An American attorney is suing 14 law schools on behalf of unemployed law graduates for allegedly misrepresenting graduate employment statistics.

Jesse Strauss is taking on the 14 (mostly low ranking) law schools, accusing them of fudging their consistently excellent job stats. This week Strauss appeared before the New York Supreme Court to face one of the defendants, New York Law School (NYLS), which has filed a motion to dismiss the claim. NYLS, which charges $46,200 a year and is ranked 135th in the country, boasts that for the past five years 90-92% of its grads have achieved full-time employment nine months after graduation. Impressive. Until it becomes clear that employment means anything, from lawyer to lavatory cleaner.

    Another happy law school graduate yesterday

NYLS told the court that the way it calculated employment statistics was just fine as it complied with the American Bar Association's rules. Plus, it asserted that none of the plaintiffs could show the school's actions caused them harm, according to an Above the Law report. Not so, argued Strauss who referred to one of the plaintiffs currently working in Starbucks. He claimed that students have "overpaid" for their degrees.

Law schools the country over (and possibly beyond) await the judge's ruling, and the outcome of the wider case, with interest. But whichever way the cookie crumbles, the litigation is casting a spotlight on a serious problem: it's estimated that 43,000 grads are being pumped out of US sausage factories law schools each year, with debts averaging $100k (£64k), to compete for less than half that number of jobs.

Depressingly, Strauss claims that in fact fewer than 40% of the law school graduates have found jobs for which they actually need a law degree.
 
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