Lawyer for New York Law School Says Misleading-Stats Suit Is Baseless and Part of a Crusade
Updated: A suit claiming New York Law School lured students to enroll with misleading job statistics is baseless and should be dismissed, the law school argues in a motion filed last week in state court in Manhattan.
The motion was filed by Venable lawyer Michael Volpe, a New York Law School graduate, according to a press release. He notes that the plaintiffs’ lawyers have announced plans to sue 15 additional schools. “The allegations are not only baseless, but also belied by the plaintiffs’ own complaint which demonstrates this case has nothing to do with New York Law School and everything to do with a crusade against the entire law school industry,” Volpe says in the press release.
The motion (PDF posted by New York Law School) contends that the plaintiffs, three New York Law School grads, are apparently dissatisfied because the ABA does not currently require the schools to release detailed post-graduate information. The plaintiffs contend the school issues misleading data by counting graduates as employed even if they are in temporary jobs or in jobs that don’t require a law degree. But the school complied with ABA and industry reporting standards, and the suit is not justified, the school says.
“Critical allegations are missing from the complaint,” the motion says. “There are no allegations about why plaintiffs applied to law school; which law schools accepted their applications; how and why they chose to attend NYLS instead of their other options; what particular statements by NYLS they ever saw, read or relied on; when and where they saw that information; what they would have done differently if they had not gone to law school; what their grades were at NYLS; what legal industry jobs they applied for and did not get; how they allegedly suffered any harm; and countless more absent facts.”
The National Law Journal and Thomson Reuters News & Insight have stories on the motion. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Jesse Strauss told the publications that the school didn’t address the plaintiffs’ primary allegations. “The fact remains that when our clients paid the annual tuition of over $40,000 to attend New York Law School, they did so based on New York Law School’s misleading representation that they had an over 90 percent chance of getting a job, and that those jobs paid certain salaries,” Strauss told Thomson Reuters.
Subsequent coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Cooley Dismissal Motion Says Misleading Stats Suit Reads ‘Like a Free-Form Rant’ “
Updated on Oct. 21 to link to coverage of Cooley’s dismissal motion.
