ABA asking for more employment info from law schools

Back in February, the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division introduced a resolution calling for increased transparency from schools that report post-graduation employment data. The group was concerned that some law schools report misleading figures regarding salary averages and employment statistics. The ABA’s Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Section listened, and it will amend the annual questionnaire it sends out to ABA-approved law schools. Now, the schools will have to answer additional questions on employment and placement.

The 2011 questionnaire will ask for additional and new information on whether a graduate’s employment is long- or short-term and, if applicable, how many positions their graduates hold that are funded by the law school or university. In the spring of 2012, data will be collected for the graduating class of 2011 asking: whether the graduate’s job is full-time or part-time, whether they had to pass the bar to get the job, whether a law degree is preferred for the job, whether the job is in another profession, and whether the job is a non-professional one.

A release on the ABA’s website says that the organization didn’t want to wait until August 2012 to collect this data and are still developing definitions for these new categories.

“The Section believes that the collection of this new information will bring additional transparency to the data reporting system employed by the Section, and offer very helpful information to assist prospective law students and graduates in making very important decisions about law school attendance and careers,” the release says.