Many believe that, some time ago, legal education in the United States arrived at a sorry junction, where it’s been stuck ever since. Schools proliferating without regard to the job market, churning out debt-strapped students with limited ability to repay loans. Little preparation for practice. Administrators who, increasingly, govern according to the U.S. News rankings rather than pragmatic decision-making. Graduates allegedly misled about the true earning-potential of their JD. Look no further than this WSJ page-one story from last year for some of these critiques.
Others believe (and these views aren’t necessarily in conflict) that students share the blame for the system’s shortcomings — self-deluding on everything from lawyer-lifestyle, to salaries, to the nature of competition in the industry.
We were reminded of all of these takes today when reading, once again, about the American Justice School of Law (recently renamed the Barkley School of Law, and formed as a new entity). On Tuesday, reports the NLJ, the for-profit Paducah, Kentucky-based law school filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Kentucky, listing its assets at $1.6 million and its debts at $5.2 million.
According to a February report in the Courier-Journal, there are about a dozen for-profit law schools nationwide, but only five have been accredited. Critics say the schools admit students who aren’t capable of passing the bar exam in order to maintain revenue to keep the school running. Proponents of such schools counter that, regardless, there’s an incentive to get graduates through the bar because if they don’t then enrollment will go down.
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