The LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center ranks as the No. 8 Best Value Law School in the Nation by The National Jurist Magazine.
The Law Center was the only Louisiana law school included in the rankings. LSU law students also received the highest passage rate among examinees in the state on the July 2015 Louisiana State Bar Exam, according to results posted Oct. 9 by the Committee on Bar Admissions of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Interim Co-Dean William “Bill” Corbett said the ranking indicates the Law Center, “offers excellent legal education at a low and reasonable cost that does not require our students to incur great indebtedness.” This year marks the fifth year the Law Center was included in the Best Value Law School rankings.
The Law Center also ranked in the Top 10 Most Underrated Law Schools in the country in July. Both rankings evaluated student performance post-graduation on the bar exam and student employment outcomes according to the ranking publications.
The National Jurist Magazine took student debt accrued in tuition and cost of living into account while University of North Carolina law professor Alfred Brophy’s Top 10 Most Underrated Law Schools partially based rankings on citations against law schools and compared his findings to the measures of the U.S. News rankings.
Second year Law Center student Arielle Minor said the ranking on the Best Value Law School list reflects the education students receive at the Law Center.
“LSU has definitely made conscious efforts to make it a best value law school,” Minor said. “Students are getting jobs coming out of here, we have really high employment rates especially out of graduation, and we have a really high bar passage rate.”
Of the 98 percent of the Law Center’s 2014 class who responded to a survey 10 months post graduation, 94 percent reported they were employed, according to the Law Center’s website. Approximately 81 percent of those graduates said their employment depended on bar passage.
Second year Law Center student Jack Zeringue said he feels “more confident” about the bar exam after seeing the recent passage rates of Law Center students.
“The passage rate really goes to show the work our teachers put into educating the students and getting them prepared for the bar exam and the real world,” Zeringue said.
Of all LSU law students who took the exam in July, 78 percent passed the exam with 82.73 percent of those taking the exam for the first time passing, according to a Law Center news release.
The Law Center’s overall passage rate of 78 percent surpassed the state average of 61.89 percent by a greater margin than achieved in 2014.