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| Formation | 2009 |
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| Type | Consumer advocacy and education think tank |
| Location | |
Executive Director | Kyle McEntee |
| Website | LawSchoolTransparency.com |
Law School Transparency (LST) is a nonprofit consumer advocacy and education organization concerning the legal profession in the United States. LST was founded by Vanderbilt Law School graduates Kyle McEntee and Patrick Lynch. LST describes its mission as "to make entry to the legal profession more transparent, affordable, and fair." [1]
Law School Transparency was founded in July 2009 by two law students at Vanderbilt University Law School, Kyle McEntee and Patrick J. Lynch. [2] When Lynch obtained a job practicing environmental law with a nongovernmental organization in South America, he reduced his involvement in LST. [3] Derek Tokaz, a graduate of NYU Law School, also works on several LST projects. [4] From the outset, one of the greatest challenges LST faced was securing funding and resources. [3]
Their goal was to improve legal education and the legal profession through increased access to high-quality post-graduation job-outcome information. The duo was motivated by Vanderbilt's comprehensive disclosure of job outcomes in early 2008. McEntee and several of his classmates decided to attend Vanderbilt in fall 2008 in part due to the information revealed by the law school. [5]
In order to increase access to better information, McEntee and Lynch first identified two key problems with law school disclosure practices in a white paper originally published in April 2010. [6] [7] An updated version of the white paper was published by Pace Law Review two years later.
First, law schools provided misleading and incomplete employment information that took advantage of how students understand law schools and the legal profession. [8] [9] For example, law schools advertised basic employment rates that included any job in the numerator, whether short-term or long-term, part-time or full-time, legal or non-legal. Schools even counted volunteer jobs funded by the law school, leading almost every school to report employment rates over 90%. In addition, law schools reported deceptively high starting salaries. Notably, law schools reported the median salary for a small percentage of the class without disclosing the response rate or sampling bias. [10]
Second, law schools did not share basic information they possessed that would have helped students better understand school offerings and career paths. The result was an information asymmetry favoring law schools that enabled law schools to raise tuition prices indiscriminately. [11]
To solve these problems, LST asked law schools to voluntarily disclose basic employment information about recent graduates. [12] Knowing that law schools would decline initially, McEntee and Lynch were actually targeting the American Bar Association's accreditation standards. By 2012, LST succeeded in reforming the ABA standards to better protect students and to hold law schools accountable, and in changing attitudes about how law schools interact with prospective students. [13]
David Lat contended that "Most observers are content just to complain about law schools not being forthcoming enough about employment information." [14] Elie Mystal added that "McEntee and Lynch are trying to fill a void left open by organizations with regulatory power (e.g. American Bar Association (the ABA)), organizations with public power (e.g. U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News)), and organizations with no power (e.g. National Association for Law Placement (NALP))." [14] Writing for American Lawyer Media's The Careerist, Vivia Chen observed that "It's not easy getting the attention of a mammoth organization like ABA, but LST did it. It deserves our kudos." [15]
This web tool helps students make smart application and enrollment choices using admissions, employment, and cost information. While not rankings, they do serve as an alternative to conventional law school rankings. LST does not reduce complex data to a single metric. Instead, LST's tool focuses students on schools that have observable relationships to specific legal markets and job types. The result is a product that makes appropriate, useful comparisons and provides a thorough understanding of how schools stack up, how much they cost, and how they're trending. [16]
This project affects how law schools disclose consumer information and impacts how the ABA enforces Standard 509, the accreditation standard LST played a major role in enhancing. In the most recent index, LST did a two-fold analysis of law school websites. First it asked whether law schools were violating any part of Standard 509. This portion of the index was designed to ensure law schools follow the rules and to ensure that the ABA is held accountable for its failure to enforce. Second it asked whether law schools were meeting transparency norms set by LST. This portion of the index was designed to change the norms under which law schools operate. [17]
This project tracks whether law schools are disclosing an employment report that they receive from NALP. LST began tracking the publication of these reports for graduates from the class of 2010. [18] At that time, no law schools published so-called NALP reports. As of May 2014, 56% of ABA-approved law schools published their class of 2012 NALP reports. [19]
LST is led by its executive director and co-founder, Kyle McEntee. Patrick J. Lynch, the other co-founder, is the chair of the board of directors. LST relies on many volunteers and on part-time consultants and employees. [20]
A law school in the United States is an educational institution where students obtain a professional education in law after first obtaining an undergraduate degree.
Stanford Law School (SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it has regularly ranked among the top three law schools in the United States by U.S. News & World Report since the magazine first published law school rankings in the 1980s and has ranked second for most of the past decade. In 2021, Stanford Law had an acceptance rate of 6.28%, the second-lowest of any law school in the country. Since 2019, Jennifer Martínez has served as its dean.
The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students; it is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. As of fiscal year 2017, the ABA had 194,000 dues-paying members, constituting approximately 14.4% of American attorneys. In 1979, half of all lawyers in the U.S. were members of the ABA. The organization's national headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois, and it also maintains a significant branch office in Washington, D.C.
Boston College Law School is the law school of Boston College. It is situated on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) wooded campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
The University of Maine School of Law is a public law school in Portland, Maine. It is accredited by the American Bar Association and is Maine's only law school. It is also part of the University of Maine System. The school's current dean is Leigh Saufley, who assumed the post in 2020. Until 1972 the School of Law was located at 68 High Street, Portland. In 1972, the School of Law moved to the University of Maine School of Law Building, which is adjacent to the University of Southern Maine's Portland campus. In 2023, the Law School moved to 300 Fore Street, on the waterfront of downtown Portland.
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a judge, lawyer, or other legal professional within a given jurisdiction.
Atlanta's John Marshall Law School (AJMLS) is a private for-profit law school in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded in 1933 and named for John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. AJMLS is accredited by the American Bar Association.
The UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law is a public law school, part of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The school is both American Bar Association (ABA) accredited and a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).
The Washburn University School of Law is a public law school located on the main campus of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. Washburn Law was founded in 1903. The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools since 1905.
The Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law is one of the professional graduate schools at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona. The school is located in the Beus Center for Law and Society on ASU's downtown Phoenix campus. The law school was created in 1965 as the Arizona State University College of Law upon recommendation of the Arizona Board of Regents, with the first classes held in the fall of 1967. The school has held American Bar Association accreditation since 1969 and is a member of the Order of the Coif. The school is also a member of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2006, the law school was renamed in honor of retired United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Widener University Delaware Law School is a private law school in Wilmington, Delaware. It is one of two separate ABA-accredited law schools of Widener University. Widener University Law School was founded in 1971 as the Delaware Law School and became affiliated with Widener in 1975. In 1989, it was known as Widener University School of Law when it was combined with the campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 2015, the two campuses separated, with the Harrisburg one renamed to Widener University Commonwealth Law School.
The University of Arkansas School of Law is the law school of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a state university. It has around 445 students enrolled in its Juris Doctor (J.D.) and Master of Law (LL.M) programs and is home to the nation's first LL.M in agricultural and food law program. The School of Law is one of two law schools in the state of Arkansas; the other is the William H. Bowen School of Law.
Building a Better Legal Profession(BBLP) was a non-profit organization founded by students at Stanford Law School in 2007. It was a national grassroots movement for market-based BigLaw workplace reform which analyzed employment data at large private law firms to promote workplace reform at these companies by encouraging students to "vote with their feet" and select future employers based on quality-of-life and diversity criteria, rather than the pure prestige. BBLP's analysis was published by Kaplan as a book in 2009–2010.
Creighton University School of Law, located in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, is a component of the Jesuit Creighton University. According to Creighton's official 2019 ABA-required disclosures, 75% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-advantaged or JD-required employment nine months after graduation.
The University of Toledo College of Law is the law school at the University of Toledo, and is located on the university's main campus in a residential neighborhood in western Toledo, Ohio. The school is fully accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools.
Florida A&M University College of Law or FAMU College of Law is an ABA-accredited law school in Orlando, Florida, United States. It is part of Florida A&M University.
The City University of New York School of Law is a public law school in New York City. It was founded in 1983 as part of the City University of New York. CUNY School of Law was established as a public interest law school with a curriculum focused on integrating clinical teaching methods within traditional legal studies.
The InfiLaw System was a for-profit consortium of three independent law schools in the United States. It was owned by Sterling Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, and was headquartered in Naples, Florida. Charlotte School of Law in Charlotte, North Carolina and Arizona Summit Law School in Phoenix closed, the latter after losing ABA accreditation. InfiLaw relinquished its ownership of Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, Florida in April 2021, with that entity closing its doors after its Summer, 2021 term.
Mike Spivey is a former senior-level administrator at Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Colorado law schools. He is an author, motivational speaker, podcaster, and the founder of The Spivey Consulting Group, and he has been featured in national media outlets including The New York Times, Reuters, The Economist, USA Today, the ABA Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. News & World Report, CNN/Fortune, Above the Law, and Law.com. He was among the first higher education experts to write publicly about the possibility of university campuses remaining closed through fall 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and has been featured in the media in respect to how higher education should respond to pandemic-related concerns. He is a co-author of The PowerScore/Spivey Consulting Law School Admissions Bible, and his next book on overcoming hardship in life is scheduled to be published in late 2023.
Post–law school employment in the United States reflects the degree to which students who obtain a law degree after attending law school in the United States are able to find employment, and specifically able to find employment in the legal profession or another area relevant to the degree. Because of the high cost of attending law school, the ability of graduates to find employment that pays well enough to recoup that cost is a concern to prospective law students. In some cases, law schools have been criticized for allegedly misrepresenting the difficulty of finding employment.
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