Schools continue to do all they can to compete with other law schools, increase their rankings, and attract the best students they can get. Though most admissions offices concede that the debt is significant, they focus students' attention on the career opportunities available to lawyers, and argue that the debt is manageable considering the large salaries that students can expect right out of law school. They point to impressive statistics about employment and salary prospects, but both of these are misleading.
First, there is a considerable lag between a class graduating and its employment statistics being reported. The 2009 data, for example, are based upon the employment outcomes of 2007 graduating class, so they don't take into effect the 2008 law firm collapse.[1] This means students won't have access to updated information about how graduates at schools have fared post-recession for several more years.
Less innocently, most employment and salary statistics rely on self-reporting, which gives an overly optimistic view of potential outcomes since unemployed graduates or those who are not working in legal jobs are less likely to report back.[2] There is evidence of "'massive exaggeration' by law schools," and "the methods that law schools choose to collect salary info just happen to be ones that underreport low earners."[3] Since employment and salary of graduates play a significant role in USNWR rankings, the schools themselves have no incentive to provide accurate statistics.
Career services offices focus some attention on helping the top students gain employment at the most prestigious Biglaw firms or to receive the most competitive clerkships, but the rest of their resources are spent making sure that the graduates who might otherwise be unable to find employment get a job.[4] Since the employment statistics do not differentiate between legal employment that requires a JD, and non-legal employment that requiring less than a high school diploma, any job will suffice. Since the offices of career services staff's jobs often hang in the balance of USNWR rankings, even top-tier schools like fourth-ranked Columbia have offered their unemployed graduates low-paying eight- or nine-month-long fellowships so as to be able to count those students as employed for the purposes of USNWR,[5] which not coincidentally bases its rankings on employment statistics at graduation and nine months after graduation.[6] Since law schools do not have any incentive to provide accurate statistics, perhaps this would be an appropriate role for the ABA. "Despite its ample resources, [though,] the ABA has rebuffed calls to monitor the schools to get more accurate data, calling the existing framework an effective 'honor system.'"[7]
Sources and Footnotes:
[1] Karen Sloan, "Going to Law School? Proceed with Caution," The National Law Journal, December 14, 2009, http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202436271998.
[2] Greenbaum, "No More Room."
[3] Justin Pope, "Analysis: Law Schools Growing, But Jobs Aren't," USA Today, June 17, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-06-17-law-schools_N.htm.
[4] Aaron Street, "Law School Career Services Fail, But There Are Fixes," Lawyerist, January 5, 2010, http://lawyerist.com/law-school-career-services-fail/.
[5] Elie Mystal, "Fellowships for the Poor: Only Unemployed Columbia Law Grads Need Apply," Above the Law, May 29, 2009, http://abovethelaw.com/2009/05/fellowships_for_the_poor_only.php.
[6] Robert Morse and Sam Flanigan, "Law School Rankings Methodology," U.S. News & World Report, April 22, 2009, http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-law-schools/2009/04/22/law-school-rankings-methodology.html.
[7] Greenbaum, "No More Room."
Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP) is an organization based at Stanford Law School. BBLP is a national grassroots movement that seeks market-based workplace reforms in large private law firms. For more information, visit BBLP's Web site at www.betterlegalprofession.org.