"Desperation" In Las Vegas; Disparities at UNLV

Those new graduates putting faith in leaving a saturated urban market like Chicago, NYC, or DC for places with less lawyer coverage should know that your peers have already beat you to it, and in droves. Check out what's going on in Nevada. Nevada is seen by some as "a magnet for young attorneys seeking their fortunes" because there is only one law school in what has been a rapidly-growing state over the last decade. But then there's this:

Alex Fugazzi, the attorney handling hiring for the Las Vegas Snell & Wilmer law office, is deluged with applications these days. He suspects desperation when Ivy League grads start filling his e-mail inbox and postal mail slot with résumés.

"I get résumés from Harvard, from Ivy League schools, and we get résumés from 'white shoe' (long-established) law firms in New York and Chicago, from lawyers who used to be able to write their own tickets," he listed.

Do you think they all had bad grades and poor networking abilities?

And that one law school in Nevada, the Boyd School of Law at UNLV, isn't giving rosy prospects, either.

Applications at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' William S. Boyd School of Law have increased steadily over the last three years, even during the worst of the economic recession, said John Valery White, the law school's dean....He expects to be able to place at least 70 percent of the 2010 Boyd Law School graduates.

While 70 percent may sound lofty in such times (and given how placement is going elsewhere, I'd like to see proof of it), remember that this is a school that is very well-positioned in-state. While some graduates from California may shuffle over, if you want to be an attorney in Nevada, UNLV is the place to go. Despite being barely in the top 100 USNWR schools, UNLV has only 16% acceptance rate and a very high yield (44%). By contrast, Fordham accepts 24% of its applicants. Minnesota is at 24%. Virginia is at 25%. Duke is at 23%. (source: lawschoolnubmers). Different application pools to be sure, but that should give you an idea of how UNLV's monopoly on Nevada legal training helps it and its graduates out.

And yet a quarter of the class just will not be placed by the dean's own admission. If they can't do it with a monopoly on new law grads, what chance do others have in more saturated markets?

And as an aside, why does the Boyd-UNLV website not reflect these adjusted employment projections?

• What is the Boyd School of Law’s employment placement rate?
  Our employment rate for 2007 to 2008 was 90.1% after 9 months. For more employment data click [dead link]

If you only project that 70% of your students will be placed in the Class of 2010, shouldn't you disclose that? By leaving the '08 numbers up, aren't you making some kind of assertion that you don't have numbers for 2009 or 2010? And since you obviously do have numbers for those years, isn't it blatant dishonesty to keep the old numbers up?