Job Searches, Law Schools

Deceptive Statistics 101, Courtesy Of A Law Professor And The New York Times

It’s not enticing to make your future debt payment the most certain thing about your future.

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The New York Times published an irresponsible column yesterday by Steven Solomon, a law professor at Berkeley. Solomon starts off on the right foot: he acknowledges that the recent drop in law school applications “is partly a problem of the schools’ own making” because schools previously “fudged the numbers on graduates’ employment.”

But then Solomon fudges the numbers in precisely the way that schools must avoid. If a law school talked about employment as Solomon does, it would violate the ABA’s accreditation standards — and risk a hefty fine. Instead, Solomon manages to publish his misleading statements in the paper of record. Let’s look at the tricks that Solomon pulls:

  • Deceptive salary information. Solomon uses Georgetown’s class as an example. He celebrates “a median starting salary of $160,000” for the private sector, but neglects to tell us the response rate. All told, about 40% of the class made that much or close to it. Beyond that 40%, just a small percentage of the class made six figures. The drop-off is quick and, if you’re in a lot of debt, painful. (I don’t, by the way, have anything against Georgetown; it’s Solomon who features the school’s employment statistics throughout his column. Georgetown itself is quite transparent and Solomon could have easily reported the correct figures. Doing so would not have allowed him to make his point, however.)
  • Counting school-funded jobs without comment. Georgetown paid for jobs for 83 of its 2013 graduates — that’s 13% of the class. More than 75% received a stipend of just $1,000 per month, earnings that put them barely above the poverty line in 2014 ($11,670 for an individual). Solomon appears to believe that “things are returning to the years before the financial crisis” when 1 in 8 graduates at this top law school are so desperate that they’re willing to accept poverty wages.
  • Including part-time, short-term, and non-professional jobs in an overall percentage of “employed” graduates — again, without disclosing that fact. Once we exclude those jobs, along with the school-funded ones, Georgetown’s employment rate falls to 79%.

How 2009.

Now, don’t think that Georgetown’s graduates are doing worse than the national average. Solomon cites a national employment rate of 86.4%, which he admits is “not . . . all that rosy.” If he were to use more meaningful numbers, he’d have an even tougher time showing there’s “vigorous life in the legal market.” Just 67.1% of graduates in 2013 obtained long-term, full-time J.D. required or advantaged jobs (including school-funded jobs).

Solomon buttresses his slanted numbers with citations to two papers by Frank McIntyre and Michael Simkovic, who outright deny that the legal industry is undergoing structural change. Those professors calculate that people who graduated from law school before 2009 earned significantly more over their lifetimes than people from that era who entered the workforce with just a college degree. What about more recent graduates? Or talented people who chose to pursue graduate programs in business, medicine, engineering, or computer science? McIntyre and Simkovic don’t know and don’t care; they’re convinced that the value of a law degree as immutable as the laws of nature.

Solomon at least admits that there are changes under way in the legal market. He also notes in passing that these disruptions “are likely to hit students at lower-tier schools harder than those graduating from the top schools.” Indeed. At Wayne State University, where Solomon began his academic career, just one member of the Class of 2013 secured a job in a firm employing more than 500 lawyers. More than a quarter of the class worked for very small firms, which Solomon admits are “hurting,” or went immediately into solo practice, which Solomon acknowledges “will become more difficult.”

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Even Georgetown’s relatively prosperous graduates may not feel so lucky when they try to pay off their loans. Almost two-thirds (63%) of Georgetown students pay full tuition. A student who enters Georgetown this fall and debt-finances the full cost of attendance will owe over $300,000 when she enters repayment. Even if she receives a half tuition scholarship, she will still owe over $200,000.

These jaw-dropping debt payments are difficult to manage, even for the minority of the Georgetown class earning $160,000. Note, too, that these Biglaw salaries haven’t changed since 2007; after adjusting for inflation they’ve declined 12%. If only we could say the same about law school tuition.

Solomon took us back to the pre-transparency era, when schools were not accountable to the truth. Reality is not so inviting, but that is what the applicant market is reacting to. And who can blame them? It’s not enticing to make your future debt payment the most certain thing about your future.

Kyle McEntee is the executive director of Law School Transparency, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to make entry to the legal profession more transparent, affordable, and fair. LST publishes the LST Reports and produces I Am The Law, a podcast about law jobs.

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