 miles south of Los Angeles in Costa Mesa, Whittier Law School is in its final year of operation after university officials decided in 2017 to close the school due to financial shortfalls and dwindling enrollment. Thomas Jefferson School of Law, farther south in San Diego, is fighting for its survival after the American Bar Association revoked its accreditation. (The school remains accredited while it appeals that decision.) Meanwhile, Western State College of Law narrowly averted closure this summer when its owner went bankrupt and it came under a federal receivership. The Orange County law school was purchased by Westcliff University for $1 and remains open, though many students transferred out amid the uncertainty, and Western State did not accept new students this fall.

On Oct. 18, La Verne's board of trustees passed a resolution convening an administration committee and a faculty committee to each develop long-term recommendations for the law school, said university spokesman Rod Leveque on Oct. 29. It could act upon those recommendations as soon as next month.

Among the catalysts for the evaluation is the American Bar Association's decision last spring to strengthen its bar passage standard, giving law schools just two years to ensure that at least 75% of graduates pass the bar instead of the previous five years. The school's finances are another factor, he said. (He declined to specify whether the law school is currently operating at a financial loss.)

"It's really looking at both the finances and then the mission, in balance," Leveque said. "It's looking at: 'If we were to maintain the current trajectory, what sort of resources would we need to commit to the college to be successful and thrive? If we were to look at other options, what might those be?' It's really just the board doing its due diligence as steward of the university to look at the changing landscape of legal education and figuring out where we fit in."

The bar exam has been an ongoing struggle for the law school. Just 32% of its graduates who took the licensing exam in 2018 passed. La Verne's poor track record on the bar was a factor in its 17-year bid to gain full accreditation from the ABA. The law school was founded in 1970, but didn't apply for ABA approval until 1999. The school first gained provisional accreditation in 2006, but that status lapsed in 2011 after the ABA declined to extend full accreditation, citing low bar-passage rates. The ABA reinstated the school's provisional status the following year in time for graduates to be eligible to sit for the bar exam, and the school gained full accreditation in 2016.

University provost Jonathan Reed addressed La Verne law students at a town hall on Oct. 23. (Interim law dean Kevin Marshall did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.) Leveque said that all options remain on the table, including keeping the school open.

"We just want to reassure all current students that, no matter what, we are fully committed to them," he said. "They will graduate from an ABA-accredited law program. Sometimes, when people are considering a change, everyone assumes the worst."