Staying at Your Chosen Law School
The "ABA-LSAC Official Guide" shows academic and non-academic attrition rates for every law school. These two numbers tell you very different things. The academic attrition rate tells you how tough the school's grading curve is -- how hard you'll have to struggle just to not flunk out. Academic attrition rates vary from a very pretty "zero" to a terrifying 29%. Non-academic attrition rates show you how many people drop out for other reasons. These are most often financial at some schools, while at others they may be a sign that people have taken on more responsibilities than they can handle. The former is more likely to be true at a school that draws a national student body; the latter would be true at "local" law schools with large part-time populations. These rates again vary from "zero" to over 35%; if you're worried about financing your education, you might want to give these numbers careful consideration.
The numbers in the book are not entirely representative, since they are based on two assumptions:
- That the number of people who leave after the first year is constant from year to year, and
- That the number of students enrolled is constant from year to year.
I know that these two assumptions are false at some law schools, making this data inaccurate to some degree. For instance, if a school had either halved or doubled its first-year class size this year, the second and third year attrition rates could be half or double the actual number. More typically, a number will be off by about 10%.
The average cumulative attrition rate for all ABA-approved law schools is 4% academic and 9% other, for a total of 13%. Be sure to check your list of schools against this reference point. A number of schools have much higher rates of attrition, and I believe you should factor that into your choice of where to apply.