Appendix B. How to Read the 509
Every ABA-accredited law school files a Standard 509 Information Report every year. It’s public. Google the school’s name and “509.”
Where to find it. The ABA database is at abarequireddisclosures.org. Search by school name. Current and prior-year reports are both there. LSAC also links 509 data on each school’s profile page.
What to pull:
Employment outcomes. The number that matters is full-time, long-term, bar-required employment about 10 months after graduation, shown as a percent of the class. Keep it separate from “JD-advantage” jobs (jobs that value the degree but don’t require a law license) and “school-funded” positions (the school is paying, which can be bridge funding or a stat-flattering placement). A school reporting 90 percent “employed” might be at 60 percent in real bar-required work once you split it out.
Take the full-time, long-term, bar-required number. Subtract the school-funded jobs. Divide by total graduates. That’s the adjusted rate in actual legal work.
The discount rate, estimated. The 509 shows the percent of students getting grants and the median grant amount. Compare the median grant to the sticker tuition, and you’ll see what the school actually collects per student. Pull last year’s report and the year before. A discount climbing fast over several years means the school is fighting to fill seats, and it’s often the first sign of trouble.
Medians and the bar. Note the entering class LSAT and GPA medians and the first-time bar-passage rate. Read them over 3 years, not 1. A school whose medians are climbing while bar passage is flat or falling deserves a closer look.
What the categories actually mean.
“Bar-passage required” means the employer required a law license. The graduate is practicing law, or in a role that legally requires one. Judicial clerkships and government positions requiring bar admission count here.
“JD advantage” means the employer found the JD useful but did not require it. A compliance manager at a bank. A hospital administrator with a JD. These are real jobs, but not the job most people borrow $150,000 to train for.
“School-funded” gets the most scrutiny. These jobs exist because the school created and paid for them, not because a market employer hired the graduate. Many are real short-term positions, but they inflate the “employed” figure. When you compare 2 schools, strip out school-funded positions from both first. What’s left is the market’s verdict on that graduating class.
The brochure comes from the marketing office. The 509 is filed under penalty of losing accreditation.
A worked example
Numbers get easier to use once you’ve watched someone else use them. So let’s read 1 actual 509 filing, the way you’d read it the night before you have to decide.
Everything below is an illustrative composite. There’s no real school named Ashford Law School anywhere in the country. The numbers are built to match a typical regional private school’s filing, so you can see the pattern. Pull up your own target school’s real 509 next to this and walk the same 4 steps.
Step 1. Open the employment section first.
Here’s what Ashford’s filing shows for its most recent graduating class of 180 students, measured 10 months after graduation.
- Full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required jobs: 102 graduates, 57 percent.
- School-funded positions (the school itself pays the salary): 14 graduates, 8 percent.
- Unemployed and seeking: 16 graduates, 9 percent.
- The rest: JD-advantage jobs, part-time work, and unknown status.
Now do the subtraction. The 57 percent in real bar-required jobs is the number that should drive your decision, not the “employed in any capacity” figure the school will lead with. That figure folds in the 8 percent school-funded group and might read 88 or 90 percent. A school-funded job means Ashford is paying the graduate’s salary, often through a short-term fellowship it created itself. Some turn into real careers; many just keep a graduate off the unemployment line during the 10-month window.
Don’t skip the 9 percent unemployed, either. That’s 16 real people, 10 months out, with no job. A brochure will never show you that number, but it belongs next to the 57 percent in your head.
Step 2. Check the first-time bar passage rate.
Ashford’s most recent first-time bar passage rate is 71 percent, against a state average of 79 percent that same year.
8 points below average is a real gap. A meaningful share of Ashford’s graduates are walking out with a law degree and then failing the test that lets them use it. Every graduate who fails the bar loses months of income and often pays for bar prep again. That costs about as much as a bad loan term, and it never makes it into a school’s pitch.
Hold that number. You’ll need it in Step 4.
Step 3. Pull the grant data and estimate the real discount.
This is where you find out what Ashford actually charges, not what it publishes. Sticker tuition is $52,000 a year. The 509 shows 81 percent of students receive a grant, with a median grant of $24,000.
A $24,000 grant against a $52,000 sticker means the typical student actually pays around $28,000 a year. Call it a discount rate of roughly 46 percent. For most of the class, Ashford’s advertised price is close to fiction.
That’s not automatically a red flag. A real discount rate is just how law school pricing works now. What matters is the direction. A school might discount 46 percent because it competes hard for strong students, or because it can’t fill seats any other way. The number by itself won’t tell you which one you’re looking at.
Step 4. Read all 3 numbers as a trend, not a snapshot.
Pull Ashford’s last 3 years of filings and lay the same numbers side by side.
| 3 years ago | 2 years ago | Most recent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bar-required employment | 64% | 60% | 57% |
| First-time bar passage | 78% | 75% | 71% |
| Median grant (% of sticker) | 38% | 42% | 46% |
Employment is sliding, down 7 points in 2 years. Bar passage is sliding with it. And the discount rate climbs the whole time, meaning Ashford gives away more tuition every year just to keep its class full.
Put together, that’s the doom loop from Chapter 2 showing up in a filing. Pressure forces deeper discounts. Less revenue per student means cuts somewhere: bar prep support, faculty, class sections. Cuts show up 18 months later as softer bar passage and softer employment. Worse outcomes scare off the next cycle of applicants, so the school discounts even harder. Round and round.
Check only the most recent filing and you’d see 57 percent employment, 71 percent passage, and think: not great, but workable. The 3-year view shows a school sliding every year while its real price keeps falling. A rough year and a real cycle look identical inside a single filing.
What to do with this. Run these 4 steps on every school still on your list, tonight. A school stable or improving on all 3 is a very different bet than one sliding on all 3, even in the exact same year.
