Law schools sued for misleading students

Law school graduates are filing class action lawsuit, accusing law schools of misleading them regarding placement.

This will probably force law schools and other graduate-level programs to be more forthcoming regarding placement. Don't think the law students will prevail, though.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-law-grads-20130402,0,1312864.story

 

Those poor naive law students. Tis a tragedy.

 

You don't feel the least bit sorry for 20-somethings who rang up six-figure student loan debt based upon false reporting by their law schools? It's crap. It's a racket. It's easy now to say that they should have known better, when there have been a million stories written about this issue. But 5 or 10 years ago?

I think that as journalists and former journalists, we're bred to be cynical toward institutions. But plenty of people take claims at face value, particularly from institutes of higher learning, some of them state schools, that are supposed to be above such shenanigans.

Now, that's not to say that students don't share in the blame at all. A JD, just like any degree, isn't a winning lottery ticket. And you can't just breeze through Joe's Law School and collect your payday. But, at the same time, students should be able to base their decisions upon accurate data.

 

I don't. Not in the least. The information and testimonials are plentiful about the conditions for lawyers starting out. You've been talking about it on here for many years. If the lead example graduated in 2009, that means he started in the mid-2000s, by which time this trend was abundantly clear.

This story could be told about any group of graduates in any field. Why are J-schools seeing record enrollments? How many English majors are waiting tables? I am sorry, but the guy who does undergrad at UC San Diego -- which is a jewel within the California system, on par with Berkeley and UCLA -- has to be a little bit fucking smarter than that.

I guess people revert to what they know. Aspiring journalists blog about it. Aspiring lawyers sue about it.

 

I should add also that any number such as the 97 percent rate, whether true or not, is based on older data anyway and completely irrelevant to what he faced in 2009. Nobody was getting jobs then in any field. There was a little thing called the financial meltdown.

 

But are J-schools and others falsifying their employment reporting? I mean, you raise fair points. Maybe this is one of those "there are no winners here" situations. I recall my brother was - and remains - pretty angry about the numbers provided by his law school before he went. He graduated in '06. Not sure how plentiful the research was then ('02-03). I do know that it's more plentiful and standardized than the data reported by undergraduate humanities programs.

Whether or not you think the plaintiffs are particularly sympathetic, it feels pretty egregious to me to flat-out lie about employment data to lure them in.

But, yeah, to address what you said: I knew - and this was in the '06/'07/'08 range - that employment data was not to be trusted, mostly because it relied on student self-reporting. I definitely imposed a cut-off for which schools I would consider. And if it didn't happen, the GMAT study guides were ready to go. (Thank god it didn't come to that.)

 

Eh, they're lawyers. It's what they do.

 

"Graduate students are the worst." - Liz Lemon

 

I assume graduates of humanities doctorate programs will jump on the lawsuit bandwagon.

 

Sullivan said some law graduates may make only limited job searches. A Thomas Jefferson graduate who sued had turned down a $60,000 law job because she didn't want to make a long drive for training, he said.

I am starting to love this lawsuit.

 

Take off your piercings and you might get a job; every think about that?

 

So if bitter law school grads are suing their alma mater (using the skills they learned,) what are English grads doing? Sending their alumni office some sharp (but surprisingly witty) limericks?