Law degree program axed at California’s Golden Gate University amid accreditation woes

Nov 30 (Reuters) – Golden Gate University said on Thursday that it will discontinue the law school’s Juris Doctor program in May.
Officials at the San Francisco school said the Golden Gate University School of Law will not close altogether and will continue to offer non-J.D. graduate and undergraduate degrees.
“Given the realities of the marketplace, our law school’s place in it and a host of related trends and data, we determined it is no longer viable to offer this degree program,” reads a message from Golden Gate President David Finke and Board of Trustees Chair Barbara Mendelson.
The move was not unexpected. University officials in May said the law school was in “financial exigency” and that its future was uncertain. The law school in October filed a plan with the American Bar Association laying out how it would handle remaining law students in the event of a closure.
The Thursday message cited enrollment declines, a difficult employment market, and low bar exam pass rates as reasons for the closure. For several years Golden Gate has failed to meet the ABA’s accreditation requirement that at least 75% of law schools graduates pass the bar exam within two years.
The school’s two-year pass rate was 63% for the class of 2020 and 67% for the class of 2019, according to ABA data. Golden Gate dramatically reduced the size of its first-year class in 2022 and provided full scholarships to all new full-time J.D. students in a bid to improve sagging bar pass rates and remain accredited, but those measures were not enough to save the J.D. program.
Among the law school’s 118 graduates in 2022, 27% were unemployed and seeking work 10 months after graduation, ABA data shows.
Current J.D. students have the option to transfer to another law school or complete their degree at Golden Gate under the plan submitted to the ABA, but the law school will not admit any new J.D. students. The message did not clarify what will happen to the law school’s 31 full-time faculty, but a university spokesperson said on Thursday that those decisions are forthcoming.
At least seven law schools have closed since 2014, the most recent being Florida Coastal School of Law in 2021. No other universities have opted to end their J.D. programs without closing their law schools. Two other California law schools — the University of La Verne College of Law and Thomas Jefferson School of Law — opted in recent years to end their ABA accreditation and become accredited by the State Bar of California instead.
Golden Gate Law currently offers a number of non-J.D. programs, including LL.M. degrees for both foreign and U.S.-trained attorneys as well as a master’s degree program for non-lawyers. The university offers an undergraduate bachelor’s degree in law.
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Karen Sloan reports on law firms, law schools, and the business of law. Reach her at [email protected]