A teach-out plan for Thomas Jefferson School of Law, allowing limited accreditation until the end of the spring 2023 term, has been approved by the council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, according to a report in the ABA Journal.

Under the plan for the San Diego school, ABA accreditation will cover current law students and transient students. The council retains its authority to remove ABA accreditation before the spring 2023 term ends if the school fails to meet obligations.

The school was put on probation in 2017, and the council withdrew its ABA approval last summer.

Read the  ABA Journal article.

Photo by John Phelan

As Trump reshapes the federal judiciary with staunch conservatives and controversial picks, some Harvard Law School students appear to be thinking twice about applying for clerk jobs with them, and passing up what are generally considered plum positions, reports The Boston Globe.

Some Harvard law students are reluctant to clerk for some recent appointees who have been outspoken opponents of gay rights, antiabortion stalwarts, and who have been deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association, said one third-year student.

“But some legal scholars worry that the reluctance of students at one of the nation’s premier law schools to clerk for Trump-appointed judges, first reported by Bloomberg Law, could further polarize the legal profession and do the country more harm than good,” writes the Globe‘s Deirdre Fernandes.

Read the Boston Globe article.

Bloomberg Law tells the story of a nonprofit consumer advocacy and education group, Law School Transparency, that has become a key part of a shift in how consumers weigh the benefits versus the substantial costs of law school.

One of the early findings of the 10-year-old nonprofit was that high starting salary salaries often listed for law school graduates were based on a low number of alumni responses.

A  more-effort led to a revision of accreditation standards to require 75 percent of each school’s graduates to pass the bar exam within two years of graduation, in order to ensure schools only admit students equipped for practicing law.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The mean scaled score for the July 2019 multistate bar exam increased this year, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners and reported in the ABA Journal.

“But for a small number of schools found to be out of compliance with an ABA accreditation admissions standard, some have concerns that even with bar pass rate improvements, they still may not meet a new standard that requires pass rates of at least 75% for graduates who took a bar exam in the past two years,” writes the Journal‘s Stephanie Francis Ward.

Read the ABA Journal article.

The Princeton Review has released the results of a study designed to rank the top 10 U.S. law schools that provide the best opportunities for women students.

The findings are based on school reported data — the percent of the student body that are women — and student surveys. Students answered a survey question on whether all students are afforded equal treatment by students and faculty regardless of their gender.

Topping the list is Stanford University School of Law in California.

Read the Princeton Review article.

The law school of Harvard University tops the list of best law schools in the world, as ranked by the Quacquarelli Symonds team at Top Universities.

Six of the top 10 law schools are in the United States: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Columbia and New York University.

Above the Law takes a deeper dive into the list:

“Farther down the list, but still within the top 25 law schools in the world, you’ll see Chicago (#11), Georgetown (#17), and UCLA (#23 in the world, yet not in the U.S. News T14). Going deeper into the list, but still within the top 50 law schools in the world, you’ll find Michigan (#27), Penn (#30), Duke (#33), Cornell (#35), and Northwestern (#50).”

Read the article.

Law schools now will have to achieve a 75 percent pass rate for students within two years of graduation to keep their accreditation.

The ABA’s legal education council approved the tighter standard at its May 17 meeting, reports Bloomberg Law.

“The council first approved the revised standard in 2016 but passage has been stymied by the ABA House of Delegates, which has twice rejected it, citing negative impacts it could have on minority students,” writes Bloomberg’s Melissa Heelan Stanzione.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Above the Law takes a look at a U.S. News & World Report survey that ranks law schools with the highest salary-to-debt ratios among 2017 graduates.

“There are several law schools that are not only highly ranked, but whose graduates are very well-compensated after graduation — in fact, they’re so well-compensated that it makes up for the high costs of their education,” explains Above the Law senior editor Staci Zaretsky.

The top 10 list includes Howard University, with a salary-to-debt ratio of 2.35 to 1. On the other end is the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with a ratio of 1.51 to 1.

Read the Above the Law article.

The bar pass rate for 2016 law grads who sat for the exam within two years of graduating is 88.57%, according to ABA data released Friday.

The ABA Journal reports that the data is for graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, according to a press release. The percentage is substantially the same as for 2015 law grads, who had an 88.49% bar pass rate within two years.

Debra Cassens Weiss writes:

Four law schools had a 100% bar pass rate. They are the University of Chicago Law School, Yale Law School, the Concordia University School of Law and the University of Wisconsin Law School.

In Wisconsin, graduates of ABA-accredited law schools in the state are allowed to skip the bar exam. Concordia had only 25 graduates, and all 24 grads who took the exam passed.

The Journal article includes links to spreadsheets showing how students from law schools fared on the exams.

Read the ABA Journal article.

Above the Law has released its updated statistics on law school employment outcomes, which are entirely outcome-based — by how well their students do upon graduating.

“These are the only rankings to incorporate the latest ABA employment data concerning the class of 2016,” according to the introduction to the rankings. “The premise underlying our approach to ranking schools remains the same: that given the steep cost of law school and the new normal of the legal job market, potential students should prioritize their future employment prospects over all other factors in deciding whether and where to attend law school.”

This year’s rankings of the top 50 law schools saw Yale fall from number 1 in 2016 to number 3. Stanford moved up from the second slot to the top this year.

Some other schools had big changes, with William & Mary Law School dropping 18 places.

See Above the Law’s top 50 rankings.

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