U.S. News to Publish More Law School Employment Data

Following up on last week’s post, Law School Transparency Gets U.S. News to Disclose More Employment Data (Dec. 10, 2010): Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, U.S. News Pledges to Publish More Law School Employment Data:

U.S. News wants to set the record straight about our decision to publish more of the employment data we collect from law schools as part of our annual Best Law Schools rankings. …

U.S. News has also been in discussions with Law School Transparency (LST), a nonprofit formed by Vanderbilt University law students trying to get law schools, the American Bar Association, and the media to disclose and publish far more robust job statistics on recent law school graduates. LST strongly urged U.S. News to publish more of the J.D. job information that we were collecting. Those discussions with LST played a part in our decisions, but were not the catalyst behind our move to publish more employment data.

Why is U.S. News planning to publish more data? Job prospects for new J.D. graduates are far less robust than just a few years ago. Law school students need as much information as possible to help them realistically understand the employment prospects from their school and the economic value of their degree in terms of their ability to pay back loans and earning power. U.S. News believes the information we will be publishing will help current students in those efforts. However, disclosure of employment data by law schools is still woefully lacking given the cost of attendance and poor job market. U.S. News strongly backs all ongoing efforts to require law schools to report even more detailed data on the how recent grads have fared in the job market. We would collect and publish those statistics if they were available.