tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521318064826848712.post44803400406925012..comments2023-10-19T04:51:53.516-05:00Comments on The Legal Dollar: Law Graduates Today Vs. 10 Years AgoManaging Partnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05130017520583425490noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521318064826848712.post-24049819936425651942011-07-19T11:36:54.090-05:002011-07-19T11:36:54.090-05:00Second part of reply
Third, with regard to increas...Second part of reply<br />Third, with regard to increasing reporting, when I visit law schools, I usually see signs all over the place about what percentage of the graduating class contributed to the class gift or how much has been collected - or some other message that the law school wishes to induce the law students to do. Further, somehow (even though the law students are on average dirt poor with massive loans) I often see participation rates exceeding 80%. Needless to say, I think that if the law school backed the message that law students need to report their hiring results anwhere near as much as they backed this other message, then the reporting ratio would be much higher. In short, the message needs to get backing from the law school - post a poster with percentages, try to drive the message home with e-mail, etc.<br /><br />Finally, I wanted to mention something that I saw on your site that I really liked - it's the chart at the bottom of the page with average indebtedness, starting salary, and tuition and fees plotted on the same graph. That's a very powerful graph that I think makes your point very well - as you mention "we are asking prospective law student to pay more -a lot more - for an education that leads to a career with dramatically declining prospects." I hope that it would be OK with you if I linked to it and did a post on it.<br /><br />In conclusion, I salute your efforts. You obviously care about the students you see and you represent the finest tradition of service to the students. Keep it up!Managing Partnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05130017520583425490noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521318064826848712.post-91585230082333829952011-07-19T11:36:07.610-05:002011-07-19T11:36:07.610-05:00Dear Admissions Guy, (Long reply - had to break it...Dear Admissions Guy, (Long reply - had to break it in two)<br />First, I wish to applaud you for recognizing an issue and trying to do something about it. I took a look at your site and the specific post that you reference and I had a couple of thoughts.<br /><br />First, I applaud you for making more granular salary information available. However, I note that the information only includes data from 57 grads - less than half the class. Now, with a random distribution, that would be an OK response rate to typify the distribution as a whole. However, I think that 1) there is a very serious self-selection process in reporting which causes the reported results to be less representative of the true distribution, and 2) unfortunately, I think that when an average person considering law school looks at an "average starting salary" chart, then they would think that the chart illustrates the result for ALL law grads, not just those who have been able to find a job (which may only be about 60% of grads).<br /><br />One way to get potential law students to really stop and think would be to include an entry in the chart entitled "Seeking employment" or even "unreported" - or both of them broken out. Both of those bars would likely dwarf the results that you have shown and would be an immediate, visual cue that the potential law students should not take the "average salary" as representative of the salary outcome for all law school grads (which is a subtle difference/mistake that I have seen just about all of them make). I have seen some law schools put a little notice that "this data only pertains to x% reporting", but I think that has less of an immediately-perceivable impact - it's kind of like "fine print" and people ignore it.<br /><br />Second, I know that there is an issue with self-reporting and you don't have a good mechanism to make people report - and I sympathize with that difficulty. One aspect that I have seen in this regard and I think is open to manipulation by unethical law schools is the student reporting methodology. If the law school makes students report their hiring result in person (or e-mail using personally identifable information), then there is a "shame factor" that comes into play and people with poor results may be less likely to report, which in turn skews your distribution. Of course, if you do truly anonymous reporting, you open the door to inaccuracy. However, there are e-mail applications that allow an e-mail with a verifiable code to be sent to each law student's address and then have them complete an anonymous (to you), but identity-verified-due-to-email-address survey, which should be great for your purposes. <br /><br />In general, the law schools have a disincentive to gather the lower-level data because it will likely lower the average. Shunning more effective means of gathering this data is one subtle way of maintaining the status quo. <br /><br />Now, I salute you and your quest to deliver better data, but your Dean may act to block you due to the likely adverse impact on the law school's data and potential reduction in applicants. However, he or she can't "look" like they are trying to influence the data (usually). In this regard, the "fig leaf" of "cost" or "confidentiality" is sometimes used.<br />In order to counter that, here are links that would allow you to set up free, online surveys.<br /><br />http://www.questionpro.com/akira/quickSurvey.do<br />http://www.surveymethods.com/Managing Partnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05130017520583425490noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3521318064826848712.post-65715855653402894402011-07-19T08:43:13.121-05:002011-07-19T08:43:13.121-05:00I work in the admissions office at a law school, a...I work in the admissions office at a law school, and I want to improve the message that we send to our students about scholarships, the law school experience, job prospects, and the profession. Do you think that if all law schools published stats that look like this:<br /><br />http://angrylawadmissionsguy.tumblr.com/post/7653200095/theres-been-a-lot-of-press-lately-both-in-the<br /><br />that prospective law students would have enough information to make an intelligent decision? Does this go far enough?<br /><br />I'm not a law school apologist, and I'm not the type of administrator that looks at a blog like this and dismisses it as whining. I genuinely think that there's a lot wrong with the system of legal education in our country and I want to do my part - however small - to make it better. So I appreciate any honest criticism you have on this type of a report.Angry Law Admissions Guyhttp://angrylawadmissionsguy.tumblr.com/noreply@blogger.com