Post-graduate Employment Survey asks for Confidential Info? Forum

[los blancos]

Alright, quick question. Got an e-mail from career services asking us to fill out a graduation survey regarding job stuff. It asks for salary, among other things. My offer letter specifically states that the information within it is confidential.

1) Is this a common thing with offer letters?
2) I assume the smart move is to refuse to answer the question then, right?

[hookem14]

FYI in a lot of states an employer can't keep you from talking about your salary. That being said, probably smart to just keep quiet.

[EdgarWinter]

Your school will use it to tabulate employment and salary data. Depending on your school they will then obfuscate the results to all hell (most places) or release it in a fairly non-misleading way (a few schools). So fill it out or don't fill it out depending upon what signals you want to send to prospective applicants.

[NinerFan]

Highly doubt anyone at your firm would find out or even care about it if they did. Just fill out the survey. Barring a massive hacker attack, the only info that sees the light of day are the aggregated numbers that you see on your law school's career services page and in the ABA employment reports.

[Myself]

.

[dr123]

fuck your school; don't fill it out.

[kryptix]

I would just not fill out any salary-related information. That's probably what your school wants, but you got to watch out for yourself--if you don't, who will? Do you even stand to gain anything by giving them potentially confidential information?

Well, legal pay is pretty easy to look up for most firms so if you tell them where you went, they'll know, and your firm will tell them how many they took from your school anyway as part of their OCI application. I don't think it's worth it to obscure things for future students if your school can just google the data.

That said, people not willing to report this is why so many schools say that their "private practice" median salary is 160k, because most people with market positions probably report what they make.

[northwood]

fill out the survey, but leave the pay blank. thats between you and your employer. You dont owe the school or CSO anything, and dont even have to fill out the damn waste of trees and ink. So if you do, great, if not, its no big deal.

Do you ask the CSO people how much money they make? Dont think so ( although now im tempted to ask mine)? If its none of their business, its none of their business and they dont need to know.

[echooo23]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

[Aberzombie1892]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

This. Why would you not want prospective students to know how much graduates from your school make? It is truly the whole point of this transparency movement:

[TTRansfer]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

Yeah. I completely agree.

"Fuck the CSO! They lie and give bad information! So don't give them any information!"

[fatduck]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

just to be, uh, god's advocate here, they're just gonna use his (presumably successful) outcome to twist their employment stats to swindle new applicants

[cinephile]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

just to be, uh, god's advocate here, they're just gonna use his (presumably successful) outcome to twist their employment stats to swindle new applicants

This is why I have told the CDO at my school that I'm currently unemployed. It's not exactly true, but I'd rather skew the results in the other direction if I can.

[NinerFan]

How are they going to twist his results? If he was underemployed, maybe, but if he has a regular job, they're just going to report it as a regular job. If you hate your school, fine, whatever, but purposefully misreporting information destroys the high ground people have when they complain about employment data and hurts the transparency movement.

[los blancos]

Not to be the devil's advocate here, but isn't this exactly the thing that we've all been fighting for - transparency of post-grad employment stats? Maybe you could indicate a range or give some nonspecific >$xx amount type answer.

just to be, uh, god's advocate here, they're just gonna use his (presumably successful) outcome to twist their employment stats to swindle new applicants

Eh I'm pretty sure my school doesn't really need to twist or obfuscate its stats to get applicants. I think we're one of the few schools with an increase in applicants so far this year.

I think I'm either not going to report it or just round it. For those who mentioned the ease of finding out salaries online, it doesn't seem to be the case for my firm. Though I would be surprised if career services didn't know the general range.

I know people really like to hate on Career Services on TLS (mostly very well-deserved), but I thought our people did a decent enough job.

[somewhatwayward]

I think NALP lets schools fill in salary info, so if you say you are working at X firm, if the school can figure out online how much that firm pays, they can report that as your salary. I believe schools are also allowed to make a default assumption about whether someone is employed for everyone who doesn't answer the survey, which obviously will be that the person is employed (not sure how that works regarding salary). I am also not sure if this changed with the ABA's 2011 rules.