Less Than Half of the Class of 2010 Have Real Legal Jobs

Even The New Republic is publishing articles critical of the games played by law schools in reporting job placement data now. In a recent TNR article, Colorado law prof Paul Campos writes:

Many law schools all but explicitly promise that, within a few months of graduation, practically all their graduates will obtain jobs as lawyers, by trumpeting employment figures of 95 percent, 97 percent, and even 99.8 percent. The truth is that less than half will.

Campos criticizes employment stats used by US News and NALP as being misleading high in reported employment rates in part because the self-reported data is not audited and includes employment that does not represent actually practicing law. Prospective law school students are not likely to attend law school if they know how many grads were employed "doing temp work, such as being paid $20 an hour to proofread financial documents in a warehouse, or $12 an hour to do slightly glorified secretarial tasks."

Reporting on an audit of one top-50 law school, Campos writes:

When we take temporary employment into account, it appears that approximately 45 percent of 2010 graduates of this particular top-50 law school had real legal jobs nine months after graduation. And the overall number is likely lower, since it seems probable that the temporary employment figures for the graduates of almost any top 50 school would be better than the average outcome for the graduates of the 198 ABA-accredited law schools as a whole.

Campos concludes with the following call for reform:

All of this suggests the extent to which prospective law students need more and better information. Of course, such information will make law school look like a far worse investment than it does at present. Still, if we assume that the point of academic work is to reveal the truth, rather than to engage in the defense of a professional cartel from which law professors benefit more than almost anyone else, then this work needs to be done.

(Emphasis added.)

Apparently Professor Campos has forgotten the first rule of real lawyering -- never assume. For details, see his The New Republic article Served: How law schools completely misrepresent their job numbers.

"My Bad." It's read and exam time for the Class of 2011.

Perhaps it is not too late to rectify "my bad." Deborah K. Hackerson, Law Librarian & Legal Research Adjunct, Univ. of St. Thomas School of Law has posted Resources to Help Law Students Prepare for Final Exams on Legal Skills Prof Blog. [JH]