Law Librarian Blog

Could ATL's Law School Ranking Unseat US News?

Not gonna happen. IMHO, the only way to reduce the impact the annual ritual known as the US News Law School Rankings is if the entire legal academy starts ignoring US News in law school marketing fodder. You think that is ever going to happen?

Here's an excerpt from the YouTube description of a BLaw interview titled "Could This Law School Ranking Unseat US News?":

Elie Mystal, editor at Above the Law, tells Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia that his blog's new law school rankings sought to list the top 50 American law schools by relying on an "outcome based" methodology. Mystal says that focusing on the costs and rewards of a legal education allows this ranking to determine which law schools yield "the most bang for this extreme buck."

[JH]

Got to "Spend" Money to Make Money: Extending Law Student WEXIS User Accounts Over the Summer and Beyond

Graduates who extend their password will receive access to WestlawNext and Westlaw Classic through November 2013 instead of just through July. The exact number of monthly access hours is not available, but is at least 40 hours per month. -- Quoting from Extended Westlaw Access for May 2013 Grads published by USF's Dorraine Zief Law Library.

"I'm wonder[ing] who will be the first grad to put on his or her resume that 'if you hire me, I'll have 40 hours of free Westlaw searching I can bring with me'??" wrote 3 Geekster Greg Lambert at Even Westlaw Knows It's a Tough Market – Law Graduates Can Keep Access Through November. He added "Please, don't be that person!!"

Hell, since the USF Law Library announcement doesn't say being an unemployed Class of 2013 grad is a requirement, I'm wondering if the extension does not also benefit Thomson Reuters by exposing Class of 2013 grad employers to its research platforms, etc. Who knows. However, it is unclear to me that Class of 2013 grads really can use their school's Westlaw account in all employment settings. Usually that is not the case. See Cleveland-Marshall's announcement at Bloomberg Law, Lexis, & Westlaw: Student Summer 2013 Access.

BLaw does allow all law school students to use their school user accounts for performing research during summer employment with no restrictions on for-profit work-related use. I'm thinking WEXIS should follow that example. It's a good idea for marketing purposes. Got to "spend" money to make money in today's market for online legal search. [JH]

Institutionalizing Academic Mobbing at Brooklyn Law School?

The Brooklyn Law School Board of Trustees has adopted a "adequate cause" definition for termination of tenured law faculty. It reads:

For purposes of the Law School’s regulations, “ Adequate Cause” shall be defined as follows:

“Demonstrated incompetence, including but not limited to, multiple unsatisfactory performance reviews or complaints from supervisors; multiple complaints from students or multiple unsatisfactory student evaluations; sub-standard academic performance; lack of collegiality.”

Does this protect academic freedom? Due process? "There is certainly an important need for American law schools to undertake a review of both their tenure standards and their standards for post-tenure review, given the dereliction of duties that are, alas, widespread (but not only in law schools, of course)," writes Brian Leiter. "But these standards are very alarming, and suggest the dangers associated with post-tenure review." For more, see Leiter's Academic freedom (and due process) under threat at Brooklyn Law School?. See also this follow-up post on Leiter's Law School Reports, Brooklyn Law's Dean Allard Replies to Concerns about Academic Freedom. [JH]

The Most Common Criticisms of the ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings

As reported by ATL's Brian Dalton at The ATL Top 50 Law Schools: A Roundup of Criticism. [JH]

A New Law School Rankings and Everything That's Wrong With It

Check out ATL's first Top 50 Law Schools and Elie Mystal's Everything That Is Wrong With The Above the Law Law School Rankings. [JH]

ABA Uncertain About Law School Faculty Tenure Requirements

The National Law Journal and others are reporting on the work of the ABA committee charged with updating the organization’s standards, this time in regard to faculty tenure.  It’s a touchy subject, having evoked a lot of criticism starting in 2010 when it was suggested that the existing standards did not require tenure as a provision of job security.  See the July, 2010 TaxProf Blog post More on the ABA’s Proposal to Dilute Law Faculty Tenure which includes links to various articles from that time.

Fast forward to 2013 and we find that the committee can’t seem to decide what to do with the issue.  The NLJ reports four possible options under a revised standard:

• Maintain the existing standard
• Afford security to full-time faculty via long term contracts, but not tenure
• Afford security as above but include clinical and legal writing instructors in coverage
• Eliminate the security requirement entirely

I can see problems with all of these approaches.  Law schools are obviously under pressure to change due to declining enrollment and calls to make the curriculum more practice oriented.  A tenured faculty tends to be one of the institutional barriers to these changes, at least out of self-interest.  The two middle choices may seem reasonable but there are other implications.  These, along with the fourth option eliminate tenure entirely though with some form of security in place.  I wonder how well that would go over with other university departments and schools where tenure is routinely part of the employment options.

There is also the issue of library staff that may be eligible for tenure track positions.  I can imagine eliminating tenure for the faculty would almost certainly mean the same for law librarians in institutions with these employment options.  It may even lead to further unionization in academics.  Something not required by the ABA may still be subject to collective bargaining.  There is one other development lurking in the backdrop to all of this.  The Sixth Circuit ruled last August that tenure is defined by the terms of the contract between school and faculty member, essentially meaning that achieving tenure does not require a school to tender successive contracts.  See my post Sixth Circuit Makes Tenure Almost Meaningless.  Whatever standard is ultimately adopted will have impact well beyond the law school.  I don’t envy the committee or fault it for taking its time.  [MG]

On the Impending Retrenchment of Legal Practice and Legal Education in China

In 2011, Carl F. Minzner's (Fordham University School of Law) China’s Turn Against Law [SSRN] was published in American Journal of Comparative Law. The article argued that "Chinese leaders’ shift against law is a distinct domestic political reaction to building pressures in the Chinese system. It is a top-down authoritarian response motivated by social stability concerns."

This Article also analyzes the risks facing China as a result of the shift against law. It argues that the Chinese leadership’s concern with maintaining social stability in the short term may be leading them to take steps that are having severe long-term effects of undermining Chinese legal institutions and destabilizing China.

Excerpted from the abstract of China’s Turn Against Law.

In The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education [SSRN], Fordham International Law Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2013, a companion analysis to his earlier article, Minzner has turned his attention to the consequences to China's legal education system, internally and abroad, as the Chinese government strives to regain top-down party control of its legal system. Here's the abstract:

Over the past three decades, legal education in China has boomed. Numbers of law students and schools have increased exponentially. Legal education has become standardized at universities throughout the country. Prominent legal academics have emerged as public voices for political reform.

But Chinese authorities now perceive flaws in these trends. A flood of law graduates faces dismal employment prospects. Schools remain uniformly focused on academic research rather than practical skills. And the liberal orientation of many faculties is at odds with new conservative Party views on legal reform.

In response, officials are remolding legal education. They are reducing numbers of law students. They are pushing law schools to differentiate themselves from each other. And they are increasing political content in classrooms.

This Article analyzes both the expansion of legal education in China and its impending retrenchment.

China’s difficulties are not entirely unique. In both Latin America and Japan, efforts at rapid reform of law schools have foundered. And in recent decades, the United States has experienced unsustainable, credit-fueled growth in the cost and structure of legal education.

This Article argues that the current bubble in Chinese legal education is largely the result of state policies pursued since the late 1990s. These pushed the rapid expansion of university legal education through the use of one-size-fits-all target evaluation systems. But they have detrimentally affected the quality and direction of legal education in China.

As a result, authorities are reviving educational practices from the 1980s, that themselves have roots in the 1950s. Chinese legal education may be returning to its own past, rather than converging with foreign models.

This Article also contends that legal education can serve as the canary in the coalmine for understanding the direction of political and legal reform in China. The ability of conservative Party authorities to politically remold legal education may indicate whether their influence has already crested or if it will continue to expand yet further.

Last, this Article argues that Chinese developments will directly impact the efforts of American legal educators to address their own financial problems. Efforts to blindly ramp up recruitment of Chinese LLM students may be unsuccessful as a long-term strategy to solve the current problems confronting U.S. law schools.

Both articles are highly recommended. [JH]

Joining the Major Leagues: Institutionalizing BLaw into the Law School Setting

BLaw started making its aggressive push into the academic market last year. Mark wrote in BLaw Makes Its Push Into Law Schools (LLB, April 23, 2012):

The offer to schools is interesting to say the least. Any school that subscribes to the BNA Premier Service will receive a significant discount on their subscription charge and free access to Bloomberg Law. That discount can be in tens of thousands of dollars for an acknowledged high quality legal database.  What Bloomberg asks in return, is parity with the way other electronic legal research services are treated at law schools.

By parity, Bloomberg Law wanted student exposure to and instruction in its online research services similar to the treatment given to WEXIS in law schools. In Bloomberg Law and the Quest for Parity, CRIV Sheet, May 2013, at 3, Lee Sims (Rutgers-Newark Law Library) commented

If we are not adding BLaw, as well as Loislaw, Casemaker, and EDGAR, to whatever we are teaching, we are not providing our students with tools they need to be successful graduates. And this was a point on which everyone I surveyed seemed to agree: to prepare students for the current legal research environment, we have the obligation to expose them to as many resources as possible. If those resources include BLaw, so be it.

[JH]

"Do the right thing: vote early, and vote often (unless you’re a bot)."

Polls close for voting in ATL's annual Law Revue Video Contest Wednesday, May 1st at 11:59 PM. You can view the finalists' videos, listed below, and vote at Law Revue Video Contest 2013: The Finalists!

1. Columbia Law School — That’s Why You’ll Make Law Review

2. NYU Law School — Last Thursday Night

3. UCLA School of Law — Don’t Call On Me

4. UVA School of Law — On A-T-L

5. Washington University in St. Louis School of Law — This is Law School

6. West Virginia University College of Law — Law School

[JH]

LSAC Loses a Round in Its Discrimination Case

The Law School Admission Council lost a battle earlier this week in its attempts to deflect a California discrimination lawsuit for the way it handles individual seeking accommodations.  The case started out as an administrative hearing over practices such as requiring test takers to provide extensive documentation for a disability and flagging test results to schools that accommodations were given.  It has since been removed to California state court and finally to the federal district court for the Northern District of California.  The plaintiff in this iteration of the dispute is the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.  That entity is seeking relief for those aggrieved by the LSAC’s practices in California, though the suit has the potential to affect disabled test takers on a nation-wide basis. 

The LSAC argues that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 applies in situations where the rights of a group are involved.  The Court, however, ruled that the California agency can proceed as a “government enforcement action” with reliance on Supreme Court precedent to that effect.  Under these circumstances, the government is vindicating a legal right available to all citizens rather than a group that may or may not be certified as a class under Rule 23. 

The Court tracked the current controversy to that of General Telephone Co. of the Nw., Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Comm’n, 446 U.S. 318 (1980).  In that case the Supreme Court held the EEOC could proceed against General Telephone in a sex discrimination case under the authority of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act without first certifying the aggrieved employees as a class.  Judge Edward M. Chen extrapolated from General Telephone and other Ninth Circuit cases that state law can provide a sufficient basis for proceeding in the same manner in this case.

I expect the LSAC to appeal the decision, and given the character of the Ninth Circuit, I expect this decision to be affirmed.  I can’t predict whether the Supreme Court will take up the case.  I do know that the Ninth Circuit is one of the most reversed courts in the country.  The LSAC’s best strategy may be for the dispute to go to the Supreme Court and hope for the best.  I personally believe the LSAC should simply comply with the antidiscrimination laws and be done with it.  As with most litigation, nothing that could be easy needs to be easy.   Download the opinion in DFEH v LSAC.  [MG] 

Full-Time JD Required Employment Including and Excluding Law School Funded Jobs

Dan Filler has ranked law schools by percentage employed in full-time, long-term jobs requiring a JD excluding all such positions that were funded by a law school on The Faculty Lounge. He compares his ranking with Gary Rosin's ranking which does the same except it includes law school funded jobs. Brian Leiter comments that "school-funded jobs are often the crucial route into public sector positions for many graduates, and schools with big investments in getting graduates into public interest will necessarily have a good number of these.  On the other hand, it is certainly true that in many other cases, school-funded jobs are make-work position meant to boost employment statistics, not help launch careers." [JH]

Short Takes On Law School News

Here’s an interesting university reaction to the drop in law school applications.  Catholic University is proposing to cut operational expense by 20%, spread across the entire university due to the drop.  I think there is an assumption that when law school tuition revenues are lower that the law school would be the one to absorb the cuts.  Apparently that doesn’t have to be the case.

If current and potential law students didn’t have enough problems with the costs of becoming a lawyer, Illinois intends to raise the minimum score for bar passage from 264 to 268 starting with the July 2013 exam.  The minimum score will rise again, to 272, in 2015.  This kind of move will place a bit more pressure on Illinois law schools to maintain their bar passage rates, especially now that employment statistics include breakouts for jobs that require a JD and bar passage.  The ABA Journal reports that Illinois is 32 in a survey of bar exam difficulty.

JDJournal is reporting that the on-again, off-again relationship the American Bar Association Standards Review Committee has with the LSAT is back on.  The Committee is considering whether to drop the LSAT as a requirement for law school admission.  The Committee is leaning again to keeping the exam according to reports cited in the article.  Things could change, of course, as the article suggests there may be hearings on the matter next year.

Speaking of the LSAT and the LSAC, here are the latest statistics on law school applications:

As of 04/05/13, there are 359,070 Fall 2013 applications submitted by 52,066 applicants. Applicants are down 15.9% and applications are down 20.0% from 2012.

Last year at this time, we had 91% of the preliminary final applicant count.  Last year at this time, we had 96% of the preliminary final application count.

Assuming everyone who applies is admitted (not reality, of course) that represents a loss of 16 students per hundred.  That’s a loss of around $480,000 in tuition revenue in a single year per hundred students using a conservative figure of $30,000 in tuition.  Magazine, one of my favorite new wave bands from the days when I was a DJ said it best:  “Maybe it's right to be nervous now.”  [MG]

Eight Law Profs Make NLJ's The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America

Kudos to the following law profs who made earned being listed in the National Law Journal's "The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America." (March 23, 2013 issue). As for the several thousand other law profs, get to work. While it may help to be associated with an elite law school (something that can be earned), it is not a necessary requirement.

1. Jeffrey Fisher (Stanford)
2. Rick Hasen (U California, Irvine)
3. Bill Henderson (Indiana U, Bloomington)
4. Mark Lemley (Stranford)
5. Lawrence Lessig (Harvard)
6. Cass Sunstein (Harvard)
7. Eugene Volokh (UCLA)
8. Timothy Wu (Columbia)

Let's added a special congratulations to the youngest member of the "100 Most Influential" list. That would by Kyle McEntee, age 27, Executive Director of Law School Transparency. [JH]

Cooley's Defamation Case Against An Anonymous Blogger Goes Back to Square 1.5

The complicated case of the Cooley Law School’s suit against an anonymous blogger on defamation claims has reached another strategic point.  A little history is in order.  Blogger Doe discovered the lawsuit via publicity generated by Cooley law school.  Cooley later filed a discovery motion to the hosting provider (Weebly) located in California for Doe’s identity in a California Court.  Doe’s site is still online, in fact, from the same provider. 

Weebly promised Doe’s attorneys to wait until a certain date before complying with the motion, allowing time for appeal.  One of Weebly’s employees, however, turned over the information three days earlier.  Cooley sued Doe under his real name (we don’t know the gender of the anonymous blogger, and I will use the nominative “him” as did the Michigan Court of Appeals in its opinion).  The trial court suppressed the name in court filings.  Doe asked the trial court for an order of protection forbidding Cooley from producing his name.  The trial court concluded that Michigan law does not address the situation and used Dendrite (New Jersey) and Cahill (Delaware) for standards in deciding the issue.  Other courts confronted with the same issue have used one or both of these cases as guidance when existing precedent is not available.  The trial court found that these cases did not provide relief for Doe but did not release his identity pending appeal.

The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed.  It analyzed the logic of cases from multiple jurisdictions as a survey of how courts have addressed the issue of First Amendment protection for anonymous speech on the Internet in a defamation context.  In the end, however, it found that the issue could have been decided adequately under Michigan Court Rules without relying on foreign law.  The case was remanded for further consideration under the correct procedural standards.  The opinion is here.

Speaking of Cooley, the law school is working on an alliance with Western Michigan University.  The Detroit Free Press reports that the schools already have three joint degree programs and that discussions on the alliance go back at least three years.  [MG]

Harper's The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis

“Imagine that the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy were put on trial for their alleged negligence and failed stewardship. Imagine further that the State had at its disposal one of the nation’s most tenacious trial lawyers to doggedly build a complete factual record and then argue the case. The result would be The Lawyer Bubble. If I were counsel to the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy, I would advise my clients to settle the case.” — William D. Henderson, Director of the Center on the Global Legal Profession and Professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis
Steven J. Harper
Basic Books (April 2, 2013)

From the blurb:

In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment to flawed U.S. News & World Report rankings criteria in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits to enhance American Lawyer rankings and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions—being honest about the legal job market, revisiting the financial incentives currently driving bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more—can take the profession to a better place.

A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal profession, this insider account is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the profession can right itself once again.

Steven J. Harper is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Law School. After a 30-year career as a litigator, he recently retired from Kirkland & Ellis LLP. [JH]

Arizona Public Law Schools Considering (Gasp!) Lowering Their Tuition

Here’s an example of market forces at work in the law school business.  The University of Arizona’s law school has a shortfall on student applicants.  No surprise there as that is the trend everywhere.  The school is proposing an 11% drop in tuition as a way of attracting more students.  That would mean a drop of almost $3,000 for in state tuition per year and a bit more than $3,500 for out of state students.  This, of course, means less income for the school.  That would be made up by expanding some of the programs, including a proposed master’s program for non-legal majors, programs for foreign attorneys to get JDs, and others.  My advice to those foreign attorneys is to carry your ID papers at all times if Arizona is your destination.  Arizona State University’s law school is considering a similar tuition drop.  More details are at AZCentral.com.  I suppose this is a dumb question to ask, but wouldn’t this idea have been possible without an application crisis?  [MG]

Rethinking Law Schools with Brian Tamanaha and Lawrence Mitchell

Philadelphia's WHYY Ratiotimes featured law prof Brian Tamanaha and Dean Lawrence Mitchell on March 21, 2013. The theme of the episode was "Rethinking Law Schools." Here's the program's description:

Law schools are in trouble. Applications are at a 30-year low and rising tuitions have led to high student debt.  A weak job market has meant that many graduates can’t find a good job to make payments on those loans.  All this has spurred a debate about what law school should be, and possible ways to reform it. Today, rethinking law school.  First, guest host, Tracey Matisak, talks with Washington University law professor, BRIAN TAMANAHA, about his book, “Failing Law Schools.” Then LAWRENCE MITCHELL, Dean of Case Western Reserve Law School, gives us a different perspective on the value of a legal education.

[JH]

Per Capita Scholarly Productivity: Rankings of "Non-Elite" Law Schools

See Lucinda Harrison-Cox, Raquel Ortiz, and Michael Yelnosky's law school rankings of per capita faculty productivity measured by articles published in top journals from 1993 to 2012 here. [JH]

Illinois State Bar Association Report Calls For Law School Reforms To Reduce Law Student Costs

The Illinois State Bar Association released a report on March 8^th from the Special Committee on the Impact of Law School Debt on the Delivery of Legal Services.  Here are some of the consequences of high debt levels on graduation:

• Small Law Firms Face Challenges Hiring and Retaining Competent Attorneys
• Fewer Lawyers are Able to Work in Public Interest Positions
• New Attorneys Have Too Much Debt to Provide Affordable Legal Services to Poor and Middle Class Families and Individuals
• As Fewer Attorneys Find Sustainable Jobs in the Private Sector, More Attorneys Enter Solo Practice
• Attorneys Report that Debt Burdened Lawyers are Less Likely to Engage in Pro Bono Work
• Debt Drives Young Attorneys Away from Rural Areas
• Heavy Debt Burdens Decrease the Diversity of the Legal Profession
• Threats to Professionalism

Most of this comes from the fact that high debt upon graduation limits the options a new lawyer can pursue.  There has to be significant initial income to pay off the student loans.  The various types of public service are not going to cut it.  

The report blames the federal government for part of the mess.  One of the recommendations is that the federal government place limits on the amount that law students can borrow.  This would lead law schools to cut costs and overhead in order to maintain an ongoing supply of students.  Law schools are to blame because they fail to adequately prepare students for practice.  The report recommends reforms to law school curricula:

• Focus on Practice-Oriented Courses
• Provide Fewer Exotic Courses
• Provide More Writing Assignments and Constructive Criticism
• Teach Law Office Management
• Teach a Bar Review Course
• Transform the Second and Third Years of Law School

Doctrinal classes have their place for learning the law, but a greater emphasis should be on transactional and litigation skills.  Faculty scholarship takes a hit with quoted statistics such as:

One study of 385,000 law review articles, for example, found that 40% of them were never cited in other articles and that 80% of them were cited fewer than ten times (including self-citations).

Student tuition finances a good chunk of this scholarship, estimated at $100,000 per article which the report suggests “may not be worth the price tag we are paying for it.”  This directly increases the cost of law school and should be reformed.

• Faculty members take a hit as well:
• Change Tenure and Hiring Requirements to Put Less Emphasis on Scholarship
• Include Practicing Judges and Lawyers on Hiring and Tenure Committees
• Use More Properly-Trained and Supervised Adjunct Faculty
• Give Clinical and Legal Writing Faculty an Equal Say in Governance

I’m sure faculty will resist the idea of “outsiders” getting involved in tenure and promotion decisions just as much as they would resist upgrading the status of clinical and legal writing faculty.  These two groups may be part of the faculty but tend to have second class status in many law schools. 

Law libraries are mentioned as in the context of cost savings if the accreditation standards allow for more digital access.  I believe the proposed ABA accreditation standards are accounting for this.  See ABA Proposes Revised Standards For Academic Law Libraries for more details.

One of the more interesting ideas in the report, and one that received some press coverage is the recommendation that state supreme courts drop the bar exam for graduates of their state’s law schools.  That would help graduates by eliminating the cost of the bar review courses and possibly the fees associated with obtaining a law license.  I’m aware that Wisconsin has this option in place.  See Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule 40.03.

I don’t know how law schools are going to take these recommendations.  They are certainly contrary to entrenched law school and faculty interests.  The deans of all Illinois and St. Louis law schools were invited to offer comments.  Only five deans out of the eleven showed up.  Perhaps the Illinois Supreme Court may take the report more seriously.  I’ve only highlighted suggestions and conclusions from the document.  The included details make a compelling case to reform the cost law schools.  Otherwise, schools may be pricing themselves out of the market.  See the latest statistics on law school applicants from the LASC.  [MG]

Top 25 Law Schools Whose Grads Earn the Highest Starting Salaries in the Private Sector

For its ranking of law school schools whose graduates earned the most in the early stages of their private sector career, Forbes turned to Payscale. According to Jacquelyn Smith's The Law Schools Whose Grads Earn the Biggest Paychecks:

Payscale combed through the profiles of its 35 million unique users who supply compensation information on its website to find which law school grads make the most. They looked at starting salaries of graduates from 98 popular law schools and found roughly 31,000 of them in their database who had reported salary information, including 9,100 working in the private sector with less than five years of experience.

With that methological insight in mind, Payscale's reported salary data are "current median salaries (as of the first quarter of 2013) for recent law school graduates who in almost all cases finished law school within the last five years. The median work experience for this group is two years, and their median age is 29." Smith's article lists the top ten schools ranked by starting median pay and includes mid-career medium pay in the private sector. No surprises; all are elite law schools. But if you take the time to view the entire Top 25 law schools here, you may find a couple of surprises. For example:

Forbes Ranked 21: University of San Francisco School of Law (US News 2014 Ranked 144)
Starting Median Pay (Private Sector): $81,600
Mid-Career Median Pay (Private Sector): $150,000

Forbes Ranked 23. Santa Clara University School of Law (US News 2014 Ranked 96)
Starting Median Pay (Private Sector): $80,700
Mid-Career Median Pay (Private Sector): $189,000

Hat tip to Staci Zaretsky's The Best Law Schools For Getting Rich Quick (ATL). [JH]