Legal education is in a world of hurt. Traditional entry-level jobs are shrinking. The number of American Bar Association-accredited law schools is increasing. States are cutting subsidies. And the primary metric of quality is the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which use a methodology that rewards schools for being expensive and having graduates who get jobs — any job, including tending bar or driving a cab. The result of this “market” is a steady stream of heavily indebted law school graduates are who are struggling to find full-time entry-level employment sufficient to service their six-figure debt.

In the wake of hard-hitting stories in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have begun a very public correspondence with ABA President Stephen Zack. But several months before these headlines, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar had already begun the painful process of creating a better, more transparent system for tracking employment outcomes. A few weeks ago, the ABA section announced its new plan. Although it is a giant leap forward in terms of solid, school-level employment data, the new plan will have the secondary effect of undermining the National Association for Law Placement’s ability to collect, analyze and publish industry-level data — a task NALP has performed for nearly four decades. This is a giant step backward that will deny policymakers the very information they need to make hard decisions.

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