Former Thomas Jefferson School of Law Employee Alleges False Data Reporting

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A former career-services employee from the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Karen Grant, said that the school lied about the number of graduates who were employed after leaving school. The law school, based in San Diego, was sued for misleading students by advertising that a large percentage of its graduates were employed. Those ads did not describe if the jobs were full-time or if they required a degree in law.

  

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Grant worked as the assistant director of career services from 2006 to 2007. Grant claims that she was ordered to mark certain graduates of the law school as employed even if they did not have a job. The claims made by Grant were denied by the school. She filed a sworn declaration last week against the school.

Rudy Hasl, the dean of the law school, claims that the school offered accurate data about employment for its graduates. Hasl also said that “no employee was every directed to falsify information.” The law school also said that it did not mislead students and said that it has always followed reporting requirements.

According to the declaration, Grant said that she “routinely recorded currently unemployed students as ‘employed’ if they had been employed any time since graduation.” The sworn statement also said that when Grant discussed her concern about it, she was told that “everyone does it.”

It is not known why Grant left the school and her supervisor is also no longer employed with Thomas Jefferson. The school plans to file a response to the allegations as early as this week.

Update: A few excerpts of the school’s response, filed October 25th, are below (See the full response at the school’s website here – http://www.tjsl.edu/news-media/2012/7835):

Recent media accounts have drawn attention to a declaration filed last week in the litigation. In the declaration, an ex-employee of TJSL claims that six (6) years ago her former supervisor (who departed TJSL in 2007) instructed her to classify graduates as “employed” in reports to the National Association of Law Placement in cases where those students were employed at some point post-graduation, but were not employed on a specific reporting date. She does not specify how often this change in employment actually occurred.

Claims of false reporting are serious and we take them seriously. TJSL policy has always been to report accurate employment data, and the declaration is the first time the declarant, or anyone else, has made such an assertion.

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In sum, as we have consistently stated, we do not believe that there is any legitimate basis for this lawsuit. Accordingly, we will continue to vigorously defend TJSL against these meritless claims.