The Campos Post for those interested in Minnesota Forum

[NoJob]

"Minnesota is currently a top 20 school, yet only 191 of 284 graduates (67.25%) were known to have a "long-term" position of any kind, law-related or not. Yet even this number is misleading. It includes seven "long-term" positions funded by the law school, and it counts 34 of 39 judicial clerkships as "long-term." (20 of those 34 "long-term" clerkships are state and local rather than federal.).

The explanation for this is probably that NALP defines "short-term" employment as a definite term of less than one year, so a contract of exactly one year in duration counts as "long-term." (Although NALP has treated judicial clerkships as short-term employment in its national stats, I've been told that beginning this year it is going to start categorizing one-year clerkships as long-term. If this is correct, the organization is helping law schools mislead prospective students about the actual long-term employment rate of graduates nine months out).

The Minnesota stats also include 28 "long-term" jobs in "business and industry" (How many of these jobs require a law degree? How many of them are in retail?), plus 36 "long-term" jobs working for law firms of less than 11 attorneys, or as solos. Indeed, if we count up the jobs Minnesota graduates had nine months after graduation that could be defined (very liberally) as real legal jobs, in the sense of "jobs someone might have considered an acceptable outcome ex ante before investing $160K and three years to get a JD" we get:

64 jobs with law firms of more than ten lawyers

20 "government" jobs

7 public interest jobs

15 federal clerkships

(Note it's not even clear that all these jobs are full-time and/or JD required).

That's 106 positions out of 284 graduates, or 37.2%. This number, probably not coincidentally, tracks closely with the number of graduates for whom Minnesota has salary data: 37% of those working in private industry; 30% of those working in public positions.

The real (in the sense of representing a loosely acceptable outcome) employment rate isn't just under 50% at bottom tier schools: it's well under 50% at a top 20 school. That's how bad things really are."

http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... uates.html

[imbored25]

just dont go bro

[srfngdd6]

retake

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

He doesn't think very highly of clerkships. If he saw them as an acceptable outcome from LS, pretty much all the schools he mentioned would show employment north of 50%, more like 70%.

[rayiner]

He doesn't think very highly of clerkships. If he saw them as an acceptable outcome from LS, pretty much all the schools he mentioned would show employment north of 50%, more like 70%.

Even if you count all of the clerkships as leading to full time employment (the state clerkships won't necessarily, while the Federal clerkships will), that's still only 44%.