About 75 law school graduates across the country have sued more than a dozen law schools, charging they were misled about prospects for employment and salaries after they graduated.
The law schools tell students that about 90 percent of the graduates have jobs within nine months of graduation and that the average annual salary, at least in New York, is $160,000, said Jesse Strauss, an attorney in New York who is representing the graduates.
He said students take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt thinking that’s a safe bet because of the high employment rate and money they’ll make after they finish law school.
But not all grads find jobs as attorneys or make the kind of money some law schools tout, Strauss said.
In some extreme cases, law school grads are working at Starbucks. The law schools, though, still would count that person as employed as part of the 90 percent rate, he said.
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The grads might have an uphill legal battle, though. One of the first lawsuits against New York Law School recently was dismissed. Strauss said he is appealing that ruling.
In response to the lawsuits and complaints from students
and other attorneys, the Amer-ican Bar Association’s committee on accrediting schools changed its guidelines in 2011 to require law schools to report more detailed post-graduate employment rate.
Now law schools disclose employment data that indicates if graduates have a job that requires the passage of the bar or if a juris doctorate degree is required.
“Unfortunately, these [re-cent] changes come too late for the Plaintiffs since they have already taken on tens of thousands of dollars in non-dischargeable debt based [on law schools’] deceptive and misleading statements,” Strauss said in a lawsuit he filed against Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Thomas M. Cooley Law School said in its court filings that the case should be dismissed.
Arguments to dismiss the lawsuit are scheduled for this week in U.S. District Court in Michigan.