The main problem with the employment information stems from the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which includes any job in its basic employment rate. Law schools truthfully advertise rates above 90% because they report employment data according to the section’s standard. Nevertheless, these advertisements mislead prospective law students when coupled with two popular yet distorted consumer beliefs: that lawyering is a lucrative profession and that the rates reflect legal jobs.
Law schools are aware of these distortions, but they have no pecuniary incentive to tear down the information asymmetry that protects the legal employment rate. Ever the optimists, prospective law students do not discover the realities of a school’s job placement until too late. Until recently, structural problems with employment information have been the profession’s dirty little secret.
