Job Searches, Law Schools

Law Schools And The Cynicism Of Disappearing Jobs

Is this evidence that law schools are engaged in a cynical attempt to game rankings, rather than caring about the careers and education of their recent graduates?

By  
on

young woman having financial problemsLaw school is a business. No matter how high-minded you feel as you dive into the rule against perpetuities, always know what really matters to the institution are the dollars you or (more likely) your student loan company are pouring into their coffers. An integral cog in keeping the money flowing is the U.S. News and World Report rankings. For good or bad, they have emerged as the dominant ranking, and many students use them to decide which school they should attend.

As a result, most schools have an incentive to “game” the USNWR rankings. One of the most salient data points is that of full-time, long-term employment requiring bar passage or where having a J.D. was an advantage. So when the real market got tough, schools started to pay for their graduates to get these full-time, long-term jobs. These school-funded jobs counted in the USNWR calculations and a wide variety of schools participated in the practice.

Internally, here at Above the Law, there was some debate as to whether the practice was beneficial to anything more than the school’s ranking. Staci called the practice “mask[ing] your graduates as being employed as lawyers with these school-funded shenanigans.” Lat, in his practical way, argued that “in the real world, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least when it’s done right.”

But then USNWR went and changed the game up, son. Instead of giving full credit to the school-funded jobs, they announced last year that they would discount the value of school-funded jobs in their ranking formula. And what do you know? There was a 52 percent drop in the number of school-funded, full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage is required. As Professor Derek T. Muller of Pepperdine University School of Law noted:

This year, the first full year of reporting after the change went into effect, law schools dramatically cut back on such positions. There were 520 law school-funded bar passage-required positions for the Class of 2012, up to 777 for the Class of 2013 and 833 for the Class of 2014. This year, however, the number plunged to 397. (For comparison, the number of law school-funded J.D.-advantage positions has been slowly declining.)

If there was ever compelling, albeit circumstantial, evidence that the practice was nothing more than a cynical attempt to game rankings rather than an earnest investment in the careers and education of their recent graduate this is it.

Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog has the breakout of the top schools to pull the rug out from under their graduates:

Sponsored

The biggest declines in school-funded full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required jobs from 2014 to 2015 were:

  1. George Washington: 72 (78 to 6)
  2. Emory: 52 (52 to 0)
  3. American: 40 (44 to 4)
  4. Michigan: 31 (33 to 2)
  5. Georgetown: 29 (64 to 35)
  6. USC: 24 (31 to 7)
  7. Vanderbilt: 22 (22 to 0)
  8. William & Mary: 19 (19 to 0)
  9. Notre Dame: 18 (22 to 4)
  10. Texas: 12 (23 to 11)
  11. Washington University: 12 (14 to 2)
  12. UC-Davis: 10 (19 to 9)
  13. UC-Berkeley: 9 (20 to 11)
  14. Cornell: 9 (11 to 2)

Delightful.

Jerry Organ of St. Thomas Law School attributes the bulk of the decline to a limited number of schools that have cut back on their programs:

The decline in law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions was manifested most particularly at several law schools. The top-25 law schools for full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded for the Class of 2014 (those schools with 10 or more law-school-funded positions classified as full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions), are responsible for the vast majority of the decline in such positions for the Class of 2015. Across these 25 law schools, the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that were law-school-funded fell from 676 to 295, a drop of 381 out of the total decline of 440 or nearly 87% of the total decline in such positions.

Organ also notes that changes to the reporting and classification of the jobs that are funded by school may be responsible for the shocking dip. He describes how some of these jobs may exist, just now deemed short-term due to changes in USNWR’s classification process:

Sponsored

Comparisons between results for the Class of 2014 and the Class of 2015 show a significant decline in the number of full-time, long-term bar-passage-required positions that are law-school-funded (from 831 to 398) and a significant increase in the number of full-time short-term bar-passage-required positions that are law school funded (from 184 to 277). Overall the number of law-school-funded bar-passage-required positions declined by one-third, from 1015 to 675, as a result of these changes.

Even under Organ’s analysis, the drop in school-funded jobs (though not as severe) should still be an eye-opener, especially when one notes that the number of full-time, long-term school-funded jobs requiring bar passage increased for the three years prior.

It certainly looks like now that law schools don’t get credit for helping their recent graduates, they’ve decided lending that helping hand just isn’t worth it.

After U.S. News Stopped Giving Full Weight To Law School-Funded Jobs, 52% Of Those Jobs Disappeared [TaxProf Blog]
LAW SCHOOL-FUNDED POSITIONS DRY UP WITH U.S. NEWS METHODOLOGY CHANGE [Excess of Democracy]
Changes in Reporting and Classifying of Law-School-Funded Positions Result in Decline in Number of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Law-School-Funded Bar-Passage-Required Positions [The Legal Whiteboard]

Earlier: Which Law School Has The Best Career Prospects? (2016)
In Defense of Law Schools Hiring Their Own Graduates

Topics

, , , , , , , , ,