AALS FAR Form Database or Elaborate Phishing Scam?
posted by Paul Ohm
Thanks to Dan and company for agreeing to let me blog here again. During my stint, I promise to talk about the law (and in particular, the threat to privacy posed by Internet Service Providers) but let me warm up with some lighter, more navel-gazing fare:
I’m serving for the first time on our Appointments committee this year, which means I get to look at the FAR form database from the other end of the microscope. Rick Garnett asks about the weaknesses of the form itself, but I wanted to comment instead on the awful user interface AALS provides for those of us perusing the forms.
The FAR form database’s user interface recalls the aesthetic of most of the phishing scam websites I have ever seen. It is ugly, which itself is not much of a sin for such a utilitarian site, but it makes me wonder whether AALS is putting care into other aspects of the database, such as privacy and security. It is also very hard to use, and I will venture to guess that schools are missing some candidates they might otherwise want to interview because of the lousy interface. Here are some specific criticisms:
1. The site’s search engine interface is bizarrely designed and very hard to use. For one thing, the search page is entitled “Untitled Document.”
Worse, it appears that the search form was once a single page about which someone decided, “wouldn’t this look better with tabs?” Clicking on one of the five tabs–”Personal,” “Education,” “Teaching,” “Employment,” and “Bar”–displays the desired subform but not at the top of the screen; instead, the visible subform floats where it once sat on some gone-but-not-forgotten untabified version of the form. (e.g., the “Education” subform sits approximately two-fifths of the way down the blue field.) (See this screenshot with the “Teaching” tab selected to get a better idea of what I am describing.) On my screen, the last two subforms, “Employment” and “Bar,” fall off of the bottom of the screen, so the user gets what looks like an empty blue field, with the search fields visible only to those who scroll down. I bet quite a few professors have abandoned their searches when faced with this “empty” page.
In addition, the tabbed interface leaves a user wondering whether the search terms specified under one tab (say Education) are “ANDed” with the terms specified under another tab (say Teaching). As it happens, the terms are ANDed, which is good, but this behavior is not obvious without testing it.
2. If you want to search for publications, you look under the “Bar” tab, naturally.
3. For some categories of information (JD-granting institutions, Course preferences) you can select from possible entries in a check-box; for other categories of information (Publication Titles, First Name, Last Name) you can perform text searches; and for yet other categories of information (Employment) you can only search broad categories of information. This inconsistency is maddening. Worse, the third category is especially limiting, because although I can tell that somebody served as a Judicial Clerk or Government employee, I can’t search for a particular judge, court, or agency.
4. While searching or browsing, I can save the FAR forms of interesting candidates in “portfolios,” but it appears that these portfolios are shared with everybody else on my committee. This might be specific to the way we set up our accounts here, but if it is system-wide, this makes portfolios less useful. Committee members aren’t able to keep a scratch pad of their favorite candidates (unless they literally scribble it down somewhere else) unless they want their fellow committee members to be able to watch.
5. The page is NOT hosted at aals.org. This is not unusual, of course, but what is unusual is that the page is hosted by a company called omnicontests.com. Omnicontest’s home page does not scream, “company you should hire to design a web page.” It has the aesthetic appeal of a Microsoft FrontPage-designed website, circa 1998.
6. Omnicontests.com touts itself as “The premier solution that streamlines the registration, payment and judging of your awards contest.” There you have it, folks: the AALS hiring process is at bottom an elaborate sweepstakes with entrants, judges, winners, and losers. Of course, we already knew that, but it’s interesting to see AALS admit it so publicly.
I could go on. What points am I trying to make? First, AALS should probably redesign the site to make it easier to use. For example, every field in the database should be text searchable. Second, AALS should audit the system to make sure they are protecting the privacy of the applicants as best as they can. Third (although this advice won’t help those who have already submitted their forms) next year’s applicants might want to try to “test drive” the search engine, if they can find a current committee member willing to let them, to see the various ways the different parts of the form may be searched. It may surprise Supreme Court Clerks, I imagine, to know that committee members cannot single them out, at least using AALS’ interface. (Although please correct me if I’m wrong about this.)
August 19, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Posted in: Law School (Hiring & Laterals)
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Responses (5)
Eric Goldman - August 19, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Very funny post, Paul. I personally liked the roving spotlights on the Omnicontest page. Eric.
linkoln - August 19, 2008 at 10:13 pm
That AALS decided to contract out of this function to an organization that had no idea how to design it seems, depressingly, to be characteristic of the organization.
bad FAR experience - August 19, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Great post. You are right to wonder whether AALS is putting care into other aspects of the FAR system–when I was on the meat market, the information for an important field that I am certain I entered ended up inexplicably missing from my FAR form in the database. I contacted AALS but they were unhelpful (and unsympathetic) in the extreme and said my only option was to pay a full additional fee to have a second form in the next distribution. Worse still, they took days to respond to an email. I ended up landing a job but I am sure my FAR form and application passed under many folk’s radar due to the glitch.
mike - August 20, 2008 at 2:41 am
I recently got a phishing e-mail that said it was taking a survey. To investigate, I went to its domain name and i found out its a fake company but now i have changed my spam filtering system to Abaca’s Email Protection Gateway and it blocked Replica watches spam mails, Subpoena Phishing mails and many more.check out abaca.com for more information.
cbhessick - August 20, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Great post.
For those of us who decided to look at the candidates on paper, AALS also did a poor job. The spacing on the printed forms is terrible & instead of having headings, the categories appear in a crowded column on the left side of the paper.
Because the forms were so difficult to read, I decided to look at the candidates’ CVs. Much to my aggravation, the site wouldn’t allow me to view the CVs without first saving them as a file on my computer.
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