Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

A couple of years ago — spurred by the helpful questions of a commentator on this blog — I tried to figure out whether the University of Miami School of Law was reporting starting salary data about its graduates in a full, fair, and honest manner. I thought now would be a good time to revisit that question, using the law school's presentation of new data on last year's class, a group suffering the worst legal hiring recession since the Great Depression.

Two years ago, the short answer to my question about whether the data was presented accurately turned out to be yes, but only if you read the data very, very carefully, more carefully than one would expect of even a reasonably prudent law applicant not trained in statistics.

The slightly longer version of the old answer was that then and now UM complies with external reporting standards set by the ABA and NALP and that these reporting standards tend to mask some realities about starting salaries. UM nonetheless adheres to them because a failure to do so would (1) Mean our numbers were reported with an asterisk, making it look like we have something to hide; (2) Make the UM numbers no longer comparable with other schools' numbers; (3) Put UM at a terrible competitive disadvantage.

The even longer version of the old answer (skip down if you want the new stuff) was this, lifted from More About Starting Salaries:

According to Career Development Office, the reason why the both the $104,500 number [for average starting salary for those employed by firms] and the more detailed but somewhat different pie charts accompanying it [which, based on firm size, suggested a lower number] are accurate has to do with response rates, differing data sets, and national reporting standards.

Not everyone who responded to the law school's survey about what they were doing immediately after graduation chose to disclose their salary. Thus, the charts about firm size, for example, are based on a bigger data pool than the salary number. In 2007 we had 378 JDs. Of that group, 346 had replied to our survey at the time the Viewbook was produced. Of that 346, however, not all worked for firms — and of the group that worked for firms only about 46% gave us salary data. So the average salary number of $104,500 is based on the data provided by that 46%.

Since firm size and starting salary are related, you might reasonably object — as I did — that it would be more reasonable to pro-rate the responses of the people who gave salary data on the assumption that the people who didn't fill in that part of the survey earned similar amounts by comparable firm size. And I still think there's something to that. But I'm told by the Career Office — and I believe them — that the average salary data is presented the way it is because that's how all law schools do it and the goal is to provide prospective students with numbers that can fairly be compared to what is provided by other law schools.

The Career Development Office avers that it collects the data and reports it in accordance with ABA and NALP guidelines, using the same methods that every other accredited law school in the country uses. Were the law school to do something else, the administration notes, it would no longer be reporting to students in the way it reports to the ABA and NALP. That would mean our data would have an asterisk. And even if we were doing it in order to provide better data the inevitable conclusion that most people would draw is that we were trying to hide something. So the Catch-22 is that we have to do it this way, possibly sacrificing some statistical excellence and even accuracy, or else we'll look like we're engaged in some sort of cover-up. And, of course, in addition to having an asterisk, we'd be harming our competitive position since we'd have gone to some trouble to calculate and report a lower number which would harm marketing and recruiting.

Well, here we are now in a very bad legal hiring year, and U.M has again provided some employment data for 2009 graduates that, on first blush, looks somewhat cheery:

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