Court throws out law school "rip off" suit
Are law schools ripping off their students?
A growing number of law school graduates insist they are. At least 15 lawsuits have been filed that allege that law schools are duping their students by inflating their salary and job-placement statistics.
Many more lawsuits are in the pipeline. A spokesman for a team of attorneys announced earlier in March that "nearly every law school in the country" will be sued for false information about their graduates' success in finding jobs.
A state judge in New York, however, threw water on the movement on Wednesday by dismissing a lawsuit that was filed by nine graduates of New York Law School. The litigation alleged that the school, which charges tuition of nearly $48,000 a year, misled them on the value of a law degree from the institution.
The judge ruled that the law school's marketing material wasn't misleading and that the graduates had plenty of other resources to access their job prospects.
Why, by the way, would law schools misrepresent their graduates' job success -- or lack of it? It can help these institutions perform better on US News & World Report's rankings of best law schools.
Shrinking law-school popularity
In the ruling, the judge observed that job openings for law school grads have shrunk considerably and this seems to be getting through to college students who have traditionally regarded law school as an option if they don't know what to do with their lives. Earlier this month, the Law School Admission Council reported that for the second year
in a row, the number of students taking the LSAT has dropped. In the
last two years, the number of test takers has declined 25 percent.
If you need some arguments against attending law school, see 5 reasons not to get a law degree, a post that provides ample motivation to find another line of work.
Image courtesy of Flickr user s_falkow.
