ABA Solicits Proposals, Not Publicized Until After the Unsolicited Deadline Passes

What if you wanted to "change" something, but forgot to tell anyone until after an internal deadline passed?

That's exactly what the ABA did with their recent call for proposals to find a new way to "audit" post-grad employment numbers. From the National Law Journal:

The American Bar Association is in the market for a law school data cop.

The organization's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has put out a request for proposals for a process by which it can better police the postgraduate employment data that law schools release. 

Later:

The request for proposals went out in early February, but the ABA hasn't yet had any takers, Currier said. 

Uh, oops, it appears they forgot to publicize it. There are dozens of places they could have advertised this call for proposals, including Law School Transparency, ITLSS, the NLJ, the Wall St. Journal, or on a prominent location associated with the ABA's Task Force on the Future of Legal Education (which has seen a slew of comments after being publicized). Instead, it's just been sitting on a random spot on the ABA's website.

If you look at the call for proposals, a possible motivation for waiting comes up:

Deadline for unsolicited bidders who
located this RFP on the ABA website to
submit qualifying information.

Unsolicited
Bidders

February 19, 2013

The same page says they sent it to "selected bidders" on the date of issue (February 1, 2013).

This is faux democracy 101: open a process to the public at large, don't bother telling anyone, and later on claim that no one did anything about it. They now have a ready excuse to reject superior proposals for data auditing so that there's "change" instead of legitimate change.

Remember, kids, the ABA and the law schools always win. They are experts at making sure the common lawyer has no voice and the law school elitists continue to profit off you and your precious student loan dollars, and experts at pre-generating responses to future criticism. "But see, look, we put out a call for proposals for checking the bogus stats and no one submitted anything."

God, shit like this makes a toady's weekend.