The most recent U.S. News statistics of employed law school graduates are impressive. At 93 percent, the number is almost a 10 percent improvement from the original 1997 publishing of the U.S. News statistic called "Graduates Known to be Employed Nine Months After Graduation."

However, the number is misleading. David Segal's article "Is Law School a Losing Game?" in The New York Times quotes law professor William Henderson of Indiana University as saying that "Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm."

Henderson is referring to the fact that the survey's guidelines, established by the American Bar Association and the National Association for Law Placement, include any kind of employment law graduates have nine months after graduation. That includes jobs that don't require a high school degree, let alone a law degree, such as a grocery clerk or burger flipper.

The reason for this deception, as Segal points out in his article, is that law schools need law students to keep their doors open. He further emphasizes that even schools that have lower yearly tuition, in the $40,000 range, make bank because they do not have the same need for equipment as other majors' departments do. Segal even suggests that universities' law schools compensate for less lucrative majors.

So of course law schools want to put out impressive statistics on employment after graduation to encourage students to pursue a law degree. The problem is that the debt students acquire to get that far is too great for those who believed in that statistic, but weren't able to get that law position with a promising salary within the first few months after graduation.

One of those recent law graduates is Jason Bohn, who was interviewed by Segal for his article. Bohn has a staggering student loan debt of more than $200,000. Although Bohn accrued most of this debt as an undergraduate and while working on a master's degree at Columbia University, Segal reports the debts Bohn accrued while attending Columbia Law and the University of Florida certainly didn't help.

In addition, as Segal points out, Bohn is only earning $33 an hour as a legal temp in contrast to the starting salary most colleges quote. As Segal's article states, schools such as Harvard, Yale and even law schools that don't make it into the U.S. News Top 40 claim that graduates ought to expect a median starting salary of $160,000 in the private sector. That breaks down to $76 an hour. Bohn is making less than half of that.

And keep in mind that even though Bohn's current annual salary as a legal temp will average to about $68,600 a year, there are other bills to be paid besides student loans. He and other law graduates will likely need to make a house or rent payment, buy groceries, fill up the gas tank and pay other living costs in addition to paying the interest on sizable school loans – Loans that can accumulate in the hundreds of thousands of dollars while acquiring the schooling needed to obtain a law degree.

Granted, employment is hard to get no matter what industry you're vying for. But when law schools are quoting statistics that mislead students into believing that not only will there be a job waiting for them when they graduate, but one with a hefty starting wage, they are creating an illusion that may not turn into reality… well, at least not at the rate that they are claiming.