Feb 27 (Reuters) - Lawsuits claiming law schools misled applicants about future job prospects have drawn plenty of attention, but they may not help disgruntled graduates get their money back , some legal education experts say.

According to the lawsuits -- three of which were filed last year followed by 12 this month -- the law schools overstated the job prospects of their students. The plaintiffs, who are graduates of the law schools, say they have been left with huge student debts and a dim career outlook after graduation. Nine of the 15 law schools denied any wrongdoing. The others could not be reached by Reuters.

While the lawsuits have generated plenty of coverage in the legal media, the underlying legal claims are not strong, according to some legal education experts. That's because it is not clear that the law schools in question failed to meet minimum industry standards when reporting job placement data, these experts say.

"I have a feeling a lot of the lawsuits will not get very far, especially if the schools can show they were complying with the rules," said Brian Leiter, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who runs a popular blog on legal education. "Plaintiffs would probably have to show they simply would not have gone to law school at all, since all schools (followed) the same standard."

It also seems "extremely unlikely" that courts will grant class certification, which has been requested by all the plaintiffs, Leiter added. This is because individual questions are likely to predominate over common ones, he said.

Historically, the American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, provided little guidance on what job placement data law schools should report. It asked law schools to use the guidelines of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) when reporting the careers of their graduates. The association allowed law schools to report their graduates as employed if they held part-time, low-wage jobs that did not require a law degree.

That changed last year, when the ABA asked law schools to provide more detailed information on where, how, and whether recent graduates are employed.

Before these changes were made, many poorly rated law schools reported that upwards of 90 percent of their graduates were employed nine months after graduation. (None of the 15 law schools facing lawsuits are among the top 50 law schools, as ranked by US News & World Report, and six are not ranked by the magazine at all.)

In their lawsuits, the plaintiffs argue that the marketing and outreach efforts of their alma maters led them to believe that these percentages referred to graduate placement in legal jobs.

In a lawsuit filed Feb. 1 against Brooklyn Law School, for example, plantiffs said the law school advertised employment rates from 88 percent to 98 percent within nine months of graduation. One plaintiff, Adam Bevelacqua, said in the complaint that he was misled when he took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt. He said he is unable to find legal work after graduating from the law school last year.

Before enrolling, Bevelacqua "specifically relied on Brooklyn Law's representation that, depending on the year, well over 90 percent of Brooklyn Law graduates secured employment within nine months of graduation," the complaint said.

A spokeswoman from Brooklyn Law School said that the claims in the lawsuit "are without merit, and we will vigorously defend against them in court."

David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island, said he is skeptical about the merits of the lawsuits. The schools' graduate job placement data may be "opaque" he said, but still in compliance with industry standards. (Roger Williams University School of Law is not among the law schools facing lawsuits by graduates.)

And, while the complaints point to statements about how each school's exemplary education will help graduates establish a legal career, "'puffing' is not the same as fraud," Logan said.

Whether claims against law schools stand up in court depends on the how strong consumer protection laws are in each state, said Douglas Rush, a professor at Saint Louis University who specializes in legal education.

An explanation of how law schools have defined "employed" is available from NALP or the ABA , and in some states the burden is on the consumer to track it down, Rush said. If the applicant didn't bother, those courts will say "too bad, plaintiff loses," he said.

On the other hand, a state with strict consumer protection laws might consider it deceptive to tell a "bunch of starry-eyed applicants" that 95 percent of graduates are employed when only 22 percent of them are working in legal jobs, Rush said.

Mark Gergen, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said he finds the claims in the lawsuits credible. Even if the job data reported by law schools was technically accurate, courts could find them guilty of common-law fraud for stating something they knew or had reason to know was misleading, he said.

"People going to bottom-tier law schools ought to know that they won't go like hot cakes on the job market," he said. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to exploit their vulnerability.

Gergen compared the litigation against law schools to the tobacco litigation in the 1990s: "People had been calling (cigarettes) 'cancer sticks' for years, but tobacco companies were still held responsible for their behavior."

The Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego was the first law school to be sued when a graduate filed a class action complaint last May. The school's dean, Rudolph Hasl, said that since the information the school published about job placement is "accurate and correct," the school is in a "very strong position" in the litigation.

Information on graduate job prospects are not the main reason individuals choose a law school, he added.

"The key is, to what extent was the applicant's decision to attend the law school motivated by (job placement) data?," said Hasl. "My sense is, it is not a significant motivating or driving force. It is probably dwarfed by so many other factors, including the applicant's credentials and what choice (of law schools) he or she has."

Law schools facing lawsuits by graduates include: Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, New York Law School, the Albany Law School of Union University, Brooklyn Law School, the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, California Western School of Law, Golden Gate University School of Law, Southwestern Law School, University of San Francisco School of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, DePaul University College of Law, the John Marshall Law School, Florida Coastal School of Law and Widener University School of Law.

(Reporting by Moira Herbst)

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