introdUction The Lost Decade In 1887 an intrepid group of Quakers founded the town of Whittier, Cal- ifornia, in a lovely spot tucked in between Los Angeles and Anaheim. That same year they also founded the Whittier Academy, which eventu- ally became Whittier College. Both the town and the school were named after the Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. From these humble origins Whittier College was born. Whittier is no longer formally associated with the Society of Friends but is still Quaker adja- cent in its spirit. Its website proclaims that “the College remains proud of its Quaker heritage and deeply committed to its enduring values, such as respect for the individual, fostering community and service, social justice, freedom of conscience, and respect for human differences.”1 Whittier College’s most famous alumni are Richard Nixon and the Quaker novelist Jessamyn West.2 The school’s sports teams are called the Poets after John Greenleaf Whittier, and their mascot is a running foun- tain pen toting, “Johnny Poet.” It is unclear how the actual poet Whittier would have felt about this likeness, but given the contemporary photos of an unsmiling and uncompromising lifelong warrior against slavery who also suffered from intermittent poor health, let’s guess that Whittier might have mixed feelings. It does seem likely that Whittier would be pleased with the college as a whole though. Whittier remains a relatively small school, with an un- dergraduate enrollment of 1,615 students in 2016 and boasting a twelve- to- one student- faculty ratio.3 It is a school that treasures its intellectual and moral heritage, as well as its namesake. 1 2 | Introduction Whittier’s Mascot “Johnny Poet.” Unless you have closely followed American law schools, you may be wondering why this book starts by discussing Whittier College (let alone the poet Whittier). It is because Whittier’s law school is ex- hibit A for the lost decade that law schools suffered from 2008 to 2018. On April 14, 2016, Whittier Law School celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.4 A year and five days later, on April 19, 2017, Whittier College’s trustees announced that the law school would be closing its doors for good.5 Whittier Law School started as the Beverly College School of Law in Los Angeles in 1966.6 Beverly College was a night-only law school explicitly tailored to second career and underrepresented law students.7 The school was a throwback to the old, night- only YMCA law schools of the early twentieth century. It focused on practical skills and bar passage, not scholarship or other higher-minded pursuits.8 In the boomtown Los Angeles of the 1960s, there was a significant and unmet demand for a school like Beverly, and its role in advancing nontraditional and under- represented lawyers was salutary and necessary. Introduction | 3 Whittier College purchased Beverly in 1975.9 From the outset, Whit- tier hoped to operate a law school that fit its educational mission. Beverly College School of Law was a night school. After Whittier took over, the law school graduated its first day class in 1976, the first of many moves meant to up the law school’s academic profile, while still maintaining its original mission of diversifying the legal profession and offering a leg up to its graduates. Beverly operated without accreditation by the American Bar Asso- ciation Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (ABA). Then and now, ABA accreditation carried important psychological and logistical advantages. Most American states require graduation from an ABA- accredited law school to sit for the bar (California is a notable exception, thus the existence of the Beverly College School of Law). Moreover, any law school that aspires to any kind of academic footprint eventually seeks ABA accreditation. In 1978, the ABA granted Whittier Law School provisional accredita- tion. Full ABA accreditation came in 1985. Whittier gained membership in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1987.10 The deci- sion to pursue AALS membership as well as ABA accreditation demon- strated Whittier’s desire to have a first-class, academic law school. ABA accreditation is critical because it is a key part of lawyer licensing. AALS membership is voluntary and only for academically oriented law schools that seek to “uphold and advance excellence in legal education.”11 As of the mid- 1980s Whittier Law School looked poised to succeed. It was the first ABA- accredited law school in the booming Los Angeles suburbs of Orange County, California. But by the 1990s and early 2000s, the ABA was warning the school about low bar passage rates.12 By 2005, the ABA had seen enough and placed Whittier on probation for two years.13 This was an aggressive and unusual move by the ABA at the time. In order to place Whittier on probation, the ABA had to find Whit- tier out of compliance with its accreditation standards. The problem was that in 2005 the ABA standards did not include any explicit language on 4 | Introduction what was or was not an acceptable bar passage rate. The ABA claimed that Whittier’s bar passage rates violated Standard 301, which states, “A law school shall maintain an educational program that prepares its stu- dents for admission to the bar, and effective and responsible participa- tion in the legal profession.” The ABA’s current, more specific Standard 316 covering bar passage (which we discuss at length in chapter 6) was not included in the standards until 2014– 15.14 Whittier promptly sued, claiming that the ABA’s enforcement of the standard violated due process and was too vague.15 The ABA won on Whittier’s request for a temporary injunction, but the lawsuit bought Whittier time to improve its bar passage results, and in 2008 when the ABA lifted the probation, Whittier dropped the suit.16 But the probation period itself was quite costly. Whittier lost twelve full- time faculty members, and enrollment dropped from 1,000 to 600.17 The school faced significant financial pressures but eventually rebounded, getting off of probation and temporarily raising its bar passage rates to more acceptable levels. Whittier’s first- time bar passage rates were 70 per- cent in July 2012 and 65 percent in July 2013, which were decent in Cali- fornia.18 For these two years Whittier looked as if it was going to be able to thread the needle and deliver on the promise of both Beverly College and Whittier College: it was admitting a diverse class of traditionally under- represented students and preparing them for success on the bar. Unfortunately, the bottom fell out again after 2013, and first-time bar passage rates in July 2016 fell to an unimaginably awful 22 percent.19 This was the worst bar passage rate in the State of California among ABA-accredited schools and a low-water mark even for a school that had a spotty record of bar passage. The July 2016, results were likely at least partially due to falling ad- missions standards implemented during the great law school applica- tion collapse of the post-2011 period. In 2010, the median Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score for Whittier’s incoming class was 152, and its median undergraduate grade point average (GPA) was 3.02. By 2016, those numbers had fallen to 146 and 2.85. Introduction | 5 Despite these declines in admissions standards, the entering class size shrunk from 303 to 132 over the same period. Whittier was hardly alone: the collapse in student credentials and class sizes across law schools over this period are a theme of this book. But note Whittier’s hardship. Between 2010 and 2016, Whittier moved to an almost open admissions schema by lowering LSAT and GPA targets substantially, and their first- year enrollment still fell by more than half! Whittier’s other indicators were likewise troubling. One hundred twenty- eight students graduated from Whittier in 2016, and six months after graduation only thirty- eight of them had a full-time, long-term job that required a JD. Whittier’s tuition was $45,350 in 2016, and the school estimated living expenses at another $32,136 per year— $77,486 a year! High tuition leads to large loans, and in 2016 Whittier’s graduates carried a crushing average debt load of $179,056, the second highest in the country.20 Pause for a minute to let that debt figure sink in. The debt carried by Whittier (and many other) law grads is perhaps the most upsetting legacy of the lost decade. Over the same period of time that job place- ment was deteriorating, law schools all over the country relentlessly raised tuition and asked students to borrow more to pay for law school. For a struggling law school like Whittier, the strategy was necessary for survival. Whittier needed to boost revenue any way it could, so they ac- cepted even marginally qualified applicants and asked them to borrow a fortune to support their education. This raises another question: why would the students take this risk? There are three reasons. First, starting in 2005 the federal government agreed to allow graduate students to borrow the entire cost of their edu- cation (plus reasonable living expenses) from the Grad Plus Program. Congress did this because the existing caps on federal loans had not changed in years and some students were being priced out of gradu- ate school. Despite this salutary goal, the result has been that Whittier (and many other law schools) can saddle their students with massive debt loads on loans that no private bank would consider underwriting.