American Bar Association / ABA, Law Schools

Stat Of The Week: Law School Self-Reported Data Batting .500

The first independent audit of law schools' ten-months-after-graduation employment surveys didn't go so great.

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stat imageSince 2012, the ABA has required law schools to conduct annual ten-months-after-graduation employment surveys. This year, for the first time, these surveys were audited by an independent firm. Ten law schools were randomly selected for a “Random School Review” in order to assess whether they “both accurately reported employment results and provided credible documentary support of what they have reported.”

To help everyone understand the nuances and implications of the auditor’s findings, we commissioned this expensive infographic:

audit scan 1

Sigh. Fully one-half of the audited schools “presented the auditors with deficient employment files in sufficient number to violate the requirements set forth by the ABA, and four of these five schools were significantly or flagrantly noncompliant.”

Bonus fun fact: Since obviously it is impossible to get every law grad to respond to a written survey, schools are allowed, per the ABA’s Employment Data Protocol, to try and call, email, or otherwise stalk the non-responsive grads. Failing that, the schools are allowed to basically guess, based on whatever publicly available information they can find, including “social media sites.” So let’s look for a spike in #JDAdvantage #blessed tweets from Uber drivers.

(Gavel bang: Outside the Law School Scam)

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Brian Dalton is the director of research for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with any questions or comments.

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