Columbia Law School Employment Troubles

This week, the New York Post reported that Columbia Law School had updated its employment website with additional employment information after its previous update raised some questions.

The newest update includes two significant pieces of data:

-a detailed breakdown for Columbia's Class of 2011
-the number of school-funded jobs for the Classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011

The Post writes:

On April 19, the school disclosed that it had funded a hefty 38 out of the 445 jobs that make up its near-perfect post-graduate employment rate. The number is up from just 9 in 2009 and 10 in 2010, and represents a growing trend among law schools struggling to keep employment percentages high amidst hiring cutbacks.

This paragraph is a bit misleading - yes, the "445" figure is the data that Columbia reported to the ABA 9 months after graduation. However, the numbers of graduates in school-funded positions seem to refer to those initially given such positions upon graduation.

Since the Post's inquiries, one can learn this information by scrolling toward the bottom of the school's employment statistics page. (A previous version of that page can be saved to PDF or printed from Google's cache.)

It's not in the numbers at the top of the page because that breakdown is specifically for jobs data reported to the ABA nine months after graduation. This puzzled me, as I'd thought the school would prefer to list the (presumably) lower number still in school-funded jobs 9 months later, rather than the initial, higher number.

It turns out that the Post stopped just short of the real prize:

How many Class of 2011 graduates initially given school-funded jobs were still in such jobs 9 months after graduation?

After emailing the school yesterday with this query, I learned*:

Four of the 38 fellows in the Class of 2011 are in permanent positions, however, all 38 were still in fellowships nine months after graduation when we reported to the ABA. 

In other words, all 38 of those who received school-funded jobs upon graduation were still in those jobs 9 months later. None of them had found permanent work. Even now, almost a full year after graduation, only 4 of them have found permanent positions.

I'm left to infer that the other 34 still haven't found jobs and are stuck with the school-funded ones for now. And this is Columbia, the Ivy League school ranked #4 by U.S. News.

9 months after graduation, 443 out of the 456 graduates were in jobs with bar admission required or J.D. preferred. However, subtracting the 38 students in school-funded jobs drops the number to 405.

In other words, after excluding school-funded jobs, only 89% were in jobs with bar admission required or J.D. preferred 9 months after graduation.

The ABA only just released the employment data for the Class of 2010, which showed that 5 out of the 10 Columbia students initially provided with school-funded jobs were still in those jobs 9 months after graduation.

I do hope the ABA is serious about its promise to speed up the rate at which it publishes employment data, rather than aging it like a fine wine before allowing us to enjoy it.

However, when that data is published, how long will it take for this information to be posted on LSAC's website, which is where most law school applicants likely look? The "ABA Law School Data" currently posted is shamefully out of date (and doesn't list the year to which the data refers). Only a truly "sophisticated consumer" would infer from the number of graduates listed as employed on that page (435) that it's for the Class of 2009. (The site's archives suggest that it's current, as the information under the heading "2011" is even older.)

I suspect that most law school applicants, and the general public, will be quite interested to learn about the employment troubles of Columbia Law's most recent graduating class. I'm sure they'd rather not wait another year to find out.



* in an email from Elizabeth Schmalz, Executive Director of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs at Columbia Law School


Further Reading:

Student moans: Schools amend grad job claims [NY Post]

Letter to the Editor: Lawfully employed [NY Post]

NY law schools inflate job figures: critics [NY Post]

Columbia Law School: Employment Statistics [Columbia Law]

The Job Market For Our Students [Columbia Law]