[T]he American Bar Association’s Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar is requiring law schools to provide more detailed job and salary information on the questionnaire they provide to the ABA. The expanded information to be required is in the areas of employment status, employer type and employer location.
Two recent Vanderbilt law School graduates, Patrick Lynch and Kyle McEntee, started Law School Transparency in 2010 to obtain more accurate job information for prospective law students. The problem, they say, isn’t with falsified data, it’s with misleading information.
Regarding job status, information on the type of job obtained will include whether the job requires bar passage, is a job for which a law degree is preferred or just what type of job the graduate is in. More specific unemployment status will also be included as well as information regarding jobs funded by the law school. Information on where graduates find the most work will be included, as well as state-specific salary information.
The expanded information from the questionnaires will be published in the ABA’s LSAC Guide in June 2012.
Law students, like all consumers, deserve transparency and accuracy from providers of services. Educators, including law schools, should have a special duty to provide accurate information to their consumers/students. I applaud the American Bar Association for working towards greater accuracy in this area.
