A review of 10 randomly selected law schools found half of them did not provide perspective students with accurate data about employment outcomes.
An audit commissioned by the American Bar Association evaluated 10 law schools for compliance with rules requiring them to keep documentation for corroborating important measures like employment 10 months after graduation, which law schools are required to report to the ABA. If more than 5 percent of a school’s records were found to be deficient, a second round of review is triggered.
The review found records at five of the ten randomly selected schools were possibly deficient. One school barely missed the 95 percent benchmark for compliance, while the remaining four were between ten and 40 percentage points below the threshold. The review found that one of the schools may have produced much of the required documentation after it was informed that it had been selected for an audit. (RELATED: Texas Law School’s Trouble A Preview Of Coming Attractions)
“It is not yet evident that any of these schools has misreported data,” a memo produced for the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar reads. “Our documentation requirements are quite specific and some think complex so it is reasonable, that in the first year of this review, there may be confusion over what we require.”
Law school transparency has been the subject of litigation in recent years, as aggrieved J.D.’s with poor job prospects and burgeoning debt bring lawsuits against their alma maters.
Graduates sued over a dozen schools in 2012, alleging they misled perspective students with inaccurate data about job placement after graduation. Most of the suits were brought against third tier institutions. Earlier this year, a jury in San Diego rejected a claim from another law school graduate who sued Thomas Jefferson School of Law, seeking damages for allegedly misleading employment data.
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