Young Law School

Today I want to address an issue that I have been turning around in my head for several weeks now. What should I make out of "young" (recently founded\accredited) law schools. In thinking about this question I first realized that there are too many types of "young" law schools to be able to tackle this question all at once, so I broke it down.

First, there are schools that are not yet accredited by the ABA. I am not a gambling man, and I have never been a gambling man, so that mentality combined with the fact that I should have good enough numbers to avoid this plight makes these schools an easy decision. Stay away. It seems to me that non-ABA accredited schools should only be a last resort.

The next group in the provisionally accredited Universities that don't seem to have anything "special." In other words, X school that is on the way to accreditation but doesn't do anything unique that draws my interest. Again, these are an easy no and I believe they should be for anybody with a choice.

That brings us to the next group, the recently accredited schools. By recently accredited I mean schools that have full accreditation but that have not been around long enough to 1. build up a national reputation and 2. have not been around long enough to have its graduates rise to the ranks of hiring partner at some firms. As you can tell, my main concern here is that the lack of an alumni network will hurt in finding a job. It seems to me that this, combined with the fact that a new school will likely be an unknown commodity (or at least, will not yet have established a strong enough reputation to land its graduates in top jobs) could become a huge weakness when it comes to employment. Sort of Princeton creating a law school (and having instant name recognition\strength), this seems like it would be a problem for new law school. In general, my conservation nature would again say to pass on these schools.

But then comes the tough group, young schools that have a "hook." In other words, schools that do not yet have a strong alumni base but that have something to offer that is unique, positive, or better than what I might be able to find in a comparable older school. This becomes a particularly interesting issue in two ways:

1. The school has some attribute that I like and will offer more money that a similarly "ranked" (remember I see rankings as a general grouping) school will offer me.

or 2. Because of the newness of the school, I will be able to get in and take advantage of the "hook". In other words, its the only school (or best school) with X attribute that I can get into here.

An example of situation two would be a D.C. law school. Somebody without the grades to get into GW, American, and GULC, and for the sack of argument lets say they do not want to attend Howard, might consider an unestablished law school in the area because they want to be in D.C. and take advantage of the cities vast resources, but cannot get into another D.C. law school. In the case of D.C. specifically, one might even be inclined to go to the young school because the location, might mitigate the weaknesses in job searches.

The first type is the one that has been troubling me. From reading between the lines it is obvious what school I am talking about: Ave Marie.

Ave Marie is a VERY conservative law school founded just a few years ago in Michigan. Ave Marie has tremendous financial support from, among others, the founders of Domino's piazza. Ave is VERY conservative (think BYU for Catholics, even more so than Notre Dame) and has the backing of several conservatives justices (Bork comes to mind). Additionally, they will likely fall somewhere in the low Tier II or High tier III schools in this, their first year of being fully accredited. Most importantly, they have been offering lots of very lucrative scholarships to people with average numbers this admission cycle (162 and a decent GPA has a good shoot at full tuition from the looks of LSN).

So if faced with the possibility of getting a uniquely non-liberal education at a school with a chance to rise in recognition over the next fifteen years for free, what is one to do? I have been thinking about this a lot. After all, what good is a degree if there are no jobs that will hire you. On this flip side, the range of acceptable jobs becomes a lot larger when tuition is reduced to $0.

I will have to think about this some more and pay careful attention to the job placement rates of Ave grades this year (and equally importantly, see if any of the judges supporting Ave take grads as clerks). The best time to evaluate this decision is probably next year, after another year of data comes out, but as of now it seems like an interesting trade off, no alumni for free law school.

If I had to decide now I would pass, but that doesn't mean if I am in this position next year I won't think long and hard about accepting.