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Data Difficulties
May 3rd, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
*Update: For those of you who can’t sleep until the data match, Jerry Organ has figured out the discrepancy described below. The spreadsheet on the ABA site is too comprehensive: It includes Hamline, William Mitchell, and Mitchell/Hamline as separate (and duplicative) entries. Eliminate the entries for the first two schools, while retaining the combined Mitchell/Hamline, and the figures on the spreadsheet match the scorecard. Data deliverance!
For the last several years, the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has collected increasingly helpful data about employment outcomes for law school graduates. Data about individual schools, as well as a spreadsheet combining all data, are displayed at this website. The Section also posts a “scorecard” summarizing key statistics for the graduating class; those scorecards appear here.
Data for the Class of 2015 are now available, and both bloggers and mainstream media have started to report on those numbers. Unfortunately, however, the data appear to be in flux. The ABA posted several versions of the spreadsheet yesterday, as it worked to include all schools. The current spreadsheet appears comprehensive, but the totals do not match those appearing on the scorecard.
So, if you see conflicting numbers in the press, don’t be confused. Several professors have been in touch with the ABA Section, and we will analyze the data further once we are sure that it is in final form. Meanwhile, no excuse for not grading exams….
ABA Employment Stats: Class of 2015
May 2nd, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Updated at 8:30 p.m. to reflect several changes*
The ABA has just released employment statistics for the Class of 2015. As Jerry Organ speculated over the weekend, the report is decidedly mixed. The percentage of graduates holding full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage edged up slightly, from 59.9% in 2014 to 60.3% in 2015.
This small increase, however, resulted from the drop in the number of graduates–rather than from any increase in available jobs. Graduates fell 9.2% between the two years, from 43,832 in 2014 to 39,817 in 2015. The actual number of FTLT bar-required jobs also fell, from 26,248 in 2014 to 23,993 in 2015. That’s a hefty decline of 2,255 jobs or 8.6%.
These figures encompass all ABA-accredited law schools, including the three Puerto Rico schools. For this initial comparison, I also counted school-funded jobs. In later analyses, I will break those out.
I will have updates on these figures as I work more with the ABA spreadsheet. The results, however, are not the good news that law schools were hoping to hear. Nor are prospective students likely to greet these figures as heralding a surge in the legal employment market. This summer would be a good time to reflect further on challenges and opportunities for law schools; I hope to contribute to that discussion.
* This year’s ABA spreadsheet includes several hidden columns, which affected some of my earlier calculations. The gist hasn’t changed, but the numbers have shifted slightly.
More Evidence of the White Bias in Legal Education
May 1st, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I wrote last summer about an important paper showing that non-white law students earn lower law school grades than their white classmates, even after controlling for LSAT score, undergraduate grades, and a host of other variables. That paper, written by Alexia Brunet Marks and Scott Moss, analyzed students enrolled at the University of Colorado and Case Western University schools of law.
A new study, authored by Daniel Schwarcz and Dion Farganis, documents the same effect among students at the University of Minnesota Law School. Schwarcz and Farganis’s primary research interest focuses on the educational impact of individualized feedback given to first-year law students. Paul Caron, Michael Simkovic, and Lawrence Solum have already discussed those parts of the paper; I hope to add some of my thoughts soon.
While analyzing the impact of feedback, however, Schwarcz and Farganis produced even more striking results related to race. The researchers, in fact, document a race effect that is almost twice as large as the feedback one. Receiving individualized feedback from a first-year professor, they found, was associated with a .108 rise in the student’s grade in the target class. That difference emerged after controlling for LSAT score, UGPA, and several other factors.
Being a U.S. born minority student, on the other hand, was associated with a .209 fall in the student’s grade. Once again, that association emerged after controlling for LSAT score, UGPA, and several other factors. The negative association for race was almost twice as large as the positive association for feedback.
As Schwarcz and Farganis acknowledge, statistical association does not prove causation; other variables might explain the positive relationship they found between individualized feedback and grades. It is hard, however, to imagine what those other variables might be in the case of the negative relationship between minority race and grades. And now we have two well controlled studies documenting that negative relationship. (A third study, by John Fordyce et al., is in press and I am working to obtain a copy of it.)
I look forward to discussing the pedagogic implications of the Schwarcz and Farganis feedback study; their paper offers a lot of food for thought. But I also hope colleagues will discuss their finding about the association between race and law school grades. Why are law schools failing their minority students in this way?
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.
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
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…)
» Read the full text for Trial Over Law School’s Job Statistics Symbolizes an Industry Gone Wrong
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.
Race, Debt, and Opportunity
March 10th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Education opens doors. In law schools, we have tried for decades to open one particular door: the one that welcomes more minority graduates into the profession. In some ways, we have succeeded admirably. The percentage of minority law graduates almost tripled between 1983 and 2012, from 8.6% to 24.2%. The absolute number of those graduates rose almost four-fold during the same years, from 3,169 per year to 11,951 annually.
Today, all of us can name successful minority lawyers, judges, and law professors–as well as minority business people, nonprofit directors, and policymakers with law degrees. Legal education can even point with pride to the first African American President of the United States.
Just as the doors started to open, however, new obstacles emerged. Research shows that minority students earn lower law school grades than white students–even after controlling for entering credentials. We have also dramatically raised the cost of legal education as our student bodies diversified. And, perhaps most disturbing, we now know that these high costs fall disproportionately on Black and Latino/a students. New data from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) show that these students assume substantially more law school debt than their white and Asian American classmates. That debt gap is new–and growing.
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