California law schools have enrolled students with lesser qualifications

Whittier Law School's bar exam passage rate has plummeted as the credentials of its incoming students have fallen.

But the Costa Mesa-based institution, which announced recently it will no longer accept new students, is far from the only school in the state to have enrolled applicants with less than promising qualifications in recent years.

Nine of the 21 American Bar Association-accredited schools in California enrolled entering classes last fall with at least a quarter of the students at substantial risk of not passing the bar exam, according to consumer advocacy group Law School Transparency.

At six of those schools, at least half of the new students are at significant risk of not passing the licensing test, according to the group.

Law School Transparency has used the 25th percentile LSAT score of an incoming class as a starting point to measure risk. In the last eight years, all but two of the state's ABA schools have seen a drop in that figure, according to a Daily Journal review.

The reduction during that period came as the overall bar exam passage rate in California dropped from a recent peak of nearly 62 percent to 43 percent last July, a 32-year low.

Kyle McEntee, executive director of Law School Transparency, said the decline in student quality has had the greatest impact on the schools that were already enrolling students with lower admission test scores and grade point averages.

California schools accepting students with similar credentials to those in other regions are stepping farther out on a limb because of the state having the second highest bar exam passing score in the nation at 144, he said.

"When the California schools make cuts to student quality, they are taking a bigger risk than schools in New York," said McEntee, referencing New York's lower cut score of 133.

Brian Tamanaha, professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said the falling credentials of new law students was a result of the dramatic decrease in applications.

In 2004, around 100,000 people applied to ABA law schools nationwide. That figure has hovered around 55,000 in recent years.

"Students who previously would not be admitted are now being admitted to law schools," Tamanaha said.

Whittier is one of three schools in the state deemed "extreme risk" by Law School Transparency because of its most recent entering class. The other two were Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and University of La Verne College of Law in Ontario.

Schools dubbed "extreme risk" had a 25th percentile LSAT score of 120-144. The admissions test is scored on a 120-180 scale.

The 25th percentile LSAT score for Whittier's first-year class fell from 151 in 2008 to 144 last fall.

Just 22 percent of the law school's first-time California bar exam takers passed last July's test, the lowest rate among ABA schools in the state.

Thomas Jefferson's most recent entering class had a 25th percentile LSAT score of 141, the worst among ABA schools in the state and a six-point drop from eight years ago.

Thomas F. Guernsey, Thomas Jefferson's dean, said relying on LSAT scores to assess the quality of students is an oversimplification.

"On its face, we know it does a disservice to people of color in terms of mispredicting what their performance will be," Guernsey said. "It certainly doesn't predict their performance on the bar exam."

The Law School Admissions Council's National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study, released in 1998, found that LSAT scores are the best predictor before law school as to whether a student will pass or fail the bar exam.

Law School Transparency's review of 14 years of data provided by the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law determined LSAT scores were a significant predictor of bar success.

California Western School of Law in San Diego, Western State College of Law in Irvine and Golden Gate University School of Law have been designated as "very high risk" by Law School Transparency. Schools in that category have 25th percentile LSAT scores of 145-146.

McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and University of San Francisco School of Law were listed in the "high risk" category due to 25th percentile LSAT scores in the 147-149 range.

University of San Francisco School of Law was the only new California entrant to one of the three highest risk categories since Law School Transparency's initial "State of Legal Education" report was released in 2015.

The school has seen its 25th percentile LSAT score drop from 156 to 148 since 2008, with its eight-point reduction the largest experienced among ABA schools in the state during that time. "While it is undeniable the indicators have dropped over the last few years, that is not the only thing we look at," said USF law school Dean John Trasviña.

He said the school also considers applicants' undergraduate grade point average and past work experience in evaluating whether to admit them. Moving forward, Trasviña said USF law school intends "to have a smaller incoming class and to be slightly more selective."

McEntee of Law School Transparency said law schools can reasonably enroll some students with lower LSAT scores if those are offset by higher undergraduate GPAs. On average, law schools have not mitigated the lower LSAT results, he said.

In California, 13 ABA schools have seen their 25th percentile undergraduate GPA drop since 2008.

But not all law schools in the state have seen sharp drop-offs in the credentials of their incoming students.

Both Stanford Law School and UC Davis School of Law have seen their 25th percentile LSAT scores stay the same the last eight years, with Stanford's 168 in that category leading the way in California by a healthy margin.

UC Berkeley School of Law and UCLA School of Law have seen their 25th percentile LSAT scores go down just one point to 163 during that same time period.

Jennifer L. Mnookin, dean of UCLA School of Law, previously said her school was evaluating a study the Educational Testing Service helped conduct about whether the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, has similar predictive power as the LSAT when it comes to law school performance at UCLA.

Two ABA schools, Harvard Law School and the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law, have started allowing applicants to only provide GRE scores rather than LSAT results. A study conducted for the Arizona school indicated that students' performance on the GRE is a valid and reliable predictor of students' first-term law school grades.

Whether GRE scores are a valid predictor of future success on the bar exam nationally is a likely topic of future study.

The sharp fall in the overall bar exam passage rate in California the last eight years has prompted the bar to study whether its cut score on the test is too high. The review was called for by law school deans and later the state Supreme Court.

The court's decision about whether the passing standard should be altered is not anticipated before the fall, but a new cut score could retroactively apply to this July's exam, State Bar officials have said. The results for February's exam will be released Friday evening.

Derek T. Muller, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law, said law schools' bar passage rates may drop a little more, but stabilize in the longer term because falling class sizes have allowed some schools to start being more selective.

McEntee said, based on the falling credentials of incoming students in recent years, "2017 is likely to be even worse in terms of bar passage outcomes."

lyle_moran@dailyjournal.com