A “deluge” of new law schools …

… are in the works. At least that’s what a recent article in the National Law Journal suggests. While the article doesn’t go into much detail on each of the plans, it appears that we are looking at possibly 10 new law schools in the next few years. Most of them are in the eastern United States and the bulk appear to be housed in private schools. I had already heard rumors on a number of these law schools, but a few are “new news” to me. Especially curious is the development of a law school at Lincoln Memorial University. I worked as a corporate attorney at a company just a few minutes from the LMU campus back in the day. Knowing a little something about the Tennessee legal market, I can say that it’s going to be a tough road for placing their students with the University of Tennessee pumping out 150+ law graduates a year just about an hour away.

ELS Blog’s Bill Henderson is quoted in the article:

“This is beyond absurd,” said William Henderson, a professor at Indiana University School of Law — Bloomington. His scholarship focuses on the legal job market.

Henderson’s research, which is based on data obtained from the ABA and ALM Research, a subsidiary of the parent company of The National Law Journal, shows dismal job prospects for many law graduates from lower-tier schools already in existence. New law schools historically have fallen into the lower tiers of the rankings by U.S. News & World Report, at least in their first years of operation.

Part of Henderson’s research focuses on so-called “bad outcomes” experienced by law students, which include graduates who were unemployed nine months after graduation, whose job status was unknown or students who flunked out. He determined the 50 law schools with the highest percentages of “bad outcomes,” and revealed a range between 49.1% and 27.9% of bad outcomes among the 20 law schools with the highest percentages of such outcomes. All of those schools were ranked either in the third or fourth tier by U.S. News & World Report.

“The popular perception is that there’s a big monolith of wealth,” he said. “The reality is that some people are making lots of money and a lot of people are not able to make a living.”

I am not sure that all of these law schools are going to be producing the outcomes that he predicts – I think that each one has their own set of challenges and advantages – but there is certainly a concern with students going $100,000 in debt at the private schools listed for a realistic set of job opportunities that may make paying such loans problematic.