LST Score Reports (Asking TLSers to test beta product) Forum

[jenesaislaw]

Hi everybody,

Law School Transparency is soon releasing a competitor to U.S. News rankings. The beta version is available now at LSTScoreReports.com. (Note that if you click the tabs at the top, they take you back to LST.com and sometimes do not work -- they will work when the Score Reports leave beta. I am purposefully not going to comment much more beyond this. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

The gist is that the "Score Reports" aim to focus people on the schools that best meet their career objectives. They start broad and ease you into the mountain of data we provide. Specifically, we hope people stop focusing on the U.S. News rankings because they have little connection to employment prospects beyond the top few schools. (For more on why the rankings have almost no value, see this.

Also, check out the guides we have made available. Most of the ones available now are about the Score Reports and their different parts. Recommendations appreciated here too.

Kyle
Executive Director, Law School Transparency

[Cobretti]

Are you doing anything to counteract schools that pad their employment numbers with school funded positions? I saw you have UVA as an incredibly highly ranked school in terms of employment score, but it is widely known that last year they hired up to 10% of their class to help their employment numbers. Looking at your number of 94.7% for UVA it seems like you simply included those numbers.

Is this the case, and are you going to add anything to take into consideration school funded jobs?

Overall great design and very intuitive.

[banjo]

How do I sort by 101+ attorneys AND federal clerkships?

[RedBirds2011]

This is awesome. Thank you LST people.

[foosbol21]

How are you deciding which schools to include on a state listing? Is there a certain % of graduates working in that state that a school must have? I'm looking specifically at Illinois. Michigan (8.7% of grads in IL) is not listed, but Marquette (5.7%), Michigan State (6.4%), WUSTL (8.5%) and Wisconsin (8.7%) are. (There might be other top schools that could belong here as well, but I haven't checked that yet.) Did you limit the number of states that could be listed per school? Michigan would seem to belong here, even if it does place into 4 other markets before IL. Is there some other reasoning for including/excluding a school than % of grads there?

Thanks for doing this, it looks like it could be a great resource! I love the layout as well, it looks great and it's very easy to navigate.

[jenesaislaw]

Are you doing anything to counteract schools that pad their employment numbers with school funded positions? I saw you have UVA as an incredibly highly ranked school in terms of employment score, but it is widely known that last year they hired up to 10% of their class to help their employment numbers. Looking at your number of 94.7% for UVA it seems like you simply included those numbers.

Is this the case, and are you going to add anything to take into consideration school funded jobs?

Overall great design and very intuitive.

There's nothing we can do right now to counteract that, other than equipping people with the ability to know the pitfalls when they see them. Read the Employment Score Debatable Inclusions section here to see why: http://www.lstscorereports.com/?r=guide ... _and_rates

How do I sort by 101+ attorneys AND federal clerkships?

You cannot, but this is by design. Aggregating these two categories doesn't mean what people think it means when they do it. One thing we might do is create a guide that explains the huge problems with doing so and shows the top performing schools.

How are you deciding which schools to include on a state listing? Is there a certain % of graduates working in that state that a school must have? I'm looking specifically at Illinois. Michigan (8.7% of grads in IL) is not listed, but Marquette (5.7%), Michigan State (6.4%), WUSTL (8.5%) and Wisconsin (8.7%) are. (There might be other top schools that could belong here as well, but I haven't checked that yet.) Did you limit the number of states that could be listed per school? Michigan would seem to belong here, even if it does place into 4 other markets before IL. Is there some other reasoning for including/excluding a school than % of grads there?

Thanks for doing this, it looks like it could be a great resource! I love the layout as well, it looks great and it's very easy to navigate.

Michigan should have been there. I've added it in there. The threshold is 5% of all graduates, and there is no limit. (Notre Dame has the most, but a few schools do not provide enough public data and thus are on fewer state reports than they should be.)

[jenesaislaw]

Bump.