The Accuracy of the T6's Self-Reported Big Law Employment #s Forum

[sunynp]

Doesn't look like this is going away:

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/ ... SF_F_River

and part of Campos' response to the quote from Columbia's dean in the above article:

It's true that the elite bar is hiring fewer people," says David Schizer, dean of Columbia's law school. "But is Columbia affected? No."

Really, at some point what is there left to say? Note that Dean Schizer wasn't making an off the cuff remark to cowed law students at "town hall" meeting, or posting anonymous snark on the internet, or mumbling something to a Jobs Creator at the bar after his fourth G&T at yet another unbearably tedious fundraising event. Instead, he said this, while on the record, to a journalist for one of the nation's leading financial publications.

Stats? Stats:

Percentage of Columbia law graduates getting jobs with NLJ250 firms by year:

2006: 69.9
2007: 74.8
2008: 70.5
2009: 54.4
2010: 55.2
2011: 51.7

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... thing.html

There is more back and forth in other posts on Campos' blog if you are interested, but I am looking at what is going beyond the blog into other media. It would be wonderful if someone pushed these schools into just giving accurate numbers.

[Bronck]

He doesn't really introduce anything new in that post. Ok, a law dean said something hyperbolic. Is that supposed to be news? NYU and CLS offered a plausible explanation for the discrepancy between their self reported data and NLJ numbers.

[Tiago Splitter]

He doesn't really introduce anything new in that post. Ok, a law dean said something hyperbolic. Is that supposed to be news? NYU and CLS offered a plausible explanation for the discrepancy between their self reported data and NLJ numbers.

If the numbers on the CLS website are to be believed, their NLJ250 placement didn't really drop much at all from 2008 to 2010. No data for 2009 of course.

[Bronck]

He doesn't really introduce anything new in that post. Ok, a law dean said something hyperbolic. Is that supposed to be news? NYU and CLS offered a plausible explanation for the discrepancy between their self reported data and NLJ numbers.

If the numbers on the CLS website are to be believed, their NLJ250 placement didn't really drop much at all from 2008 to 2010. No data for 2009 of course.

If a sizable number of firms didn't report for class of 2010, I wonder if the same phenomenon happened in previous years for the NLJ report?

If we assume a similar percent of kids (92%) got firms of size 101+ in 2009, then 77% of the class for 2009 would have landed something (we should note that clerkship numbers were ~4% lower that year).

[Tiago Splitter]

He doesn't really introduce anything new in that post. Ok, a law dean said something hyperbolic. Is that supposed to be news? NYU and CLS offered a plausible explanation for the discrepancy between their self reported data and NLJ numbers.

If the numbers on the CLS website are to be believed, their NLJ250 placement didn't really drop much at all from 2008 to 2010. No data for 2009 of course.

If a sizable number of firms didn't report for class of 2010, I wonder if the same phenomenon happened in previous years for the NLJ report?

If we assume a similar percent of kids (92%) got firms of size 101+ in 2009, then 77% of the class for 2009 would have landed something (we should note that clerkship numbers were ~4% lower that year).

Hard to imagine NLJ underreported much of anything when they said CLS put over 70% into NLJ250 jobs in 2007 and 2008.

NYU was nearly dead on in 2008 but reported way more than NLJ in 2009/2010. Same is true with Penn, although their numbers came closer to NLJ's for 2010 than NYU's did.

Either way, Schizer's statement doesn't seem that far from reality. Unless you're Campos, who is sticking to his "I am not accusing them of lying but they are for sure lying" line.

[sunynp]

Yeah, I'm only interested in seeing how this plays out in the media beyond Campos' blog. I personally think that it is ridiculous for the Dean of Columbia to posture that everything is fine at Columbia and it hasn't been affected by the economy. If nothing else, we know that people were Lathamed and no offered. Hiring at all biglaw firms are down, how is Columbia exempt from that?

As far as I can tell, those numbers still don't add up, but that is a definite beating a dead horse conversation.

[Bronck]

Yeah, there's not a whole lot else we can do with the data given to us.

At the very least, I think it's safe to assume a general stance, i.e.,: recent NLJ reports were "incomplete" and disproportionately underrepresented the placement numbers for large NY-feeder schools (i.e., HCN).

[seanPtheB]

What are people's opinions on how much more this affected an NYU or a CLS as opposed to a Chicago?

[Bronck]

What are people's opinions on how much more this affected an NYU or a CLS as opposed to a Chicago?

NYU and CLS (and to an extent Harvard) are feeder schools for some of the big NY firms that didn't report to the NLJ.

[Tiago Splitter]

What are people's opinions on how much more this affected an NYU or a CLS as opposed to a Chicago?

Just for kicks I checked out Chicago's stats.

Their website reports at least 6 more employed in NLJ250 firms in 2008 than NLJ does, at least 35 more in 2009, and as Campos said, they understate for c/o 2010.

EDIT: 2009 was all kinds of wacky. Harvard comes in with a minimum of 332, with NLJ reporting just 270.