Consumer Law

The US News Rankings, Employment Statistics, and Consumer Protection

By Jeff Sovern

by Jeff Sovern

In ranking law schools, US News takes into account the percentage of students who are employed at graduation and nine months after graduation. This has led to reports that are interesting, to say the least.  For example, Brian Leiter has pointed out that Duke is the only law school to have reported 100% employment at graduation and and one of only five to report 100% nine months later.  Among other oddities, he also points out that "George Mason University reported 95.9% of its graduates employed at graduation, more than Georgetown and George Washington Universities." 

These reports may well be true. The numbers can be manipulated. For example, a law school may create the illusion of greater employment by hiring its own alums for the first nine months after graduation.  Perhaps more significantly, as far as I can tell, the numbers measure simply employment, and are not limited to jobs for which a JD is required or desirable.  Unless I am mistaken (possible, since I am going just from the methodology description at US News's website), jobs at Starbucks count the same as clerkships.  But of course, not many people go to law school with the hope of working at Starbuck's.  Similarly, probably few go with the hope of working at the law school for nine months. 

So here comes the consumer protection angle: US News should limit the jobs it counts in two ways: first, it should exclude jobs at the law school itself (either directly or indirectly to prevent imaginative ways around that restriction), and second, it should limit the jobs that count to those for which a JD is required or desirable.  That way, the rankings will reflect more accurately the value the law school adds to students' employment prospects as of graduation and nine months afterwards and eliminate an avenue for manipulating the figures.  To be sure, some people graduate from a law school and are perfectly happy with a non-law job, but probably few go into law school with that expectation, and perhaps the numbers of such students are similar across law schools (if that is a real issue, perhaps US News could include a separate list of those numbers, as it does for diversity, for example, or include them in the rankings with a lower weighting).

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on April 27, 2010 (boomark / email).