Lit. Review #1

The main focus of this article is about the current trend in class action law suits being brought before many law schools by recent graduates who have not obtained employment. In these cases, the graduates are arguing that schools mislead them about employment opportunities available to them upon graduation.  This article also provides numerous facts about student loans and increasing tuition.

The author of this article Drew Eckman is a graduate of the University of Louisville Law School. Being a lawyer himself Eckman knows a great deal about the legal higher education system. Also as this article was published in the Journal of Law and Education, he holds a great deal of credibility.

American Bar Association (ABA):  founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. The ABA has 410,000 members. Its national headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois; it also maintains a significant branch office in Washington, D.C.

Law School Transparency: the ability for incoming students to know exactly what recent graduates of this school are doing currently. While many schools give employment numbers, they do not specify type of employment. This idea of transparency advocates that la schools must be completely honest to students about employment as well as school operations.

“The national median salary for graduates of the law school class of 201 1 was $60,000, which was 17 percent lower than it had been just two years earlier.” (Page 1).

This quote will be useful in introducing the issue of decreasing salaries for new lawyers.

“In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts only 73,600 new lawyer jobs from 2010 to 2020." But just three years into that decade, already about 132,757 new lawyers have hit the legal job market.9 When the supply of new lawyers seeking employment exceeds the demand for their services, the salary legal employers are willing to pay them will drop.” (Page 3)

This bit of information will provide to be very useful as in all of my other research I have yet to find a statistic such as this. This clearly shows how the supply of lawyers far outweighs the supply. This point can serve many roles in my writing as it provides a high “shock level”

“In May of 201 1, the Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL) in San Diego became the first law school to be sued in a class action for allegedly misrepresenting its post-graduate placement rates.18 Since then, the alumni of at least fifteen different law schools have filed similar class action lawsuits” (page 7)

This will certainly be helpful when discussing the new phenomenon of former students attacking their former schools through the court of law. Using this quote will definitely be a good introduction to the developing trend.