Skip to main content

You are here

Advertisement

Yale Responds

As we reported last week, a Yale University Law School professor sent letters to over 6,000 plan sponsors suggesting their 401(k) plans were “high cost” and, among other things, implying that they may be violating their fiduciary obligations. We pointed out the serious flaws in the data being used by the professor as well as the general inappropriateness of the tone of the letters.

Yesterday, we received an email from Yale Law School’s Director of Communication, Janet Conroy, in response to our post. She indicated that:

The letters from Professor Ayres aren’t a precursor to any legal action, and Professor Ayres has no intention of sharing data with plaintiffs' attorneys. While he intends to publicize the results of his research when the project is published, those results will be presented as aggregate data. He does not intend to publicize company-specific data based on 2009 data.

Although this is somewhat promising to hear, there is no mention of the other significant flaws in the data being used by the professor for the underlying study. We have reiterated our request to have a conference call with the professor about our concerns with this data. As you may recall, his response to our last request for a call was that he was too busy. We will continue to keep you informed as we learn more.

The WSJ's recently published article about the letters can be found here (Subscription required).

P.S. It is a good thing that I have already graduated law school (University of Pennsylvania) as I am pretty sure I have no shot at getting into Yale at this point.

Advertisement