ABA Journal:  U.S. News & World Report will probably change its law school ranking methodology to reflect the new and more detailed job placement information the ABA’s law school accrediting arm has conditionally agreed to start collecting.

ABA Journal:  A handful of law schools have announced plans to shrink their incoming classes, leading to speculation about the reasons why.

Is the move designed to better students’ chances of landing a job or to better the schools’ rankings in U.S. News & World Report? Inside Higher Ed points out that law schools with smaller classes can be more selective, admitting students with better credentials and with a greater chance of passing the bar, all factors in the rankings. The pressure to downsize is even greater at a time when law school applications have dropped by about 11 percent.

ABA Journal:  A recent law grad is getting some support for his assertion that the Federal Trade Commission could investigate whether law schools are violating federal consumer protection law.

Joel Murray, a recent graduate of the University of California at Davis law school, posted a paper outlining his conclusions at the Social Science Research Network, the National Law Journal reports. “Many law schools are violating the FTC Act by reporting false and misleading employment statistics,” he writes. “The FTC should begin an investigation into U.S. law schools.”

Law School Transparency.com:

The ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar completed an enormous step this morning towards helping prospective law students make informed decisions. The Council, which is the sole accrediting body for U.S. law schools, unanimously approved the Questionnaire Committee’s recommended procedures for the improved collection and sharing of employment data. The recommendation is based on last December’s Questionnaire Committee hearing, at which interested parties, including LST’s executive director, presented on the issue of consumer information transparency.

TheCareerist: This article discusses the troubles some law grads laid off from BigLaw jobs cannot find jobs, and how there soon could be a lost generation of lawyers.  The article states:

“Normalcy has returned to the profession–but not for everyone. Certainly not the so-called Lost Generation–those unlucky newbie lawyers who lost their jobs (or never got one) during the recession. Remember them?

They are still there, pressing their noses against the thick law firm windows. I hear from them every now and then, and this is their message to the profession: We’re still looking for jobs. And if you’re hiring again, why won’t you give us a look?

Sadly, they know the answer. “There’s a glut of us,” says a 2009 law graduate who got laid off from an Am Law 100 firm after less than four months on the job. And though they’re told that it’s not their fault that their careers derailed prematurely, few firms think of them as associate material.”

And some of the ones who have not found jobs have resorted to suing their law schools like the former Thomas Jefferson law grad.