A Law School Crisis Reader

ABA Journal:

• Did Law Schools Underreport Student Debt? (Mar. 31, 2012)
• The Pedigree Problem: Are Law School Rankings Choking the Profession? (July 1, 2012)
• ABA to Toughen Bar Passage Accreditation Standard (July 17, 2012)
• Louisville Outspends Financial Aid Budget by 136% to Land 1L Class; School to Eat $2.4m; Admissions Dean Resigns (July 18, 2012)
• Court Dismisses Fraud Lawsuit Against Second Law School: ABA Placement Data Are 'So Vague and Incomplete as to be Meaningless and Could Not Reasonably be Relied Upon' (July 21, 2012)
• ABA Publicly Censures, Fines Illinois $250k for Intentionally Inflating LSAT, GPA Medians to Goose U.S. News Ranking (July 24, 2012)
• 28 of the Top 50 Law Schools Are Still Accepting Applications for Entering 1L Class (July 25, 2012)
• ABA Requires Greater Data Disclosure by Law Schools (Aug. 7, 2012)
• Three Law Schools Busted for Underreporting Student Debt Load by 63% - 234% (Aug. 9, 2012)
• Federal Judge Blasts Law Schools for Burdening Graduates With Oppressive Debt (Aug. 13, 2012)
• Chemerinsky Dismisses Tamanaha's Call for High-Quality, $20,000 Per Year Law Schools (Aug. 24, 2012)
• Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against Third Law School: DePaul Can't be Blamed for 'Metamorphosis in Legal Practice' (Sept. 13, 2012)

American Lawyer:

• Law Student Debt Grew $475 Million in 2008-2010 (Nov. 23, 2011)
• The Real Reason Why Law School Tuition Keeps Rising (Mar. 3, 2012)
• The Beginning of the End of the Law School Tuition Bubble? (Mar. 21, 2012)
• Legal Employment and Law School Enrollment (April 10, 2012)
• The Competition for Law Students: Golden, Popular, Marginal, and Scavenger Law Schools (June 5, 2012)
• Tough Choices Ahead for Some High-Ranked Law Schools (July 5, 2012)
• Which Law Schools Are Most at Risk for Missing Their Fall 2012 Enrollment Target? (July 19, 2012)
• Debt Crisis Looms for Law School Grads (July 30, 2012)
• The 'Versatile' J.D. Canard (Aug. 15, 2012)
• Law Class of 2015 Will Have Six-Figure [Taxable] Income ... in 2035 (Aug. 20, 2012)
• Law School Applications and Tuition (Aug. 23, 2012)
• A Tale of Two (California) Law Schools: La Verne and UC-Irvine (Sept. 8, 2012)
• LSAT Scores at Top Schools Are Dropping Like Flies (Sept. 9, 2012)
• 2011 Law Grads Paid $3.9 Billion from Student Loans to Law Schools (Oct. 1, 2012)

The Atlantic:

• What Happens When Computers Replace Attorneys? (June 21, 2012)

Bloomberg:

• Job Market Gets Even Worse for Law Grads (June 9, 2012)
• Law Grads Are Now 'Indentured Servants' to the U.S Government (June 13, 2012)
• Law Grad Starting Salaries Are in Free Fall (July 18, 2012)
• The Broken Law School Rankings (Aug. 28, 2012)
• Now Hiring: Thousands of Lawyers (Sept. 5, 2012)
• Law Firm Revenues and Profits Dropping, Layoffs Ahead (Sept. 6, 2012)

Bernard Burk (North Carolina):

• Class of 2011 Employment Outcomes (July 5, 2012)

Paul Campos (University of Colorado),

• The Law Student Debt Crisis (May 16, 2012)
• Survival Guide for the 132 Non-elite, Non-flagship Law Schools (June 5, 2012)
• Northwestern, Loyola (But Not Chicago) May Cut Size of Entering 1L Class (June 6, 2012)
• Will Rutgers-Camden Fill Only 100 of 269 1L Seats This Fall? (July 2, 2012)
• California Court Allows Fraud Cases Against Golden Gate, USF Law Schools to Proceed (July 28, 2012)
• The Crisis of the American Law School (Aug. 3, 2012)
• Entering 1L Classes Shrink 19% - 33% (Aug. 15, 2012)
• 80% of Students Are Worse Off Going to Law School (Sept. 18, 2012)
• Carnage in 1L Law School Enrollments (Sept. 22, 2012)

Jim Chen (Louisville):

• Lawyers, law Professors, and the Guilded Age (July 5, 2012)
• Can You Afford Law School? (July 12, 2012)
• The Mathematics of Law School Merit Scholarships (Aug. 21, 2012)

Steven Davidoff (Ohio State):

• The Economics of Law School (Sept. 24, 2012)

Forbes:

• Is Law School Still a Golden Ticket? (June 21, 2012)

Bill Henderson (Indiana University):

• Attention Law Schools: Our Cheese Is Being Moved (May 14, 2012)
• The Future of Higher Education Is Education (May 24, 2012)
• Unsustainable Law Student Debt (Mar. 25, 2012)
• ABA Employment Data Will Fundamentally Reshape Legal Education (June 26, 2012)
• Higher-Pay Law Office Jobs Shrink, While Lower-Pay Legal Services Jobs Expand (June 28, 2012)
• The Most Interesting Man in Legal Education (July 5, 2012)
• The Shifting Bi-Modal Distribution of Entry-Level Lawyer Salaries (July 16, 2012)
• How Equity Investment Could Spur Legal Employment (Aug. 5, 2012)
• The Coming Student Loan (and Law School) Debacle (Aug. 10, 2012)
• BigLaw Salaries, Jobs Plummet for First Year Associates (Sept. 21, 2012)

Law School Admissions Council:

• Law School Applicants Are Down 14.4%, Applications Are Down 12.6% (June 8, 2012)

Law School Transparency:

• Only 55.2% of the Class of 2011 Have Full-Time Long-Term Legal Jobs (June 18, 2012)
• Take This (Legal) Job and Count It (July 24, 2012)

Jeff Lipshaw (Suffolk):

• Don't Blame Faculty for Legal Education's Problems (May 29, 2012)

Massachusetts Bar Association:

• Advice to Law Schools: Reinvent 3L Year, Be More Like Medical Schools (May 23, 2012)

Deborah Jones Merritt (Ohio State University):

• Law School Tuition, Monopoly Rents, and Law Prof Professional Responsibility (May 22, 2012)
• Short-Term Law School Predictions (2012-2014) (May 24, 2012)
• Client-Centered Law Schools (May 24, 2012)
• The Risks of Attending Law School (July 17, 2012)
• Are Law Profesors Greedy? (Aug. 11, 2012)
• The Scholarship Smokescreen (Aug. 22, 2012)
• 2010-2020 Math: 200,000 Lawyer Jobs, 450,000 New Lawyers (Sept. 6, 2012)

National Association of Law Placement:

• Law School Class of 2011 Faced 'Brutal' Job Market (June 7, 2012)
• Starting Salary for Law Grads Plunges 35% in Two Years (July 12, 2012)
• New Lawyer Salaries, 1991-2011 (July 22, 2012)

National Law Journal:

• George Washington to Cut Size of 1L Class (May 15, 2012)
• Law School Innovators: Pushing the Boundaries of Traditional Legal Education and Legal Theory (June 4, 2012)
• Chemerinsky: You Get What You Pay for in Legal Education (July 24, 2012)
• ABA Accreditation Standards Stand in the Way of Law School Reform (Aug. 1, 2012)
• Law School — Still a Dodgy Investment (Aug. 4, 2012)
• ABA Forms Task Force on the Future of Legal Education (Aug. 8, 2012)
• Law Schools Jack Up Tuition 4%-6% Despite 14% Decline in Applicants (Aug. 18, 2012)
• Judge Skeptical About Graduates' Fraud Claim Against Brooklyn Law School (Aug. 22, 2012)
• Law School: Still a Good Investment for African-Americans (Sept. 4, 2012)
• Law Schools: A Special Report (Sept. 18, 2012)

New York Times:

• An Existential Crisis for Law Schools (July 16, 2012)

Jerry Organ (St, Thomas):

• Comparison of 2010 and 2011 Law School Profile and Enrollment Data (Aug. 9, 2012)
• 39 Law Schools Saw Declines in Enrollment and LSAT/GPA in 2011 (Aug. 17, 2012)
• Most Students Are Better Off Going to Regional Law School in State in Which They Hope to Practice (Even If Lower Ranked) (Sept. 4, 2012)

Nancy Rapoport (University of Nevada, Las Vegas):

• Rethinking Legal Education in Non-Elite Schools (May 25, 2012)

Reuters:

• Caveat Emptor Makes for a Lousy Law School Motto (Sept. 26, 2012)

Jason Solomon (William & Mary):

• Who Pays Law Professor Salaries? (Sept. 25, 2012)
• How Much Taxpayer Money Should be Spent to Support Legal Education and Scholarship? (Sept. 26, 2012)

Brian Tamanaha (Washington University):

• The Quickly Exploding Law Student Debt Disaster  (Mar. 25, 2012)
• The Law School Crunch Is Here -- Finances and Quality to Suffer (Apr. 9, 2012)
• How and Why Law Schools Take From the 99% to Give to the 1% (June 19, 2012)
• UC-Irvine's Original Sin: Chasing Prestige at the Expense of Public Service (Aug. 28, 2012)
• Response by Dean Chemerinsky (Aug. 29, 2012)
• Law Schools Lose by Winning Lawsuits Brought by Former Students (Sept. 21, 2012)

Reviews of Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2012)

• Jim Chen (Dean, University of Louisville)
• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Stanley Fish (Florida International University)
• Scott Greenwald (here and here)
• Bill Henderson (Indiana University)
• Paul Horwitz (Alabama)
• National Law Journal
• Orin Kerr (George Washington University)
• Brian Leiter (University of Chicago)
• National Law Journal
• Ronald C. Den Otter (California Polytechnic State University)
• Robert Steinbuch (Arkansas-Little Rock)

U.S. News & World Report:

• Law School Rankings by Debt Load Per Graduating Student (Mar. 23, 2012)

Wall Street Journal:

• At Least 10 Law Schools Cut Size of Incoming 1L Class (June 11, 2012)
• Law School Rankings by 2011 Grads in BigLaw Jobs (June 21, 2012)
• NYC Bar Forms Task Force to Study 'Plight of Young Lawyers' (July 16, 2012)
• Law Schools Haggle Over Scholarship Money to Fill 1L Class (July 30, 2012)