how they do it Forum

[03152016]

John Marshall (ATL)

LSAT:146(0), 148(-1), 151(-1)
GPA:2.63(-.02), 2.90(-.08), 3.21(-.13)


Solid GPAs

God this is infuriating.. Needs to close.

How much does this school cost and do people here realize they will not be hired as lawyers...?

every year thousands of students shell out tens of thousands of dollars a piece to attend toilets
what are they thinking? haven't they heard about the law school scam? can't they do some research?

in the tls bubble, it's almost unthinkable that a prospective student wouldn't know about 509 forms and lst and bl+fc
yet that's the reality for thousands of students each year
every cue they've gotten from society is that law is a respectable and prosperous path – it's portrayed as such in the media, maybe they know a few successful lawyers, their profs and pre-law advisors encourage them to go to law school, and so do their parents and friends

yet, thanks to the diligent efforts of law school reformers, it seems you'd have to be particularly oblivious to not be aware of the peril that is attending law school in 2014
it's only reasonable to assume that even the students with the least cultural capital do at least some research on employment outcomes before plunging into six figure debt
so how do these law schools manage to keep students attending?

how they do it

for the purposes of this demonstration, i picked atlanta's john marshall
i checked out their site after seeing the thread quoted above
i didn't go cherry picking, this is the very first site i came across
in the future i may bump this thread with other schools

so forget you're a tls user for a moment
imagine you're one of the students i described above
you just graduated from a small undergrad in georgia, and you're thinking of attending law school
you know a successful lawyer who graduated from atlanta's john marshall and you think it might be a good fit
however, since you've heard law school is a risky proposition, you decide it's best to look at the employment statistics
a law school wouldn't lie, would they?



you log onto their official website
looks pretty good, lots of success stories
you're looking at their j.d. page when something catches your eye - student outcomes & disclosures
bingo, that's exactly what you were looking for!
good on them for being so forward



right at the very top of the page is "gainful employment disclosure"
that sounds familiar to you, someone told you on some forum to check out the employment disclosures
this will be easy, you think



here we are! the employment disclosures!
except only a quarter of the page actually talks about employment at all
that's odd, you think
but look, the number is right there
93% of students graduate in 3 years
and their job placement is 88%
'wow!', you think, 'an 88% chance of becoming an attorney!'
you're excited, and can hardly contain yourself as you click on the "more information" button



'look at all these jobs i can get from john marshall!', you exclaim
you had never thought of being a judge... or a professor! that one had never occurred to you either

of course, had you clicked on the link you wouldn't have been directed to any statistics about placement in those areas
no information about actual student outcomes
instead you're directed to this fairly useless page:



and had you clicked the link on the bottom of the disclosures page to get more information about the program, this is what you would have found:



but at this point you don't even notice
your head is buzzing with the thought of becoming a real lawyer, an 88% chance!
still, you're not done with your due diligence yet
you head back to the "student outcomes" page and scroll down to "job placement statistics"



here you read about the methodology behind the number
looks like this number wasn't pulled out of thin air, it's calculated by the ABA, or NALP, or some other organization that you have a faint familiarity with
you're now thoroughly satisfied that this was a scientifically conducted survey, not a bunch of marketing fluff
you don't even notice the "previous placement statistics" (actual employment reports) at the very bottom of the page
if you had, maybe you wouldn't have thought it relevant since you had the most current version right in front of you
and even if you had clicked on it, you may not have known what to make of it, since the disclosures don't explain the importance of the lt/ft/jd number (unlike the 85/88% figure, which is explained over and over again on the john marshall site)

at this point, you're pretty satisfied with john marshall and are strongly considering attending
there's one last place to check – the career services page
that's where you find this:



you see another sky high employment figure
200/234 graduates employed
and look at the outcomes!
law! business! government! public interest! academia!
this was just what you were looking for, now you're ready to deposit
(and the disclosure at the bottom of the page is useless for the reasons stated earlier)

but what you don't know is that "law" includes hanging a shingle after failing to find work, and losing money
and you don't know that the "business" category includes temp coder jobs, jumping from law firm basement to basement trying to make ends meet
and you don't know that "government" doesn't mean government lawyer or even jd-advantage jobs in government, it simply covers most jobs where a government is the employer
and you don't know that "public interest" includes school funded jobs you're almost certain to lose after a year of working for scraps
and you don't know that "academia" includes teaching grade school, which you could have done without six figure law school debt

there's a lot you don't know, because atlanta's john marshall has tried to hide the real data from you while maintaining a veneer of transparency

people scoff at students who end up at toilets, figuring it's their fault for being so gullible
but not so fast
look at what they're up against

[unodostres]

Disagree. If you're looking to invest six figures you better know the ins and outs of whatever the fuck you're doig. No sympathy.

[pancakes3]

I want to ask the former Penn dean about Indiana Tech and cummings but I'm too a'scarrred.

[03152016]

Disagree. If you're looking to invest six figures you better know the ins and outs of whatever the fuck you're doig. No sympathy.

please do go ahead and discuss the extensive research into the legitimacy of your ug's placement and underemployment numbers before you decided to uproot your life to move to a strange place for four years of your life, possibly incurring major debt in the process

oh, you didn't do that? really?
why not?

was it because you took schools at their word when they provided employment data?
was it because your parents, peers, and authority figures encouraged you to go to college?
was it because you had no exposure to the critics of higher education?

think about that, and then think about how lucky you are to be in the position you're in
consider that not everyone has your cultural capital, consider that not everyone caught prof. campos article in the atlantic
consider that some students haven't been exposed to the tls orthodoxy and are trying to process conflicting arguments about the merits of law school
consider the thousands of students who did do research, who read some of the countless articles on law school online, the wikipedia entries that are essentially marketing vehicles for law schools, and the shockingly deceitful law school employment disclosures appearing on school websites

your post is annoying because it's a non-argument
i'm open to hearing other points of view
but you simply deny my argument without engaging in any debate on the merits
i show you that students do try to research
they study multiple employment disclosures provided directly from the source
and they are actively hindered by the law schools from finding meaningful data
and you say, welp it's their fault bc they should have known better

this is exactly what shill deans want people like you to do, absolve them of responsibility for the law school scam, make marginalizing arguments, and completely avoid discourse that could lead to further reforms

[RCSOB657]

As someone from GA, I will say it is unfortunate that JM and the other private schools here target candidates that most people on TLS would recommend to NOT go to law school. It is no different than Cooley or Coastal in some regards, many of these students are URM status. I know more than a handful of JM graduates from my county government.

[billydaduck]

I applaud you showing the nonsense these schools do but I think your scenario is unrealistic.

Knowing a few people who went to terrible law schools, they really couldn't care about job outcome statistics because:

1. They think they're a special snowflake
2. The 'prestige' of being a lawyer matters to them much more then job outcomes
3. They assume even if they don't make the 'big leagues' their next best alternative is something great after graduating
4. Simply holding any advanced degree may bring a great deal of personnel validation

I also haven't known anyone considering a poor law school to have done anything even remotely approaching the minimal research you did in your first post.

I think the thinking/research process you're attempting to show would be more applicable for individuals considering schools ranked 30-80ish. For a lot of those individuals, I think they do the research, see the numbers, but for the reasons above don't consider law school as a purely monetary endeavor to be assessed according to the probability of different outcomes.

No amount of regulation will solve the problem in this market except maybe ending federal student aid and reforming student loan bankrupcy so that maybe the interest rate on student loans at TTT schools would hit the market rate/discrimination level.

[03152016]

i think it's fair to say that some people do little to no research
but i don't believe that to be the case generally
schools shoved phony statistics about median salary and employment down the throats of prospective students for years
they wouldn't have done so if they didn't think it would make a difference in the number of apps and yield

re: regulation, my position is that the disclosures still haven't gone far enough
but even if more detail isn't forthcoming, grads shouldn't have to wade through multiple sets of conflicting employment disclosures trying to figure out which data are accurate
even if you know to look for form 509, on most ls websites you'd have to be a where's waldo champion to find them
that must change, deans should make it easier to find accurate consumer information about their school, not harder

[billydaduck]

I agree that the starting salary information was egregious but I thought that there had been marked improvement in how schools reported those numbers?

Example from a TTT near where I grew up:

http://www.willamette.edu/wucl/careers/ ... ebsite.pdf

That is the first result I received for "Willamette Law Starting Salary". I think in general the days of trying to pass off a 160k median starting salary as honest is over but if I am ignorant as to what most TTT are up to point it out.

Going to have to disagree with your assertion that a majority of individuals who go to TTT do adequate, thorough, or reasonable amounts of research. I know of no statistics on the issue (if you have them link appreciated) but its not what I see happen.

[03152016]

there has been marked improvement in how schools report those numbers
that's why i said "schools shoved phony statistics ... down the throats of prospective students for years"
instead of saying that they do currently

the reason i said that was to show that the schools must have, themselves, reasoned that students pay attention to such statistics
otherwise they wouldn't have included them in marketing materials

if you don't believe that people who go to terrible law schools care about job outcome statistics, then why did/do those schools promote these numbers so heavily?

[gnomgnomuch]

I agree with you up to a point, schools need to stop hiding their employment numbers.

However, at this day and age, it should NOT be a problem to just google law schools. TLS is on the first page, halfway down. If you can find all the information you found, but you cant find TLS and through TLS, LST and all the LSAT prep we've got on here and whatever else they need to get a leg up, then you shouldn't be going to LS in the first place.

Also, at some point it's not the TTTT's fault. For example, i've got a bunch of kids i know at my colleges pre-law. One kid's dream is to get into Fordham. Thats a pretty good school, not a t-14, but he doesn't want T-14 or anything, he wants PI. I showed him personally, in front of him while doing this, TLS, LST. Told him that for PI his best bet was to kill the LSAT (he's got a 3.8+ last time I checked) and apply to NYU. With a high enough LSAT he'd get good money at NYU and make it a financially smart decision. He laughed and told me that i'm an elitist. He's going to end up going to a school like Fordham at sticker.

Another kid i know. 3.7 GPA, 159 LSAT. Got into Seton on a 90% conditional scholarship - top 25%. I told him, that chances are you're not keeping the scholarship, retake the LSAT, get a higher score, go to a better school, at a nice scholly. He laughed told me that he was too tired to study for the LSAT anymore.

I've got like 10 more examples like this. They're making decisions that can potentially screw their lives, ignoring mine and TLS advice, dismiss us as elitist (which I can see as kinda valid tbf) and think that "it wont happen to us."

This is basically social Darwinism. The law schools like Marshall are at fault, they need to stop BS'ing around, but then again, NALP/ABA need to chance their "job" criteria. If you're not working in an actual JD or JD advantage job, then it shouldn't count as employed, it should count as UNDERemployed. But if you're not doing your due diligence and researching everything you can about employment stats about "x" school and whatnot, then you're at least partially at fault.

[billydaduck]

Any TTT is going to divert its marketing efforts into something that is going to make the individual choose their school rather than law school in general.

The reasons I listed as to why many individuals don't consider law school a purely monetary endeavor would be hard for an individual TTT to market on; at best it could hope to make an individual more likely to attend any TTT but it would be hard to make them want that school specifically.

Because of that, touting career numbers becomes one of the most efficient ways to try and market their own program rather than being a lawyer in general. I said that for many/most people attending a TTT is not a purely economic activity but that doesn't mean that promoting job numbers can't make a marginal difference. My main point is that more transparent job numbers won't make a significant difference in enrollment numbers and that individuals considering TTTs do not solely consider law school an investment in future earnings.

I do believe that schools should not lie/obfuscate their numbers, but if we compared the situation we have to an imagined scenario where if you loaded the law school website their LST employment numbers automatically popped up I do not believe much of a difference would be made.

Gnomgnomuch's experience echos my own. People are unwilling to look at the hard numbers and are more enamored with an imagined dream. All the knowledge in the world cannot fix this and its a sad fact of life that many individuals will resign themselves to soul crushing debt for little increase in earning power.

[03152016]

@gno

you bring up some excellent points

i agree that a line has to be drawn somewhere
although i'm sympathetic to students who are trying to process contrary information about law school, my sympathy quickly diminishes when the students have seen actual accurate employment disclosures
for example, the student interested in fordham, despite seeing the employment statistics on lst, knows what he's in for
if he decides to go into $300k debt and ends up unemployed, i think few would deny that he bears much of the blame

however, my post isn't referring to students like that
it's referring to students who aren't aware of the transparency movement and scamblogs and tls
and who get their information from school websites, wikipedia (although we fixed that), usnwr, etc.

to that point, you argued that one could simply google "law schools"
i do a lot of research on law schools, i'm on lst every day
yet i don't think i've actually ever googled the term "law schools"
i'm much more likely to google the names of law schools, or search for law schools within a region
for example, doing a non-personalized search for john marshall law school atlanta yields zero sources like tls or lst on the first page
the same holds for when i do a non-personalized search for law schools in atlanta
these are the types of terms that i think students are most likely to search for

[03152016]

@billy

i find it difficult to believe that (a) job numbers make only a marginal difference and (b) that transparent job numbers won't make a significant difference in enrollment

the reason i find this difficult to believe is that the decline in law school apps is largely recognized to be due to an increase in visibility of employment data (although that hasn't trickled down to all applicants)
further, the schools that are struggling the most are not the top schools, but the TTTs you're referring to
if job numbers do not make more than a marginal difference, then what explains the decline in apps to TTTs?

i'm also not sure i buy the argument that the heavy marketing of job stats were to make a mere improvement on the margins; they seemed far more central to me

i won't be arguing my anecdotal evidence, but i will say that i have plenty of it, much of it contrary to your and gno's experiences

[gnomgnomuch]

@gno

you bring up some excellent points

i agree that a line has to be drawn somewhere
although i'm sympathetic to students who are trying to process contrary information about law school, my sympathy quickly diminishes when the students have seen actual accurate employment disclosures
for example, the student interested in fordham, despite seeing the employment statistics on lst, knows what he's in for
if he decides to go into $300k debt and ends up unemployed, i think few would deny that he bears much of the blame

however, my post isn't referring to students like that
it's referring to students who aren't aware of the transparency movement and scamblogs and tls
and who get their information from school websites, wikipedia (although we fixed that), usnwr, etc.

to that point, you argued that one could simply google "law schools"
i do a lot of research on law schools, i'm on lst every day
yet i don't think i've actually ever googled the term "law schools"
i'm much more likely to google the names of law schools, or search for law schools within a region
for example, doing a non-personalized search for john marshall law school atlanta yields zero sources like tls or lst on the first page
the same holds for when i do a non-personalized search for law schools in atlanta
these are the types of terms that i think students are most likely to search for

Is there a way to fix that? For example if I were to google "john marshall law." can we get the first pop up to be TLS or LST.

I first decided on law as a career rather arbitrarily - maybe I could do law, what do you need for law, and boom I discovered all of this. I kinda feel that even if you're coming from an underprivileged background, if you're in the position to be applying to LS your research skills should be developed enough to figure out what schools are worth going too, even with all the conflicting information

And not for nothing, but laymen prestige generally should serve as an measuring stick. For example, if you're in atlanta, you should know the schools that have good reps. If you take an unheard of school (i'm assuming JM is more or less unheard off in atlanta) and compare it to better known schools like Emory or G state it should become pretty clear, pretty fast that JM isn't the best option out there.

I feel that the problem we have in the legal field isn't the for profit schools out there, but the amount of people who don't know the basic day of an attorney, and who don't want to educate themselves. The for profit schools are part of the problem to be sure, but this is a free market after all, if people are willing to buy their product we cant stop them from selling it. (We should def prevent the fed gov from funding it though). On that note, i'd recommend Jon Olivers segment on for profit schools, its wonderful.

[RCSOB657]

And not for nothing, but laymen prestige generally should serve as an measuring stick. For example, if you're in atlanta, you should know the schools that have good reps. If you take an unheard of school (i'm assuming JM is more or less unheard off in atlanta) and compare it to better known schools like Emory or G state it should become pretty clear, pretty fast that JM isn't the best option out there.

No that is one of the problems I think. JM isn't unheard of, and is typically the pushed 'go to' school for many URM and others who again want to stay home in GA, but who have stats many here would ask what they are thinking about even going to LS. They really do see LS as a ticket out of lower class and lower middle class life.

My LSAT is above their 75%, and while I know that is a bad school to go to for my future, many see it differently. LS is also a way for me to "get out" and even though all of you would probably say for me to stay home with my score; I have at least done my due diligence to know what will be important for me is to keep my costs down.

This reminds me of the ATL blog article making fun of tweets from similar students and schools starting LS this year.

[03152016]

@gno

maybe i will speak anecdotally after all, at least for a bit
in order to make these two points:
(1) i think layman prestige doesn't function well as a metric
(2) i don't know that we're at the point yet w/r/t research, and we certainly weren't there a couple of years ago (however, with the transparency movement marching on, i think this will change in the foreseeable future)

i have two mentors, both older lawyers
when i decided to go to law school, i sought their advice, which i valued highly (and still do, outside of advice about choosing law schools)
they strongly encouraged me to go to cardozo or fordham (fordham law, in particular, has significant lay prestige)

did my research online, wikipedia, usnews, grad school sites, the fordham law website, and decided fordham was for me!
it didn't occur to me that my initial research was anemic
i looked at what i thought were legitimate employment statistics, i looked at types of placement, i looked at reputation, i looked at campus culture, i looked at the different tracks offered, i looked at costs
nothing clued me into the fact that fordham was a struggling school until i stumbled upon tls while doing my lsat prep

so i don't think lay prestige will cut it as a rule of thumb tbh
i'm not convinced on the research point either, but i think the ground is starting to shift
in part because of these debates we have right here on tls

btw, even after stumbling on tls, it still took a while to get to the truth
there's a real problem with a lot of these tls school write-ups
i'm going to be spending some time on the tls wiki very soon to rectify this

Many Fordham students secure jobs with top law firms before graduation, while others are not as fortunate. According to recent graduates, the top 50 percent of the student body, as ranked by GPA, have little trouble securing work with top law firms in New York City and elsewhere, while the lower 50 percent do not enjoy such opportunities as often. Still, the school's location in Manhattan gives graduates an inside edge on jobs in the city, and the school's increasingly solid reputation and alumni network should continue to improve job prospects for graduates. As it stands, 86% percent of students have secured jobs at graduation in a typical year, and 98% have done so within 9 months after graduation. Further, the school states that Fordham ranks behind only Harvard, NYU, Columbia, and Georgetown in terms of the number of its graduates working in the top 40 law firms in the county.

The school reports that, with 98.93% of graduates reporting their employment status, its “at graduation” employment rate was 81.68%. However, that number increased quickly in the coming months, as the school's “nine months after graduation” employment rate was a much better 96.13%. In addition, with 93.02% of graduates reporting salary information, the school's average salary and median salary were $128,017 and $160,000, respectively. Because a high percentage of graduates reported both employment and salary information, all employment statistics that follow should be quite accurate. The school's bar passage rate in the state of New York is also quite impressive. For the Class of 2008, with 456 first-time takers (all of which reported their bar passage status), 94.08% of graduates passed the New York bar; this is quite a bit better than the state average of 88.98%.

Unlike most schools that place into the New York market, attending at sticker is not necessarily an awful idea. It is still a decision that should be thought over with great care, as the school's tuition (and cost of living) are very high, but those that place in the top third (or even top half) have a reasonable chance of finding a job that will allow them to pay back their loans at a decent pace.

[A. Nony Mouse]

FWIW, most of the TLS write-ups are really old (well pre-ITE and pre-scam movement) and do need to get updated, but it's kind of a big project.

[03152016]

And not for nothing, but laymen prestige generally should serve as an measuring stick. For example, if you're in atlanta, you should know the schools that have good reps. If you take an unheard of school (i'm assuming JM is more or less unheard off in atlanta) and compare it to better known schools like Emory or G state it should become pretty clear, pretty fast that JM isn't the best option out there.

No that is one of the problems I think. JM isn't unheard of, and is typically the pushed 'go to' school for many URM and others who again want to stay home in GA, but who have stats many here would ask what they are thinking about even going to LS. They really do see LS as a ticket out of lower class and lower middle class life.

My LSAT is above their 75%, and while I know that is a bad school to go to for my future, many see it differently. LS is also a way for me to "get out" and even though all of you would probably say for me to stay home with my score; I have at least done my due diligence to know what will be important for me is to keep my costs down.

This reminds me of the ATL blog article making fun of tweets from similar students and schools starting LS this year.

that's interesting that jm is pushed as the go to school in some circles
looking at it from afar, i assumed jm had little cachet
that definitely helps to explain how students end up there (and why they might be willing to take the employment stats at face value)

btw, there's a blog similar to the atl thing you're describing, law school lemmings
some people find it funny (i think it's a little mean-spirited though, it just makes me depressed)

[TTRansfer]

Great thread, Brut.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I think a LOT of schools have some cachet in their local market and among certain populations. There's certainly an anti-Ivy/elite school streak in a lot of regions/populations, and it's easy to assume that what holds for undergrad holds for grad schools. Obviously yes, there is information to the contrary out there, but there are a lot of potential students who really don't know what it is they don't know.

Which is to say, I generally agree with Brut that it's still pretty easy to fall for some of the marketing. If everyone in your community "knows" that lawyers make money, and "knows" that being a lawyer is a good, respectable, upper-middle class profession, and "knows" that - say - JM is a good school, why would you look for counterinformation?

[RCSOB657]

I think a LOT of schools have some cachet in their local market and among certain populations. There's certainly an anti-Ivy/elite school streak in a lot of regions/populations, and it's easy to assume that what holds for undergrad holds for grad schools. Obviously yes, there is information to the contrary out there, but there are a lot of potential students who really don't know what it is they don't know.

Which is to say, I generally agree with Brut that it's still pretty easy to fall for some of the marketing. If everyone in your community "knows" that lawyers make money, and "knows" that being a lawyer is a good, respectable, upper-middle class profession, and "knows" that - say - JM is a good school, why would you look for counterinformation?

+1

GA State really is the hidden gem in our state, imo. Emory does have a reputation of dishonest employment, or at least it did (and was smacked in the rankings because of it). GA State isn't as outwardly preftigious as say UGA to people in Georgia, but it sure as hell is an extremely affordable instate tuition school. I'd be willing to bet, dollar for dollar GA State is the better bet for most people in my score range. If I actually wanted to stay in Georgia, this would probably be my pick. Assuming I had the minimum scores to get into both schools, I know I won't get Scholy $ to make UGA affordable, but GA State even at sticker is.

[dixiecupdrinking]

A scam is a scam, regardless of whether the victim could have avoided it.

Anyone saying "they could/should have known better" is missing the point IMO. The schools are just as culpable regardless.

[billydaduck]

The decline in applications is due to a cultural shift more so than increased transparency. You could argue that said shift occurred because of better transparency but IMO the numbers were already there and what deters lower tier applicants isn't hard data but simply receiving less positive feedback about law school from peers/others. This is fundamentally different then your assertion that these students consult employment numbers before making a choice which I doubt a majority do.

[03152016]

why do you doubt that

[03152016]

and why do you think the shift was about "less positive feedback"