Under a new draft proposal, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has suggested random audits of graduate employment data of law schools.
The draft proposal also recommends subjecting all ABA accredited schools to an annual website compliance review concerning the employment outcome data they post online. The review is deemed necessary to make sure that the published jobs data is consistent with what the law schools report to the ABA.
The draft proposal goes further by recommending that random reviews should be conducted on at least 10 schools a year. Schools that submit files more than 2 percent deficient according to the requirements will have their information verified by submitting to a random sampling of at least 10 percent of their graduates. If the findings of the random sampling do not support the 2 percent deficiency, or if the school’s claims are found to be inaccurate or false, the school will have to hire an outside expert pre-approved by the ABA to verify its data.
Schools would also be subject to random sampling of the jobs data they report to the ABA. Schools that possess files which do not support the reported information on their graduates will have to undergo the same type of verification process as randomly audited schools.
The section will also conduct an annual “red flag” review of schools which are already sanctioned for misreporting employment information, and of schools suspected of reporting false or inaccurate jobs data.
However, Council member Edward Tucker commented the measures were little more than making noise and are bound to be “doomed.” He said graduates are under no obligation to disclose their employment status to the schools, and as a result, “What we’ve done is construct a dike to hold back the ocean with a great big hole in the middle.”