New York lawyer David Anziska has been one of the attorneys pushing litigation against law schools over inflated or erroneous employment figures. He has now released a list of 20 law schools accused of fudging the books. Two top 50 schools — Pepperdine and American University — are listed. No evidence for the inclusion on the list has been given and these schools have not had the opportunity to respond. Some of the schools have been previously accused of such fudging of data in the now hyper-competitive annual rankings.
It is not a good listing for religiously-affiliated schools, particularly Catholic-based schools: Catholic University; Chapman University School of Law; Loyola Marymount University Law School; Loyola University Chicago School of Law; St. Louis University School of Law; St. John’s University, University of St. Thomas School of Law; and Valparaiso University School of Law. That is forty percent of the targeted schools.
Here is the full list:
American University Washington College of Law
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law
Chapman University School of Law
Loyola Marymount University Law School
Loyola University Chicago School of Law
New England School of Law
Pace University School of Law
Pepperdine University School of Law
Roger Williams University School of Law
St. Louis University School of Law
St. John’s University School of Law
Seattle University School of Law
Stetson University College of Law
Syracuse University College of Law
University of Miami School of Law
University of St. Thomas School of Law
Valparaiso University School of Law
Western New England University School of Law
Whittier Law School.
Source: Inside Education as first seen on ABA Journal
This is what a scam looks like:
School website: We produce 90-100% employment w/ salaries of 66-120k.
Reality: We produce 50% employment w/ salaries of 35-55k.
If the courts can’t provide a remedy for this obvious of a scam then they are as useless as I think they are.
test
It is sad to see my daughter’s school on the list and my alma mater was already sued for these alleged issues.
“Howard Norris
1, March 15, 2012 at 12:58 pm
I sure as heck know my school tricked me into thinking a six figure salary was all but assured to me after graduating. Little did I know it be a pointless exercise in intellectual bullying. Well, at least everything was in English:”
:=)
@Jack: That is because relentless mailing works. They ignore your reply because editing the mailing list to delete your name is not generally cost effective; it is not worth the manpower effort to read your mail and find and delete your name from the list; or to go through the red-tape it takes to supply a new list to their mailing contractor.
Besides, you might change your mind; you might get rejected by your A and B schools and decide on that C school you never thought you would attend.
Many of these schools also guilty of relentless mailing. A reply of “I’m not interested in attending your institution” has minimal effect.
@Sprite: I guess there is one other reason to lie: If everybody else is lying, telling the truth makes you look ridiculously bad.
What’s even more embarrassing is that Seattle University, Loyola Chicago, Loyola Marymount and St. Louis University are all Jesuit institutions.
I sure as heck know my school tricked me into thinking a six figure salary was all but assured to me after graduating. Little did I know it be a pointless exercise in intellectual bullying. Well, at least everything was in English: http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2012/02/02/arizona-town-fights-non-english-speakers-ballot/
Prospective applicants, pre-2009, already had the preconception(reasonable or not) that a JD would ensure them SOME kind of decent job after graduation, so there wasn’t a perceived need to closely scrutinize the “90+ percent employed after graduation” numbers posted by almost all law schools, even those in the third and fourth tiers. As I said before, the numbers that matter are “% of those working full-time, permanent positions requiring a JD and bar admission” at graduation and 9 months later. You can toss in whatever number are working judicial clerkships, too, but the main thing is that applicants need to know what their actual chances of getting a job are, and whether they can be merely average law students and still get a decent job in legal practice(or any job in legal practice for that matter). Listing more accurate salary stats would help too.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.
Posted here earlier but it disappeared. It certainly is pretty over on the river by St. Thomas, Frankly. I have learned too much about law schools from a law school blog over the last couple of years. No one would go to St. Thomas if they had the right combination of LSAT and GPA to get in the U. Georgetown and BC are the premier catholic law schools. There are too many law schools and they are graduating many clueless students with large amounts of debt that will never work in the field.
These lower tier schools that charge nearly as much as higher ranked schools are a scam and need to be held accountable. Those post-grad employment stats are there to help people decide whether to attend and I know that some of the schools have changed those post grad statistic pages on their sites after the suit went public. These lower ranked schools shouldn’t cost more than 40k – as most of their grads will be lucky to make that. I hope they have to pay students back the difference but of course that woud be too fair – how dare someone be naive enough to believe statistics from an ACCREDITED LAW SCHOOL?? At the very least now the reality of the worth of these degrees is out in the open but that won’t help students who “naively” believed the schools post grad employment data.
Test 3
Tony:
Re: the religious schools
I guess they are lying for Jesus so that makes it okay.
I was just relieved that my alma mater (Vermont) is not on the list.
This is a test
Well if you can believe that the real employment numbers have dropped then you might as well believe the statistics of this…..oh what a tangled web we weave…..
The primary reason to lie would be to con prospective students into thinking their degree will be respected and just as valuable as if they went to other schools. In other words, it is fraudulent advertising. Interesting that religious schools seem to feel the greatest need to lie in order to get students.
I would suspect that the privates, at least those without the sort of reputation of a Harvard or Yale, would have the most incentive to make themselves look better. They are more expensive than a land grant like Minnesota or Michigan but don’t even match their prestige. Why enroll in the more expensive St. Thomas when a few blocks away is the #19 law school? One reason might be you are not quite up to the entrance requirements (another local private, Hamlin, is known as “last chance law”). That would tend to indicate a lower quality grad and therefore poorer job prospects.
Not a good example for their students.