Finance & Commerce:  “The rising costs of legal education may not be sustainable. So what’s next?”

Above the Law: “It’s one thing when I write about how crushing law school debt has impacted the value proposition of going to law school. . . . Everybody is up in arms about Goldman Sachs allegedly selling products it expected to fail.  How is that any different than the scam being run by some law schools where the tuition keeps going up while the job prospects disappear?

Here are several stories and one paper on what I believe is an obligation of law schools to give their students and prospective students accurate and current statistics about the success or lack thereof experienced by recent graduates.  It’s wrong for law schools to charge $35,000, $40,000 or more in tuition and not tell prospective students what salaries to expect after graduation.

• Increasing Transparency in Employment Reporting by Law Schools: What Is To Be Done?
• Law students push schools for better employment numbers
• Law Schools Take Note: Students Push for Better Job Stats
• A Way Forward: Improving Transparency in Employment Reporting at American Law Schools – This is a paper written by two Vanderbilt law students, Kyle P. McEntee and Patrick J. Lynch.  The abstract says, “

The decision to attend law school in the 21st century requires an increasingly significant financial investment, yet very little information about the value of a legal education is available for prospective law students. Prospectives use various tools provided by schools and third parties while seeking to make an informed decision about which law school to attend. This Article surveys the available information with respect to one important segment of the value analysis: post-graduation employment outcomes.

One of the most pressing issues with current access to information is the ability to hide outcomes in aggregate statistical forms. Just about every tool enables this behavior, which, while misleading, often complies with the current ABA and U.S. News reporting standards. In this Article, we propose a new standard for employment reporting grounded in compromise. Our hope is that this standard enables prospectives to take a detailed, holistic look at the diverse employment options from different law schools. In time, improved transparency at American law institutions can produce generations of lawyers who were better informed about the range of jobs obtainable with a law degree.

• A Way Forward