Law School Transparency.org Forum

[California Babe]

I guess this criticism is a little late, but they would have been taken more seriously. Seems like they got excited with an awesome idea and jumped the gun.

Er, LST has been in the works for a long time - a time which includes writing and distributing an academic paper about reporting standards. Critique the project all you want, but LST certainly didn't "jump the gun."

Written five months ago, at the end of February:

About 9 months ago, we planned to immediately request employment data and information from law schools. In the interest of our long term goals, however, we decided it would be best to wait. We instead chose to focus our energy on producing a scholarly article that explains why prospective law students should consider themselves uninformed and provides one solution that balances the interests of prospectives against other stakeholders like graduates, law schools, employers, and the legal community as a whole.

[Sell Manilla]

Er, LST has been in the works for a long time - a time which includes writing and distributing an academic paper about reporting standards. Critique the project all you want, but LST certainly didn't "jump the gun."

I think the project is awesome and I'm grateful someone's doing the work to make it happen. But I still believe that the gun was jumped:

Attached to this request are tentative guidelines for fairly, accurately, and uniformly reporting data under our standard. The guidelines will be finalized by November 15, 2010. Until then, we reserve the right to clarify how your school can best fill out each component. The finalized 2010 guidelines will serve as The Official LST Standard
...
We look forward to hearing from your law school by September 10, 2010.

I'm not saying they didn't take a lot of time; I'm saying they could have taken more.
Most rational people would disregard a call to participate in a watchdog program before knowing exactly what they were getting into, & most rational people have a lot less at stake than law schools.

[California Babe]

I'm not saying they didn't take a lot of time; I'm saying they could have taken more.

Let it be known from here out that "jumping the gun" now includes doing something with (at least) 14 months preparation.

Most rational people would disregard a call to participate in a watchdog program before knowing exactly what they were getting into, & most rational people have a lot less at stake than law schools.

If you decide not to commit to disclosing according to the LST Standard, we respectfully request that you provide your reasons for declining to disclose. We recognize that not all schools will share our view that there is a need for greater transparency. If your school disagrees with our position, we would like to have an open, on-the-record dialogue to debate the merits of our respective positions.

Seems like the perfect way to give schools the opportunity to "know exactly what they're getting into", right?

LST is not some sekrit idea that randomly just popped on the scene July 12. That's why when they sent their letters out, they got a lot of publicity. People already knew what was going on, and their standards they were requesting have been known for a long time. There is nothing shocking about this, and if there was, surely 60 days for a school to respond is plenty.

[Sell Manilla]

Let it be known from here out that "jumping the gun" now includes doing something with (at least) 14 months preparation.

The amount of time taken is not in question. They could have taken two decades & I'd stick to my opinion: It's about timing.

They asked major establishments to respond to something in September that was not to be finalized until November. Would YOU say "sure, sign me up!" without knowing what you were signing up for?

[Sell Manilla]

If you decide not to commit to disclosing according to the LST Standard, we respectfully request that you provide your reasons for declining to disclose. We recognize that not all schools will share our view that there is a need for greater transparency. If your school disagrees with our position, we would like to have an open, on-the-record dialogue to debate the merits of our respective positions.

Seems like the perfect way to give schools the opportunity to "know exactly what they're getting into", right?

No. It's saying, essentially, "If you refuse to disclose, let's talk." In order for it to be a great way to know what they're getting into there are two options:
1) Talk to students & finalize it first.
2) If you want to include the law schools in the dialogue for developing the standard, send an initial communication requesting input on the tentative standards within 60 days if they choose to participate, informing them that you'll be sending a request for participation in November, after the standards are finalized.

[keg411]

Let it be known from here out that "jumping the gun" now includes doing something with (at least) 14 months preparation.

The amount of time taken is not in question. They could have taken two decades & I'd stick to my opinion: It's about timing.

They asked major establishments to respond to something in September that was not to be finalized until November. Would YOU say "sure, sign me up!" without knowing what you were signing up for?

We don't know yet how many school are considering it, though. If a lot of schools are taking LST seriously for a number of reasons that we might be unaware of, it could be a success. Personally, I think the information that LST is asking for should be required for schools to disclose... but since it isn't, it's nice that at least someone is trying to push the issue.

I would wait for the results before passing judgment that anything was done wrong here.

[Sell Manilla]

Idea: What about creating a website for self-reported data? No usernames or capability to create text, which gives rise to e-egos and incentive to inflate numbers.

This takes schools out of the equation, which I think is crucial.

To prevent schools from spamming inflated numbers, there are a variety of potential preventative measures with various degrees of difficulty. I'll avoid getting into a couple, 'cause this is already off topic.

[Sell Manilla]

We don't know yet how many school are considering it, though. If a lot of schools are taking LST seriously for a number of reasons that we might be unaware of, it could be a success...
I would wait for the results before passing judgment that anything was done wrong here.

I truly hope it is a success, but you can critique something on more grounds than outcome alone.
The criticism questions whether the odds of success might have been increased.
Positive outcomes are a metric for "good enough to work," not a metric for "as good as possible."

[ggocat]

Idea: What about creating a website for self-reported data? No usernames or capability to create text, which gives rise to e-egos and incentive to inflate numbers.

This takes schools out of the equation, which I think is crucial.

Keeping schools in the equation is a cost-effective way of ensuring reliable and valid data.

A self-reported website is a good idea, but not if it's open to the public for manipulation. That would yield incredibly unreliable and potentially invalid results. The real problem with an "open" website is lack of direct communication with graduates. A simple open website like LSN would not provide enough meaningful data points.

To build on your idea, though, would be to create a website that displays information publicly but is partially editable by users with specific access. Imagine a database where you could edit your "profile" (like linkedin). But instead of a profile, it's just answering those 10 or whatever questions anonymously, and each profile is merely one row in a large table. If law schools do not comply with the data collection requested by LST, they might at the very least be willing to send an e-mail to their students' e-mail accounts (or provide the e-mail list to LST). The e-mail would include a message from LSTand a unique password linked to each e-mail account. Recipients go to the website, enter the password to edit their profile, and answer the basic questions.

With the latter method, each school gets to avoid the costs of data collection, yet the entry of data is still strictly controlled, and requests would reach a substantial number of graduates.

[legalease9]

I think this is all an enormous waste of time. Applications are up across the board, law schools don't need to do ANYTHING to make their current or prospective students feel more shiny or happy about their choices. They don't need us. They don't care. Just come to terms with that and move on with your life.

This implies that every law school stands to lose if they implement the system. I disagree.

Say you've got a school ranked 60 and a school ranked 45 (random numbers for example). A lot of students may jump at the chance to go to rank 45 over 60 because its in the "prestigious" tier 1 and is higher ranked by 15. The student has no other info to go on, since employment info is murky (the problem LST is trying to solve). So they go 45.

But what if school 60 has better employment prospects than 45 and is losing the US news for some other reason (less desirable location, newer school with less rep, library needs to be bigger, Don't have as much money on hand for schollys to top students). A lot of schools are getting creamed in US NEWS b/c of that last simple fact.

For school 60, adopting a full and robust employment report along the lines of what LST proposes could actually benefit school 60, by making them more attractive to students then they previously were. In turn, school 45 may feel pressure to update their employment statistics to compete with school 60.

Now, is this going to make a T4 overtake a T1? Of course not! But schools that report detailed employment statistics will do better than schools that do not in terms of attracting students, other things being equall.

[legalease9]

Idea: What about creating a website for self-reported data? No usernames or capability to create text, which gives rise to e-egos and incentive to inflate numbers.

This takes schools out of the equation, which I think is crucial.

To prevent schools from spamming inflated numbers, there are a variety of potential preventative measures with various degrees of difficulty. I'll avoid getting into a couple, 'cause this is already off topic.

I wouldn't underestimate students loyalty to their alma matter. My question to this is how will you prevent students from anonomously posting their own inflated numbers on behalf of their school. If I go to a particular law school, I want my law school to increase in prestige. I may even feel an emotional connection to my school after three years. I'm going to BS these anonomous statistics to make my school look better than the reality on the ground. This is of course unless I'm pissed at the school, but there is no way to control for that.

Also, there is the problem that online polling isn't accurate. You will have all the same problems with salary reporting that you have on the law school's surveys (only high salaried individuals reporting etc.) What's worse is you won't even know whose reporting what in what percentages. I don't think Online is advanced enough yet to aquire valid results on much of anything.

[Sell Manilla]

Keeping schools in the equation is a cost-effective way of ensuring reliable and valid data.

I agree that it's the most cost-efficient way, but I'm not so sure about "reliable" & "valid"

A self-reported website is a good idea, but not if it's open to the public for manipulation. That would yield incredibly unreliable and potentially invalid results. The real problem with an "open" website is lack of direct communication with graduates. A simple open website like LSN would not provide enough meaningful data points.

I agree with all of this. I'll spare you with my scheme for screening contributors' legitimacy & uniqueness 'cause it's not very feasible.

To build on your idea, though, would be to create a website that displays information publicly but is partially editable by users with specific access. Imagine a database where you could edit your "profile" (like linkedin). But instead of a profile, it's just answering those 10 or whatever questions anonymously, and each profile is merely one row in a large table.

Fun ideas. Different ways to sort certain data points into XY axis graphs would be fun as well, such as selecting a school & graduating year, having "class rank" on the X axis & "employment" on the Y. An "employed at graduation dot could be one color", "3 months" another, "9 months" a third. Hovering over a data point could show you 1L class rank, journal(s), & summer work, with the option to click into the users' profile.
[[Edit: the "salary" could be all along the X axis, so height would be salary. A zoom feature would be fun 'cause a lot of dots would cluster around particular salaries.]]

If law schools do not comply with the data collection requested by LST, they might at the very least be willing to send an e-mail to their students' e-mail accounts (or provide the e-mail list to LST). The e-mail would include a message from LSTand a unique password linked to each e-mail account. Recipients go to the website, enter the password to edit their profile, and answer the basic questions.. each school gets to avoid the costs of data collection, yet the entry of data is still strictly controlled, and requests would reach a substantial number of graduates

This might work if LST gains serious momentum, which would be amazing. I have a hard time believing that TTT schools which may or may not be fudging data would participate, though. They might have everything to lose & nothing to gain.

[lawls]

If this is going to work, I think what you need is for some of the top schools to get on board. A lot of people are suggesting that schools have no incentive for making their data public because they have more than enough paying customers to fill demand. I don't think this is true. For the very top schools, showing the real distinctions between them and the lower tiers helps the school brand. Showing HLS outplaces Michigan by a rather wide margin is good for Harvard--sure, Harvard is not going to lose a lot of students to Michigan, but reputation does matter for alumni and donations and the like. And for those schools that outplace their traditional tiers (say, according to USNEWS ranks), having that info public benefits in more obvious ways.

Part of what this means, I think, is that it is worth dropping the "schools are on notice" rhetoric; the project will succeed only if some schools want it to, and because others will then be forced to follow suit. In any event, thanks for all the work being put into this--the more info out there the better.

Edit: Legelease beat me to it somewhat, while I was writing...

[Sell Manilla]

I wouldn't underestimate students loyalty to their alma matter. My question to this is how will you prevent students from anonomously posting their own inflated numbers on behalf of their school. If I go to a particular law school, I want my law school to increase in prestige. I may even feel an emotional connection to my school after three years. I'm going to BS these anonomous statistics to make my school look better than the reality on the ground. This is of course unless I'm pissed at the school, but there is no way to control for that.

Damn... good point.
But wouldn't this remain an issue, regardless of the format?
Do you think online is hit harder with this problem than other options?

Also, there is the problem that online polling isn't accurate. You will have all the same problems with salary reporting that you have on the law school's surveys (only high salaried individuals reporting etc.) What's worse is you won't even know whose reporting what in what percentages. I don't think Online is advanced enough yet to aquire valid results on much of anything.

If its purely public & unregulated self-reporting, sure. But if you accept donations & introduce funding, things can change quickly. Ideally there would be means of confirming information.


FWIW, I think your post above the one I just quoted (the one about schools' incentive to participate) is awesome.

[Action Jackson]

I think this is all an enormous waste of time. Applications are up across the board, law schools don't need to do ANYTHING to make their current or prospective students feel more shiny or happy about their choices. They don't need us. They don't care. Just come to terms with that and move on with your life.

This implies that every law school stands to lose if they implement the system. I disagree.

You are entitled to your opinion, but the underlying point behind the entire transparency movement is that ALL law schools are lying about the employment prospects for students in some way shape or form, and therefore anyone that decides to be truly honest is going to immediately suffer.

If school #45 is reporting $120k median salary how in the world is school #60 possibly going to come off looking better than that by giving their honest numbers, instead of the misleading, mostly likely similar $120k median salary that school 45 is reporting? That's the rub. If everyone is lying, it is not in your best interest to step forward and be honest.

Law schools aren't run by idiots. If a school thought it could magically outcompete another by revealing employment info they would jump at it. They don't because it's not in their best interest to do so. There has to be something forcing them, and a bunch of law school students aren't the ones to be able to do that.

The only hope for a movement like this would be to lobby US News, the ABA, or the gov't and outspend the law schools to force them to reveal more information. Asking schools nicely to volunteer info is a waste of time.

[Sell Manilla]

...the underlying point behind the entire transparency movement is that ALL law schools are lying about the employment prospects for students in some way shape or form,

Let's assume this is accurate.

and therefore anyone that decides to be truly honest is going to immediately suffer... If everyone is lying {read: "inflating"}, it is not in your best interest to step forward and be honest.

Unless prospective law students are terrified, and would feel more comfortable attending a school with X% employed @ graduation & Y median salary with a LST stamp of validity than they would a school with better numbers that have not been verified & thus could be BS.

[ggocat]

Keeping schools in the equation is a cost-effective way of ensuring reliable and valid data.

I agree that it's the most cost-efficient way, but I'm not so sure about "reliable" & "valid"

What I mean here by "reliable" is mainly the amount of data collected and the accuracy of that data. If you have a self-reported site, and 5% of the students report, then the data is not reliable as an indicator of the employment prospects for that school overall (which, I believe, is what the project is trying to ultimately measure).

With a pure open website that anyone can edit, you will also not be able to obtain accurate results unless you go through additional steps that you alluded to. But as you suggested, those steps would likely be prohibitive (or it there would be more cost-effective ways of collecting data than to try to make a website open but "verified/regulated" at the same time).

I still believe you will get more reliable data if schools collect data than if you have an open website. They will be able to directly contact every person and ask for employment data. You can't do that extrinsically with an open website. For that matter, you can't even do it with a direct mailer unless you persuade the schools to give you updated contact information on their graduates, something they are likely not going to do.

I have had some experience researching U.S. News and the placement success variables. I am content in believing that for the most part, the data is reliable. That is, the schools generally try to measure exactly what is asked. But the big problem with U.S. News employment data is validity. That seems to be the primary reason LST asks for the additional data = validity = ensuring the variables measured are related to employment prospects. LST will not "cure" reliability problems, particularly if it is relying on schools to report information.

Ideally, LST could cure reliability issues by obtaining contact information for every graduate and conducting the data collection themselves. Then they would have complete control over method of collection, which is how some schools currently (purportedly) make data inaccurate. In this sense, removing schools from the equation = more reliable data. But you would still need to generate a list of recent graduates. The best way to do this is to get the list from schools direction = keeping them in the equation. There are other methods, but you would lose reliability.

(I probably should not have used the word "valid" in my first post. That's more to do with making sure the variables actually measure what you're trying to measure. That's primarily why U.S. News sucks. The data collected do not allow students to draw meaningful conclusions about employment prospects. So we would say the data is invalid, although it is generally reliable--i.e., it is generally accurate.)

This might work if LST gains serious momentum, which would be amazing. I have a hard time believing that TTT schools which may or may not be fudging data would participate, though. They might have everything to lose & nothing to gain.

First, it would be incorrect to believe that the top schools don't engage in tactics to artificially improve the variables measured by U.S. News. They generally play by the rules (i.e., so data is reliable), but the rules allow for serious validity problems. You see more and more top schools employing their own grads or establishing post-grad fellowships (placements in public service entities, subsidized by the school).

Top schools have much more to lose by a drop in employment numbers given the clustering of numbers. If GULC's 9-month employment stats drop 5-10% relative to peer schools, it's probably no longer a T14. So in a rough economy, GULC established a program to employ 60 of its graduates. Other schools have taken similar actions: Michigan, Columbia, BC, UT, SMU, Miami, just to name a few. (see http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 0#p3239811).

But lower ranked schools overall seem to not engage in tactics to artificially inflate employment rates. If you look at the data, you see most schools report accurately or refuse to report. (Refusing to report at-graduation employment in years prior to the next rankings benefited schools with lower numbers). Many schools report in the 50-60% range for at-graduation and the 80-90% range for nine months. If any of these schools wanted to, though, they could establish programs to artificially employ graduates. That data would still be reliable as a measure of the variables U.S. News collect. But many of them appear to not take full advantage of the loopholes in U.S. News reporting. Why? Less incentive. They are grouped into large categories, and a drop in the overall rankings of 10 slots does not affect them unless they are switching tiers (compared to a drop of 5 slots near the top end). And even then, switching between tier 3 and tier 4 is not as significant as switching between tier 2 and tier 3.
(there are, of course, exceptions to the rule, I can think of some schools in tier 3/4 who engage in shady tactics)

[Sell Manilla]

...Ideally, LST could cure reliability issues by obtaining contact information for every graduate and conducting the data collection themselves. Then they would have complete control over method of collection, which is how some schools currently (purportedly) make data inaccurate. In this sense, removing schools from the equation = more reliable data. But you would still need to generate a list of recent graduates. The best way to do this is to get the list from schools direction = keeping them in the equation.

You've sold me on this.

First, it would be incorrect to believe that the top schools don't engage in tactics to artificially improve the variables measured by U.S. News.

I didn't assume this, I just assumed that it was much worse among TTT schools, because I hear nothing but wretched horror doom & gloom on TLS regarding employment prospects from T3 schools which doesn't match their meager yet reasonable stats. Apparently I was wrong. Thanks for the info.

[Action Jackson]

...the underlying point behind the entire transparency movement is that ALL law schools are lying about the employment prospects for students in some way shape or form,

Let's assume this is accurate.

and therefore anyone that decides to be truly honest is going to immediately suffer... If everyone is lying {read: "inflating"}, it is not in your best interest to step forward and be honest.

Unless prospective law students are terrified, and would feel more comfortable attending a school with X% employed @ graduation & Y median salary with a LST stamp of validity than they would a school with better numbers that have not been verified & thus could be BS.

That would require a significant amount of prospective law students to:

1. Pay close attention to employment statistics beyond a glance.
2. Know that there's something fishy about most law school's reported numbers.
3. Know that there's a thing called LST that reports other numbers.
4. Trust the self-reported LST data.
5. Choose lower ranked schools over higher ranked schools based solely on the hope that LST data is more accurate than a higher ranked school's non-LST data. In other words, they have to assume the non-LST data is totally unusable, and the LST data is canon.

I don't see that happening, even ITE. I find it hard to believe people would choose a law school with, say, 50% employment at graduation at $70k median, instead of a school reporting 90% employment at graduation with $120k median salary, regardless of 3rd-party "stamp of validity."

[ToTransferOrNot]

This is the most futile, though well-intentioned, thing I have seen for awhile.

[Sell Manilla]

That would require a significant amount of prospective law students to:

1. Pay close attention to employment statistics beyond a glance.
2. Know that there's something fishy about most law school's reported numbers.
3. Know that there's a thing called LST that reports other numbers.
4. Trust the self-reported LST data.
5. Choose lower ranked schools over higher ranked schools based solely on the hope that LST data is more accurate than a higher ranked school's non-LST data. In other words, they have to assume the non-LST data is totally unusable, and the LST data is canon.

I don't see that happening, even ITE. I find it hard to believe people would choose a law school with, say, 50% employment at graduation at $70k median, instead of a school reporting 90% employment at graduation with $120k median salary, regardless of 3rd-party "stamp of validity."

Let's re-work your list:

1) "Know that there's a thing called LST," the first-ever 3rd-party collector of LS employment data, with no inherent vested interest in inflating data. Increased knowledge of this is the first & most crucial step.

No one needs to think it's canon, or that the non-LST data is totally unusable; they just have to realize that any school which signs up believes it has nothing to hide. Period. There's enormous significance in that. They don't need to pay a great deal of attention to stats, or "know" there's something fishy, they just need to be aware that certain schools are willing to lay it on the line, & others aren't. They don't even need to trust it; they just need to know that it's fundamentally more trustworthy than self-reported data. [Yes, schools might try to pay off people within LST etc. Nothing is immune to bribery]

As for choosing lower-ranked schools over higher ones, now you're confusing outcomes with necessary conditions to bring about those outcomes:
-You said schools would *suffer* if they stopped lying (*I.E. lose applicants & application-attendance conversion rates to lower-ranked schools*).
-I said maybe not all schools would suffer if students give LST stamps serious weight in their decision-making process.
You're only allowed to counter with picking apart why "students giving LSAT stamps serious consideration" is an insufficient reason to believe that some schools might stand to gain (I.E. experience students choosing their school over a higher ranked one because their data is 3rd-party verified).
Metric X being impacted can't be argued to be a necessary condition for Metric X to be impacted. Ciiiircles.

No, people prolly won't choose a law school with, say, 50% employment @ $70K median with an LST stamp over one with self-reported 90%/$120K, but that's an extreme difference. I call straw man. We're talking about a potential gain of any degree, as opposed to absolutely nothing to gain which you posited; not necessarily "your T3 school will be more desirable than T10 if you start reporting and they don't!"

[jenesaislaw]

Er, LST has been in the works for a long time - a time which includes writing and distributing an academic paper about reporting standards. Critique the project all you want, but LST certainly didn't "jump the gun."

I think the project is awesome and I'm grateful someone's doing the work to make it happen. But I still believe that the gun was jumped:

Attached to this request are tentative guidelines for fairly, accurately, and uniformly reporting data under our standard. The guidelines will be finalized by November 15, 2010. Until then, we reserve the right to clarify how your school can best fill out each component. The finalized 2010 guidelines will serve as The Official LST Standard
...
We look forward to hearing from your law school by September 10, 2010.

I'm not saying they didn't take a lot of time; I'm saying they could have taken more.
Most rational people would disregard a call to participate in a watchdog program before knowing exactly what they were getting into, & most rational people have a lot less at stake than law schools.

I think you are making too much of this. The standard is not tentative (it has been pretty thoroughly vetted); the guidelines for reporting are tentative. This means that if a school recognizes an ambiguity in how to report something for a graduate (for example, we did not include what to do for "Salary Source" if the school pays 50% of the salary and another source pays 50%), we can address it. In other words, we are providing time for the real reporting experts to think critically about the issues that pop up that we are unaware of - not because we didn't do our due diligence, but because there are 40-45,000 graduates each year across almost 200 law schools that do a huge variety of things post graduation.

Perhaps this wasn't clear enough for the law school administrators, but they're all really smart people. I give them the benefit of the doubt that they can see the distinction between the standard and the guidelines, and why the guidelines shouldn't be 100% final until 3 months before the report is due.

[ToTransferOrNot]

Er, LST has been in the works for a long time - a time which includes writing and distributing an academic paper about reporting standards. Critique the project all you want, but LST certainly didn't "jump the gun."

I think the project is awesome and I'm grateful someone's doing the work to make it happen. But I still believe that the gun was jumped:

Attached to this request are tentative guidelines for fairly, accurately, and uniformly reporting data under our standard. The guidelines will be finalized by November 15, 2010. Until then, we reserve the right to clarify how your school can best fill out each component. The finalized 2010 guidelines will serve as The Official LST Standard
...
We look forward to hearing from your law school by September 10, 2010.

I'm not saying they didn't take a lot of time; I'm saying they could have taken more.
Most rational people would disregard a call to participate in a watchdog program before knowing exactly what they were getting into, & most rational people have a lot less at stake than law schools.

I think you are making too much of this. The standard is not tentative (it has been pretty thoroughly vetted); the guidelines for reporting are tentative. This means that if a school recognizes an ambiguity in how to report something for a graduate (for example, we did not include what to do for "Salary Source" if the school pays 50% of the salary and another source pays 50%), we can address it. In other words, we are providing time for the real reporting experts to think critically about the issues that pop up that we are unaware of - not because we didn't do our due diligence, but because there are 40-45,000 graduates each year across almost 200 law schools that do a huge variety of things post graduation.

Perhaps this wasn't clear enough for the law school administrators, but they're all really smart people. I give them the benefit of the doubt that they can see the distinction between the standard and the guidelines, and why the guidelines shouldn't be 100% final until 3 months before the report is due.

You are out of your mind if you think that more than 10 schools will reply to this lollerderby.

[jenesaislaw]

Pushing the ball forward does not require that we kick it all the way down field.

[Action Jackson]

As for choosing lower-ranked schools over higher ones, now you're confusing outcomes with sufficient conditions to bring about those outcomes:
-You said schools would *suffer* if they stopped lying (*I.E. lose applicants & application-attendance conversion rates to lower-ranked schools*).
-I said maybe not if students give LST stamps serious weight in their decision-making process.
You're only allowed to counter with picking apart why "students giving LSAT stamps serious consideration" is an insufficient reason to believe that some schools might stand to gain (I.E. experience students choosing their school over a higher ranked one because their data is 3rd-party verified).
b]Metric X being impacted can't be argued to be a necessary condition for Metric X to be impacted.[/b] Ciiiircles.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize there were rules set up ahead of time that I was supposed to play by. Silly me. Or you, for not mentioning your nonsensical rules in advance.

My point was that it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that students would give LST-whatevers enough weight to actually benefit the schools that voluntarily joined LST. Please see my list again.

No, people prolly won't choose a law school with, say, 50% employment @ $70K median with a LST stamp over one with self-reported 90%/$120K, but that's an extreme difference. I call straw man.

If you think this is an extreme example then you honestly do not understand what is happening with regards to self-reported employment numbers. Last year, during the worst recession in 40 years, at least one T14 school (not Yale or Harvard or Stanford) reported 100% employment at graduation. Does that even seem probable? And that's a T14. Nearly all law schools report 90%+ employment and six figure salaries as median. Even at T14 the numbers are inflated. Farther down in the rankings the difference between reality and reported gets even more significant.

And that's the whole point of LST. If the difference between reported and reality was slight then LST would not exist, and no one would care. LST exists and people care because the difference is actually HUGE. 50%/$70k might be generous for some of these schools.

So you have a situation where being honest would be harmful to schools, and a highly unlikely situation where they might get some hypothetical advantage by revealing their employment numbers. Law schools aren't just going to volunteer up their actual employment stats if they aren't forced to by someone with real power.