The Boston Business Journal is reporting that the “American Bar Association is considering whether to audit the data law schools provide about how many of their graduates are employed.” According to the BBJ and the AmBar, a “draft proposal suggesting random audits was submitted . . . to the governing council.” of the section of the ABA that handles legal education and admissions to the bar. At a meeting last December, the council approved developing the draft proposal.
Under the proposal, schools with employment files that have more than a 2 percent discrepancy between what they post and what they report to the ABA would have to verify the information, using a random sample of at least 10 percent of their graduates, the ABA said. And, if 2 percent of that information cannot be supported or is inaccurate or false, the school would be required to retain an outside expert to verify the accuracy.
via Bar Association mulling random audits of law-school hiring reports – Boston Business Journal.
I say, too little too late. During my last, or maybe my second-to-last year of law school teaching, I delivered a scathing lecture to my not-first-tier law students regarding their malaise in pursuing excellence and the true state of the job market and their relative place in that market.
My message, essentially, was that if they wanted a prayer at being a practicing lawyer when they left law school they better bust their butts hard enough to land in the top ten percent of the class. If they wanted to have any choice in the type of law they want to practice, they’d better graduate in as one of the top 5 students. There was, back then (2010’ish) a murky conspiracy of propaganda convincing every one of those students that all they needed was law degree and they’d be good to go.
Lo and behold, within a few days I was being scolded by the director of my academic unit for that little outburst. The Dean’s Office, it turns out, heard from a whiny second-year student whose delicate ego was in jeopardy. The Dean didn’t think reality was a good message for students. This incident marked the beginning of the end of my patience for the charade.
The truths, as I see them, are as follows:
- There are too many lawyers
- There are too many law students
- Too many law students are substandard and should not be in law school
- There are not enough good lawyers
- Law schools are profit, not quality motivated
- Law schools are motivated by and in the business of deception.
What in this scheme of compliance prevents a law school from reporting the same lies to the ABA as it publishes publicly in its promotional material? So long as the numbers match, no audit is triggered.
