Arizona Summit Law School is the latest institution in trouble with the American Bar Association (ABA) for low bar exam passage rates.

The ABA has placed the school–which has recently seen bar passage rates for first-time test takers fall to 25 percent–on probation. This is a significant drop from the school’s 2008 passage rate of 97 percent. The association also cited Summit’s admissions policies as a reason for the probation.

Summit Law School has until May 15 to develop a plan to improve its students’ test results in accordance with the ABA standards, which require that at least 75 percent of a law school’s graduates pass the bar within five years of graduation.

The ABA has been getting tough on law schools recently. Charlotte School of Law in North Carolina, which is owned by the same for-profit company that owns Summit, was placed on probation in November and lost its federal funding in February. In order for students to be eligible for loans from the government, their schools must be ABA-accredited. Charlotte landed in hot water with the association after admitting too many unqualified students who were unable to pass the bar or pursue careers in the field post-graduation.

In February, the association even considered tightening its standards for accredited schools. A proposed revision would have required 75 percent of graduates pass a bar exam within two years instead of five, but this proposal failed. Students and law school deans across the country challenged the idea of imposing stricter criteria, saying that it would limit diversity in schools and eventually the profession. Summit is especially cognizant of these concerns, as 43 percent of its students are minorities.

Last August, the ABA gave the Ave Maria School of Law in Florida a list of measures it would have to undertake to improve its school, and in November it publicly censured the Valparaiso School of Law in Indiana.

One explanation for the ABA’s crackdown on under-performing schools could be because it faces the possibility of losing its accreditation power. Last June, a Department of Education advisory committee suggested that the association’s authority to accredit schools be suspended for a year because of low student achievement.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

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For years, I’ve been seeing those TV ads about for-profit universities. University of Phoenix, ITT Technical Institute, Porter and Chester Institute, and the list goes on, but no matter what catchy jingle they used, they all seemed like crap. While for-profit universities at one point seemed like a good idea, they’re now recognized as pretty bad investments. I think very few of us realized that they had moved beyond the point of just offering associates, bachelors, and technical degrees–they’ve now expanded into the law school game as well. Not only do the existences of for-profit law schools harm the people who make the foolish choice to attend them, they also have the potential to harm the entire legal profession.

Paul Campos of the Atlantic recently wrote an excellent piece on the rise of for-profit law schools. He explains how they were born out of the brainchild of one company called InfiLaw, a corporation created by the Chicago equity firm Sterling Partners. They bought up a struggling law school–Florida Coastal University–and created two others–Arizona Summit Law School and Charlotte School of Law. Campos goes on to explain how InfiLaw’s law school experiments started to accept students who would not have been enrolled in most law schools, mostly because their LSAT scores were very low. Admitted students often had to take out massive loans to pay for their substandard educations, and then struggled deeply to find jobs after graduation. Campos explains how this simply is not sustainable. Throughout the entire article, one thought kept coming into my mind: this sounds like the educational version of a ponzi scheme.

There’s something dangerous about for-profit educational institutions, especially for-profit law schools, and that’s that they make promises that they can’t keep. Despite what Suits may tell us, in order to be a lawyer you really do need to pass a bar exam. That’s not an easy feat–only about 68 percent of the people who took the bar exam passed it last year. While there is a lot of dispute over whether or not scores from the LSAT test correlate to bar exam passage, most analysts certainly admit that they are at least somewhat linked. Students’ law school grades can also indicate whether or not a particular individual will pass the bar exam. Overall, the prospects of for-profit law school students to pass the bar exam are pretty bad. As Campos explains,

Scores ranking from the 60th to the 40th percentile, by contrast, correlate with a moderate but rapidly increasing risk of failure. Scores below the 40th percentile correlate with a high risk of failure, and scores below the 25th percentile correlate with an extreme risk of failure, to the point where it is quite unlikely that someone with an LSAT score below 145 will ever pass a bar exam.

Florida Coastal’s median LSAT score was 144. Of course the argument could be made that these law schools are doing students a service because they are working with individuals who would not have been admitted other places to get their law degree, despite all odds. But that’s simply not true–instead, these for-profit law schools are just handing out promises that they can’t possibly keep.

Law school may still be a good choice for many American students, despite the fact that the legal field is rapidly changing. But the Obama Administration is actually starting to put pressure on for-profit colleges, in recognition of the true disservice they’ve done to most of their students. The for-profit law school field is a bubble that’s slowly popping, and it brings us back to this point: if you’re going to go to law school, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. It could save you a lot of time, money, and pain.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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