Frequently Asked Questons
You can look in the Law School Profiles in this website and we will do our best to display this information (keep checking for updates if the school is not yet listed or the attrition rate). Some law schools even post their attrition rate as it is probably very low. Although, some schools do not publish their attrition rates because they are rather high. A law school with a high attrition rate (that is approximatley 20 percent or higher) may point to a few problems the school has. For example, the school may have a low morale and the students are transferring to other schools to get out of a bad situation. Students may also be transferring to higher ranked or more well known schools. A significant amount of lower ranked or less well known law schools have very stringent and difficult forced curves, which rely on, and require, a certain amount of students failing out of the school. This creates a cut throat culture wherein the students must work very hard to succeed, but often creates low morale as a student may work very hard yet fail out of the school. Students that fail out are not allowed back into the school unless they meet the stringent requirements for re-admission i.e. health issues, a difficult family situation etc. The law schools with these strictly enforced mandatory grading curves (grading curves that do not use the typical grading scale i.e. 90-100=A 80-89=B instead a C may be 75-85 and an A may be 94-100 etc. In addition only a certain percent of each letter grade are allowed per class.) rely on a elite system where only the best students graduate (as a significant amount of second year law students also fail out; although the number is much less than in the first year) and take the bar exam thus increasing the bar passage rates for the school because only the most studious students graduate to take the bar. If you are able to visit the school you may want to inquire about the schools attrition rate and gauge the explanation given the school. It may simply be that the school is small and a few students transferred for various reasons, e.g. they moved out of state or closer to home, unrelated to the schools quality, which resulted in a relatively high attrition rate.
How Do I find out what a law school's attrition rate is? Why do some law schools have high attrition rates?