ABA employment numbers for C/O 2011, LST and recent articles Forum

[sunynp]

ABA data by school: http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/

LST data by school (As discussed in other threads): --LinkRemoved--

LST on the ABA data:

The ABA has released Class of 2011 job outcome data for all domestic ABA-approved law schools. The data are far more granular than ever before. Law School Transparency has analyzed the data and made the school-specific data available on its website for easy comparison.
The ABA data shed considerable light on how poorly the 2011 graduates fared. We can now say with certainty that the employment picture is far worse than previously reported. Only 55.2% of all graduates were known to be employed in full-time, long-term legal jobs. A devastating 26.4% of all graduates were underemployed.

Also:

Law School Transparency’s executive director, Kyle McEntee, urged caution to students planning to enroll this fall. McEntee said, “Law school still costs way too much money compared to post-graduation employment outcomes. If you plan to debt-finance your education or use your hard-earned savings, seriously think twice about attending a law school without a steep discount. For the vast majority of prospective law students who have not received an extensive scholarship, it will make sense to wait for prices to drop.”
There has been some speculation that the class of 2011 may represent the bottom, though this view is grounded more in optimism than evidence. Rather, evidence points to a structural shift in legal employment, especially at the entry-level, that signals a new normal far below pre-recession levels. Technology, globalization, and law firm strategies are substantially changing our profession.

http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/20 ... -expected/


ATL:

But we’re not going to change the entire perspective of a generation in one blog post. Instead, LST has a stat for the people who only want to think about the good things that can happen:
NALP statistics define large firms as shops with more than 500 attorneys.
[chart from LST that I can't link to directly]
Here, LST is saying that even if we reduce the definition of “large” down to firms with 100 people or more, it’s still extremely challenging to find a full-time job. Obviously, there are things that you can do besides working in a large firm. But if you want to go from owing a lot of money because of law school to earning a lot of money in a big firm, remember that it only happens to 10.7% of you.

http://abovethelaw.com/2012/06/aba-empl ... -expected/

Taxprof blog post using LST data:

He has a chart of the top 25 and bottom 25 schools that I can't link to directly. Remember how LST has defined full-time long-term jobs - it is a conservative measure so the "actual" numbers may be worse.

Schools ranked in the U.S. News Top 35 with the largest underperformance in the full-time long-term legal job rankings:
- 86: Boston University (26, 112)
- 82: U. Washington (20, 102)
- 80: Illinois (35, 115)
- 72: Indiana-Bloomington (26, 98)
- 68: Washington & Lee (24, 92)
- 60: William & Mary (35, 95)
- 54: UC-Davis (29, 83)
- 50: Fordham (29, 79)
- 51: Minnesota (19, 70)
- 49: Washington U. (23, 72)
- 41: UCLA (15, 56)
- 37: Georgetown (13, 50)
- 32: Notre Dame (22, 54)
- 22: USC (18, 40)

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... -only.html



Campos' discussion using American - second article
http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... chive.html

[spleenworship]

Thanks for this, the links all gathered in one place made my desire to drink heavily happen in a much more rapid fashion than if I had been required to search and gather the data for myself.

Cheers!

[sunynp]

Thanks for this, the links all gathered in one place made my desire to drink heavily happen in a much more rapid fashion than if I had been required to search and gather the data for myself.

Cheers!

I thought this was better than a thread for each article. Students need to know these numbers and understand how they are calculated. Rank doesn't always correlate with jobs.

And, as ATL says:

But the class of 2011 is the last class you can argue “didn’t know” what was happening to the legal market. We’ve quoted NALP Executive Director James Leipold before on this point:

For members of the Class of 2011, caught as they were in the worst of the recession, entering law school in the fall of 2008 just as Lehman Brothers collapsed, going through OCI in the fall of 2009, and summering in 2010 if they were lucky enough to secure a summer associate spot, the entry-level job market can only be described as brutal. When this class took their LSATs and applied for law school there were no signs that the legal economic boom was showing any signs of slowing, and yet by the time they graduated they faced what was arguably the worst entry-level legal employment market in more than 30 years

.
Translation: the class of 2012 was just not paying attention to the obvious warning signs, and the class of 2013 decided to be willfully ignorant of reality. For their sakes, I hope we’ve reached the bottom.

At the cost of tuition, noone can afford to be "willfully ignorant of reality."

[sunynp]

The NLJ has a take on the number of people employed by schools:

Slightly more than 4 percent of the class of 2011 were in jobs funded by the law schools themselves, according to the ABA data, and the trend appeared to be on the rise. Twenty-seven law schools had 10 percent or more of their 2011 graduates on their payroll.

In 2010, the City University of New York School of Law had hired the highest percentage of graduates, at 19 percent. But it was eclipsed by 14 other law schools in 2011. The University of Miami School of Law and the University of Notre Dame Law School both reported hiring 23 percent of their graduates, followed closely by Boston University School of Law at 22 percent and the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law at 19 percent. Several of the country's most prestigious law schools, including the University of Chicago Law School, New York University School of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law and Yale Law School, hired 10 percent or more of their class of 2011.

Other information:

Five law schools reported full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment rates of 90 percent or more: Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, NYU, Stanford Law School and Virginia. Thirty schools had corresponding percentages of below 40 percent. The three lowest were Golden Gate University School of Law at 22 percent, the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law at 21 percent and Whittier Law School at 17 percent.

Slightly more than 10 percent of the class of 2011 landed in full-time, long-term jobs at law firms of 101 or more attorneys, according to the ABA data. Only three schools sent 50 percent or more of their recent graduates into major law firms: Columbia Law School, Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1

[disco_stu]

Schools ranked in the U.S. News Top 35 with the largest underperformance in the full-time long-term legal job rankings:
- 86: Boston University (26, 112)
- 82: U. Washington (20, 102)
- 80: Illinois (35, 115)
- 72: Indiana-Bloomington (26, 98)
- 68: Washington & Lee (24, 92)
- 60: William & Mary (35, 95)
- 54: UC-Davis (29, 83)
- 50: Fordham (29, 79)
- 51: Minnesota (19, 70)
- 49: Washington U. (23, 72)
- 41: UCLA (15, 56)
- 37: Georgetown (13, 50)
- 32: Notre Dame (22, 54)
- 22: USC (18, 40)

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... -only.html



Whoever made this list didnt actually look at the data. Emory included 25 (!) full time, long term school funded jobs in their statistics. This inflates their full time employed percentage to 69%. It should be at around 57%, just below Wash U. I wonder how many other schools are still messing around with their statistics.

[JournalismToLaw]

This data is even more disgusting than I expected, but at least reaffirms my choice of school over my other options. I'm most surprised by the numbers for BU, 50.9%!?!

[jenesaislaw]

Schools ranked in the U.S. News Top 35 with the largest underperformance in the full-time long-term legal job rankings:
- 86: Boston University (26, 112)
- 82: U. Washington (20, 102)
- 80: Illinois (35, 115)
- 72: Indiana-Bloomington (26, 98)
- 68: Washington & Lee (24, 92)
- 60: William & Mary (35, 95)
- 54: UC-Davis (29, 83)
- 50: Fordham (29, 79)
- 51: Minnesota (19, 70)
- 49: Washington U. (23, 72)
- 41: UCLA (15, 56)
- 37: Georgetown (13, 50)
- 32: Notre Dame (22, 54)
- 22: USC (18, 40)

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... -only.html



Whoever made this list didnt actually look at the data. Emory included 25 (!) full time, long term school funded jobs in their statistics. This inflates their full time employed percentage to 69%. It should be at around 57%, just below Wash U. I wonder how many other schools are still messing around with their statistics.

No, Professor Caron did it correctly. The 25 FT, LT school-funded jobs were properly categorized. We can argue about whether or not to include it, but it does not mean he made a mistake and didn't look at the data. To be sure, I know for a fact that he did look at the data.

[manofjustice]

All we can do is name and shame. Here is the list: schools that had more than 5 school-funded and put um all in Long Term, Bar Required.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY - 80
VIRGINIA, UNIVERSITY OF - 64
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY -56
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - 38
HARVARD UNIVERSITY - 33
EMORY UNIVERSITY -25
CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF -24
YALE UNIVERSITY - 22

It's worth noting that this is the first year the ABA form requires a breakout of school funded (thanks to LST and Senator Boxer), so the schools won't get away with this, unless USNWR is dumb enough to let these schools goose their ranking with these shenanigans.

[manofjustice]

"Five law schools reported full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment rates of 90 percent or more: Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, NYU, Stanford Law School and Virginia." ...quote from the NLJ provided above...

Only 1 of these 5 schools didn't include a raft of school-funded positions in their employment score: Stanford.

Just an interesting tidbit. Silicon Valley maybe?

[disco_stu]

Whoever made this list didnt actually look at the data. Emory included 25 (!) full time, long term school funded jobs in their statistics. This inflates their full time employed percentage to 69%. It should be at around 57%, just below Wash U. I wonder how many other schools are still messing around with their statistics.

No, Professor Caron did it correctly. The 25 FT, LT school-funded jobs were properly categorized. We can argue about whether or not to include it, but it does not mean he made a mistake and didn't look at the data. To be sure, I know for a fact that he did look at the data.

I guess I was speaking too euphemistically. By look I of course meant interpret. In the same way we now reject the total percent of students employed and the total percent of students employed in any legal job as misleading, this data used by Professor Caron and Law School Transparency is also misleading. It really doesn't help prospective law students if you continue to hide real employment prospects for law school graduates.

[sunynp]

Whoever made this list didnt actually look at the data. Emory included 25 (!) full time, long term school funded jobs in their statistics. This inflates their full time employed percentage to 69%. It should be at around 57%, just below Wash U. I wonder how many other schools are still messing around with their statistics.

No, Professor Caron did it correctly. The 25 FT, LT school-funded jobs were properly categorized. We can argue about whether or not to include it, but it does not mean he made a mistake and didn't look at the data. To be sure, I know for a fact that he did look at the data.

I guess I was speaking too euphemistically. By look I of course meant interpret. In the same way we now reject the total percent of students employed and the total percent of students employed in any legal job as misleading, this data used by Professor Caron and Law School Transparency is also misleading. It really doesn't help prospective law students if you continue to hide real employment prospects for law school graduates.

I think the definition for a long term job is that it lasts a year or more. Jobs that schools created to just game the system were to deal with the "employed at graduation" and "employed at 9 months after graduation."

LST can explain their methods better than I can.

[Broseidon]

Great thread. Thanks OP.

[disco_stu]

I think the definition for a long term job is that it lasts a year or more. Jobs that schools created to just game the system were to deal with the "employed at graduation" and "employed at 9 months after graduation."

LST can explain their methods better than I can.

If schools were willing to game the system by employing students at graduation and 9 months, I don't see why the wouldn't inflate their numbers now by employing graduates for a full year. They have incentive to do this when the ABA will count school funded jobs as full time legal jobs - 57% to 69% full time, long term legal employment is a big jump. This sounds like a great way to confuse applicants, and trick them into going to a school they would't have otherwise attended. I don't know whether all of these schools are actually intending to game the system and trick applicants, but these law school funded jobs certainly don't count as "real jobs" and shouldn't count in the Law School Transparency "full time, long term" statistic. If LST is trying to show prospective students their chance of actual legal employment, they're not helping themselves by including these "jobs." I'm not going to law school to get a job in which I'm paid under $2,000 per month for one year.

Edit: I of course respect the work LST has done, I just don't understand why they would stop short of giving a (more) accurate representation of job prospects.

[sunynp]

I think the definition for a long term job is that it lasts a year or more. Jobs that schools created to just game the system were to deal with the "employed at graduation" and "employed at 9 months after graduation."

LST can explain their methods better than I can.

If schools were willing to game the system by employing students at graduation and 9 months, I don't see why the wouldn't inflate their numbers now by employing graduates for a full year. They have incentive to do this when the ABA will count school funded jobs as full time legal jobs - 57% to 69% full time, long term legal employment is a big jump. This sounds like a great way to confuse applicants, and trick them into going to a school they would't have otherwise attended. I don't know whether all of these schools are actually intending to game the system and trick applicants, but these law school funded jobs certainly don't count as "real jobs" and shouldn't count in the Law School Transparency "full time, long term" statistic. If LST is trying to show prospective students their chance of actual legal employment, they're not helping themselves by including these "jobs." I'm not going to law school to get a job in which I'm paid under $2,000 per month for one year.

For schools that you are interested in attending, it would be pretty easy to take the LST data and look up the number of school funded jobs and subtract them from the total of long term full time jobs. I tend to agree with you that including those jobs is misleading. We know that even though the job lasts a year, there is no real future with it.

The only difference is that some fellowships help a student get a PI job, after they have taken and passed the bar. Some PI jobs can not hire people until after they are admitted to practice.

[grimfan]

All we can do is name and shame. Here is the list: schools that had more than 5 school-funded and put um all in Long Term, Bar Required.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY - 80
VIRGINIA, UNIVERSITY OF - 64
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY -56
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - 38
HARVARD UNIVERSITY - 33
EMORY UNIVERSITY -25
CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF -24
YALE UNIVERSITY - 22

It's worth noting that this is the first year the ABA form requires a breakout of school funded (thanks to LST and Senator Boxer), so the schools won't get away with this, unless USNWR is dumb enough to let these schools goose their ranking with these shenanigans.

If you subtract the School-Funded jobs, some of these schools' Long-Term Bar-Passage Employment % become:

Virginia: 78%
NYU: 78%
Columbia: 86%
Harvard: 84%
Chicago: 76%
Yale: 77%

[KevinP]

Ironic that UVA is at the number one spot. Talk about being law-school funded secure.

[rayiner]

Ironic that UVA is at the number one spot. Talk about being law-school funded secure.

Which is what I was afraid of when I saw the LST methodology. I hate the idea of UVA getting away with their rancid-TTT reporting here.

[grimfan]

Ironic that UVA is at the number one spot. Talk about being law-school funded secure.

Which is what I was afraid of when I saw the LST methodology. I hate the idea of UVA getting away with their rancid-TTT reporting here.

Yeah. Virginia's Employment Rate drops nearly 20% if you subtract those jobs. NYU falls by 12%.

Suffice to say, those aren't tiny little drops.

[rayiner]

Ironic that UVA is at the number one spot. Talk about being law-school funded secure.

Which is what I was afraid of when I saw the LST methodology. I hate the idea of UVA getting away with their rancid-TTT reporting here.

Yeah. Virginia's Employment Rate drops nearly 20% if you subtract those jobs. NYU falls by 12%.

Suffice to say, those aren't tiny little drops.

The cold harsh reality is that this quote is completely wrong: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1.

"Five law schools reported full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment rates of 90 percent or more: Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, NYU, Stanford Law School and Virginia."

No school reaches 90% full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment when you take out school-funded positions. Only Stanford comes close at 89.4%.

[sunynp]

Ironic that UVA is at the number one spot. Talk about being law-school funded secure.

Which is what I was afraid of when I saw the LST methodology. I hate the idea of UVA getting away with their rancid-TTT reporting here.

Yeah. Virginia's Employment Rate drops nearly 20% if you subtract those jobs. NYU falls by 12%.

Suffice to say, those aren't tiny little drops.

The cold harsh reality is that this quote is completely wrong: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNL ... slreturn=1.

"Five law schools reported full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment rates of 90 percent or more: Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, NYU, Stanford Law School and Virginia."

No school reaches 90% full-time, long-term, bar passage-required employment when you take out school-funded positions. Only Stanford comes close at 89.4%.

So how difficult, as a technical matter, would it be for LST to recalculate this number for schools? I think they might have the data set up in a way it would be relatively simple to do. They have already done more work on this for basically nothing, but I think that an addendum should be made to take out the law school funded jobs. Maybe there is an easy way to do this, or maybe we could just do it for all the schools we care about? I'm not a maths person like you guys.

[KevinP]

So how difficult, as a technical matter, would it be for LST to recalculate this number for schools? I think they might have the data set up in a way it would be relatively simple to do. They have already done more work on this for basically nothing, but I think that an addendum should be made to take out the law school funded jobs. Maybe there is an easy way to do this, or maybe we could just do it for all the schools we care about? I'm not a maths person like you guys.

I think it should be relatively straight forward (depending on how their underlying code is structured). I would be more than willing to volunteer some of my time in helping them write the extra code needed for the calculations because I agree with rayiner that the LST methodology is overestimating the employments scores of schools that hire their own grads.

[laxbrah420]

Compiled it in a slightly more useable format. I can add more stats.
Google Docs 2011 Quick Stats

[grimfan]

Compiled it in a slightly more useable format. I can add more stats.
Google Docs 2011 Quick Stats

You rule.

[spleenworship]

Compiled it in a slightly more useable format. I can add more stats.
Google Docs 2011 Quick Stats

Wow! This is actually really cool. I'm glad I go to school at a top 50 on this list.

This really puts to bed the US News rankings- look at all the T2s and T3s in the top 100 spots, some even in the top 30. When it comes to the numbers we should really be caring about US News is way off.

[fatduck]

This really puts to bed the US News rankings- look at all the T2s and T3s in the top 100 spots, some even in the top 30. When it comes to the numbers we should really be caring about US News is way off.

not all full time long term jobs are created equal