ABA Should Collect School Data on Law Grads’ Salaries and Debt, Prof Says
Would-be law students could better evaluate law schools if they knew more about graduates’ jobs, salaries and debt loads, a law professor says.
Writing at the Legal Profession Blog, Indiana University law professor William Henderson says the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar should collect three kinds of law school data:
1) A database of bar passage rates for the Multistate Bar Exam that controls for entering credentials and other factors. “Preliminary evidence suggests large variations—above and beyond entering credentials—in law schools’ ability to get their students over the bar exam hurdle,” Henderson writes.
2) Employment outcomes. “How many graduates are working in nonlegal settings?” Henderson writes. “What are the salary ranges and distributions within legal and nonlegal practice settings? Is there any evidence that some schools have better placement records as a result of curricular initiatives? Remarkably, no one in legal education knows the answers to these questions.”
3) Debt loads. Tuition figures can be misleading because of scholarships awarded by nearly all law schools. Debt is a more accurate measure, Henderson says.
Previous coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “ABA Should Publish Better Job Info for Naive Law Students, Prof Says”
