The ABA has confirmed that it will begin conducting random audits of the employment data statistics provided in May by US law schools for the class of 2015. According to an internal memo from the ABA, the random checks are ‘intended to promote confidence among the ABA, law schools, law school applicants, and other interested parties that law graduate employment information is complete, accurate and not misleading.’

Audit process

The ABA has hired an outside consultancy to undertake the audits, using funding from a $250,000 fine handed down to the University College of Illinois Law School in 2012 for misreporting admissions data. The audit process will assess the accuracy of data for the full graduate cohort at 10 randomly selected law schools, as well as the data of 382 randomly selected individual students from 156 different law schools. Flaws uncovered for these individual students will trigger more in-depth reviews of the school in question. A range of sanctions will be enforced for schools with serious reporting errors, including private or public reprimand, fines or probation. If, after several years, the audit process finds yearly graduate employment data to be more or less accurate across all schools, then the intensity of the audit program may be reduced.

Student suspicions

The decision to undertake audits comes amid widespread student and graduate concern that law schools are misrepresenting the employment prospects for grads who have paid top dollar to secure law degrees – a handful of whom have taken their schools to court. In one recent high-profile case, a graduate of Thomas Jefferson Law School in California brought a lawsuit against her alma mater after being unable to secure a full-time job in the legal industry with a satisfactory salary for a full 10 years after graduating. Her lawsuit has since been dismissed. 

Sources: ABA Journal; Law.com