In the obstinate push for transparency, at least someone is listening. U.S. News & World Report has agreed to release its more detailed employment data for law school grads online, according to New York Lawyer. The magazine already asks schools to report the number of grads whose employment status is known and unknown, how many are enrolled in a full-time degree program, how many are unemployed and seeking work and not seeking work, etc. Yet, this detailed information has never been released publicly—until now. The report next year will include this data for the class of 2009 and perhaps also the class of 2008.
Apparently, the pressure exerted on the magazine from Law School Transparency contributed to its decision to release this information. Nevertheless, although this is a step in the right direction, the actual rankings will be unaffected by this development. As explained by Above the Law, “U.S. News won’t be collecting any additional information. Schools will still be able to materially misrepresent some of their crucial employment statistics, and U.S. News is not increasing the weight given to outcome-oriented metrics in its rankings methodology.”
And as we’ve seen before, law school applicants overemphasize the importance of the rankings and pay much less attention to employment statistics. This new transparency, therefore, will not likely make a huge impact on applicants’ decisions at this stage, and law schools won’t have to reevaluate their game plans. For, “If the ABA won’t mandate the steps law schools need to take to ascertain the employment status of recent graduates, if the ABA won’t define what it means to be ‘employed’ and ‘unemployed’ and everything in between, if the ABA won’t hold law schools accountable for their graduate outcomes when it comes time to review each law school’s accreditation, then we are still fundamentally living in a world where all law school deans need concern themselves with is moving up a few spots on a rankings list published by a for-profit magazine.” Thus, when it comes to transparency, we have a long way to go.
Law schools are not accountable for their graduates’ decision. They are accountable for the information they provide and fail to provide.
As adults, the graduates are accountable for their decisions, including assuming absurd amounts of debt to enter a profession that may not — and the “may” could easily be probably for many schools — provide the means of paying back that debt. The data upon which to base intelligent decisions is available. It should be more specific to schools and to different outcomes (full-time permanent associate positions, contract jobs, clerkships, waiting tables, selling clothes at the Gap,etc.). Caveat emptor. Future lawyers should do their due diligence with the data at hand.
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Read the full article: Law Rankings Become a Little More Transparent
