Is a Law Degree Still Worth the Price?

Book excerpt: Fifteen law schools have been sued for allegedly reporting misleading employment data. For years, almost all law schools claimed to have a 90% or better overall employment rate. Since 2012, we now know that at many ABA-accredited schools less than 50% of their graduates find long-term, full-time jobs that require passage of the bar exam--the actual attorney jobs. Many schools also have relatively low bar-exam passage rates and high attrition rates (i.e., high percentages of students who flunk out or drop out). Professor Johnson demonstrates how to find relevant data about a law school and how to analyze over twenty different criteria in assessing whether the school has sufficiently satisfactory outcomes and is, therefore, worth attending. Such a thorough analysis will help prospective students avoid getting "vanity degrees"--the diplomas that look lovely in a picture frame but that may not make one employable as an attorney.