Jesse Strauss and David Anziska may be aiming at the wrong target. Strauss and Anziska’s suit against Thomas M. Cooley Law School and New York Law School on behalf of their alumni claims the schools published misleading post-graduate employment statistics. The suit was recently expanded to another 15 law schools. But shouldn’t the American Bar Association (ABA), as regulator of the nation’s law schools, be responsible for the widespread lack of transparency regarding post-graduate employment statistics?
In the suit’s wake, policy makers have focused their attention on the ABA. The ABA is considered the key, if not sole, regulator of what information law schools must publish. This conception is bolstered by the ABA’s Standards and Rules of Procedure for Law Schools, which contains a section on Basic Consumer Information that “requires a law school fairly and accurately to report basic consumer information whenever and wherever that information is reported or published.”
This past August, the ABA censured Villanova University Law School for violating those standards. After an investigation found that the school published misleading admissions data–specifically, the number of offers extended, as well as students’ GPAs and LSAT scores–the ABA decided to take action. Although the ABA deemed the transgression worthy of probation or deaccreditation, it decided not to pursue either after Villanova cut ties with various school officials responsible for the misinformation, corrected the information, and established a new reporting process to prevent future misreporting.
The ABA issued a written censure, which Villanova is required to display on its homepage for the next two years. Additionally, Villanova will now submit to and pay the costs for a compliance monitor to ensure it stays up to code for at least the next two years — and possibly longer, at the ABA’s discretion. While Villanova expects to “incur significant expenses” from the investigation and subsequent disciplinary action, some critics claim the ABA is not going far enough to deter future misreporting.
Northwestern University professor Steven J. Harper believes that the ABA must ultimately put forth more stringent restrictions on what information law schools disclose. Since 2008, Harper has been teaching “Demystifying the Myth of the American Lawyer,” a legal studies course at Northwestern University which aims to prepare undergraduates for the realities of law school and the legal market. Much of that course, as well as his blog Belly of the Beast (http://thebellyofthebeast.wordpress.com), deals with the information law schools publish in an effort to entice prospective students and bolster their position in the controversial US News and World Report annual Law School Rankings. To Harper, the ABA must act as the primary force to compel law schools to report truthful statistics. “Until everyone has to do it,” he says, “it’s a prisoner’s dilemma.” An area in which Harper thinks the ABA could make an immediate impact is requiring schools to report more detailed postgraduate employment information. “Take a school like Yale, who breaks down the placement statistics [by noting whether graduates took jobs that required bar passage or a J.D.],” he notes. “But you expect that, because they have less to hide.” Harper commends Cardozo for reporting their placement statistics in the same way–and even adding what percentage of students take positions funded by the law school.
In fact, the ABA came close to mandating this level of reporting this past year. However, according to Harper, “they couldn’t agree on the definitions” to use in their annual questionnaire to law schools. “It’s ridiculous that they couldn’t get this done.”
If the ABA does not make changes to reporting requirements on its own, Congress might force the issue. In the past year, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) have written letters to the ABA. Boxer first wrote to the ABA in March, asking it to reform information transparency for law students. “Most students…rely on this information – which may be false at worst and misleading at best – to inform their decision,” noted Boxer. The ABA responded in April, clarifying some of its data collection and law school consumer information oversight processes, and mentioning that they were examining how to improve transparency.
Grassley, in a July letter, noted that the ABA “was barely granted renewed recognition by the U.S. Department of Education’s accreditation experts” after found to be out of compliance with 17 regulations. He also questioned the ABA as to why it did not take more action against law schools misrepresenting employment information and offering bait-and-switch scholarships (extending more scholarships to 1Ls than they can renew).
The ABA responded to Grassley’s concerns in a letter issued August 29th. On the subject of law student debt, the ABA noted that “law school graduate student loan default rates are significantly lower than default rates for undergraduates,” and “[b]ecause the default rate for law school graduates has been comparatively low, establishing a benchmark has been a challenge.” Nonetheless, they plan to examine and revise their standards before next summer. Regarding bait-and-switch scholarships, the ABA plans to begin gathering information on scholarship retention rates, and is considering a proposal to require schools to publish that information.
A day after Strauss and Anziska added 15 schools to their lawsuit, Boxer sent another letter to the ABA, this time urging more immediate action. She was disappointed that the ABA had not yet required law schools to report the percentage of their graduates who work only part-time legal jobs or non-legal jobs. She also questioned the ABA on what it was doing to ensure independent oversight of law school information and merit scholarship retention.
The ABA responded two weeks later with its most comprehensive plan to date. It noted that it will now require law schools to report the employment status, type (law firm, business/industry, government, public interest, clerkship, academia), location and salary, whether that employment is short or long-term, and if that position is funded by the school itself.
Further, in the future, the ABA will require schools to note whether the positions their graduates took required a JD.