“Law schools are misrepresenting their job numbers” so says Colorado law school professor Paul Campos in the latest exposé in a string of continuing reports about how law schools add B.S. to the J.D. they award their graduates. And I don’t mean “Scientiæ Baccalaureus.” My thanks to Carson City, NV trial attorney Day Williams for the tip on Professor Campos’ article, which was published last month in “The New Republic.“
But the news that law schools fib about post-graduation employment numbers is hardly leading-edge stuff. After all, their stock-in-trade Socratic Method was always a dodgy disingenuous way to the truth. Moreover, if anyone was paying attention, the reports about “certain debt and uncertain job prospects” have been going on for several years, including recently at “Law Schools Attract Far Fewer Students – WSJ.com” and 4 years earlier at “The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market – Law Blog – WSJ.”
The ABA has also finally but belatedly reacted to the brouhaha thanks to pressure from U.S. News and World Report (USNWR), which annually ranks U.S. law schools. See “U.S. News Challenges ABA on Law School Employment Data Standards.”
Selling law school.
But when the pressure for revenue overrides the way administrators sell law schools to thousands of clueless lemmings, what did you expect? See Professor Campos’ essay at http://www.tnr.com/article/87251/law-school-employment-harvard-yale-georgetown
Professor Campos adds his own anecdotal take to data he gleaned from U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) and the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). But the New York Times was previously all over the same story at “Is Law School a Losing Game?” And I’ve also added my own 2 cents, including at “Personal irresponsibility and poor life choices, one’s about law school and the other’s the film “Another Year.”
And certainly the just-graduated, underemployed and unemployed law school bloggers have all weighed in with their own impassioned musings. It’s also a problem not limited solely to law school graduates. College undergrads also struggle to find use for overpriced, oversold degrees.
Earlier this month, for example, I met yet another college grad working a low-paying service job, having failed to find work in her field. She was waitressing at a local coffee shop. Add her to the several golf cart refreshment cart workers I’ve met similarly embittered over hustling “Arnold Palmers” and beer instead of meaningfully plying their Bachelor’s Degrees for good pay.
Law professors biting the feeding hand.
Surprisingly, since they’re biting the hands that feed them, besides Professor Campos, other academics have also investigated the fudged job numbers. Another is law school professor Jason Dolin at “Deciphering law schools’ post-graduate employment data,” which was reported last November by the Ohio State Bar at “Are law school graduates at a loss for jobs?”
It’s hardly an excuse but Professor Dolin does acknowledge that tuition is “the life blood” for law schools because it’s how they sustain themselves and throw off profits.
And piling on, in a March 31, 2011 press release, even California U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer is asking for “a detailed summary of the ABA’s plans to implement reforms to its current procedures to ensure access to accurate and transparent information for prospective law school students.”
Given the data and attendant controversy, it’s truly surprising it’s taken so long for the “Law school admissions drop 11.6% across U.S.” If lawyer aspirants would only pay attention. It doesn’t take a lot of due diligence, just a healthy dose of skepticism.
As Professor Campos asserts in his article, the point of academics ought to be a search for truth, not “the defense of a professional cartel from which law professors benefit more than almost anyone else.”
This is only anecdotal, but according to my law school’s statistics, I earned more than 90% of those in my class simply by keeping my day job as a computer programmer. My numbers went into the school’s “employed” column even though my JD had nothing to do with it. I stopped responding to their surveys so if they are now asking us to distinguish between law- and other- work, I don’t know. I’ve never asked whether they mis-used my data because they were dishonest or because they were too stupid to think of the possibility, and I’m not sure which answer would be more disturbing.