Personal Connection.

A woman who says she graduated with honors from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2008 and passed the California bar exam but cannot find a decent legal job has sued the institution, contending that she was tricked into attending by employment statistics TJSL provided for the annual U.S. News & World Report law school survey.

Anna Alaburda, who racked up $150,000 in student loans and is now doing document-review work when she can find it, says she decided to attend the law school after reading the magazine's 2003 law school survey, reports the National Law Journal. It stated that 80 percent of the school's graduates were employed.

She "reasonably interpreted these figures to mean that the vast majority of TJLS graduates would find employment as full-time attorneys," the lawsuit states, alleging that "the foregoing statistics were false, misleading, and intentionally designed to deceive all who read them.
...
Beth Kransberger, who serves as the law school's associate dean for student affairs, tells the legal publication there was no misrepresentation and says TJSL followed guidelines set by the American Bar Association when reporting its employment statistics..

"We've always been accurate in what we report, and we've always followed the system given to us by the ABA," she says. "This lawsuit is very much about a larger debate. This is part of the debate about whether it's practical to pursue a graduate degree in these difficult economic times."

Dean Beth Kransberger, responding to a lawsuit here filed against the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, was the dean for admissions when I applied to UW-Law in 2002. Later I learned from classmates that she had helped recruit them for our class -- one young man working as a Milwaukee schoolteacher got the call in his classroom -- because our school wanted to up minority enrollment before the Grutter v. Bollinger* decision came down. (The fear was, if the ruling had gone the other way, the school would not be able to take race into account for preference points, in evaluating a candidate's potential.)

They overadmitted (more students accepted their offers to attend UW Law than predicted) and consequently, we graduated a very large class of 2005 after 3 years of swollen classes. Never said openly, I got the impression from snide remarks that some faculty didn't appreciate the larger than usual numbers taxing the program's capacity (the class schedule and building, as well as the usual law school opportunities for extracurricular opportunities). The Monona terrace, the day we all graduated with unlimited family present, was absolutely packed. Dean Kransberger had already moved on in her career, but turned up again as our graduation speaker, recalling memories of recruiting some of us, and delivering her speech on our class diversity.

She was an excellent marketer back then -- earned a law degree from UW herself, and then like many, figured out a way to end up back at the school, as paid administration staff. The 3-year full-tuition merit scholarship they offered me based primarily on my test scores and academic background sold me -- though sometimes I wish I had deferred a year...

I'm not sorry I know now what I know about the law -- it always helps to understand the system you live under, and what works where, don't get me wrong. It just opens your eyes to the measurements others are using as success (= high enrollment numbers), and some of the unequal tools used to satisfy those aims.
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* The Court held that the law school's interest in obtaining a "critical mass" of minority students was indeed a "tailored use". O'Connor noted that sometime in the future, perhaps twenty-five years hence, racial affirmative action would no longer be necessary in order to promote diversity. It implied that affirmative action should not be allowed permanent status and that eventually a "colorblind" policy should be implemented. The opinion read, "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time." "The Court takes the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its use of racial preferences as soon as practicable. The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." The phrase "25 years from now" was echoed by Justice Thomas in his dissent. Justice Thomas, writing that the system was "illegal now", concurred with the majority only on the point that he agreed the system would still be illegal 25 years hence.