Detailed C/O 2011 UN-Employment Data Forum

[071816]

Why are firms with less than 50 attorneys automatically deemed undesirable employment?

[rayiner]

Why are firms with less than 50 attorneys automatically deemed undesirable employment?

"Undesirable" is obviously a relative term, but it is used here in the context of a hapless law student who will have a $2,500/month loan payment after graduation. A $75,000/year job isn't undesirable in and of itself, but after taxes and loan payments in say Illinois that graduate will have $1,900/month to live on (equivalent to a $30,000 a year job). He will be working lawyer hours for entry-level college graduate pay, and will have to deal with the stress of a $2,500/month loan payment in a situation where he can't build up a cushion of cash if he gets laid off or has a financial emergency.

If you look at NALP-listed firms, 50-attorneys is in most markets where it becomes hard to say with confidence that a given position pays near six figures (equivalent to $50k/year after loan payments) and is likely in some good practice area like business litigation, etc. Below that mark it becomes increasingly likely that the firm is in a practice area like insurance defense that has limited room for career growth. Also, under 50 attorneys firms are much less likely to be NALP-listed, and non-NALP firms are where you tend to find the $45k/year associate salaries.

Now obviously there are boutiques with (< 50) attorneys that pay good salaries, but on the whole a firm in that range is less likely to be a good boutique than it is to be a small firm paying a low salary.

[rayiner]

Added Georgetown. Did about the same as Cornell/Virginia on the unemployment front, perhaps giving credence to the idea that their lower big-law placement is the product of self-selection into government...

[rayiner]

Updated Columbia. Their employment data page doesn't list the 38 law-school funded temporary positions they have: http://lsatblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/co ... tml#source.

That brings their overall un/under-employment rate to about 20%, consistent with Penn.

[rayiner]

Unemployment data for most of the T18 in tabular form:

[thelaststraw05]

Given Michigan's nice LRAP the most important thing is to stay out of the ~11% unemployed. Even for undesirable firm work you can qualify for LRAP. That 11% number is in line with schools like Columbia. That makes me rest a little easier.

[rayiner]

Given Michigan's nice LRAP the most important thing is to stay out of the ~11% unemployed. Even for undesirable firm work you can qualify for LRAP. That 11% number is in line with schools like Columbia. That makes me rest a little easier.

Wait, why isn't this publicized more. Michigan's LRAP is AMAZING: --LinkRemoved--

Basically, you can work a $70k private practice job and the school will pay your IBR payment and your unpaid interest (on a sliding scale up to $80k). The only requirement seems to be a JD-required job. How can they afford this?

[thelaststraw05]

Given Michigan's nice LRAP the most important thing is to stay out of the ~11% unemployed. Even for undesirable firm work you can qualify for LRAP. That 11% number is in line with schools like Columbia. That makes me rest a little easier.

Wait, why isn't this publicized more. Michigan's LRAP is AMAZING: --LinkRemoved--

Basically, you can work a $70k private practice job and the school will pay your IBR payment and your unpaid interest (on a sliding scale up to $80k). The only requirement seems to be a JD-required job. How can they afford this?

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

[Paul Campos]

Given Michigan's nice LRAP the most important thing is to stay out of the ~11% unemployed. Even for undesirable firm work you can qualify for LRAP. That 11% number is in line with schools like Columbia. That makes me rest a little easier.

Wait, why isn't this publicized more. Michigan's LRAP is AMAZING: --LinkRemoved--

Basically, you can work a $70k private practice job and the school will pay your IBR payment and your unpaid interest (on a sliding scale up to $80k). The only requirement seems to be a JD-required job. How can they afford this?

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

[rayiner]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.[/quote]

At $51k they pay all of your IBR + all of your unpaid interest. Between $51k and $83k they pay all of your IBR + part of your unpaid interest. After 20 years, your loan is forgiven under IBR. You get hit with a tax bill for taxes owed on the amount of principal (probably $50k or so). If you leave the program (your salary goes above $83k), you get a check for the contributions made so far, which are held in escrow to that point.

[thelaststraw05]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

Rayiner responded well to your main point. A response which might not have been required if you followed his link to the LRAP program.

My main point was that an 11% unemployment rate is comparable to other schools. And Michigan has a substantially better LRAP than a lot of peer schools.

Beyond that, shouldn't you be doing something that actually provides value to your students who are getting Law School Scammed by you rather than trolling around on TLS?

ETA: Have you finished grading exams?

[rayiner]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

Rayiner responded well to your main point. A response which might not have been required if you followed his link to the LRAP program.

My main point was that an 11% unemployment rate is comparable to other schools. And Michigan has a substantially better LRAP than a lot of peer schools.

Eh, you can't just subtract off part of the unemployment rate like that. At the end of the day 30% of folks at Michigan still ended up in a job which probably wasn't what they wanted, compared to 20% of folks at Columbia. The LRAP makes life a bit better for the 10% out of that 30%, but it's not the same as at Columbia where the extra 10% are working big law, with the expanded career options that entails.

[thelaststraw05]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

Rayiner responded well to your main point. A response which might not have been required if you followed his link to the LRAP program.

My main point was that an 11% unemployment rate is comparable to other schools. And Michigan has a substantially better LRAP than a lot of peer schools.

Eh, you can't just subtract off part of the unemployment rate like that. At the end of the day 30% of folks at Michigan still ended up in a job which probably wasn't what they wanted, compared to 20% of folks at Columbia. The LRAP makes life a bit better for the 10% out of that 30%, but it's not the same as at Columbia where the extra 10% are working big law, with the expanded career options that entails.

I was using the under-employed number as the mental "can't pay their loans" number.

At both Michigan and Columbia there are 11% unemployed. I completely agree that Michigan has a decently high number of people underemployed. I'm just saying, that the LRAP makes the underemployment number far more palatable than other schools (UVA? Duke? Gtown?) that might not have as generous a plan.

Granted, I know more about Michigan's plan.

[Paul Campos]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

Rayiner responded well to your main point. A response which might not have been required if you followed his link to the LRAP program.

My main point was that an 11% unemployment rate is comparable to other schools. And Michigan has a substantially better LRAP than a lot of peer schools.

Beyond that, shouldn't you be doing something that actually provides value to your students who are getting Law School Scammed by you rather than trolling around on TLS?

ETA: Have you finished grading exams?

If you think that carrying six figures of unsecured debt around for 20 years while hoping the government doesn't decide to change its mind about discharging it adds up to an acceptable result then fine, it's a "great" program.

[soj]

Why are people still taking cheap shots at Campos for being a law professor? He does more good by criticizing TTTs from within the system than as an outsider whom others can more easily dismiss as a sore loser.

ETA: I know people ITT haven't (yet) suggested that Campos quit his job, but given what happened here and here, it's a matter of time, and I wanted to pre-empt it.

[thelaststraw05]

Why are people still taking cheap shots at Campos for being a law professor? He does more good by criticizing TTTs from within the system than as an outsider whom others can more easily dismiss as a sore loser.

ETA: I know people ITT haven't (yet) suggested that Campos quit his job, but given what happened here and here, it's a matter of time, and I wanted to pre-empt it.

Because he constantly shits on professors for "the continual self-dealing that characterizes the behavior of the contemporary law school faculty." (http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... essor.html)

If he shits on other professors for taking money from students who have nearly no chance to succeed, why is it ok for him to do it too?

[answer23]

I'm not sure how they can afford it, but it is a beautiful plan isn't it? If you shoot for big law and miss (and land in shit law or anything JD preferred) you still end up getting your loans paid off. I'm guessing if you have someone who wants to hire you, getting them to make the position JD preferred isn't difficult.

You don't get your loans paid off. Your best case scenario is that the principal on the loans doesn't grow. And that will be the case only if you're making less than $51K per year.

Rayiner responded well to your main point. A response which might not have been required if you followed his link to the LRAP program.

My main point was that an 11% unemployment rate is comparable to other schools. And Michigan has a substantially better LRAP than a lot of peer schools.

Beyond that, shouldn't you be doing something that actually provides value to your students who are getting Law School Scammed by you rather than trolling around on TLS?

ETA: Have you finished grading exams?

If you think that carrying six figures of unsecured debt around for 20 years while hoping the government doesn't decide to change its mind about discharging it adds up to an acceptable result then fine, it's a "great" program.

But wouldn't the people already in the program be grandfathered. This would only apply to current students and 0L's who have not sign into IBR yet. If the government were to ever to decide to end it, current students who may have rely on the program would probaly be phased in also. Similar to what they do in immigration law when they change certain benefits.

[soj]

Why are people still taking cheap shots at Campos for being a law professor? He does more good by criticizing TTTs from within the system than as an outsider whom others can more easily dismiss as a sore loser.

ETA: I know people ITT haven't (yet) suggested that Campos quit his job, but given what happened here and here, it's a matter of time, and I wanted to pre-empt it.

Because he constantly shits on professors for "the continual self-dealing that characterizes the behavior of the contemporary law school faculty." (http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot. ... essor.html)

If he shits on other professors for taking money from students who have nearly no chance to succeed, why is it ok for him to do it too?

Because he might do some good by dissuading students from attending TTTs and encouraging them to evaluate their options before attending T14s. Yes, he makes a living off students making poor decisions, but if he quit, he could easily be replaced by another yes-man willing to pretend (or, god forbid, actually convinced) that TTT degrees are worthwhile investments.

[soj]

Unemployment data for most of the T18 in tabular form:

[img]http://i46.tinypic.com/zxkv9i.png

Nice graph, thanks. The right column is actually in decimal rather than percentage form, but no big deal.

[sunynp]

Unemployment data for most of the T18 in tabular form:

This is very nice, thank you. So what overall conclusions are you drawing from your work with the data? I saw earlier in the thread you posted that the data supports the conclusion that if you don't get biglaw or a clerkship, you will be underemployed or unemployed. Any other conclusions? What do you feel about the number of school supported fellowships? And the lack of government or PI jobs?

Does all your work just come down to the conclusion that without biglaw or clerkship a grad from all these schools will be in trouble? Or is there more here?

There was a thread yesterday where a person was choosing between Cornell and Vanderbilt, based on your data, the employment outcomes are closer than I thought. I expected Cornell to have much better outcomes based on what I have read on the forums here, not based on any data I had seen.

Adding up the number of school funded jobs there are 309 people total funded by these schools.(i think this is about 7% of all the grads from these schools.) The total of 309 just about equals the entire graduating class of Berkeley, and is larger than the classes of several of these schools. I wonder if Texas has some school funded students, they are the only one that has 0. I find that a little hard to believe just because all of the other schools have some.

[rayiner]

Unemployment data for most of the T18 in tabular form:

This is very nice, thank you. So what overall conclusions are you drawing from your work with the data? I saw earlier in the thread you posted that the data supports the conclusion that if you don't get biglaw or a clerkship, you will be underemployed or unemployed. Any other conclusions? What do you feel about the number of school supported fellowships? And the lack of government or PI jobs?

Does all your work just come down to the conclusion that without biglaw or clerkship a grad from all these schools will be in trouble? Or is there more here?

There was a thread yesterday where a person was choosing between Cornell and Vanderbilt, based on your data, the employment outcomes are closer than I thought. I expected Cornell to have much better outcomes based on what I have read on the forums here, not based on any data I had seen.

Adding up the number of school funded jobs there are 309 people total funded by these schools.That just about equals the entire graduating class of Berkeley, and is larger than the classes of several of these schools. I wonder if Texas has some school funded students, they are the only one that has 0. I find that a little hard to believe.

At this stage, I think there are the following take-aways:

1) Even at CCN, C/O 2011 was scary, with 20-30% of the class ending up without a job or in a less desirable job. This represents a doubling or tripling in the number of people with these outcomes at these schools.

2) Looking at less desirable outcomes gives you a lot of insight into what is really happening to students, beyond that you get from just looking at something like NLJ 250 placement. For example, while Michigan was lampooned for having terrible NLJ 250 placement this year, they seem to have done a decent job finding alternative work for people. Cornell and Virginia really seemed to have dropped the ball on this front.

3) The data shows that some CSO's clearly pivoted very well to respond to the crisis, while others did not. People assume CSO's are useless, but they need not be. As a 3L who was in school during C/O 2011's OCI, I saw and heard CSO's at certain schools give terrible advice/data, and was very pleased with the competence of the CSO at our school. I think the pattern of the data lends credence to the idea that inside the T14 and outside HYS, school reputation is not the dominant driver of placement. Particularly for people below median, there is a lot CSO's can do to improve overall placement. Giving people accurate bidding advice, explaining systematic mass mailing, etc.

4) Comparing the un/under-employment data to the big law + clerkship data gives a lot of insight into PI hiring. In 2010, U Chicago sent about 16 people into PI+Gov (8.4% of 191 employed). In 2011, it was 39 people (19.6% of 199 employed). That would seem to be a big shift to PI placement. However, in both years there were actually 14 real PI/Gov jobs. In 2010, there were 2 law-school funded placements, and in 2011 there were 25 such placements. At the same time, U Chicago's big law + clerkship hiring fell by 18%, or roughy 36 people given its class size. The data suggests that these people did not get LRAP-eligible PI jobs, but rather a mix of school-funded temporary placements, "business and industry" (which includes temp agencies), and small firms. Now I don't mean to pick on U Chicago--this happened at every T14 to some degree.

5) I think the law-school funded fellowships are great, but I do think they shouldn't be counted as employment. Nobody takes a law-school funded fellowship in lieu of real employment. I think they are very necessary, because the freeze on PI/Gov hiring has really affected a lot of very qualified PI people, and the fellowships help them find a job. But they're not employment.

[rayiner]

BTW, Texas had 10. I didn't have the data when I made the above chart.

[timbs4339]

Great chart. But a disclaimer should perhaps be included re: small 1-50 person firms (I know a few CLS grads in elite boutiquey firms) and state clerkships (some state supreme court clerkships pay more than federal clerkships, qualify for CLS LRAP, and offer comparable exit options to some D.Cts). I still think, however, the on the whole these jobs are much less likely to be the kind of high status legal employment most people go to an elite law school expecting to get. So it makes sense to roll them into the "undesirable" category.

Or perhaps you could adjust the metric using pre-crash stats (so subtract the number of grads who did SSC or 1-50 firms in 2008 from the current total to get an adjusted number of grades who likely would not have gone into those jobs).

[rayiner]

Great chart. But a disclaimer should perhaps be included re: small 1-50 person firms (I know a few CLS grads in elite boutiquey firms) and state clerkships (some state supreme court clerkships pay more than federal clerkships, qualify for CLS LRAP, and offer comparable exit options to some D.Cts). I still think, however, the on the whole these jobs are much less likely to be the kind of high status legal employment most people go to an elite law school expecting to get. So it makes sense to roll them into the "undesirable" category.

Or perhaps you could adjust the metric using pre-crash stats (so subtract the number of grads who did SSC or 1-50 firms in 2008 from the current total to get an adjusted number of grades who likely would not have gone into those jobs).

Those are definitely disclaimers to note. That said, I think the overall significance is small. Elite boutiques tend to hire post-clerkship, so most of those people are probably accounted for in the clerkship category. At the same time, there are a lot of 50+ attorney firms that don't pay very well.

The problem with adjusting for pre-ITE is that there are undoubtedly quite a few people pre-ITE who went into undesirable jobs. I don't think it makes sense to assume that the figure for those years was zero.

[skers]

One of the advantages of Rayiner's analysis is it undervalues outcomes. Sure, some jobs at smaller firms/academia/business and industry are good jobs, but the majority are shitty outcomes. I'd rather base things on the necessary good outcomes as everything from there is icing.