Thursday, April 10, 2014

Sloppy ABA Employment Statistics

The new ABA job numbers for the Class of 2013 were released yesterday. US News & World Report asks the same basic questions and divides graduates into the same basic categories as the ABA, so these will be the numbers that will make up 14% of next year’s USN&WR rankings and everyone is looking at how their schools’ numbers changed. (Screen caps after the jump).


But as I started crunching the numbers, I noticed that the ABA was a bit sloppy in putting them together. For example:
 Are they accepting applications for their first class yet?

And I was puzzled that U.D.C. School of Law didn’t have any figures reported at all, then I realized they are listed twice:
And once I cleaned up the multiple campus-specific rows for Thomas Cooley and Penn State, I noticed the ABA was still a school short. Then I realized they had left off Emory School of Law:


If I recall correctly, in the past some schools haven't turned in their data on time, but they're still listed and the ABA indicates that somehow, but that's not the case here. Where's the stats for Emory - I couldn't find any indication of why they weren't listed. I even doubled checked their web site to make sure they hadn’t changed their name. No, same name. Turns out you can get their school-specific report from the ABA page, but they're just not in big Excel file for the Class of 2013.

And, sloppiness aside, other news includes how the ABA must have changed its mind about accrediting foreign law schools:

They've been trying to get the ABA's attention for several years now.

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