LEGAL EDUCATION UDPATE: At Arizona State, A Residency Program For Lawyers. “Arizona State University plans to launch a nonprofit teaching law firm next summer to hire some of its recent graduates and provide on-the-job training – a move the law school’s dean said is motivated by a desire to serve students, not to boost the employment data frequently used in law school rankings.” It’s a good idea, though it’ll affect the rankings, too.

Perhaps, as Brian Tamanaha suggests, this sort of thing can be substituted for the third year instead of being set up post-graduation.

Related: ABA Employment Data Will Fundamentally Reshape Legal Education. “The lifeblood of the entire legal education establishment, including elite law schools, is federal student loans. Our students get the same generous terms as graduates of medical and dental schools, who are not struggling to make six figure incomes. The graphs above suggest that a large proportion of our students will be on Income-Based Repayment (IBR), which is — functionally — insurance in the event a high income fails to materialize in the years following graduation. The downside risk of that insurance — lack of repayment of expected principal and interest — is borne by U.S. taxpayers.” It’s no picnic for the borrower, either, though.