The Thomas Jefferson School of Law did not defraud a graduate who claimed she based her decision to enroll on misleading information, a split jury decided Thursday in a widely watched trial.

Anna Alaburda, who sued the school in 2011, said during a trial in San Diego Superior Court that she enrolled in the nonprofit law school after reading statistics that showed a high number graduates had jobs nine months after earning their degrees.

Although she graduated near the top of her class in 2008 and passed the bar exam on her first attempt, she has never worked as an attorney in a law firm and said she believes the employment statistics provided by the school were inaccurate.

Jurors rejected the claim that she based her enrollment decision on misleading information, and one juror said he also was influenced by Alaburda’s decision to turn down a law firm’s job offer in 2008.


After less than a day of deliberations, the jury returned Thursday morning with a 9-3 verdict in favor of the school.

Her lawsuit was one of 15 that had been filed across the country by other law school graduates with similar claims. Judges have rejected requests for class-action status in some cases and have dismissed others. Alaburda’s has been the only case to go to trial.

She had sought $92,192 in lost income and $32,475 in reimbursement of tuition and fees.

Alaburda and her attorney left the court immediately after the case concluded. Thomas Jefferson School of Law President and Dean Thomas Guernsey said outside the courtroom that the verdict proves the merits of the school.


“I’ve been there two and a half years, and I came there because I thought it was a great place,” Guernsey said. “I like the vision, I like the mission, I’m incredibly impressed with the faculty and staff and the students.”

Guernsey said the lawsuit has not caused the school to change any of its practices, but added that it is constantly reviewing how things are done. With the lawsuit completed, Guernsey said he hoped more attention will be paid to the good things the school does, such as the students’ pro bono work to help veterans and small businesses.

While the verdict is a victory for the school, some believed there was cause for concern in the case. Judge Joel Pressman had rejected the school’s request to dismiss the case and allowed it to proceed, ruling that there were issues that should go before the jury.

While three jurors sided with Alaburda, another juror who voted in favor of the school said he was a little uneasy with the verdict, and might have voted another way if the case were broader.


Central to the case was whether the school had presented accurate data to U.S. News and World Report as part of the publication’s annual ranking of law schools.

While the report showed the number of graduates working to be about the same as other law schools, the data included people who were in jobs unrelated to the law profession. Some were working in salons, restaurants, as valets and selling books or tractors, according to evidence during the trial.

“I found it kind of appalling,” juror Wade DeMond said about how the school compiled data.

The Rancho Peñasquitos resident said he sided with the school because the judge’s instructions required the jury to consider whether the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings Alaburda read had inaccurate information.


Those specific editions – 2004 and 2005 – accurately reflected the job statistics of graduates, he said. Had the jury been asked to consider other years, DeMond said he may have agreed that a student was mislead by data in the report.

During the trial, Alaburda’s attorney said she did not know until 2011 that graduates from her school and others were complaining that they had been misled about employment figures. She learned about the other complaints from a New York Times investigation that year and filed suit later that year.

DeMond on Thursday said Lisa Kellogg, the school’s director of graduate alumni programs, was the most credible witness to testify, and she was in charge of compiling data that went into the editions reviewed by Alaburda.

“If a person came to her and said he was employed, she wanted documentation,” he said.


DeMond said he and the jurors who sided with Alaburda believed the school should have done a better job of reporting the job status of its graduates.

“I think it came out there were incidences where Thomas Jefferson was not reporting certain individuals correctly,” he said. “The issue is, that came out later” than the editions reviewed by Alaburda.

In the end, DeMond said he had mixed feelings about the verdict. While Alaburda said she did everything she could to find a job in a law firm, she also acknowledged that she turned down a job at a firm because she believed it was predatory against bankrupt consumers.

“The fact that she had a job offer was a big factor,” he said.