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Graduate Law School, Drive Full-Time for Uber

By Jonathan R. Tung, Esq. on December 23, 2015 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Clark Moffat is the latest in a series of law school graduates to become victims of circumstance. He and a handful of other students who graduated from San Diego's Thomas Jefferson School of Law (TJSL) are suing their alma mater on causes of action that essentially amount to fraud. They allege that the school intentionally inflated their employment numbers in order to make law school seem more appealing.

Moffat's case is particularly sympathetic because he has never once been able to find work in the legal field and he has never made more than $25,000 a year. To make matters more dire, he's drowning under $170k in debt while caring for his cancer-stricken wife and his son in a rented mobile-home. Is that the picture people think of when they think law school?

When Everything Goes Wrong

As told through Business Insider, Moffat describes how he had intended to be working in criminal defense once he obtained his license to practice law. Unfortunately, he failed to pass both the California bar exam and the Texas bar exam.

When he graduated, he took up work at the GameStop because his student debts were mounting and he needed "any job" in order to start paying them off. At the moment, he drives full time for Uber.

Moffat has not exactly reached his full potential as a law school grad. His frustration at his predicament unfortunately comes in tandem with opinions from academia that law schools have been pushing to keep admittance numbers high to stay solvent -- to the detriment to the profession and students' lives.

What's "Employment"? Clerk at Victoria's Secret

It's no secret that there's an insidious and rather troubling incentive for schools to use the word "employment" in as broad a way as possible in order to prop up the severely hampered employment figures in the law recently. Doing so is not without its scandal, of course. Earlier, the Associated Press caused quite a ruckus when it was reported that Thomas Jefferson included sales clerking at Victoria's Secret in its gainful employment figures. We recently covered the story of Nikki Nguyen and her suit against TJLS.

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