You are currently browsing archives for March 2016.
The Fall Of Systemic Deception At Law Schools
March 29th, 2016 / By Kyle McEntee
Originally published on Above the Law.
Last week, Anna Alaburda lost her lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law. From what one juror said of deliberations, the jury only considered deliberate falsification of the data underlying the statistics she consulted before law school. Systemic deception by law schools, blessed by the ABA, was not on trial. While I am disappointed in the result — I think it would have been an important symbol — I want to talk about the changes that we’ve seen over the last six years on the transparency front. We did not win on every count, but we long-ago declared victory. Here’s why. (more…)
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Job Growth
March 26th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
How many lawyering jobs does our economy support? Is that number still growing? Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shed light on these questions. Every other year, BLS counts the number of existing “lawyer” jobs as part of its Employment Projections program. This count is particularly useful because, unlike some other BLS reports, it includes both salaried and self employed workers. These biennial counts thus include solo practitioners, law firm partners, and practicing lawyers who earn a salary from any source.
By examining these counts, which are available online since 1978, we can chart growth trends for lawyering jobs. (For a full description of the jobs included in these figures, see the note at the end of this post.)
Jury Verdict for Thomas Jefferson
March 24th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Anna Alaburda’s lawsuit against the Thomas Jefferson School of Law is over: a split jury returned a verdict for the law school earlier today. Nine jurors sided with the school, three would have found for Alaburda. One of the jurors stressed that their deliberations focused only on data reported in two editions of US News, rather than on later figures that might have been more misleading. He implied that even the nine jurors siding with the school were not completely comfortable with the school’s conduct.
What should legal educators make of this verdict? Some may sigh in relief; although graduates filed fraud claims against numerous schools, only one has produced a recovery for the plaintiffs. That one suit involved Golden Gate, which paid $8,000 to each of five plaintiffs in a settlement.
Others may celebrate, interpreting the Alaburda verdict as vindication of all employment reporting practices at law schools. If a jury of ordinary citizens found no fraud, then there must have been no wrongdoing.
I would interpret Alaburda and its kin as a more cautionary tale. The widespread reporting practices provoking these lawsuits damaged the reputation of legal education. Most educators now agree that our prior practices were–at the very least–not as informative for prospective students as they should have been. Some of the practices, such as failing to report the number of students supplying salary data, bordered on deceitful.
After the jury verdict, Thomas Jefferson’s attorney told a reporter: “This is not, you know, Trump University. It is so not that.” In my opinion, law schools should have worked harder to avoid even the possibility of that comparison.
Criminal Defense (OK): The Business Side of Being a Lawyer [Solo]
March 20th, 2016 / By I Am The Law
This episode is presented by The United States Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corp.
When you are a solo practitioner, you are a small business owner who happens to provide legal services. Many new lawyers fail to fully appreciate this right away, aggravating the already tall challenge of learning to practice law on your own.
Matt Swain is a 2009 graduate of the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Right after law school, he started his own criminal defense practice in a college town 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City. In this episode, Matt talks to us about the importance of understanding your business inside and out. He describes some of the techniques he uses that ultimately make him more efficient and more likely to notice opportunities to help his clients move forward with their lives.
This episode is hosted by Kimber Russell. It is sponsored by Barbri, ShouldIBeALawyer.com, and Top-Law-Schools.com.
Episode Links
- Matt Swain Law Firm
- American Bar Association: Compare Law Practice Management Software
The ABA Intends To Hold Law Schools Accountable
March 16th, 2016 / By Kyle McEntee
The good news keeps coming for law school reform advocates. The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has taken its next affirmative step towards holding law schools accountable for their exploitative admissions and retention choices.
Soon, the Council for the Section of Legal Education will publish the proposed ABA accreditation standard changes for public comment. The Council will assess any new information it obtains and consider approving the new standards in October. Although the Council is the final authority for law school accreditation, the ABA House of Delegates will vote in February. The process allows the House a formal but non-binding say in new standards.
Let’s review the proposals. (more…)
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The Latest Issue of the Bar Examiner
March 15th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) has released the March 2016 issue of their quarterly publication, the Bar Examiner. The issue includes annual statistics about bar passage rates, as well as several other articles. For those who lack time to read the issue, here are a few highlights:
Bar-Academy Relationships
In his Letter from the Chair, Judge Thomas Bice sounds a disappointingly hostile note towards law students. Quoting Justice Edward Chavez of the New Mexico Supreme Court, Bice suggests that “those who attend law school have come to have a sense of entitlement to the practice of law simply as a result of their education.” Against this sentiment, he continues, bar examiners “are truly the gatekeepers of this profession.” (P. 2)
NCBE President Erica Moeser, who has recently tangled with law school deans, offers a more conciliatory tone on her President’s Page. After noting the importance of the legal profession and the challenges facing law schools, she concludes: “In many ways, we are all in this together, and certainly all of us wish for better times.” (P. 5)
» Read the full text for The Latest Issue of the Bar Examiner
Path Cleared for Paid Externships
March 15th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar took several significant actions at its March 11–12 meeting. The first of these was approval of several changes in Standards 304 and 305, which govern experiential learning and non-classroom educational experiences. Some of the changes adjust guidelines for supervision of externships; the most controversial allows schools to award externship credit for paid positions.
I have written several times to express my support for this change. Individual schools may still choose to ban paid externships, but the path should soon be open for schools to integrate these externships within their educational programs. The ABA House of Delegates will vote on the change, probably at its August 2016 meeting, but that vote does not bind the Council. [Updated at 4:45 p.m. to correct meaning of ABA’s vote.]
The responsibility now lies with law schools to implement this change wisely. I supported the change because I hope it will help us find innovative ways to educate students more thoroughly for law practice, as well as to help employers develop lasting frameworks for education in the workplace. We won’t accomplish either of those goals unless law schools devote real resources, energy, and collaboration to working with employers on these externships.
If your law school has an innovative idea for creating paid externships–or if you’re an individual with such an idea–please send me an email (merritt.52@osu.edu). I hope to feature good ideas here and promote discussion around them. Few ideas are perfect at their inception but, through discussion and sharing, perhaps we can refine ideas that will achieve our educational goals. Consider it online workshopping of pedagogic ideas!
Trial Over Law School’s Job Statistics Symbolizes an Industry Gone Wrong
March 14th, 2016 / By Kyle McEntee
Originally published online and in print in the National Law Journal.
In May 2011, Anna Alaburda filed a lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson School of Law alleging that the school in San Diego lured students with deceptive and fraudulent employment statistics in violation of California consumer protection laws. With the trial starting last week, Alaburda’s case highlights how far the law school transparency movement has come in reforming U.S. legal education.
Outsourcing, automation and a thriving legal tech industry have fundamentally changed the legal profession. Law firms large and small closed or laid off huge swaths of attorneys in the wake of the Great Recession. Even recently, in February, Milwaukee’s largest minority-owned firm, Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan, abruptly discontinued its business, laying-off more than 100 attorneys and 200 staffers. Many remaining jobs on the legal market are temporary or paying low wages.
But Alaburda’s claims about an unknown glut of law school graduates predate the financial crisis. After graduating from New York University in 2002 and working for several years, she started law school in 2005. Her lawsuit reflects several decades of unethical marketing from law schools of all types.
When Alaburda applied, Thomas Jefferson and the American Bar Association reported a graduate employment rate north of 80 percent. In court documents, she alleges that she relied on reports about Thomas Jefferson’s success in deciding to enroll.
To say she should have known better is to miss the cultural context in which she made her decision. Until only recently, “education debt is not bad debt” dominated career advice that college provides a positive return on investment. Law school especially has been portrayed as a ticket to financial security or even wealth. Students are told to and, indeed, want to trust the institutions they’re seeking to attend for higher education. To mistrust schools, your advisers and common wisdom required a divergent leap of faith.
Alaburda decided to attend law school before The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Washington Post and hundreds of other publications covered misleading employment statistics. Coverage of law school deception started in earnest in April 2010 in this very publication — nearly five years after Alaburda started law school. That fall, after decades of conditioning, law school enrollment peaked while thousands of recent and not-so-recent graduates began to realize they were not alone in feeling duped. Against an overwhelmingly positive cultural backdrop, they misplaced their trust.
(more…)
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Improving Bar Passage
March 13th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Scott Johns, Professor of Practice and Director of the Bar Success Program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, has posted a thoughtful empirical analysis of the college’s bar preparation program. Johns analyzed 642 students who graduated from the college in 2008–2010 and then immediately sat for the Colorado bar exam. He knew the exam score for each graduate, rather than simply pass-fail status, which allowed for a particularly nuanced analysis. Using multiple linear regression, Johns found the following associations with bar exam score:
- Law school GPA showed the strongest association. An increase of one point in GPA was associated, on average, with an increase of 46.5 points in bar exam score.
- LSAT score was the next strongest predictor. A one-point increase on the LSAT correlated with a 1.1 point increase in bar exam score.
- Participation in two of the college’s bar success programs each correlated with higher bar exam scores. A third program did not show a significant correlation.
- Neither sex nor minority status correlated significantly with bar exam scores.
- Age correlated negatively with bar exam scores; on average, older students achieved lower scores.
- Participation in the college’s part-time program likewise correlated significantly with lower bar exam scores.
All of these associations occurred while controlling for the other variables listed above. Participation in one of the successful bar preparation programs, for example, was significantly correlated with a higher bar exam score after controlling for LSAT, law school grades, sex, minority status, and other factors listed above.
The U.S. News Rankings Are Horrible. Stop Paying Attention.
March 11th, 2016 / By Kyle McEntee
Note: A version of this piece was published last year on Law.com, but the U.S. News rankings remain as toxic of an influence as ever. This years version was published on Above the Law.
Next week, the law school world will overreact to slightly-shuffled U.S. News rankings. Proud alumni and worried students will voice concerns. Provosts will threaten jobs. Prospective students will confuse the annual shuffle with genuine reputational change.
Law school administrators will react predictably. They’ll articulate methodological flaws and lament negative externalities, but will nevertheless commit to the rankings game through their statements and actions. Assuring stakeholders bearing pitchforks has become part of the job description. (more…)
» Read the full text for The U.S. News Rankings Are Horrible. Stop Paying Attention.
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