Lawsuit Against Law Schools Would Look Something Like.....This Case
When I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago I could not locate a recently filed lawsuit against a law school based on deceptive marketing of graduates' job prospects. But last week the ABA Journal reported on a case filed by a former student against the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
Here is a link to the Class Action Complaint in Aladruda v. Thomas Jefferson School of Law, courtesy of Legal Ethics Forum.
The Complaint pleads causes of action that will be familiar to lawyers with experience in deceptive sales practices cases. Claims include common law based actions for fraud and negligent misrepresentation.
The plaintiff amassed $150,000 in student loan debt. She claims that she was misled by the school's use of statistics that 80% of law school grads find jobs. Apparently, delivering pizza does count as a job in those statistics.
My Take:
I doubt that law schools are laughing. I believe that law schools do have exposure in these types of cases. If you intentionally use misleading statistics to induce someone to spend six figures attending your law school, then you may have exposure to fraud-related claims.
Keep in mind that many law school applicants are not sophisticated when it comes to recognizing deceptive marketing. A twenty-two year old college senior can be naive and gullible. Are law schools taking advantage of this? Probably.
The amount of the economic damages at stake in these cases suggests that there could be other similar cases filed. If one law school settled, it could open a floodgate of litigation against other law schools. And they wouldn't have to be class actions. A lawyer could make a go of it in individual cases if she represented many students with a lot of debt.
Update:
The Above the Law Blog has good coverage of the lawsuit here.
No big surprise here. The law schools may want to settle these cases because if the disgruntled graduates prove fraud at a trial (if the case ever goes that far), the disgrunted students would have a basis to discharge their law school student loan debt in bankruptcy. This would give the lender more risk and they may be less willing to hand out loan money like they do now.
Hopefully, this lawsuit will lead to more transparency about employment statistics and student loan debt. Many young people who apply to law school do so with the delusion that they are going to "strike it rich" when they become an attorney. The reality of law practice is that it takes many, many years to build a practice and make *lawyer money*