First Trial For Lawyers v. Law Schools

A spate of law graduates have filed suit in recent years, claiming their alma maters overstated employment data. Now the first trial in such a case has been set. Anna Alaburda spent about $150,000 earning a law degree from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in 2008, and has yet to find a full-time salaried job as a lawyer. Even as legal hiring dropped in 2011, Thomas Jefferson stated that 92.1 percent of its graduates were working in full-time jobs. She sued, claiming the school inflated its data on graduate jobs in order to lure her and other potential students. Alaburda’s suit is one of many that claim various law schools counted jobs like part-time waitressing in their public information, to bolster employment data. In many cases, courts found that law students enrolled at their own risk. But Alaburda’s case in California will go forward. Two similar cases in the state – one against Golden Gate University School of Law and the other against University of San Francisco School of Law – were not certified for class actions and were later dropped.