Thank you for the opportunity to report on the state of the Law School. I'm happy to say that through the commitment of faculty and staff, alumni and friends, the Law School has reestablished the fundamental soundness to sustain it in coming years. Without doubt, one of our fundamental sources of strength is the support of so many around us. As the State of South Dakota’s law school, we are incredibly supported by the State of South Dakota. The Legislature and Board of Regents provide crucial financial and policy support; increasingly the business community partners with the Law School in important ways; the bench and bar continue their generations of support for the Law School without which we could not endure. We are a community of excellence, service, and leadership. The most fundamental source of our strength is the strength of our community. As South Dakota’s law school, you are ALL part of our community. Thank you all for that.
in-state tuition offerings, we have recruited about half our class from outside South Dakota without excluding talented South Dakotans. Our next goal is to keep more of those students in South Dakota to begin their careers. To that end, we produce great career outcomes for our graduates. Our last two classes reported over 90 percent placement in jobs that require or prefer a J.D. We placed sixteen graduates in judicial clerkships last year. Our last two reported Ultimate Bar Passage rates were 87 and 94 percent. Our last three classes have outpaced national numbers on bar passage. Our graduates continue to have the second lowest amount of student debt in the nation. If you stack all this up, we offer students a valuable and affordable education. Our graduates will pass the bar, get jobs, and be able to put their degree to work where they want to make a difference, not just where they have to work to pay for it. That matters for students who want to pursue public service or work in small towns.
The fruits of our communal labor are visible in the fundamental metrics of the Law School. Recruiting great students is the foundation of everything else we do. It is not an easy task this year as national law school applications are declining by double digit percentages. Despite that challenging national reality, the Law School is within a whisker of the number of applications we had last year and an entering class of more than 70 students. LSAT scores and undergraduate grade point averages remain strong among admitted students, at or above last year’s levels. Although these objective numbers are not gaurantees of success, they are good indicators and we continue to compete aggressively and creatively to attract great students. We also continue to work hard to expanding our candidate pool. Through expanded
I am fond of saying that a lot of my job is lot like a college football coach. We recruit talented students, we coach those students up to be the best they can be, we send them to the pros, and share that good news with our alumni and friends. Through the lens of that metaphor, we are winning program fully prepared to reload not rebuild. Heck, we don't even need a lastsecond Hail Mary like the Coyotes used to defeat Bill Garry’s Jackrabbits this fall. Despite our fundamental strengths, and my deep belief in the Law School's future, I would provide one caution to all of us. We cannot simply assume the future of the Law School or the profession. The years to come will 10
