The Admission:
http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/2012/10/ex-cso-assistant-director-from-tjls-admits-to-fraud/
On October 23, 2012 at 10:00 am, Law School Transparency published a story labeled “Breaking: Ex-CSO assistant director from Thomas Jefferson admits to fraud, alleges deliberate scheme by law school.” Check out this excerpt:
“In a sworn statement, Karen Grant, a former career services assistant director at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, admits that she fabricated graduate employment outcomes for the class of 2006. Grant alleges that her fraud was part of a deliberate scheme by the law school’s administration to inflate its employment statistics. She also claims that her direct supervisor, Laura Weseley, former Director of Career Services, instructed her on multiple occasions to improperly record graduate employment outcomes and justified the scheme because “everybody does it” thus “it is no big deal.” TJSL could face sanctions from the American Bar Association as severe as losing accreditation.” [Emphasis mine]
How is that for meat and potatoes? Now you see why industry bagmen/pieces of trash Melvin Schweitzer and Gordon Jay Quist did not want the class action lawsuits against NYL$ and Thomas M. Cooley Law Sewer to go to a jury. They did not want any potentially damaging info to be accessed, if discovery were allowed.
Later on, the piece continued:
“It is the nature of the process that schools do not follow up with certain graduates before submitting data to NALP by the end of February. Schools begin collecting post-graduation job outcome data shortly before graduation and continue through the February 15 reporting deadline. Once a school knows that a graduate has a job, career services staffers will often cease follow-ups because they believe their time is better spent elsewhere.
However, Grant alleges that the accepted practice in the TJSL career services office, at least during her tenure, went beyond cherry picking which students to follow up with. She alleges that she participated in a scheme that guaranteed that TJSL’s employment stats would be better than the reality by affirmatively ignoring new, true, and proper outcomes of graduates whose jobs were terminated or ran their course before the reporting deadline. Grant admits that TJSL submitted false information to NALP, U.S. News, and the American Bar Association as a result of her counting as employed at nine-months any student who was employed at any time after graduation regardless of whether they had a job at that time.
A look at the statistics TJSL reported to the ABA for the class of 2006 confirms that the numbers from Grant’s spreadsheet, Exhibit D of her declaration, were submitted to the ABA. These numbers were not submitted to the ABA until after her termination in September 2007.” [Emphasis mine]
The Smoking Gun:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/110912164/Alaburda-v-TJSL-Declaration-of-Karen-Grant
Take a look at the handwritten notes on Exhibit B, attached to Karen W. Grant’s Declaration. On the second page of this file, she attests that the meeting took place on October 16, 2006. As you can see from the document, Grant was to update the Employment Report & Salary Survey with those who were unemployed before February and found employment before the NALP deadline, but not vice versa.
This commode is a bastion of integrity, huh?!?! For $ome rea$on, the academic thieves were not concerned with temporarily employed JDs who ended up jobless at the nine month mark.
Coverage from Others:
http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/10/former-assistant-career-services.html
Later on October 23, 2012, Paul Campos posted an epic entry entitled “Former assistant career services director admits to falsifying employment data, claims she was ordered to do so.” Here is the opening:
“A former assistant career services director at Thomas Jefferson School of Law has admitted in a sworn statement to fabricating graduate employment data, and claims she was ordered to do so by her boss, the director of the of the office.”
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/10/former-thomas-jefferson-school-of-law-employee-alleges-falsification-of-employment-statistics/
Also on the same day, Staci Zaretsky published a piece for ATL under the headline “Former Thomas Jefferson School of Law Employee Alleges Falsification of Employment Statistics.” From her conclusion:
“[A]s we hear about more and more misconduct, alleged or admitted, at law schools around the country — from TJSL to Villanova to Illinois — it gets harder and harder to dismiss each as a “one bad apple” situation. And it’s rather unfortunate that the ABA seems unable or unwilling to recognize this. Perhaps the organization ought to do something more than watch from the sidelines and then punish a law school when its misdeeds come to light. Perhaps it’s time for the ABA to do something that should’ve been done a long time ago: require that all employment data be independently verified by a third party.” [Emphasis mine]
Hell, I'm surprised the pigs at TJ$L did not claim that this was an "error."
Conclusion: The sources above share one common thinking error: they believe that the ABA will or should do something to stem this conduct. With their track record, nothing indicates that the American Bar Association cockroaches will intervene. If they do get involved, you can chalk that up to public relations, i.e. “Look! We’re doing something to remedy this situation!”
Remember that law equals politics. For instance, you will occasionally see senators and “representatives” dress down morally bankrupt, financial criminals known as CEOs in committee hearings. However, this is a mere charade. The dogs are engaging in mere theater, with their masters. After the performance, the council may recommend future study - and the rats might even issue a report on the findings months later. In the meantime, everything returns to normal. The big-ass campaign checks continue to be written and cashed. In the end, an audit of the toilets’ figures should be conducted by an entirely independent agency or firm. However, the ABA will not broach the subject.
