NY law schools inflate job figures: critics

The New York Post reports:

Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, noted that the number of big-law jobs available has decreased significantly. “The [focus on the] highest paid [law school graduates] make it seem like you’ll earn $160,000. There are about 30 to 40 percent fewer of those jobs than there were a few years ago,” he said.

Columbia’s current listing of second-year summer associate positions, which remain at a low 76.7 percent for the class of 2012, after falling from 91.3 percent for the class of 2010, suggests that those jobs are not making a strong comeback.

With average student debts of $127,000 and $125,000, Columbia and NYU fall into the top 22 schools in student indebtedness, according to Brian Tamanaha, author of the new book “Failing Law Schools.”

“I feel ashamed for my family because they expected big things for me, and now I might end up living with them after graduation, which is very disheartening,” said a Columbia third-year student struggling with no job offers.

Yet Barack Obama thinks federal taxpayers should subsidize even more people to go to law school!