Law admissions to publish truths of employment

For Penn undergraduates considering law school, making an informed decision about whether or not to attend is not always easy.

The American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division is attempting to ensure that future prospective law students understand what a legal education will cost them, as well as their job prospects after graduation. On Feb. 12, the YLD adopted the “Truth in Law School Education” resolution.

The resolution encourages the ABA to urge all ABA-approved law schools, including Penn Law, to report employment data in a manner that accurately reflects whether graduates manage to obtain full or part-time employment in the legal field. The resolution also compels law schools to place this employment data in easily accessible places, including websites and brochures. This resolution will be presented for approval at an ABA meeting in August 2011.

Kyle McEntee, co-founder and executive director of Law School Transparency — a nonprofit that analyzes employment statistics for recent law school graduates on its website — said this movement is necessary in order to make employment data readily available for prospective law students.

McEntee, a third-year student at Vanderbilt University Law School, added that his organization aims to help students make informed decisions when deciding whether to attend law school. He added that top-ranked law schools are not necessarily better about disclosing employment data than lower ranked schools.

Despite these concerns, McEntee said, “Penn does a great job with collecting salary information.”

According to a Feb. 28 article in the National Law Journal, 53.3 percent of Penn Law’s Class of 2010 hold jobs at the top 250 law firms.

McEntee pointed out, however, that in general employment statistics released by law schools can be misleading. The website includes a data clearinghouse that breaks down the available salary information in order to clarify its exact meaning. McEntee explained that one of the goals of LST is to help prospective students answer the question: Is going to law school worth the cost?

Although most law schools publish information about the employment prospects and salaries for their graduates, this information may be difficult to access, said College junior Christina Shin, a board member of Pre-Law Women at Penn.

“It’s often hard to decipher what those numbers mean,” College junior Sarah Klein wrote in an e-mail.

Klein, who is president of Pre-Law Women at Penn, added that “statistics are easy to manipulate, and no law school wants to look bad, so it’s hard for prospective students to get a clear picture.”

“Law students are the consumers in this equation,” Robert Miller, a 1998 Penn Law graduate and author of Law School Confidential, said. “As a law student paying an ungodly amount of money to a law school in order to become educated, you are entitled to transparency and to knowing both what kind of education you are going to get and what your prospects are in ending up getting what you want out of the experience.”

Heather Frattone, associate dean for Career Planning and Placement at Penn Law, added, “I encourage prospective law students to think about how a legal education will advance their professional goals and intellectual interests.” Frattone explained that students need to have a clear understanding of the value added from a legal educaiton in order to develop a successful career strategy based on their personal interests.

Todd Rothman, associate director of Pre-Law/Pre-Health Advising for Career Services, agreed with both Miller and Frattone. He emphasizes the importance of being an “informed consumer” to his advisees.

“Law school is a very significant — not to mention, very demanding, time-consuming, and often very expensive — enterprise,” Rothman wrote in an e-mail. “And it should be entered into with a clear sense of your professional and personal goals.”

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