Pages

Sunday, February 17, 2008

And They All Talk With Straight Faces

My old law school has produced a 10 minute promotional video that essentially consists of the dean and some current and former students giving scripted testimony about how great and wonderful Trinity Law School is. What's not said, of course, is that for the past 8 to 10 years, the bar pass rate for Trinity graduates is well below 20 percent. There are several reasons for this outside of the quality of education at Trinity, e.g., the high number of part-time students who have families and full time jobs, but the inescapable fact of the matter is that the low bar pass rate pretty much makes a Trinity law degree worthless on the open market.

Trinity also does almost nothing in the way of career development, like helping students obtain summer associate positions. The closest thing that Trinity has to a career program is a big cork bulletin board hanging in a hallway with a "Jobs" sign stuck to it. With something like 90 percent of the law instructors at Trinity being active practicing lawyers, you'd think the school could do a little bit something more.

Anyhow, although I like the fact that Trinity tries very hard to maintain an orthodox Christian environment, as perfectly illustrated by the herein referred to promotional video, it's not a law school I could really recommend to anyone who is planning on practicing law, but not as a sole practitioner. Trinity's academic creds just aren't there, and the school simply doesn't do enough in career development to compensate for it.

No comments: