By on Jul 03, 2010 at 7:48 pm

Quick Update

We just wanted to provide our readers a quick update on what we’re currently up to.

LST’s Official Request
After disseminating our white paper, discussing our project with a number of law school administrators over the last couple of months, and engaging some major players, we have finally set our sights on Monday, July 12th as the date of our official request.

In a little over a week, LST will submit our official request to every ABA-approved and provisionally-approved law school. The immediate request will not be for data; instead, we will ask each school to commit to releasing Class of 2010 lists compliant with our standard. Schools will be asked to collect and report the requested data to LST in February 2011, following procedures similar to those used by the ABA, NALP, and U.S. News.

Schools will have 60 days from delivery to respond to our request. At the close of the 60-day window, September 10th, we will survey the responses and report preliminary results on this website. During the time between September and February, we will engage law school administrators to understand the choices they’ve made. We will continually encourage all of you to directly contact schools to rally their participation.

LST Standard
Thanks to concerns raised by some commenters, we have added a new component to the Job List: Salary Source. A forthcoming post will explain this decision in full detail.

Tennessee Judicial Conference
We had a great opportunity to talk about our work at this year’s Tennessee Judicial Conference. After co-founder Patrick Lynch presented our plan to reform the employment reporting standard, he participated in a panel discussion led by Judge Randy Kennedy, along with Justice William Koch of the state Supreme Court, Vanderbilt’s Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, the Dean of Nashville School of Law, and the Dean of the new Belmont University College of Law.

It was a great chance to learn what leaders in the legal community consider some of the most important issues facing lawyers today. At the top of the list was how to mentor and train the increasing number of debt-ridden lawyers entering the market each year. They also discussed how to encourage new lawyers to serve underrepresented communities in Tennessee, which goes to how schools pitch their programs to the 50,000 new law students each year. We look forward to seeing how our solution addresses the problems members of the Bench and Bar identified. As always, please let us know if you know about discussions like these taking place elsewhere around the country.

Tags: LST Updates, Outreach,
Permalink | Add Comment | View Comments (10)
  • guest

    So is the goal to only collect and present the “employed at graduation” data? Since February is nine months after May graduation, will schools be able to gather, organize and have ready the “@ 9 months” data to meet your requested deadline?

    I have not read the entire paper, only parts, so I don’t know if this is an issue you have already addressed.

  • LST Admin

    Thanks for your reply. As far as we know, the “due date” should not be a problem because the timeline is consistent with NALP. If you check out http://www.nalp.org/assets/1296_submitform08.pdf you can see that NALP only gives schools 5 days after the collection period ends.

  • guest

    I looked at the employment stats for Vanderbilt’s class of 2007 that you all posted and found that they included my “job” but they left the salary blank. This is interesting. I was unfortunate enough to NOT obtain full time employment upon graduation, only a summer law clerkship at a general counsel’s office, where I worked for $10/hr. Instead of listing this, Vandy left that space blank on the salary sheet. This is one of their tactics to raise the average salary of graduates and pretend that there is high percentage of graduates that are employed. A $10/hr summer job with $114k in student loans does NOT qualify as full-time employment!

  • LST Admin

    Thanks for your note. However, it should be clarified that Vanderbilt did not provide the salary data to prospective students other than the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of private practice. Instead, we filled in the salary data from public information (mostly NALPdirectory.com). I’m sorry we’ve caused any confusion.

  • guest

    No problem LST. I’m not sure that NALP is an accurate source though. Graduating students had an exit sheet of sorts that we completed upon graduation or shortly before graduation. I’m just wondering if this information was supplied to you all because it would be the source of more accurate stats on salary or “wages” for those people like myself unfortunate enough to get paid by the hour.

  • guest

    #1 here. That schools indeed have this information ready for NALP in February is interesting to me, because when I contacted my school in May 2010 asking for the class of 2009 data, they told me it was still incomplete (although they did provide what they had so far).

  • LST Admin

    @5: I think there is something to be said for your concern, but I would caution overemphasizing certain outcomes. Much of the available job information overemphasizes certain portions of the class, and the overemphasis applies both to the very best outcomes and the outcomes that cause graduates to become disgruntled with their school and their profession.

    NALP’s salary data for large firms is about as good as we can expect from an independent source. But – as you imply – it is not a total replacement for the post-graduation summaries graduates fill out. In this vein, we hope the Salary List part of our standard can help balance the available information so that a given school’s granulation is apparent while providing just respect to those at the top, middle, and bottom of the class.

  • LST Admin

    @1: That is interesting to me too. I am curious as to why that is the case. Shoot me an email at lawschooltransparency@gmail.com – I would like to hear more about this story. Perhaps looking at the data can illuminate why they told you it was incomplete. There could have been a miscommunication, or even just old-fashioned hedging.

  • guest

    #1 here again. After rereading the email correspondence, it indeed just sounds like “old-fashioned hedging.” They essentially said that the numbers were not complete because they had yet to be submitted to the ABA. I had entirely forgotten about this part of the email correspondence.

  • guest

    I heard from Judge Kennedy that Patrick was none too optimistic with respect to the new BelmonTTT Law $chool. Glad to hear you guys keep fighting the good fight.