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| Formation | 2009 |
|---|---|
| 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]
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, a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. It is situated on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) campus in Newton, Massachusetts, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the university's main campus in Chestnut Hill.
Vanderbilt University Law School is the law school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874, it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law enrolls approximately 640 students, with each entering Juris Doctor class consisting of approximately 175 students.
Syracuse University College of Law (SUCOL) is a Juris Doctor degree-granting law school of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. It is one of only four law schools in upstate New York. Syracuse was accredited by the American Bar Association in 1923 and is a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools.
A law school is an institution, professional school, or department of a college or university specializing in legal education, usually involved as part of a process for becoming a judge, lawyer, or other legal professional within a given jurisdiction. Depending on the country, legal system, or desired qualifications, the coursework is undertaken at undergraduate, graduate, or both levels.
Case Western Reserve University School of Law is one of eight schools at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It was one of the first schools accredited by the American Bar Association. It is a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). It was initially named for Franklin Thomas Backus, a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, whose widow donated $50,000 to found the school in 1892.
The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University in White Plains, New York is the law school of Pace University, a private university with multiple locations in New York. Founded in 1976 as Pace Law School, the American Bar Association (ABA) accredited it in 1978.
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 Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law is the law school of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, a private Catholic university with its main campus in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It was established in 1961.
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 University of Colorado Law School is one of the professional graduate schools within the University of Colorado System. It is a public law school, with more than 500 students attending and working toward a Juris Doctor or Master of Studies in Law. The Wolf Law Building is located in Boulder, Colorado, and is sited on the south side of the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. The law school houses the William A. Wise Law Library, which is a regional archive for federal government materials and is open to the public. United States Supreme Court Justice Wiley Blount Rutledge graduated from the University of Colorado Law School in 1922.
The University of Washington School of Law is the law school of the University of Washington, located on the northwest corner of the main campus in Seattle, Washington. The school is fully accredited by the American Bar Association and has been a member of the Association of American Law Schools since 1909.
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 part of the Jesuit Creighton 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 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, The Washington Post, Reuters, The Economist, USA Today, Inside Higher Ed, the ABA Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. News & World Report, CNN/Fortune, Above the Law, and Law.com. He is a former senior-level administrator at Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Colorado law schools. 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, We're All A Bit Messy, 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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