T14 top 49%-26%: 1+ *OFFER* (BOSTON, TEXAS, ETC.) Forum

[Anonymous User]

Polls are limited to a maximum of 10 options, so I was unable to include Boston and several other markets in the previous poll.

In short: this is based upon your results so far in the markets which you primarily targeted during OCI. (That means an absolute minimum of one-third of your OCI interviews were in these markets.) This is meant to make the data more meaningful and useful. If you targeted more than one market with this level of intensity, you can mark both. Since the "one-third" figure is meant as an absolute minimum, please only mark three if it was truly an even split between three markets.

Please note the other poll for NY/DC/Bay Area/LA/Chicago.

[bmontminy]

i'm interested in this as well.

[lawschoollll]

Protip: Your poll treats 26th percentile at Yale the same as 49th percentile at GULC.

[KMaine]

Protip: Your poll treats 26th percentile at Yale the same as 49th percentile at GULC.

So maybe people can add their anecdotal experience. I don't think this was intended as a completely scientific survey.

[Anonymous User]

i'm interested in this as well.

GULC, right around top 1/3, 5 yrs relevant WE, Ties to TX. 9 CBs (6 to TX).

4 Offers (all in TX)

[Anonymous User]

Protip: Your poll treats 26th percentile at Yale the same as 49th percentile at GULC.

I considered excluding Yale, because it seems to be pretty "magical" in this regard. Perhaps Harvard would also qualify, although I've heard that people have had a hard time there. I decided to leave it as an undifferentiated look at the T14. A better survey would gather data on school, and would probably differentiate between right at median and pushing the top quarter. It would also consider firms specifically. However, this is meant as a rough look, and I have erred on the side of taking a broad view. Based on what we see here, we might want to investigate more narrowly.

Actually, I think that a lot of the Law School Transparency objectives could be satisfied with a site that gathers these sorts of numbers. I don't have the time to do that right now, unfortunately, but someone who does have time would be doing law students a great service by putting something like that together. They could even call it Law Firm Numbers. Ha ha. Get it. Question mark.

[observationalist]

Protip: Your poll treats 26th percentile at Yale the same as 49th percentile at GULC.

I considered excluding Yale, because it seems to be pretty "magical" in this regard. Perhaps Harvard would also qualify, although I've heard that people have had a hard time there. I decided to leave it as an undifferentiated look at the T14. A better survey would gather data on school, and would probably differentiate between right at median and pushing the top quarter. It would also consider firms specifically. However, this is meant as a rough look, and I have erred on the side of taking a broad view. Based on what we see here, we might want to investigate more narrowly.

Actually, I think that a lot of the Law School Transparency objectives could be satisfied with a site that gathers these sorts of numbers. I don't have the time to do that right now, unfortunately, but someone who does have time would be doing law students a great service by putting something like that together. They could even call it Law Firm Numbers. Ha ha. Get it. Question mark.

I definitely think a site that encourages self-reporting could help satisfy some of LST's core objectives, particularly for those components that are too personal to request from the schools themselves (notably gpa). There are problems with being able to verify the data, and with 45,000 graduates each year it'd be an enormous undertaking for a small nonprofit like ours, but it could definitely help. But there would still be a major problem with overrepresenting the top of a class, since successful graduates would be far more likely to voluntarily report their gpa and job outcomes than unsuccessful graduates. One of the reasons we're trying to collaborate directly with the schools is because they are better situated to collect and verify the job outcomes of their own graduates. The information they report will then be subject to a public audit, where people who think their own information is incorrect can go ahead and request a review. Because both the initial publication on the site and the subsequent review will be accessible to prospective students, schools would have a strong incentive to make sure there won't be many discrepancies.

In the meantime, the ABA standards committee has been making progress, and we will continue to monitor and get involved where necessary to help them reform the standard. Schools have until February to commit to the LST reporting standard, and we're hopeful to get more responses after we publish our next report. If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot a PM.

-obs

[Anonymous User]

I definitely think a site that encourages self-reporting could help satisfy some of LST's core objectives, particularly for those components that are too personal to request from the schools themselves (notably gpa). There are problems with being able to verify the data, and with 45,000 graduates each year it'd be an enormous undertaking for a small nonprofit like ours, but it could definitely help. But there would still be a major problem with overrepresenting the top of a class, since successful graduates would be far more likely to voluntarily report their gpa and job outcomes than unsuccessful graduates. One of the reasons we're trying to collaborate directly with the schools is because they are better situated to collect and verify the job outcomes of their own graduates. The information they report will then be subject to a public audit, where people who think their own information is incorrect can go ahead and request a review. Because both the initial publication on the site and the subsequent review will be accessible to prospective students, schools would have a strong incentive to make sure there won't be many discrepancies.

In the meantime, the ABA standards committee has been making progress, and we will continue to monitor and get involved where necessary to help them reform the standard. Schools have until February to commit to the LST reporting standard, and we're hopeful to get more responses after we publish our next report. If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot a PM.

-obs

I might actually question the presumed hesitancy of students to report unpleasant data. I think a lot of students are pissed off, and/or want to share this data to help warn the next class.

I would recommend requiring the use of a school email account (might raise privacy issues, but if LST is considered trustworthy enough ... besides, once you've graduated, it's not like it would be a big secret where you're working), and noting the size of each class so that the response rates can be computed. The viewer can be left with "And X% of the class hasn't answered" and make whatever assumptions they like on that basis.

[observationalist]

I definitely think a site that encourages self-reporting could help satisfy some of LST's core objectives, particularly for those components that are too personal to request from the schools themselves (notably gpa). There are problems with being able to verify the data, and with 45,000 graduates each year it'd be an enormous undertaking for a small nonprofit like ours, but it could definitely help. But there would still be a major problem with overrepresenting the top of a class, since successful graduates would be far more likely to voluntarily report their gpa and job outcomes than unsuccessful graduates. One of the reasons we're trying to collaborate directly with the schools is because they are better situated to collect and verify the job outcomes of their own graduates. The information they report will then be subject to a public audit, where people who think their own information is incorrect can go ahead and request a review. Because both the initial publication on the site and the subsequent review will be accessible to prospective students, schools would have a strong incentive to make sure there won't be many discrepancies.

In the meantime, the ABA standards committee has been making progress, and we will continue to monitor and get involved where necessary to help them reform the standard. Schools have until February to commit to the LST reporting standard, and we're hopeful to get more responses after we publish our next report. If anyone has any questions feel free to shoot a PM.

-obs

I might actually question the presumed hesitancy of students to report unpleasant data. I think a lot of students are pissed off, and/or want to share this data to help warn the next class.

I would recommend requiring the use of a school email account (might raise privacy issues, but if LST is considered trustworthy enough ... besides, once you've graduated, it's not like it would be a big secret where you're working), and noting the size of each class so that the response rates can be computed. The viewer can be left with "And X% of the class hasn't answered" and make whatever assumptions they like on that basis.

Fair point. But if we're looking at who among the 45,000 are most likely to report their employment information directly to LST, I just don't think the aggregate will be representative of an entire class even when you include the people who are pissed off. Strong performers will report for the reasons I gave above, and people who are upset will report for the reason you gave, but the rest may just not bother. One of our major criticisms of existing tools (like the NLJ250 listing) is that they portray a small subsection of job outcomes as if they are representative. Another criticism is that the current ABA standard permits schools to be highly selective in how they present their employment information. Schools can collect salary data from as little as 10% of the class and then report six-figure median private sector salaries without disclosing that the salaries only constitute 10%.

Unless we can figure out a way to ensure widescale reporting I still think it's better to pull the data from the schools themselves, since they already have it. Regarding the second bolded above, it also seems more fair to give credit to schools when they do the work involved in collecting and reporting information, rather than comparing different schools based on how many of their graduates decided to report to a third party. The students at some schools (notably Vanderbilt) are more aware of LST than at others, so they would benefit disproportionately from a self-reporting regime. Putting 45,000 grads on notice each year is more difficult than putting 200 law school administrators who are mostly the same people year to year.

One way your suggestion could work, though, is if we can tie in with the 200 student bar associations and get them on board with publicizing the data. It's something we've been working on and if it comes through we might be able to offer a service in conjunction with the SBAs (or whatever each school calls them). Thanks for the input.