voice up that is not a microphone ok i'll try my best thank you thank you ramsey this there's this is a garden variety consumer fraud case in which there's a the defendant is a law school that had a promotional scheme to increase sales he only unusual back about this case is the prominence of reputation of the defendant to paul university so to paul misrepresented and falsified its employment information for a period of years to undo students who enroll at deploy all rather than some other school obviously there are many legal issues that are present in the appeal but i first  some some areas where the trial court misunderstood misstated and the factual the case instead the decision is based on faulty premises page for stu the nature of the falsity yes there are there are plenty of facts the facts and the facts are that the polls saying that ninety percent of the people are employed when you know when you read that information in the context of their disclosure you're not aware that they're counting part time people they're counting temporary people the kind of people who are working in the legal profession the kind of people really are struggling so that's that's the falsity is what they're leaving out those are the examples of it that's false so you look at then i'm a reasonable person takes a look at that information and remember the salary information is listed right below salary look information says they have a night you know that they're claiming that you know enormous ever salaries here so when they when they get i'm just looking at two thousand and eleven see three to eight in the record so you look at that you see it ninety two point eight percent employment that's false because they're counting all these people who are unemployed in the law business and then you look right below it says average starting salary in private practice ninety seven thousand dollars star salary statistics they're only counting the salaries they choose to count they're not counting part time people people believe that they would secure employment knowing law school sufficient to service the debt that they were undertaking right not quite you know slightly different  clients believed if they were attending a law school reasonably believe it's our position that had a ninety percent employment rate or an eighty eight percent employment rate if you look at the stats you see an eighty eight percent chance of getting a good job at the time they had as right there looking at the pen i understand these are passed facts to suppress track record so they say they're comparing that to another law school but they're really getting a law school education with a real employment rate is about forty percent forty to fifty percent throughout the litigation period even today the paul university has not cracked fifty percent putting their point to date on the record we've i mean this is been i mean this is been part of this case from the beginning that's the whole point they're there for computing employment stats they're cutting all those people out who they don't want you to know about and the student looks at that your likelihood of getting a good paying job underage you ation it's a it's a reflection of past graduate success in the past tense enormous effort getting students to believe the stuff they do all kinds of effort to say we're better than the solar law school over here our degree is better you're going to do better in the world it applies in good times and bad they're saying we have a better track record we have a better reputation employers regard our graduates highly employers are snapping up our graduates attended that's the point well there you say they wouldn't have attended to paul you're not saying they wouldn't have gone to law school through i thought they would have incurred the debt they ultimately heard anyway possibly we don't know this from finder's i am going by the allegations of your complaint nowhere in the complaint to the point it's plain that had they known the truth about the fall they wouldn't have gone to law school well they say they would have attended she's saying she would know when rover continued to be enrolled at department but it isn't it and that's what we have alleged and i don't know what else to tell you when the students say if we knew the truth we wouldn't have gone we would have done something else with our lives we would have done something else that's the problem sure so that's a fair characterization of the man so you think i do you think we're saying that they would have they would have gone to another law school maybe but the brother law school could have had a better alleging that's the nature of it i do but i do want to go back to you know we're not claiming that the paul we've never claimed no one in any of these cases has claimed what the law school promised them a job we've never claimed that we've said you have a false track record that made but it's really impossible if you don't get the true information could be people don't tell you the truth you can't make your own projection we're not saying to paul promised a job that's been to paul's position in the litigation they say you were claiming that we didn't get a job no we're saying you to paul didn't tell us the truth about your past track record so the we students could have done a five hour possibilities for the future to make our reasonable conclusions as to what we wanted to do your theory of damages statistics should have been and so they have to be translates into they guaranteed me on john they gave me a ninety two percent guarantee that i would be employed within nine months and i think the truth is i only ha fifty percent chance and so the ants the measure of much is it's it's only one of the measures i provided i just i'm not obligated to plating staged to provide all the detail of my damages but that's one one of several options i provided the other option is you you take statistics you take to courts you take the people who attended law schools with the employment stats of the real de paul fifty percent ish more or less and then you compare those to the people who attended law schools with the what the track record to support claim to have that's that's what i have that's why i've also claimed obviously we're starting out but i'm not claiming that someone promised a job we never did none of these cases are about that these cases are about false facts false track record so the student can figure out what his or her options are going forward if they go to that school constantly address issues of proximate cause where is the cause and fact in this case the proximate cause is the students relied on the data they say that they would have gone to paul if they hadn't if they had if the day that they'd known the true that could have yielded this same result and are you not mt to show that the paul's representation was in fact the cause of these individuals not being able to secure the employment that they thought it was titled no i don't quite agree with you what i'm proposing what i will propose if the case proceeds is a statistical analysis we take the cohorts because there's plenty of evidence there's peer reviewed research some which were cited in our papers that shows you can measure the value of a law degree there is peer reviewed research to show you can measure a value of a lot of grief from a particular institution there's also plenty of economic data and research and statistics that show you can measure the effect of where you start as a big impact on where you end up that's a huge impact where you start is important to where you end up and you take those things and you have and you do you need an expert at the x but says the people who came from law schools that had a track record to depart claimed to have earned x and these the students have earned less why that's the proof a statistical analysis again you know some of the cases are cited are from times when that things weren't the supposed to get it but there is a reviewed research that has appeared on these questions so that's how you that's how you calculate it obviously the students don't have a earnings track record when they walk out the door you know they've they've passed the bar  away they go but the illinois courts of awarded damages to minors and other people based on statistical cohorts of statistical groups do only courts have recognized this for a long time so that's our damages our damages are that we started out lower than we thought we and we earn less over time because of that we thought we were getting a degree that offered us this what we really got a degree that offered us that meaning a much lower employment rate a degree that offered us much lower chance of getting a job in the legal business requiring a law degree and the individual characteristics of any given student no that's for the statistic as titian's to argue about i don't obviously there are always individual differences i mean whether the case can be a class action or not those are all for the future but no they could be relevant to this issue it could be but the statisticians can show you go while courts of people do and they can go through that they've gone through it for minors or people with no track record there's no reason to think that the students here that we could make that same showing based on the them there's a mountain of p reviewed research on this topic because there is this whole thing you know this whole this group this dept situation is a small piece of a big national scandal that went through the whole law profession it started in two thousand and eleven you know caused all kinds of an essential element of the fraud claims is injury they have to have been injured by the claim misrepresentation and they simply were not injured cases like the city of chicago says michigan beach housing makes that clear or sustainable claim there must be an injury this will be the third appellate court that faces these issues precisely the same issues involving law school case affirm the dismissal of precisely these claims because the statistics complained about the percentage of prior graduates employed after nine months and shop the ninety plus percent employment rate within the first nine months of graduation against any average salary without disclosing that that's for full into that simple statement ninety two percent employed to mean only illegal employment and a high salary it's like you've got you've got applicants who are taking on according to the upwards of one hundred thousand dollars and get to obtain this degree now they're not spending one hundred thousand dollars so that they can go out and be waitresses and work in retail if we're not right  so when so when a law school is in reporting we have a ninety two percent success rate in our graduates obtaining employment following law school would need a reasonable reader believe that we're talking about relevant employment to this very expensive degree i'm taking on so so i think they might in isolation the next bits of information though are that ninety percent includes so in this record that ninety percent includes fifty percent in private practice thirty percent in business fifteen percent working for the government and there's three or four more categories of public service and no so the twenty thousand dollars to a high of two hundred fifty thousand the other range is a low twenty five thousand to a high of about one hundred ninety thousand judge cohen said you can look at that and say that employment statistic must mean full time private practice it says twenty thousand dollars is the range and that's what the sixth circuit said a reasonable reader and to the point that this is an expensive purchase you're about to make inquires further and if that reader doesn't you don't hold the person who made us a rather general representation you don't hold that person responsible the reader has an obligation before making a reasonable reader to dig a little bit and of course the official guide a b a published for each of the years at issue here says here's the law school report understand those jobs include not just full time or part time jobs not just legal jobs they include retail jobs now because someone about to make one hundred thousand dollars purchase faced with objectively true but it medically general information what the a b a required the law schools by the american bar association committee on legal education this is not a choice they have that committee an independent arm of the a b a i mean x is an agent for the united states government instructs those law schools as to what they must put in their materials they instructed that the overall employment number nine months after was cool for whatever it's worth rather and admittedly it's say it's in general a statistic that doesn't inform very much but it's what the aviary require so they're independent you will is to report to statistically are obligated to report which is the same statistic the other seven hundred last pools are obligated to report in the a b a standards prohibited the law schools from reporting morning for me and certainly kind of reported more so when automobile manufacturers had to report average mileage they report an average mileage purchase there's a look at the number of sales ninety two percent employed after nine months and say great i can assume that means a high paying legal job that i'm going to desire especially when they see understand perspective students is the a b a official this is survey data so the ball never actually said ninety two percent are employed they said nine months after graduation ninety two percent of the respon advice to those who are interested in not looking at an opaque statistic if you want to refer to it is that and coming to the conclusions that they want to come to i want to suggest that leave to amend here would be versus the william blair case make it clear that we're talking about proximate cause ation of the damages your claim so we are talking about was causation so it's you have two separate album is that we shouldn't can fight the representation as to cause you to act in this case to roll over meaningful that's one aspect of a misrepresentation the second aspect is it has to be fairly direct haws of the damages your claim so here the theory would be reporting the ninety two percent statistic about a prior class is a direct cause of me and in this case the development of damage paying incremental higher amount for law school and having to diminish future earning capacity there is simply no possible connection between how our motion and raised these issues that have been as i said faced by numerous corps before there was no request to amend then there was no attempt to meet those  where of course not asked exercise discretion or at least pointed in the direction where a solution is sustainable solution suggested but again at the end of the day you can amend around these very these  numerous courts have said you can't do this even if you approach the value of a law degree is soley an economic matter which is a questionable proposition to begin with doesn't it have intrinsic value to those who decide to become lawyers but assume you approach it as an economic value isn't it idiosyncratic isn't the value of a law degree highly individual doesn't it depend on countless circumstances beyond the control of the ball doesn't depend on how you apply your  sufficient and this is this is from the city of chicago michigan beach was a case in the amber william blair case it's not sufficient that the misrepresentation caused him to act in this case to roll the misrepresentation must you know depaul talks about there's an aviator the flip side of the record and the book is they printed parts of the book extracts of it for so for years i want to say that paul itself did not comply with the a b a guidelines in those years two thousand and six to two thousand and eleven if you had has numerous categories including non legal careers from lawyers that's a key point and that's that c five eighty four that's correct it's not but it's in the record i mean that's correct it's not but they didn't meet the a b a standards either so all i mean were you know i mean that's why we asked for leave to amend in that's the whole point but him to talk a little bit about you know that some of these cases have fallen into a trap you know the coolie cases and the cases involving the new york cases have fallen into the trap of saying that there was some other place the students could have gone to find the true employment rate that is of that is a mess that's an urban legend that is unfortunately you see some well respected and very capable jurists there is of all the data comes from the school you are stuck with the data it's the same in the graveyard book it's the same in their website it's the same in u s news so the data stays the same there is no place where you can we can figure that out and then you know  they talk a little bit about they say we're going to sell the range it's true there's a salary range that's two thousand and ten eleven they say twenty five thousand one hundred ninety thousand their lawyers will make their full time lawyers make twenty five thousand dollars for that that  doesn't tell me anything useful but the student is going to look at that ninety seven thousand and fifty six dollars or the seventy four thousand two hundred sixty seven that's worth of that's the purpose and then the tombs to two groups of stats are made up differently you have everybody here and you look at the employment information and you have a small group here for the salary statistics that's the deception it's not that's not fair  but finally i mean we have you know i mean fundamentally we have a good institution in the paul law school that made a series of mistakes but the clients that i represent are harmed by that they