Is every professional job a JD-Advantage job?: The case of Washington & Lee School of Law.

For the last four years, accredited law schools have been required to conduct a nine-month (now 10-month) after graduation employment survey. The ABA’s survey protocol requires schools to classify each employed grad’s status as one of the following: Bar Passage Required, JD Advantage, Professional Position, Non-Professional Position, or Undeterminable.

 

This post concerns the two intermediate categories. Consider the following definitions, adopted by the ABA for survey purposes:

JD Advantage: "A position in this category is one for which the employer sought an individual with a JD, and perhaps even required a JD, or for which the JD provided a demonstrable advantage in obtaining or performing the job, but itself does not require bar passage or an active law license or involve practicing law."

Employed – Professional Position. "A position in this category is one that requires professional skills or training but for which a JD is neither required nor a demonstrable advantage."

 

For the last four years, the average law school reported its JD-Advantage placement at between 12.0% and 14.5% and its "Professional Position" placement at between 4.4% and 5.0%. [1]

 

When a law school categorizes a non-law job as "JD Advantage," it is asserting that the graduate who holds that job has derived real value from his or her legal education even though he or she is not actually practicing law. By contrast, when a law school categorizes a non-law job as "Professional Position," it is acknowledging that the JD did not benefit the grad, even though he or she landed a white collar job of some sort.

 

Therefore, I appreciate when a law school places a grad in the "Professional" survey category, as opposed to JD Advantage. As noted, doing so is essentially a statement against interest on the part of the law school, and the law deems statements against interest to have special reliability. Moreover, a law school could probably get away with placing the grad in the JD Advantage category, given that JD Advantage is so broadly and loosely defined.

 

In this regard, I want to note that Washington and Lee (W&L) School of Law, over the past two years, has placed 33 grads in the category of JD Advantage and ZERO grads in the category of "Professional Position."

W&L Class of 2014:

 

 W&L Class of 2013:

 

W&L is one of only 11 schools to place zero grads in the category of Professional Position for the most recent survey.  It is one of only three schools to place zero grads in the category of Professional Position for the last two years running. The other two such schools are lofty T14s-- namely, the University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Is it likely that every single professional nonlaw job obtained by a W&L law grad who graduated in 2013 or in 2014 was JD Advantage?  Again, no other non-T14 school and only two T14 schools have made this claim.

Obviously I make no accusations, but I think that it is important for scambloggers and friends to be on the lookout for little anomalies like this because law schools in general have such a sordid history, pre-ABA survey, of publishing deceitful placement stats. We have the survey now, it is true, but the ABA's auditing regime is far from ideal. [2]  And it is also important to monitor what law schools say about JD Advantage because it is how lousy law schools try to justify the value of their JD programs in spite of poor legal placement outcomes.

-----------------------------------------------
notes:

[1]  http://educatingtomorrowslawyers.du.edu/law-jobs/calculator

[2] "Each year, the ABA will select at least 10 law schools for Random School Review.. . . This Review will begin with a Level 1 Review and then, if warranted, proceed to a Level 2 and then to a Level 3 Review. . .A Level 1 Review consists solely of a review of all Graduate Employment Files. Graduate Employment Files contain the supporting documentation for a school’s reported employment outcomes. Documentation in the files will be presumed to be complete, accurate, and not misleading in the absence of credible evidence to the contrary." [Emphasis added]

"Some really bad luck" sank Indiana Tech. Film at eleven.

A recent editorial in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette avers that opening a law school at Indiana Tech was the right thing to do, despite all the naysaying and baleful warnings from quarters like ours:


http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/editorials/Legal-tender-7122838


It was a sound decision, insists one of the leaders of the "feasibility study". Only "some really bad luck" derailed Indiana Tech's sure thing. After all, "[i]f you look at the baby-boomer generation and expected retirements, and at the expected growth in the economy, the case was there".


Except that we, who were recently likened to the Wicked Witch of the West at the LSAC's lavish conference for 500 admissions scamsters, spoke to every bit of that and more. As usual, the "feasibility study" was nothing but propaganda designed to cook up a justification for a decision that was a fait accompli. Since there never was a case for a law school at Indiana Dreck, one had to be cobbled together out of the usual scraps:

• a void to be left any minute now by the retirement of baby boomers en masse
• many openings for lawyers as a result of economic growth
• unmet demand for law schools in the region
• a shortage of lawyers to serve the impecunious

Let's consider these one by one.


The much-vaunted imminent retirement of the baby boomers hasn't shown signs of happening—and the oldest of them turned 60 a decade ago. Moreover, the departure of old lawyers won't necessarily entail openings for new ones. Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), not noted for economic doom and gloom, has stated for years that "more students are graduating from law school each year than there are jobs available". And that statement seems to militate against opening yet another goddamn law school.


Prognostication of economic growth is of course the standard chestnut for Pollyanna forecasts. But economic growth, even if real rather than imaginary, may not extend to all sectors. As the BLS has long predicted (see link above), much work that used to be done by lawyers is now going to cheaper paralegals, overseas suppliers, temporary workers, and others. Law is not the candy store that it was once upon a boomer time.


It is true that Fort Wayne had no law school. Yet, by my count, there were 31 accredited law schools (including one in Canada) within a four-hour drive during the "feasibility study". From Chicago and Michigan to Valpo and Cooley, there was something for every taste and LSAT score. True, a handful of people in the vicinity of Fort Wayne were unable or unwilling to move even a couple of hours away for law school. As Indiana Tech has discovered the hard way, however, one cannot build a viable law school on a couple of dozen local students alone.


Of course there's a vast unmet demand for free legal services, just as there's a vast unmet demand for free anything. If Indiana Tech ever becomes accredited and its graduates are able to pass the bar (neither point should be taken for granted), some valiant Indiana Tech centurions may be able to fill this void, competently or otherwise. But I doubt whether many of them spent three years and six figures of borrowed money with a view to practicing without pay.


In addition, both applications and admissions were already in decline when this "feasibility study" was concoc—er, conducted, and it was well known that large numbers of graduates even of established schools, to say nothing of unaccredited upstarts, were unable to find relevant jobs.


In short, the veriest simpleton could have seen that this would-be bottom-grade law school was headed for the rocks. The founders knew of the criticisms but proceeded anyway. And now they blame "bad luck" for their wholly predictable calamity.


The author also opines that "[t]he departure of the law school’s founding dean inevitably hindered the accreditation process". This refers to Peter Alexander, who suddenly (what was the euphemism?) resigned less than a year after the school opened. Reportedly he resigned on account of "the achievement of the goals he had established for the law school to that point in time and a desire to pursue other employment opportunities". So strong was the desire to leave that he gave up not only the deanship but also his tenured post as professor, all without a minute's notice. His profile on LinkedIn suggests that today, more than a year after his "resignation", he is marginally self-employed if not downright unemployed.


Now, I don't know what goes on in Alexander's mind (if I may so flatter him), but this narrative strains credibility. First, I find it hard to believe that he achieved any goals that he had established. Indiana Tech Law Skule 'n' Biker Bar completely missed his stated goal of starting off as third out of Indiana's five law schools in LSAT and undergraduate GPA: the first class's median LSAT score of 146 (percentile 29.5) fell ten points below his proclaimed target (percentile 67.4). Upon his departure, Indiana Tech was the poster boy of arrogance, greed, self-delusion, and exploitation (particularly racial exploitation). It had ousted Cooley as the leading laughing-stock. Enrollment was a third of the pie-in-the-sky forecast. Red ink gushed forth in torrents, to the point that in less than a year the school would be forced to raffle off a "scholarship" in the hope of trapping one more gullible student-loan conduit. Only a sadist could feel gratified and accomplished with that track record.


Second, he would not lightly throw away two sinecures in a dismal hackademic job market unless he had something better lined up. A genuine resignation, unmotivated by pressure, would ordinarily include a bit of notice—two weeks at the minimum, and probably several months for a dean and tenured professor; yet he was gone before the ink was dry on the announcement, and the institution immediately scrubbed from its Web site every mention of him. I therefore believe that he nominally resigned after being—how can I put this diplomatically?—invited to consider that option.


If that be so, then the departure of the founding dean was within Indiana Tech's control. And if it would "inevitably hinder[] the accreditation process", Indiana Tech has only itself to blame for that consequence.


I don't believe that it made a significant difference in the accreditation process, except perhaps to the extent that Dougie Fresh Pond Scum was an even more inept administrator than Alexander. The editorialist is off the beam here. He is just bitter that the one law school in his city has become a grievous embarrassment, not to mention a financial and professional liability.


The author of this editorial may not be so sanguine this time next year, when 25 or fewer people are expected to don hideous orange-yellow caps and gowns as Indiana Tech's first graduates. Will their precious alma mater be accredited by then? How many of them will have found suitable work? How many of them will be able to repay their loans?

Athornia Steele, Nova Southeastern Law Prof. and LSAC Board of Trustees Chair, compares scambloggers to the "wicked witch" from the Wizard of Oz.

(The Hotel del Coronado, where the Law School Admission Council recently hosted a four-day, three-night vacation/ conference for hundreds of law school admissions professionals).

Somewhere over the scambow is an enchanted realm called law school. You get there by riding a twister of career service lies, and then just follow the lemming debt road to an unforgettable three year long encounter with a faculty-full of wise and beneficent law wizards. It does not matter if you have a munchkin-sized LSAT score and the social conscience of a rusty can. The magic pedagogy of the law wizards will supply you with brain, heart, and a lollipop-sweet career that will have you up to your ankles in million dollar rubies. Just don’t be unnerved or led astray by the wicked scambloggers, or all those angry-as-a-flying-monkey law alumni.

From May 27 to May 30, 2015, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) hosted a conference for some 500 law school admissions professionals at the Hotel del Coronado, an enormous Victorian-era luxury beachside resort hotel near San Diego. The hotel is alleged to have been author Frank Baum’s inspiration for the Emerald City of Oz. Naturally, the LSAC hosts did not forego the opportunity for some tongue-in-cheeky Oz-inspired wordplay and analogies. (E.g., "Speakers and beaches and workshops, oh my!") Indeed, the very title and theme of the conference was drawn from Oz: "A Brain, a Heart, and Courage: Leading Law School Admissions Today."

LSAC's most recent biannual newsletter, issued in May, is partially devoted to the conference and its objectives. The newsletter includes the following unforgettable comments from Nova Southeastern Law Professor (and former Dean) Athornia Steele, who is also the Chair of LSAC's Board of Trustees:

* "You, the admission professionals, are like Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Lion courageously in search of a way home, a feeling of stability, and a sense of forward momentum. We are all hoping that there IS a Wizard of Oz, or at least a Good Witch, who will help us in our quest."

* "Like the journey our Wizard of Oz friends took across the poppy fields, into the Emerald City, and through the dark forest, the work of LSAC and member law schools will not take place overnight and without some challenges. Unlike the journey to Oz, we’re not dreaming up these challenges; they are very real."

* "I have always loved the story of the Wizard of Oz and believe it to be a story directed to adults as well as children. If you go to your library’s catalog or Google any combination of the words leadership and/or personal development along with Wizard of Oz, a number of books and articles written on the leadership and personal development lessons of the Wizard of Oz appear."

* "Legal education in general, and admission professionals in particular, are engaged in a journey. It may take a bit more than clicking our heels together to overcome the wicked witch of the scam bloggers, rankings, negative media stories, declining applications, and pressuring deans, but at least at this annual meeting and educational conference, we can take some time to consider possibilities, recharge our internal strengths, and bask in the support of our friends and colleagues (and some lovely beaches and sunshine)." (Emphasis added). 

Now, Dorothy did say that there is no place like home, but a fancy resort vacation is still pretty good, especially when LSAC or one's employer is picking up the tab. And, of course, there is also law school-- there is definitely no place like that. 

It may be presumptuous to criticize a children’s fantasy classic, but it really is a shame that the story did not end on a more uplifting note. There should have been a joyous concluding scene where Dorothy mortgages the family farm to attend law school so that she can address the obvious crisis of unmet legal needs in her small Nebraska, I mean Kansas, rural community, as well as elevate her own leadership skills and personal development. In solidarity with Toto, she could then go on to obtain an LLM in Animal Law, the better to critique the legal system's species-based hierarchy.

Lacking that, it is fortunate that we have great and powerful legal intellectuals like Professor Athornia Steele to tease out the similarities between Oz and law school recruitment. Which scambloggers can do too, of course, but our perspective is tainted by wicked witchery. 

(There are a few other only slightly less ridiculous things from LSAC's newsletter archive that are worth discussing, and I will highlight them soon in another post or posts, my pretties. [Evil cackle, cloud of smoke, and exeunt]).

 

Do Pace Law School Dean David Yassky and Asst. Dean Jill Backer know that Pace's own salary survey data undermines their hype about JD Advantage?

For the graduating class of 2014, the average law school reported having placed 14.5% of law grads in jobs that are classified as JD Advantage, an all-time high for that category, with standout schools claiming to place over 30% of their graduating class in such jobs. However, we are still relatively uninformed as to the quality of JD Advantage jobs that all these law grads are (allegedly) landing.
 

According to the murky definition adopted by the ABA for employment survey purposes,  a job is JD Advantage if "the J.D. provide[s] a demonstrable advantage in obtaining or performing the job, but itself does not require bar passage or an active law license or involve practicing law."

Note the phrase: "obtaining or performing." That means a law school gets to classify a job as JD Advantage where it can assert that a legal education helps the grad do his or her job, even if it did not help the grad actually get his or her job. And even where a JD arguably provides a demonstrable advantage in obtaining the job, it may be the case that the grad could have obtained the same or greater advantage in some far less burdensome way-- say, depending on the job, through an industry-specific master’s degree, a CPA, or even a paralegal certificate.

You know, a used car dealer can peddle a decrepit old rattletrap for $150,000 and truthfully claim that the vehicle provides a demonstrable advantage over walking. What the dealer may not mention is that the same or greater advantage could have been acquired in other far less expensive ways.  

 

Notwithstanding the above, Pace Law’s Dean David Yassky and Jill Backer, its Assistant Dean of Career and Professional Development have made some strong claims as to the desirability of JD Advantage jobs:

*     "There are a lot of jobs in addition to traditional law firm associate jobs, where legal skills and law school training are immensely valuable. . .Jobs like compliance at banks or pharmaceutical companies, jobs at big accounting firms that deal with corporate transactions or investigations, those are jobs that call for traditional legal skills even though they don’t have ‘lawyer’ in the name of the job." – Dean David Yassky 

*     "We know that people doing the fundamental work that law schools train their students to do are needed more than ever, and will continue to be more needed. . . And we know that businesses must deal much more with regulation today than they did as recently as 10 years ago or more, which means they need more people with legal training to do that work than they did a decade ago or longer." -Dean David Yassky

*     "The real problem is one of perception because the J.D. advantage position is actually perceived as "less than" a J.D. required position. In my view, this is misguided, and in fact hurtful to the legal industry." - Asst. Dean Jill Backer 

*     "It is assumed that a J.D. required position is more prestigious and has a better salary level. However, for many law graduates entering positions in compliance, HR and entrepreneurial roles, this is not the case. . . .This line of thinking is sorely behind the entrepreneurial mindset of our current economy."- Asst. Dean Jill Backer

In response to Backer, Kyle McEntee, director of Law School Transparency, wrote a great post at the Law School Café challenging law schools to "show us your work" on JD Advantage. McEntee noted that: (1) NALP reports that the average JD Advantage salary is 25% less than the average salary for graduates in bar-required jobs: and (2) Pace reported 14 grads of the class of 2014 as either law firm paralegals or law firm administrators--and placed nine of them in the JD-Advantage category.

In addition to the points made by McEntee, there is actual salary data from Pace graduates that further undermines Yassky and Backer’s loud-mouthed hype. Pace did a salary survey of nine-month-out grads for its graduating classes in 2009 through 2012, and reported JD Advantage salary data for two of those years, 2009 and 2011.  For both of these years, the JD Advantage median was significantly less than the Bar Passage Required median ($7,000 less for the Class of 2009 and $5,000 less for the Class of 2011).

A.  Pace Class of 2009:








B.  Pace Class of 2011:

Now, granted, these salary surveys were severely flawed in that the sample size is very small --fewer than than one-fifth of JD Advantage job holders actually reported their salary.

Still, these are Pace’s own findings, based on data obtained by Pace career service employees from Pace graduates. And yet these findings, which are consistent with NALP’s as to the inferiority of entry-level JD Advantage jobs in terms of pay, are not acknowledged by Yassky and Backer as they tout a Pace legal education for its JD Advantage value.

Were Yassky and Backer aware of their school’s own salary survey results when they made the statements quoted above? I do not necessarily think that outrageous puffery combined with convenient unawareness of contradictory facts, including data obtained by one’s very own institution, establishes that the declarant is deliberately trying to mislead. However, it does seem suspiciously two-paced. Which may be unavoidable when one is shilling for a pace-of-shit law school.
 

Infilaw Allegedly Paid Graduates Not to Take the Bar; Faces Fraud and Discrimination Allegations

For those who haven't seen it, I wanted to repost what National Law Journal and Above the Law have reported regarding a lawsuit that's pending in Arizona by a terminated Arizona Summit employee.  From ATL:

Paula Lorona, a former assistant director of financial aid at Arizona Summit Law School, claims that starting in May 2014, all three of InfiLaw’s schools — Arizona Summit, Charlotte, and Florida Coastal — began offering $5,000 payoffs to students who were unlikely to pass the bar exam.

I guess it's a cost of doing business when you are enrolling tons of 140 LSATs and trying to stay accredited?

Above the Law has graciously posted a copy of the complaint that makes for some interesting reading to learn about the facts as alleged.  For example, Ms. Lorona was enrolled as an evening student in 2009 and became an administrative assistant for the school a few months later.  She received rather rapid promotions and was student accounts/accounting manager by 2011 (See para. 12, 16).  Pages 4-6 make allegations regarding alterations on an Arizona Summit state tax filing; by pointing out such things, Lorona allegedly became the recipient of harassment.

The really good stuff begins around page 8.  Lorona allegedly told Dean Shirley Mays that she they were misrepresenting the success rates of students admitted through the alternative admissions program. Beginning with paragraph 80, they set forth facts regarding the "failure predictor formula," which calculated whether a student was likely to fail the bar and if so, they would be offered $5000.

Lorona, as a 2014 alumna, allegedly received emails from the school regarding low anticipated pass rates and had a school-employed bar coach tell her the school was concerned about losing federal funding, while the school was still boasting high pass rates to the consuming public; the effect being that the school knew it was misleading students (see para. 90-100).

More intriguing, at least to me, is that in Count III the complaint sets forth a consumer fraud claim from an actual insider whose testimony can apparently establish admissions that show intent to deceive.  Lorona may face the same reliance problems that have plagued the class action cases in other jurisdictions, but as an employee of the school, she surely knows more than a run-of-the-mill student, and she's only suing on her own behalf rather than a class; thus, it should be her reliance that would matter, and not that of a vague made-up student with a time machine and unlimited access to things no one knows.

The complaint indicates that Lorona allegedly turned down a confidential waiver when she left employment.  Here's to hoping she and her attorneys continue that line of thought as the matter progresses.

The Battle of Law ScamDeans, Part II

Looking around, I realized that it has been a year since the first verses of "The Battle of LawScam Deans" were published!  Enough has happened since then to warrant an encore, so here goes:

 
(with apologies to Johnny Horton, "The Battle of New Orleans")


The schools threw open every door they had,
but student LSAT scores were really, really sad,
and the bar-pass rates started falling through the floor,
so Dean Allard said "it's the bar exam that's poor!"

            And the Scamblogs blogged 'cause they felt it was a calling,
            There weren't as many lemmings as there was awhile ago,
            The Scamblogs jeered as the Cartel found it galling,
            From the T13 to the Law Schools down below.

  
Cooley had no choice but to fire a bunch of Prawfs,
Hamline merged while uttering quiet coughs,
and just when UMass was about to take a fall,
Kosko and Carr knifed the Charleston School of Law.

            Chorus

Indiana Tech couldn't get accredited,
So they raffled off scholarships to try to get ahead,
TJSL hit the check-cashing place,
While Concordia quietly tried to save face.

            Chorus


Simkovic was mad that no one took him at his word,
When the bloggers all said his work was patently absurd,
Leiter preached the papers to his echo-chamber flock,
While Merritt, the Times and Leichter said the studies were a crock.

            Chorus


Professor Telman said "claw back the scholarships,"
But the critics continued to give the Prawfs the fits,
Steve Freeman's faux-outrage was certainly sublime,
And Steve Diamond was convinced the Kochs were funding law's decline.

            Chorus

　

The battle continues! Again, Fight the good fight, stay strong, and run the race with endurance! The truth is on our side.

 

JD disadvantage: make less than a janitor or a switchboard operator

The switchboard operator in a Massachusetts courthouse makes more than the public defender; the janitor, more than the assistant district attorney:

www.massbar.org/media/1494238/doing%20right%20by%20those%20who%20labor%20for%20justice.pdf

(See p 22.)

Of course, only two of those people have to pay annual fees to maintain a license to practice, and they happen to be the same two who had to complete a four-year bachelor's degree and a three-year law degree at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, typically financed with student loans bearing high interest.