Step right up ladies and gentlemen

I've been putting together a collection of promotional e-mails prospective law students from all around the country get from law schools (One amusing aspect of this practice is that some schools keep harassing people all through their 1L year, as apparently they blast email everybody who took the LSAT in the previous cycle, in the hope that some people who didn't end up enrolling will now change their mind).

Here I want to focus on two aspects of this practice:what have become the the quasi-open enrollment policies of lower-tier schools, and the juking of the stats by some elite institutions.

As for the former, Nando at Third Tier Reality noted yesterday that the Oklahoma City University School of Law is accepting applications for its fall class up to and including August 1st, while the class's first-year orientation starts three days later.  This has apparently become a standard practice at lower-tier schools. Here's one from Regent:

Date: August 2, 2011 11:09:58 AM CDT

To: 

Subject: [Name], our final deadline is almost here!

Reply-To: "Regent Law" <law@lawregent.org>

Hi [Name],
We are checking every day, and we have not yet seen your application to Regent Law for this coming academic year. It's not too late to apply!
You still have time to fill out your LSAC application ... or list us as one of your schools if your application is already on file.
In turn, we are happy to send you a timely admission decision and consider you for a scholarship. Plus, you won't pay an application fee.
We have just a few spots available in our incoming 2011 class, [Name]. Apply today to make sure you meet the final August 8 deadline!
Sincerely,
Jeffrey A. Brauch
Dean and Professor
Regent University School of Law
1000 Regent University Drive
Virginia Beach, VA 23464

And this kind of thing is spreading well beyond the depths of the fourth tier:  In 2010 Seton Hall's (ranked #69 out of 200 ABA schools) admissions dean was sending out who knows how many emails at the end of June --the school's application deadline had supposedly passed three months earlier -- with this cordial invitation:

We do have a few remaining seats as well as scholarship opportunities in the Fall 2010 class.  If you have already earned your bachelors degree and starting law school in August might be of interest to you, feel free to call me to discuss submitting an application for priority review.  If I am not available to take your call you can also speak with our Associate Director, Laura Dauchy.)

Given that law school applications are down nationally almost 25% since then, I imagine a lot of places that until now thought they were above transforming their admissions office into a troupe of carnival barkers are shall we say becoming more flexible on this score.

And the highest reaches of our learned profession are not immune to engaging in quite dubious tactics.  My in box reveals that for at least the last three years Columbia Law School has sent out a blast email in the first week of February (actually on the exact same day, 13 days before the school's admissions deadline).  Here's the 2011 version:

From: "admissions@law.columbia.edu" <admissions@law.columbia.edu>

Date: February 2, 2011

To: " Subject: Columbia Law School Application Fee Waiver

Reply-To: admissions@law.columbia.edu

Dear Mr. :

We are writing at this time to encourage you to apply to Columbia Law School, if you have not already done so.

Our February 15, 2011 application deadline is approaching and we continue to actively read applications and render decisions.  If you wish to be considered for admission to our 2011 entering class, please apply via the LSAC online application at http://www.lsac.org.  We can assure you, if you apply and complete your application promptly, that your candidacy will be considered carefully. [my emphasis]

At this point in the admissions cycle, we understand that you may have applied to numerous other schools, and thus might feel burdened by the costs of application fees.  Therefore, if you have not already applied to Columbia Law School, we are waiving the usually required application fee of $80. In order to take advantage of the fee waiver, you must apply online via the LSAC electronic application. Please note that this fee waiver is specific to the current application cycle.

We should emphasize that this correspondence does not imply that our Admissions Committee would necessarily be able to take favorable action on your candidacy.  For more information on Columbia Law School and our admissions philosophy, please visit our website at http://www.law.columbia.edu/admissions.

Best wishes for success with all your law school applications.  We look forward to our review of your candidacy for admission to Columbia.


Warm wishes,

E. Nkonye Iwerebon
Dean of Admissions

What's interesting about this is that many of the people who are getting this solicitation have quite literally zero chance of being admitted.  One person who got it had a 2.7 GPA and a 161 LSAT. This person qualified as an under-represented minority (URM) but CLS's affirmative action admissions policies don't come within light years of making these competitive numbers for admission  (You can look at a graph of CLS's 2012 class to get a sense of how absurd it would be for this applicant to apply).  And many other recipients had numbers that were far below at least one of what seem to be the hard GPA and LSAT cutoffs CLS's admissions office employ (Per LSN Columbia hasn't admitted a non-affirmative action applicant with a GPA below 3.4 in the last five years, but lots of non-URM applicants with GPAs below 3.0 got the above letter).

It appears CLS has an institutional policy of sending out an enormous number of application fee waivers immediately before the school's application deadline to people who have no chance of admission, but who will, if they can be induced to take the time to apply and pay the LSAC reporting fee of $16 (formerly $12), then be counted as applicants by the school for the purpose of lowering its acceptance ratio (which is part of the USNWR ranking).

This is pretty sleazy stuff. Now of course in this situation CLS retains what the Nixon administration used to refer to as plausible deniability: I'm sure they don't employ formal hard cutoffs for applicants, so the school can always claim that it's not true in the most literal sense that white kids with GPAs below 3.0 whose parents didn't happen to buy the university a new library have no chance of admission, even though nobody with that profile has been admitted to CLS since the Korean War. And obviously lots of law schools do much sleazier stuff all the time (at least most people who get into CLS actually get legal jobs). Furthermore CLS is far from alone among elite schools in soliciting applications from people with no chance of admission, although they seem to have taken the systematizing of the practice further than anyone else.

Still. this kind of thing is symptomatic of remarkable combination of lax ethics and imperious sanctimoniousness that characterizes so much of the upper reaches of both legal academia and the legal profession.