OK, this is not about DL. It's about law school and a bunch on cry babies who are suing their law school alleging that the school duped them into believing they'd become, I don't know, employed as lawyers if they graduated. To me that's like saying that if I earn a PhD in Archeology then I'll get to go to some exotic place and dig up fossils. You'd expect these people to actually have some brains and do some research. Graduates Sue New York Law School Claiming 'Systemic, Ongoing Fraud' - FoxNews.com
That's interesting. If they do not possess enough deductive reasoning to understand the risks involved in getting a law degree, I wonder how they would do in a battle of wits against another skilled attorney? Not well, I would think.
I'm guessing it's the bottom of the class kids who somehow thought they'd be automatically scooped up and offered tons of money. I don't understand it. You'd think that in this current economic climate they'd be a little more in touch with reality.
If nothing else, they've learned that the law and verbiage in contracts is a very precise profession and are very precise things. It'll get thrown out.
To my understanding these lawsuits are more form than substance. It's three lawsuits total that I'm aware of. One against Thomas Cooley Law School, New York Law School, and Thomas Jefferson Law School. There primary purpose is to bring to light the "deceptive" practices of law schools. Specifically the whole employment rate statistics. I seriously doubt that at some point prior to graduation that they weren't at least somewhat aware of their employment chances...or lack there of. These lawsuits are just a way to get more publicly to the matter...but that's just my personal opinion.
I have no idea if those in law school are relative to those in law enforcement, but I remember most of those in the bottom of the class usually made the best cops on the street. Those who could memorize stuff out of a book and test well seemed to have a hard time thinking on their feet during stressful situations on the street. I got out of the Police Academy with a "B" average, so I fall in between, but I was always amazed at how things like that seems to manifest in the real world. I've had more than one Deputy D.A.'s fresh out of law school that seem oblivious; and some senior Deputy D.A.'s who are worth their weight in gold.
The data is manipulated by the law schools. Some of them will even hire their recent unemployed graduates as "research assistants" until after the reporting period so they can report those graduates as employed. They will count graduates who were only able to get part-time positions as employed. Those that give up looking and try to make it as solo practitioners are counted as employed. Those who work at Starbucks are counted as employed. What's needed is standards about what can be counted as "employed" and then oversight to be sure those standards aren't manipulated. If nothing else, maybe these lawsuits will cause that to happen and stop these schools from lying with statistics.
This is the heart of the problem, and the basis for the lawsuits. It is now widely acknowledged that the employment statistics provided by law schools can, in at least some cases, be misleading. For example, the best-known independent evaluator of law schools is US News & World Report, which publishes a widely-read annual law school ranking. USN&WR has stated explicitly that certain law schools appear to be providing questionable data, and that better information should be made available. If the ABA, NALP, and USN&WR can't get valid employment numbers from law schools, then is it realistic to expect a 21-year old law school applicant to do better? I'm no legal expert, but if it's true that some law schools have been providing misleading data to the public -- and USN&WR should be in a position to know -- then it seems like the students may in fact have a case.
USN&WR is partially the cause of the problem. Its "rankings" are nonsense. Yes, everyone knows what the top ten or 20 law schools are. Don't need USNWR to tell us that. Beyond that, the rankings system is being gamed by the law schools because a school's ranking is perceived as so very damned important. Deans have lost their jobs for letting a school drop a couple spaces in these rankings. Drifting between tiers can end careers. Schools manipulate data on their entering classes qualifications and on the success of their graduates along with everything in between. (One of the law schools I used to work for decided finally to give its librarians faculty rank so it could count them when calculating the student/faculty ratio, solely to improve its ranking in USNWR). At some schools, anything it can do to make it look better on paper to USN&WR is fair game, whether it actually improves the educational experience or not.
Law schools undoubtedly have strong incentives to fudge their statistics for USN&WR ranking purposes. But if their numbres are challenged in court -- and some ex-students are apparently seeking to do just that -- that's probably not a defense that will help them.
Well said. While they may not be the spark to the fire, they are definitely fuel for it. Even though these lawsuits are against "Tier 4" schools, a lot of "Tier 1" students are upset. They entered school with the assumption that since they were going to a higher ranking school then they had a better chance of getting jobs. True (partially), but somewhat misleading because their chances may not be as great as they originally thought. Arguably, the students that have attended the higher ranking schools have gotten the worse of it. They often have bought into the USN&WR rankings and all of the information from their school. They often leave school with much more debt, yet face the same chances of getting jobs. Guess their tactics worked though. They seem to be getting the attention they want.
Two of the three lawsuits mentioned above (Cooley and Jefferson) are traditionally regarded as "Tier 4" schools. But the third, New York Law School, is traditionally "Tier 3". It's #135 (of 190 schools) in the current USN&WR ranking.
True. Under the current (2012) rankings, the top 3/4 of law schools are in the "first tier", and the bottom 1/4 is considered the "second tier". This means that a school can rank well below average, yet still represent the "first tier". So by this measure, NYLS is technically "first tier", and Cooley and TJ are "second tier". But in practice, people tend to think about law schools in the traditional divisions of Tier 1 (top quartile), Tier 2 (second quartile), Tier 3 (third quartile) and Tier 4 (bottom quartile). And in that sense, NYLS is Tier 3, while Cooley and TJ are Tier 4.
