Holder Gives Good Advice to UVa Grads

Attorney Eric Holder spoke at Virginia's commencement yesterday:

He asked of the audience, "I hope in the spirit of Robert Kennedy your most famous predecessor and mine, that you will dare greatly. That you will question what is accepted, and that you will change what is objectionable and that you will weed out injustice in all it's [sic] forms and that you will always remember the truth of his enduring words - 'The future is not a gift, it is an achievement'."

Absolutely.

I'm all for "weed[ing] out injustice in all its forms." Not that it's the most pressing form of injustice, but I certainly wouldn't object if they started with the law schools themselves.

On a related, here is the University of Virginia's "Facts and Statistics" page, where you can see that they're clinging to the '07, and '08 numbers:

More than 96% of the Class of 2008 reported employment at graduation

More than 99% of the Class of 2008 reported employment nine months after graduation.

Presence in Top Law Firms, Classes of 2007-09

• 73% with firms in American Lawyer's top 100 by gross revenue
• 11% with firms ranked between 100 and 200
• 16% with smaller firms

*Rankings according to American Lawyer 2008 survey

Public Interest Jobs, Classes of 2007-09

• 31 public interest groups
• 22 federal government
• 14 state and local government
• 16 military

Clerkships, Classes of 2007-09

• 9 U.S. Supreme Court (alumni clerkships, 2006-08)
• 44 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
• 93 U.S. District Courts and other federal courts
• 12 state courts
• 1 international court

It's now 2011. With a school the size of Virginia (>350 students per graduating class), there's no reason to lump classes together aside from rigging the statistics to allow the 2007 numbers to balance out the 2009 numbers. And you have to wonder why the 2010 graduates aren't mentioned at all.

Meanwhile, employment is so "99% guaranteed" amongst Virginia 3Ls that someone actually saw fit to publish this piece as an April fool's joke.

As its US News and World Report entry states, the salary discrepancy between public service employees and private sector employees (i.e. BigLaw) is over $100,000. But as this article states, the class of 2010 had a record number of people entering the public sector. Of course, the school tries to play it as a "we're committed to service" type of thing, but it can't be an accident that Virginia had a record number go into the government and public sectors in 2010 while the law school still finds it necessary to include 2006-2008 numbers in its employment and placement presentations, can it? Hmm....