New Law School Rankings: Employment Data Cleaned Of School Funded Jobs

23

I've taken the same data that Gary Rosin used in this post (which ranked schools by percentage employed in full-time, long-term jobs requiring a JD) and cleaned the list…by excluding all such positions that were funded by the law school.  

One concern I have about Gary's list – similar to concerns about US News rankings – is that once you eliminate the top schools, an ordinal ranking suggests large distinctions between schools with small acutal differences.  Thus, the gap in Gary's list from the #1 school (Penn) to the #31 school (Georgia) is 25 percentage points; Penn placed 94.4% of its students and Georgia placed 69.4%.  But the gap between Georgia and the school 30 places down the list – #61 FIU (which placed 63.6 of its students) – was only 5.8 percentage points.  A law school candidate might be agnostic as between Georgia and FIU, based on placement, but not between Penn and Georgia.  

I am going to publish my list from number 1 to 197, but a savvy reader would be well advised to consider schools in clusters.  For example, this time using my list, schools 1 to 6 place over 85% of their grads in legit L/T, F/T JD required jobs.  Call that cluster 1.  Schools 7-19 place over 75%.  Schools 20-52 place over 65%.  Schools 53-98 place over 55%.  And so on.

Even this clustering obscures important facts for anyone comparing law schools, the primary one of which is this: outside of a few elite schools, most grads with jobs are working somewhere geographically close to their law school.  So a graduate of #34 Campbell University has a comparatively good shot at a job; it's probably going to be in North Carolina.  Ditto #28 South Texas College of Law.  And if your goal is Big Law, particularly in $160K-ville, you'd best take that #17 Northwestern offer (even if you did get into #16 LSU or #15 West Virginia.)  I do love Alabama – after all, it was my first academic home – but if I had an offer from #14 Yale and #13 Alabama…well, you know where this is going.

And a close reader might consider whether a particular school claims a very high number of graduates going into solo practice.  While solos are treated the same as associates at Wilmer Hale, for statitstical purpose, the average solo is probably going to earn less during her first few years than she would have made in a non-JD job.  You can go here and and sort through all sorts of these issues. 

Are there any notable distinctions between my list and Gary's?  That is, did some schools hire a big chunk of their grads in long-term, full-time JD required positions?  A few.  Virginia falls from #2 to #11  - or almost 15 percentage points.  A bunch of schools – Chicago, NYU, Columbia, and others – showed distinctly weaker placement numbers, though they remained quite strong, comparatively.  And then there was George Washington which fell from 14 to 76 or from 81% employed to 60.35%.  This is an admirable form of back-end financial aid for unemployed grads, and phenomenally expensive, but it does confound the rankings a bit.

My chart is after the jump.  If you want to compare Gary's ranking which includes law school funded jobs, it's here. 

 

Class of 2012 ABA Employment Report

 

 

JD Required, FT, LT Minus Law School Funded

 

Rank

School Name 

Rate

1

PENNSYLVANIA, UNIVERSITY OF

91.85%

2

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

88.95%

3

CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF

86.98%

4

CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, UNIVERSITY OF

85.90%

5

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

85.29%

6

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

85.26%

7

DUKE UNIVERSITY

84.89%

8

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

84.58%

9

CALIFORNIA-IRVINE, UNIVERSITY OF

83.93%

10

MICHIGAN, UNIVERSITY OF

81.70%

11

VIRGINIA, UNIVERSITY OF

79.67%

12

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

79.05%

13

ALABAMA, UNIVERSITY OF

77.33%

14

YALE UNIVERSITY

77.03%

15

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

76.76%

16

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

76.68%

17

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

75.93%

18

TEXAS AT AUSTIN, UNIVERSITY OF

75.34%

19

SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY

75.09%

20

KENTUCKY, UNIVERSITY OF

74.15%

21

MERCER UNIVERSITY

72.54%

22

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

71.43%

23

SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW

71.35%

23

IOWA, UNIVERSITY OF

71.35%

25

ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE, UNIVERSITY OF

70.45%

26

SOUTH CAROLINA, UNIVERSITY OF

70.35%

27

CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES, UNIVERSITY OF

69.97%

28

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF

69.68%

29

GEORGIA, UNIVERSITY OF

69.43%

30

MISSOURI-COLUMBIA, UNIVERSITY OF

68.03%

31

WASHINGTON, UNIVERSITY OF

67.96%

32

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY

67.95%

33

NORTH DAKOTA, UNIVERSITY OF

67.78%

34

CAMPBELL UNIVERSITY

67.59%

35

NORTH CAROLINA, UNIVERSITY OF

67.58%

36

NEW MEXICO, UNIVERSITY OF

67.23%

37

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

67.07%

38

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

67.00%

39

LOUISVILLE, UNIVERSITY OF

66.93%

40

EMORY UNIVERSITY

66.92%

41

ST. MARY'S UNIVERSITY

66.79%

42

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

66.77%

43

OKLAHOMA, UNIVERSITY OF

66.49%

44

ARIZONA, UNIVERSITY OF

66.44%

45

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

66.43%

46

MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY, UNIVERSITY OF

66.01%

47

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

65.83%

48

SETON HALL UNIVERSITY

65.81%

49

NEBRASKA, UNIVERSITY OF

65.63%

50

BOSTON COLLEGE

65.38%

51

NOTRE DAME, UNIVERSITY OF

65.31%

52

TENNESSEE, UNIVERSITY OF

65.16%

53

MINNESOTA, UNIVERSITY OF

64.35%

54

TULSA, UNIVERSITY OF

64.18%

55

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

64.10%

56

WASHBURN UNIVERSITY

63.46%

57

UTAH, UNIVERSITY OF

63.43%

58

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

63.27%

59

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

63.21%

60

SOUTH DAKOTA, UNIVERSITY OF

63.16%

61

HOUSTON, UNIVERSITY OF

62.98%

62

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-CAMDEN

62.96%

63

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

62.64%

64

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

62.55%

65

TULANE UNIVERSITY

62.45%

66

WISCONSIN, UNIVERSITY OF

61.97%

67

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL

61.96%

68

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

61.40%

69

KANSAS, UNIVERSITY OF

61.04%

70

MONTANA, UNIVERSITY OF

60.98%

71

CALIFORNIA-DAVIS, UNIVERSITY OF

60.89%

72

ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY

60.87%

72

NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIVERSITY OF

60.87%

72

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA – LAS VEGAS

60.87%

75

ARKANSAS, LITTLE ROCK, UNIVERSITY OF

60.43%

76

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

60.35%

77

MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE

59.76%

78

SAMFORD UNIVERSITY

59.64%

79

STETSON UNIVERSITY

59.53%

80

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

59.46%

81

MISSISSIPPI, UNIVERSITY OF

59.39%

82

OHIO NORTHERN UNIVERSITY

59.38%

83

ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

59.22%

84

MIAMI, UNIVERSITY OF

58.79%

85

PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

58.25%

86

ILLINOIS, UNIVERSITY OF

58.22%

87

CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY

57.58%

88

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY

57.34%

89

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

57.06%

90

RICHMOND, UNIVERSITY OF

56.76%

90

FLORIDA, UNIVERSITY OF

56.76%

92

IDAHO, UNIVERSITY OF

56.73%

93

MEMPHIS, UNIVERSITY OF

56.72%

94

WILLIAM AND MARY SCHOOL OF LAW

56.37%

95

DRAKE UNIVERSITY

56.12%

96

WYOMING, UNIVERSITY OF

56.00%

97

LEWIS AND CLARK COLLEGE

55.98%

98

TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

55.61%

99

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

54.76%

100

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY-CHICAGO

54.61%

101

INDIANA UNIVERSITY MAURER SCHOOL OF LAW

54.41%

102

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-NEWARK

54.32%

103

CONNECTICUT, UNIVERSITY OF

54.27%

104

YESHIVA UNIVERSITY

54.01%

105

CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

53.90%

106

CHARLESTON SCHOOL OF LAW

53.71%

107

OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY

53.62%

108

CINCINNATI, UNIVERSITY OF

53.57%

109

TEXAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

53.14%

110

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY

53.07%

111

BALTIMORE, UNIVERSITY OF

53.03%

112

MARYLAND, UNIVERSITY OF

52.98%

113

HAWAII, UNIVERSITY OF

52.83%

114

DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY

52.74%

115

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY-CARBONDALE

52.34%

116

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO

52.15%

117

WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY

52.00%

118

TOLEDO, UNIVERSITY OF

51.70%

119

ALBANY LAW SCHOOL

51.50%

120

WILLIAM MITCHELL COLLEGE OF LAW

51.49%

121

COLORADO, UNIVERSITY OF

51.43%

122

ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY

51.38%

123

PITTSBURGH, UNIVERSITY OF

51.35%

124

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

51.24%

125

REGENT UNIVERSITY

51.18%

126

VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY

51.17%

127

DAYTON, UNIVERSITY OF

51.15%

128

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

51.11%

129

ELON UNIVERSITY

50.89%

130

INDIANA UNIVERSITY – INDIANAPOLIS

50.85%

131

TOURO COLLEGE

50.82%

132

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY

50.60%

133

FAULKNER UNIVERSITY

50.00%

134

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

49.55%

135

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY

49.23%

136

DENVER, UNIVERSITY OF

49.21%

137

ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY

49.11%

138

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY

48.86%

139

BROOKLYN LAW SCHOOL

48.71%

140

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY-NEW ORLEANS

48.56%

141

BARRY UNIVERSITY

48.50%

142

DREXEL UNIVERSITY

48.39%

143

CAPITAL UNIVERSITY

48.22%

144

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

47.68%

145

SAN DIEGO, UNIVERSITY OF

47.09%

146

SEATTLE UNIVERSITY

47.06%

147

AKRON, UNIVERSITY OF

46.76%

148

WIDENER UNIVERSITY-HARRISBURG

46.72%

149

PACE UNIVERSITY

46.52%

150

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

46.51%

151

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY

46.48%

152

CALIFORNIA-HASTINGS, UNIVERSITY OF

46.28%

153

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

45.95%

154

VERMONT LAW SCHOOL

45.15%

155

UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS

44.10%

156

NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY

43.83%

156

SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL

43.83%

158

CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW

43.82%

159

PHOENIX SCHOOL OF LAW

43.65%

160

ATLANTA'S JOHN MARSHALL LAW SHOOL

43.50%

161

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

43.26%

162

SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

43.21%

163

HAMLINE UNIVERSITY

42.63%

164

SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY

42.62%

165

MAINE, UNIVERSITY OF

42.53%

166

JOHN MARSHALL LAW SCHOOL

42.03%

167

VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY

41.86%

168

OREGON, UNIVERSITY OF

41.61%

169

MCGEORGE SCHOOL OF LAW

41.50%

170

QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY

41.06%

171

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

40.89%

172

LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY-LOS ANGELES

40.88%

173

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

40.49%

174

ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY

40.28%

175

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY

39.85%

176

NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL

39.60%

177

WIDENER UNIVERSITY

38.66%

178

APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF LAW

38.46%

179

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

38.44%

180

FLORIDA A&M

38.13%

181

CHARLOTTE SCHOOL OF LAW

37.61%

182

CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY

36.52%

183

NEW ENGLAND LAW | BOSTON

36.28%

184

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

36.18%

185

FLORIDA COASTAL

35.88%

186

UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE

35.58%

187

AVE MARIA

35.54%

188

WHITTIER COLLEGE

34.12%

189

WESTERN NEW ENGLAND UNIVERSITY

33.75%

190

WESTERN STATE

32.53%

191

DETROIT MERCY, UNIVERSITY OF

29.72%

192

THOMAS JEFFERSON SCHOOL OF LAW

28.85%

193

THOMAS M. COOLEY LAW SCHOOL

28.82%

194

NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY

26.06%

195

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

25.81%

196

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS DARTMOUTH

22.73%

197

SAN FRANCISCO, UNIVERSITY OF

22.62%

198

GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY

21.51%

199

PUERTO RICO, UNIVERSITY OF

13.86%

200

PONTIFICAL CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF P.R.

10.60%

201

INTER AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO

2.14%

 

 Updated to reflect that schools with tied scores should have identical ranking positions.

23 Comments

  1. Kedd
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    It is also noteworthy that William and Mary drops from #22 to #94 when school funded jobs are excluded. The advertise for one year volunteer jobs on their website and say there will be a school stipend. The have 41 school funded jobs in the last year, and top the list of public interest jobs. It does not say how much the school stipend is, but these volunteer jobs are counted as full time, long term jobs, and thus count fully in US News. I wonder how many people will choose the school because of its public interest placement is allegedly first in the nation? They have not published salary stats for their class of 2012 yet — I wonder what the salary stats will show for their public interest jobs? I imagine their median salary for these jobs will be whatever the school stipend is.

  2. J
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    Why should we not count school-funded jobs as "real" jobs? If an incoming student has a 94% chance of getting a full-time job, but 17% of the time that job will be funded by the school, is that student's expected income any lower?

    The answer might be that it is, but that's not because the person may have a school-funded job after graduation. Instead, it's because school-funded jobs (in some cases) tend to be low-paying or quasi-volunteer gigs, as Kedd notes in the comment above.

    I graduated a couple of years ago from a school in Dan's "second cluster," and I chose to take a school-funded fellowship to do public interest work. I'm being paid about as much as my classmates who are employed directly by an NGO or the government. I'd argue my job should count just as much for purposes of employment stats as my classmates' nonprofit jobs. On the other hand, I have some classmates who are "employed" by private firms or nonprofits or Starbucks and are making a fraction of what I'm making, or they're not really working full time, or the job isn't guaranteed to last past next week. Those are the jobs we should be discounting, not mine. Maybe we don't have the data to make that distinction, but either way the distinction Dan's making in this post doesn't quite hit the mark.

  3. Kedd
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    J — You make a good point, but I suspect your type of job may be different. You indicated that you graduated a couple of years ago and are still working in a school-funded fellowship, and it is a job you chose. Does the school put a limit on how long the fellowship lasts?

    In W&M's case, the fellowship stipends are specifically advertised as ending after one year [magically, the dividing line between "long term" and "short term" for U.S. News, ABA and LST] and are "giving J.D. graduates the chance to broaden their skills and knowledge of a practice area while they continue to seek permanent employment."

    http://law.wm.edu/careerservices/employers/pgfemployerform/index.php

    So it sounds like no one is expecting any of these jobs themselves to turn into anything permanent, and may never result in the actual "employer" paying one dime to the worker. I wonder if the stipend would be at least minimum wage?

  4. BoredJD
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    J – The distinction is important because schools with a high number of school funded jobs are likely paying EXTREMELY low salaries, not fellowship salaries. E.g. the GW P2P program that employed 1/5 of the class and paid $15/hr capped at 35 hours per week (with the Dean considering cutting it to $10/hr). That's not "about as much as my classmates who are employed directly by an NGO or the government" but closer to "about as much as my classmates who are employed directly by Starbucks or Walmart."

    Schools are of course welcome to present salary data to show that their school funded jobs are actually decent paying alternatives to direct funded PI/gov't. But given the recent behavior of schools and the reticence of the ABA to require detailed salary reporting (for obvious reasons), the burden is on the schools to prove otherwise.

  5. AndyK
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    With public data as to the (1) size of the legal market in a locale, (2) actual employment numbers, and (3) percent of law graduates with jobs disaggregated by market, someone now has all the data to make a reasonable estimation of the value of a given law degree by market.

    So, for example, Penn is at the top of this list, and having lived in Philly, I know that a Penn Law degree will win over a comparable top-10 degree most of the time. Whereas, in NYC, a Columbia or NYU degree doesn't have that automatic regional "bump." And now we are getting close to the ability to find out exactly what the value-add of a school in a given market is.

    My intuition is that higher or lower rankings in job placement is marginally affected by putting up regional walls around cities, and some schools have a better "national" brand at the expense of overall employment. Penn, I suspect based on my anecdotal experience, has a sort of "United States of Philadelphia" strategy so that their graduates can be absorbed by that city. Similarly the University of Oklahoma (I was just there this week) has a lock on the OKC market. On the other hand, Yale has a national brand but no proprietary market of any size.

    All this is, I think, fairly obvious, but the interesting point to me is that we can probably now calculate it, and identify schools and markets that give parochial bumps. I suspect NYC and DC, and to a lesser extent LA, are relatively neutral markets that give less of a "bump" to regional schools than Chicago, Atlanta, or Philadelphia. But this is pure speculation and I look forward to more number crunching!

  6. J
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    Kedd — Sorry for the verb-tense confusion. I was talking about my first job out of school. The fellowship lasted a year, and there was a not-guaranteed one-year extension at a slightly reduced rate. But that rate was still on the same order of magnitude as actual salaries. More importantly, though, by my estimate about half of these fellowship jobs turn into full-time, employer-funded work. (Though that's less likely when the employer is the government or a foreign NGO.)

    These fellowships are obviously inferior to full-time jobs, but I think the law school's purpose matters here. W&M seems to be offering a bit of money to tide people over. My school offers full-pay fellowships to support work for an organization that otherwise couldn't afford to hire, and it does so with the hope that the fellowship job turns into a real one. For that reason, the fellowships are targeted toward a certain type of organization, the salary is enough to support a modest lifestyle, and there is support for students and orgs who want to transition the fellow to full-time employment at the end of the fellowship term.

    Not sure where all of this gets us, other than to say that not all school-funded employment is created equal, and prospective students should be aware of that fact (and the underlying data, some of which you and BoredJD have helpfully provided).

  7. Jeffrey Harrison
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    I am wondering how graduates are counted who pursue another advanced degree — LLM, or otherwise. Are the deemed to be unemployed? If so the figures could be a bit off.

  8. Greg Sergienko
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    I'm wondering if these results are affected by judicial clerkships. At least as some schools are reporting them, many of them do not satisfy the long-term requirement because they're less than a year. Students in federal clerkships and appellate state clerkships will have little trouble moving into long-term jobs when their clerkships are done.

  9. Anon
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    According to the ABA, judicial clerkships of all kinds (federal, state local, etc.) are considered long-term employment if they are for a period of a year of more. Judicial clerkships are considered bar passage-required employment.

  10. Anon
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    Most judicial clerkships, by the way, are for a period of a year or more, and are therefore included in calculations of "long-term, full-time, bar passage-required employment."

  11. Perplexed
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    Could someone articulate the objection to law schools devoting resources to obtaining JD-required, full time, public interest jobs (e.g., local prosecutor, public defender positions) for otherwise unemployed grads? Aren't graduates who take such positions better off (in terms of gaining legal experience, making connections, and applying to other positions) than unemployed graduates of other schools? And shouldn't schools that devote resources to directly helping students get jobs in a difficult economy benefit relative to peer schools who instead devote their resources to glossy brochures, fancy buildings, faculty perks, university cross subsidies . . . .

  12. Midwest 1L
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    AndyK – I would be very interested in this type of data or analysis.

    I left Boston and decided to not enroll in one of the mid-ranked law schools that feed into the city, although Harvard grads and maybe BC grads have more of a national reach. Boston alone has 7 law schools. I think this is an important factor for students to consider when determining what schools in which cities to enroll in. The Boston market is simply saturated with recent grads from both Boston area law schools, but also elite East Coast /Mid Atlantic schools.

    That's why I left Boston, although I miss it, for a school in the Midwest that provided a scholarship and has better employment prospects than a higher ranked Boston school.

  13. Kedd
    Reply
    April 10, 2013,

    Perplexed — No objection to schools doing that to help out their grads, just an objection to how such things are counted. It might help them get a full time, JD required job in year 2 after they graduate. It might not. It just should not be counted as a year 1 full time, JD required job (i.e., a job 9 months out), which is what the employment stats are supposedly counting. Other grads listed as unemployed in year 1 might also get a job in year 2, yet they are listed as unemployed for the purpose of the stats.

    These are the sort of loopholes which will result or have resulted in schools like W&M or GWU moving up in the rankings, then everyone else will follow suit in ensuing years, and eventually you get everyone reporting close to 100% employment again, making the stats meaningless.

  14. Perplexed
    Reply
    April 11, 2013,

    That seems like a pretty small and speculative complaint. Since this actually helps students get real (public interest) JD jobs, I guess I don't mind if it also shows up in the "rankings."

  15. Anon
    Reply
    April 11, 2013,

    Perplexed–

    First, you're assuming that those law school programs are actually effective, and, in my admittedly limited and anecdotal experience, they may well not be. They seem to be more effective, however, in obscuring true employment figures.

    But second, it's not really a practice that should be encouraged. The programs don't increase the total number of public interest jobs available to law students; to the extent they were effective, they would merely result in a transfer of employment between law schools. And law schools principally obtain their funding through tuition. So, ultimately, and to the extent they are effective, those programs are an inefficient transfer of employment between law schools, funded by law students. At a time when law school tuition has risen to unconscionable levels, encouraging a competition between law schools to expand their statistics-obscuring programs seems like a bad idea.

  16. Kedd
    Reply
    April 11, 2013,

    Anon at 9:53 — I do not have any data on this, but as these types of programs become prolific — it might have the effect of reducing the number of real paid positions with government agencies and public interest. Imagine a budget conscious local prosecutor's office which might have hired young grads in the past saying — hey, this is free to me and my budget if I keep getting a new grad with a small school stipend every year.

  17. Kedd
    Reply
    April 11, 2013,

    I found the amount of the W&M Stipend: $11/hr — i.e., $385 a week, $20,200 total if they stay the whole year:

    law.wm.edu/careerservices/documents/pgfemployersummary.pdf

    So it exceeds minimum wage, but just barely.

  18. J
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    Anon at 9:53 — "The programs don't increase the total number of public interest jobs available to law students; to the extent they were effective, they would merely result in a transfer of employment between law schools."

    Yet again, the point is that this list/discussion lumps totally disparate practices together: No doubt this is true in some cases. Seems like Kedd's scenario could happen with a local prosecutor or even a national nonprofit. But it's also true that some school-funded public interest fellowships create jobs where there would be none — recipients often work as a "special assistant" to a high-ranking government official, nonprofit leader, etc. That's a job that wouldn't exist if the grad weren't free labor for that office.

    Also (tongue semi-firmly in cheek): If we shouldn't encourage practices that merely shift jobs from one school to another, then what to make of the frequent outcries against lazy/unhelpful career services offices? Shouldn't we just get rid of those offices altogether? They're certainly not job creators. Nor are the skills courses people seem to be advocating these days. If UNC adds skills courses to get its students jobs, that's just taking jobs away from Vanderbilt students who would get the jobs otherwise, no?

  19. Anon
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    Being a "special assistant" or a similar position, however, is not creating a real, long-term position. Instead, it's creating a year-long internship that conveniently disguises the fact that the students in those internships were unable to obtain real employment. At the end of the internships, no real employment necessarily results, although no one at that point cares (except, of course, the law school graduate), since it no longer affects employment statistics.

    Classes are a cost inherent to attending law school, and so is having someone to guide students in their career search. I'm not saying transfer of employment between law schools is bad, I'm saying transfer of employment between law schools funded by yet another cost to law students is bad. Additional skills classes or careers services people are also not incentivized by the ability to directly manipulate their employment statistics.

  20. BoredJD
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    I'd absolutely support cutting career services offices to the bone. Whenever I hear that a law school is responding to the jobs crisis by beefing up their career services office I cringe. Other than event planning for OCI (which isn't even that large at most schools) and reading typos on resumes every other facet of their job could be handled by the alumni office.

    Obviously you need some classes, but then again, I'd prefer a law school with no "skills classes" that cost 15K per year to one with an entire slate of "skills classes" that was 50K per year. The employment benefit is going to be marginal.

  21. Kevin Outterson
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    The ABA, NALP and USNews should NOT count these funded programs as LT FT JD jobs.

    It's fine to offer these fellowships – these experiences might well lead to jobs — but we should not conflate these fellowships to real LT FT JD jobs.

    GW and W&M were gaming the system to offer such low dollar fellowships to such a large percentage of their classes.

  22. Anon
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    As the Anon from above, I agree that some of those fellowships may be OK to offer. However, every fellowship funded by a law school represents money that could be otherwise committed to reducing tuition, or some other purpose, and therefore the fellowships should only be offered when they present a reasonably strong likelihood of permanent employment, and not because they allow law schools to game the employment statistics system. However, I suspect that if law school-funded employment were expressly excluded from employment statistics most of those fellowships would likely dry up.

  23. Anon
    Reply
    April 12, 2013,

    And, of course, as I've pointed out before, although they may be a reasonable use of a particular law student's tuition at a particular school if they offer a very strong chance of employment, they should not be regarded as a good thing for law students in general, because they are merely an exchange of employment between law schools rather than a means of creating true employment. Including them in employment statistics merely incentivizes law schools to engage in statistics manipulation. Rather, they should be discouraged, as they present the possibility of displacing real employment with law school-subsidized interns and they result in an unnecessary additional use of law student tuition when considered over the law school population as a whole.

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