Grand Theft Law Student?

The law school ranking system created by U.S. News & World Reports is just destructive on so many levels.  No telling how much of the tuition increases over the last 10 years have been a direct result of law schools competing in ways to trump this system instead of actually teaching lawyers to be good lawyers.  It causes law schools to reject students it really wants or believes best for its student population.  Now some law schools have discovered they can hide the lower LSAT and GPA scores by shipping students off to other law schools for a year.

This is the latest flare up among law schools.  According to The ABA Journal,  Northwestern University Law School is offering some rejected applicants a chance to transfer in their second year.  This seems tame enough, but it is the underlying reason and motives on all sides of the transfer issue.

Northwestern is not the only higher tier law school to do this.  It accepted 43 transfers during the 2006-7 academic year, for example; Georgetown University accepted 93 transfers; NYU accepted 38; and the UCLA accepted 31.

Other law schools are accusing Northwestern and others of poaching their best students, while avoiding the hit to their rankings for taking the students that have lower LSAT scores and GPAs than the school advertises.

Northwestern's dean, according to The ABA Journal, does not deny this is true, comparing law schools to Chrysler and General Motors.  (Probably a bad metaphor or comparison to use presently).

Apparently, U.S News does not consider the LSAT scores or the GPAs of transfer students.

David Logan, dean of the Roger Williams University School of Law, says transfer students are being used as “cash cows” by the elite schools that recruit them after the first year, but Northwestern dismisses that argument as “patronizing.”

The ABA Journal initially reported that Northwestern offers about 150 of its 5,000 rejected applicants the chance to reapply for “conditional acceptance” the following year. In order to be admitted at that point, they would have to achieve an unspecified grade-point average or class rank during their first year at another law school. The journal said the law school later clarified that only 15 to 25 students receive such offers.

My general advice to law students?  Stay with the law schools that cared enough about you to give you a chance and which tried to nurture you.  Schools like Northwestern disrespect you when they rejected you in the first place for no better reason than to prevail over other law schools in terms of rankings.  These law schools disrespect you, as a student, when they care more for their rankings than about the students they accept on for the first year.