ABA Law School Transparency Site

If you're interested in the new ABA transparency guidelines you might want to check out the LST - Law School Transparency - web page. The Winter 2012 Transparency Index Report is ready. This is the first Transparency Index Report. The full report is here. The following is a direct quote from the Execute Summary of the Report. It appears that many schools are still disclosure-challenged:

- 27% (54/197) do not provide any valuable information on their websites for class of 2010 employment outcomes. Of those 54 schools, 22 do not provide any employment information on their website whatsoever. The other 32 schools demonstrate a pattern of consumer-disoriented behavior.
- 51% of schools fail to indicate how many graduates actually responded to their survey. Response rates provide applicants with a way to gauge the usefulness of survey results, a sort of back-of-the-envelope margin of error. Without the rate, schools can advertise employment rates north of 95% without explaining that the true employment rate is unknown, and likely lower.
Only 26% of law schools indicate how many graduates worked in legal jobs. 11% indicate how many were in full-time legal jobs. Just 1% indicate how many were in full-time, long-term legal jobs.
- 17% of schools indicate how many graduates were employed in full-time vs. part-time jobs. 10% indicate how many were employed in long-term vs. short-term jobs. 10% of schools report how many graduates were employed in school-funded jobs.
- 49% of schools provide at least some salary information, but the vast majority of those schools (78%) provide the information in ways that mislead the reader.