LST Certification Forum

[sf_39]

Apparently LST has sent out a note to schools offering them a transparency certification for just over $1900. More details in the link below.

Thoughts?

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leit ... hools.html

Post is from a law professor so opinion in the post may be skewed.

[Clearly]

Personally I think this was a misstep.

[NYstate]

Someone needs to certify school data. No regulator is stepping up to do it and we know that schools lie. The ABA allowed this mess to happen. Now they changed their reporting reguirements, but does anyone verify the data?

Personally, I think they are charging too little. They have been providing a major service for free and they need income to support their operation.

Haters are going to hate. I don't give Leiters angry screed any value. He is just a hateful blowhard who refuses to see what is happening in law.


And lol at any law school complaining that LST are "shakedown" artists. Law schools perfected the art of shaking down students a long time ago. That must be why they are accusing LST of doing the same thing.

I think schools can easily afford this money. But if they don't want to pay, they don't have to. They probably aren't going to voluntarily support the group that highlighted their lies and data manipulation.

[dr123]

Sounds like they're scamming the scammers - I like it.

[LSATSCORES2012]

Someone needs to certify school data. No regulator is stepping up to do it and we know that schools lie. The ABA allowed this mess to happen. Now they changed their reporting reguirements, but does anyone verify the data?

Personally, I think they are charging too little. They have been providing a major service for free and they need income to support their operation.

Haters are going to hate. I don't give Leiters angry screed any value. He is just a hateful blowhard who refuses to see what is happening in law.


And lol at any law school complaining that LST are "shakedown" artists. Law schools perfected the art of shaking down students a long time ago. That must be why they are accusing LST of doing the same thing.

I think schools can easily afford this money. But if they don't want to pay, they don't have to. They probably aren't going to voluntarily support the group that highlighted their lies and data manipulation.

It sounds like they intend to certify that the data is readily available, not that it's accurate:

One review is for Standard 509 compliance. The other review is for LST Best Practices. The latter requires that schools produce various consumer information (employment data, financial aid, etc) on their websites. Sometimes the Best Practices require a certain form; usually we just check that certain data or statements are present. Importantly, we require schools to centralize all consumer information for easy access and require that schools indicate info about definitions and methodologies used.

Edit: It looks like Standard 509 (LinkRemoved) fleetingly addresses accuracy. I doubt this is anything besides a rubber stamp, though - how could LST reliably audit the data more thoroughly than the ABA, when the ABA actually has leverage that extends beyond a "LST certified" designation?

Leiter's point about the ABA's new employment reporting rendering LST useless is interesting... but I think incorrect. Dissecting an ABA employment spreadsheet takes quite a lot more effort than jumping on LST and getting an immediate employment score, with the data presented in an easily comprehensible format. That having been said, I also question whether or not this will actually take off. AFAIK many top schools aren't even submitting NALP reports to LST... I doubt they'll pay money to get certified when it won't benefit them very much. Perhaps some lower ranked schools will... but that means that they have to openly and accurately report their poor employment numbers.

This gets me thinking, though... why don't we have employment data here on TLS? Or a link to LST prominently displayed somewhere? Admittedly people who post about making potentially bad decisions are bombarded with such links... But I would say it merits its own sidebar item on the front page, or a whole section dedicated to comparing employment prospects of schools

ETA: here's another source

apparently the $1950 is a discounted fee for the first year, and LST

won't launch the certification process until at least 10 schools have signed up, McEntee said. He has talked with administrators at a few dozen law schools, he said, but declined to specify how many have committed to the program.

It also describes the ABA's (apparently new) development of a plan to certify the accuracy of employment data:

Meanwhile, the ABA is moving forward with its own effort to better police the employment and salary statistics that schools submit. It recently retained independent advisory firm Duff & Phelps Corp. to develop a protocol for reviewing law school numbers. The firm, which was retained in 2011 by the University of Illinois to investigate the falsification of admissions data by the former admission dean, was one of four that responded to a request for proposals from the ABA. Duff & Phelps will be paid $75,000.

[prezidentv8]

Haters are going to hate.

[jenesaislaw]

The ABA will eventually audit the underlying data -- or at least outsource it using a pre-defined auditing standard. We may do that in the future, but the LST Certification is about the presentation of data.

ETA: I also agree that it'd be good to link the Score Reports prominently at the top of TLS. If I knew who to approach about that, I would do so.