Monday, November 28, 2011

Back to basics

Legal academia is very much on the defensive at the moment, which is all to the good.   The mixture of outrage and pearl-clutching which greeted David Segal's latest entry in his series in the New York Times on the state of American legal education is a sign of, if nothing else, the extent to which law school faculty and administrators are finally noticing that we are dealing with that most dreaded of things, a genuine public relations crisis.  (Unlike the economic and personal disaster which has been overwhelming a growing percentage of our graduates for many years now, this is one crisis which cannot be ignored).

Given that reaction, this seems like a good time for a restatement of some fundamental points, to help avoid a deflection of the conversation into tangential issues such as the actual value of legal scholarship, how much law professors get paid, how much Socratic method nonsense still inhabits our classrooms, etc.  (Many thanks to Matt Leichter's invaluable Law School Tuition Bubble for collecting and analyzing much of the data cited below).

POINT ONE:  Over the past 20 years, the share of the nation's GDP attributable to the legal services sector has deteriorated significantly.  In the late 1980s, the legal services sector represented slightly more than 2% of GDP (the same percentage as in the mid-1970s).  As of 2009, that figure had declined to 1.37%.  Contrary to the standard narrative within legal academia, which assumes an increasing or at least steady demand for legal services relative to overall economic growth, the demand for legal services within the American economy has been declining, relative to the rest of the economy, for the past  two decades.  In other words, "law" (as an economic entity) appears to be a mature industry in relative decline.

POINT TWO:  The rate at which American law schools are producing aspiring lawyers far outstrips the demand for new lawyers, and this has been the case for many years now.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the economy will produce an average of approximately 24,400 new jobs for lawyers per year over the next decade.  ABA-accredited law schools are producing 45,000 new graduates per year, while non-accredited schools produce several thousand more (Approximately 53,000 people pass state bar examinations each year).  An important sub-point about these statistics is that the BLS estimates are not for how many jobs will be filled by new law school graduates: they are for all new legal jobs.  What this means is one can't assume, for instance, that half the 50,000 aspiring lawyers (conservatively speaking) that enter the market each year will get law jobs within a year of graduation, since some of those new jobs are going to be taken by people already in the market for attorney jobs who were not currently employed as attorneys. Obviously, this problem gets worse over time, as the surplus of lawyers without law jobs continues to increase.

POINT THREE:  The cost of law school is, in economic terms, arbitrary.  Given the faith in well-functioning markets that well-functioning citizens in our society are expected to maintain, this point is extremely counter-intuitive, but it is, given points one and two, essentially undeniable.  For more than twenty years now, the demand for the services of American law school graduates has been declining relative to the demand for other economic goods (not constantly, of course, but the overall trend is clearly negative).  For much if not all of that same time, the output of American law schools has far exceeded the demand for that output, and now appears to be in a roughly two to one ratio.  Yet since 1985, tuition at private law schools has increased by 2.5 times in real terms, while resident tuition at public law schools has increased more than fivefold, again in real terms.  In other words, over the past quarter century, the relative change in the cost of acquiring a law degree has borne no rational relationship to the relative change in the value of a law degree.

POINT FOUR: There is, to this point, almost no sign that this arbitrary relationship between the change in the cost of acquiring law degrees and the change in their value is going to move toward a more orthodox economic relationship, in which the decreases in value trigger decreases in price.  Law schools continue to raise tuition at far faster than the rate of inflation, and the market for the graduates of law schools -- which it bears repeating has been bad relative to the rest of the economy for many years, for reasons that have nothing to do with the recession that began in 2008 -- continues to deteriorate.  An extrapolation of current trends into the very near future, i.e., four years from now, suggests that private law school tuition will average $50,000 per year, and will be more than $60,000 at some schools, while average resident tuition at public law schools will be as high as private law school tuition was in 2007.  This means that the total cost (tuition and related expenses, plus opportunity cost) of attending law school will be approaching $300,000 for many students and will be at least $200,000 for the vast majority. Meanwhile, it appears that around half these graduates will not have real legal careers, defined as long-term employment in jobs requiring law degrees, and that indeed for a significant percentage of them acquiring a law degree will have made them less employable than they would have been otherwise (In other words, for these graduates, law school will have turned out to have been a bad investment even without regard to the direct costs and opportunity costs incurred by attending it).

POINT FIVE:  These otherwise unsustainable trends are being maintained by a combination of unlimited federal educational loan money and, to a lesser extent, poor information regarding the actual relationship between the costs and benefits of acquiring a law degree.  Any significant change in either of these factors, but especially the first, will lead to a massive disruption in the current economic structure of legal education in America.

116 comments:

  1. Obviously there is an oversupply. As an insider, what do you see as the easiest way to correct this problem? Is it a matter for the ABA; perhaps altering the number of accredited schools? Or is it a matter for each individual school limiting the number of admitted students going forward?
    Presumably the former could work since many states restrict bar admission to graduates of accredited schools, although as you point out there are some students who choose to attend non-accredited law schools. The later could also work although history has shown that each individual school is not very good at limiting their acceptance rates since it is not necessarily in their immediate interests.
    A final point that needs to be raised is that, assuming the economy stays anemic for the foreseeable future, the number of people seeking a law degree (and other post-graduate studies), is likely to increase.

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  2. A very cogent post. Now watch: To the extent the various law professor blogs take notice of it at all, they will ignore the data presented here and simply repeat, in varying ways (all unsupported) the claim that what they do is important, has great value for their students, etc.

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  3. Hear hear! But your colleagues seem to wake up and start addressing their critics only when they challenge legal scholarship or their teaching methods, not the cost of legal education or the number of new lawyers produced. I remember when you first started this blog you took a lot of flak from profs who became very defensive about your criticisms of law professor effort and time spent preparing for class/teaching. Once you'd been properly flogged by the likes of LeiTTTer they went right back to their holes.

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  4. "Over the past 20 years, the share of the nation's GDP attributable to the legal services sector has deteriorated significantly. In the late 1980s, the legal services sector represented slightly more than 2% of GDP (the same percentage as in the mid-1970s). As of 2009, that figure had declined to 1.37%."

    Meanwhile doctors have been taking a much larger and ever increasing share of GDP. Doctors pwn lawyers again!

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  5. Allow me to throw this idea out there. Do we need to "correct" the "problem" of oversupply of lawyers? In other words, imagine there was enough disclosure and warning but college graduates still went to law school. Is that a "problem?"

    For example, imagine a system where every student has to sign a form stating that they understand the lack of jobs, the rate of depression in law school, the lack of practical training and so on. I'd be OK with that even if none of the above problems were cured.

    I'm also not sure we have to attack the student loan system. We need educated youth to compete on the world's stage. Because of the education subsidy, the United States has the best Universities in the world. No country comes even close in terms of scientific output, inventions and so on. Law schools, of course, are the ugly cousins in the academic family. The work of law schools is completely ignored by other fields, and they bring shame to the entire notion of education. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Fix the problem of law school and other bad programs, and leave the rest of the well functioning education establishment be.

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  6. Thanks for the statistic on share of GDP. I'm surprised. I thought lawyers were taking a bigger share.

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  7. The rest of the "education establishment" often depends upon law schools to fund other programs in the university. Costs would rise throughout the university without the contribution of laws schools. People who have gone to universities with law schools have benefited from this. That is why it has never made any sense to talk about tuition as a matter that is within the sole purview of law schools.

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  8. I agree that other bad elements of the education establishment get a subsidy from the law school scam, but those programs are part of the bathwater too.

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  9. Of course, the last resort when faced with numbers like this is to claim that the "value" of the legal degree should not be measured by employment or salary.  Legal education makes you a smarter and better person, no matter what comes next, and that alone justifies the cost.
     
    Any professors who believe this need to quit flattering themselves. 

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  10. But remember, some people go to law school not to become lawyers, but to pursue other careers, and so long as at least one of these people exists, law schools don't have to care how many people actually become lawyers.

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  11. Point 2 misses the mark. The BLS' calculation is *net* new jobs for lawyers, so if there are 24K "new" jobs, that is on top of however many jobs employed lawyers switch between.

    Your blog is starting to bump up against methodology problems on a regular basis.

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  12. "Point 2 misses the mark. The BLS' calculation is *net* new jobs for lawyers, so if there are 24K "new" jobs, that is on top of however many jobs employed lawyers switch between."

    How does that contradict what Lawprof wrote?

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  13. Trying reading this again:

    An important sub-point about these statistics is that the BLS estimates are not for how many jobs will be filled by new law school graduates: they are for all new legal jobs. What this means is one can't assume, for instance, that half the 50,000 aspiring lawyers (conservatively speaking) that enter the market each year will get law jobs, since some of those new jobs are going to be taken by people already in the market for attorney jobs who were not currently employed as attorneys. Obviously, this problem gets worse over time, as the surplus of lawyers without law jobs continues to increase.

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  14. If transparency does nothing else, it should make much more clear which of the 45,000 graduates are getting the 24,000 legal jobs and which are not. Even the pessimists who think that suckers will still be found for every seat generally don't believe that those suckers will pay peak-of-the-bubble prices for those seats.

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  15. 8:39: One function of the educational system is to direct our young people into socially valuable careers that will help grow our economy. A lot of what lawyers do is just a transaction cost- America will not be able to draw much economic benefit from more new lawyers filing more cases or devising cool new causes of action. In fact, we will probably get a great economic benefit from the efforts of non-lawyers to bring costs down and make simple legal tasks more accessible by consumers.

    Right now, the government does not discriminate between programs based on what long-term benefits they will bring to the country. Education is seen as the business of the individual student and school.

    At the very least, education shouldn't leave our country worse off. But when students leave school saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and yet are no better off than where they would have been had they worked for three years in another field, it creates perverse economic incentives. For example, interest rates on student loans are higher than almost every investment out there, so students pour their money into servicing this debt rather than investing or saving.

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  16. Leiter is now attacking the NY Times's balance sheet, painting them as a poor and unprofitable business that can't afford to write proper stories.

    http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2011/11/why-is-the-ny-times-turning-out-such-error-ridden-and-ill-informed-pieces-on-law-schools.html

    Maybe the NY Times should do what law schools do, lie about what they can deliver ("99% of NY Times Readers experience an $80,000 increase in salary") and get the federal government to subsidize the cost of buying newspapers.

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  17. God Damn Fine analysis.

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  18. Changing, not eliminating, the barriers to entry is the answer. The barriers should be cheaper and stiffer; law school should cost half as much as it does (if not less), and half of the law schools should close (if not more).

    One important subpoint: the grifters soaking students at the bottom (Cooley, Touro, etc.) will respond to any attempt to restore sanity by bleating about "Access to Justice!," "Legal Services Gap!" etc. Those concerns are mostly misguided (the important legal problems that poor people face require third party payors; most of those people couldn't pay lawyers enough on their own to support even ridiculous $25,000/year legal jobs; as for the other problems, if you have $852.13 in assets is it really a travesty if you can't afford to make a will?), and folks making the $coin that Don LeDuc makes have no standing to raise those points.

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  19. 10:05, Those are great ideas but how do we put pressure on schools to achieve those goals?

    That's what's so depressing about this blog. It's all whining and no action. I had a few ideas, including:

    1. Preparing a list of all academics, and labelling them as "the problem" or "the solution" based on whether they agree with the need for transparency and a need to reduce tuitions. People who haven't been categorized will be surveyed to get their opinions.

    2. Protests (although again OWC and University of California have proven that the freedom of speech and assembly means little in modern America).

    3. Lawsuits (thank you Kurzon Strauss).

    4. Lawprof's work. He's put a lot of pressure on the industry, but he's only one person.

    Any other ideas? You're not going to achieve anything in life until you dig deep and fight. Until then you're nothing but an inconsequential whiner.

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  20. Well, the good news, LawProf, is your analysis appears to comport with the BLS table. The bad news is you're both eliding the difference b/w *new*, as in additional, positions and people switching from Existing Position 1 to Existing Position 2 -- i.e., the distinction underlying the definition of net new jobs. I don't have time at the moment to go hunt around for the BLS' explanation of its methodology, but I'd be interested to know how they define "growth" and "replacement" needs.

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  21. Here is an interesting article about alternative methods of training in law schools

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/90ecfb2e-1641-11e1-a691-00144feabdc0.html?utm_source=News%40Law+subscribers&utm_campaign=eaaba13b3d-News_Law_Monday_Nov_28_201111_28_2011&utm_medium=email#axzz1f1B67Na5

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  22. LawProf: I've asked these questions before, but I will ask them again.

    1) I've labeled the "transparency issue" as largely a "red herring" in the past, and you concluded your post today, "...to a lesser extent, poor information regarding the actual relationship between the costs and benefits of acquiring a law degree."

    While we both are only predicting, I think you are quite wrong in your follow-up to the above sentence that you think increasing the information (i.e. more transparency) "will lead to a massive disruption in the current economic structure of legal education in America."

    Once the information is out there, there will still be more than enough applicants to fill all of the law school seats in existence, AND while the price continues to increase (although maybe not as fast as it has).

    THEN what will you argue needs changing? I'd guess you'd go to the easy access to loans and the fact that they are non-dischargeable. If that is so, and you admit in your post that THAT is the more significant issue, then why do you not spend your time and effort lobbying for change on that front?

    Again...transparency is a diversion that will not change anything.

    Also, as the school year marches on, I ask you this again: How many students have you counseled to drop out so far? I figure the answer is zero, but do you expect to counsel any of your students to drop out after they receive their grades, if they have done poorly?

    I'm not saying that you give unsolicited advice, but I'm assuming that if there are students "on the fence" that they may come to you for "honest advice." Will you give it? If so, why haven't you given it in the past, as you've claimed that you "saw the light" some time ago.

    Typing along on the internet is one thing, actually doing something in the real world is another. I expect to see higher drop-out numbers on the ABA report for your law school when it comes out...even if it's only a couple. If not, this is all a lot of hot air.

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  23. We often hear the complaint that we are not doing enough by simply reading and commenting on this blog. That may have merit and so here's my idea: an alternative lobbying and organizing entity for young lawyers. Our current guild, the ABA, is undermining the economic security of young lawyers. We need someone to look out for the interests of young attorneys and maybe even all non-partners out there like unions do for other workers. Does anyone know of some existing group or institution that we can use to support reform? If not, how could we go about creating a organization that lobbies for better transparency, student loan reform, cheaper legal education, and (most importantly) reducing the oversupply of new lawyers?

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  24. 10:46, you've now admitted that your first post was wrong, and your new post is completely incoherent. Even 26,000 new jobs per year is too high, because if you look at the total number of working lawyers - the number in 2010 is about the same as the number in 2009. No new jobs are being created at all - the only jobs being created are those given up by retiring or leaving attorneys, and that's probably no where near 26,000 per year.

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  25. Boy, it sure sounds like the ABA SHOULD be the one to do everything you just referenced!

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  26. "Once the information is out there, there will still be more than enough applicants to fill all of the law school seats in existence, AND while the price continues to increase (although maybe not as fast as it has)."

    What school do you teach at 12:06, and -- if it won't affect the school's revenue -- then why hasn't your school implemented the transparency that you claim will have no effect?

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  27. "I'd guess you'd go to the easy access to loans and the fact that they are non-dischargeable. If that is so, and you admit in your post that THAT is the more significant issue, then why do you not spend your time and effort lobbying for change on that front?"

    I completely disagree with this. We don't need to gut the entire U.S. education system because law schools discovered that by fraud they can induce students into attending what is objectively a terrible educational program. Lots of other educational programs are helping the economy, their graduates and society and they deserve federal loans.

    Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

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  28. "Boy, it sure sounds like the ABA SHOULD be the one to do everything you just referenced!"

    The ABA can't do anything because they've been completely co-opted by the deans and professors that benefit from the law school scam. It's like asking the mafia to clean up organized crime.

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  29. Fantastic idea 12:08.

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  30. "What school do you teach at 12:06, and -- if it won't affect the school's revenue -- then why hasn't your school implemented the transparency that you claim will have no effect?"

    Really...are you serious?


    And on "throwing the baby out with the bathwater," I'm not saying to attack student loans in general. But I am saying that instead of giving them out for anything/everything, maybe the loan providers should take into consideration the course of study, the employment outlook, etc.

    Every other loan given out for anything isn't given blindly. It seems really stupid to do it blindly in this case.

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  31. Yes I'm serious. What school are you affiliated with and why haven't they implemented the transparency that you claim will have no effect on revenue?

    Further, if transparency doesn't matter, then:

    why did Cooley/NYLS hire top law firms to fight class action lawsuits when the plaintiffs said they would settle for honest job placement numbers?

    why did the ABA committee in charge of determing proper job placement disclosure decide - earlier this year - to stop distinguishing between full and part time jobs, and to stop distinguishing between legal and non-legal jobs?

    why do schools repeatedly present outrageously deceptive job placement numbers? why lie about something that doesn't matter?

    If transparency doesn't matter, then why do law schools fight it tooth and nail?

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  32. "I'm not saying to attack student loans in general. But I am saying that instead of giving them out for anything/everything, maybe the loan providers should take into consideration the course of study, the employment outlook, etc."

    TO DO THIS ANALYSIS, YOU NEED HONEST DATA ON HOW GRADUATES DO ON THE JOB MARKET, I.E. YOU NEED TRANSPARENCY.

    Thus your post completely contradicts your earlier statement that transparency doesn't matter.

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  33. Stop this argument now. This has been happening for weeks on this site. A few people decide to turn this into their own discussion about transparency v. student loans and no one else wants to take part. You guys stifle all other discussion and this is in no way productive for the rest of us. If you want to continue this incessant fight, go somewhere else.

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  34. I disagree, we need to discuss this until it's resolved.

    First of all, you can't talk about the law school scam without talking about the lack of transparency. Lack of transparency is the only "scam" element of law school. It's the only act of law schools that is wrongful, a sin, and disgusting. There is nothing immoral or illegal about not teaching practical skills, or about federal loans, or about training people in an area with no jobs. It is immoral and illegal to lie, to commit fraud.

    Second of all, the loan person wants to attack the entire educational system for the sins of law schools. That's ridiculous. American education is world class because the vast majority of its members contribute to society, the economy and their graduates' lives. Law school and a few other programs harm students for profit, but don't destroy our nation's education subsidy because of a few bad actors.

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  35. Here we go again, Transparency Boy on the attack.

    Avor just ignore him, he's just a sad little man who sits on this blog all day every day and picks fights with anyone that disagrees that transparency is the answer that will save all our souls.

    The fact that what Avor has to say is in any way controversial shows how truly screwed we all are. If thats arguable then law school/educational reform is going to take another generation of massive loan debt. If you can't even grasp basic economics and simple common sense then how is transparency going to help?

    And no 12:35 - its Transparency Boy fighting with dozens of people but insists its one guy. If he would just shut up and let people express their opinions without breaking into capitalized shrill back-to-back comments this place wouldn't be so tiresome. And cue Transparency boy:

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  36. Scientists from top science schools have cured, and are on the verge of curing, numerous diseases. But yes let's starve them of federal loans because Cooley and NYLS figured out a way to steal that money by lying about the value of the degree.

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  37. 12:46 - you are incredibly stupid. That is not what he said. At all.

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  38. "law school/educational reform"

    This is the law school scam blog, not the anti-education blog. That's your error.

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  39. That's exactly what he said 12:50. And please conduct yourself with manners, this isn't your family's dinner table.

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  40. @12:50, i.e. Transparency Boy - can you write out a list of your requirements on what you can and can't write in this blog? Please be exact in how we must all limit our arguments in your childish little world.. Don't want to set you off on a frenzy.

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  41. You can write about whatever you want, but if you want to advocate for the destruction of the American education system - literally one of a handful of areas in which the US still leads the world - all because of a few scam law schools - then you're going to get a response.

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  42. No transparent boy that is not what he said. student loan reform /=/ eliminating student loans. You are incredibly stupid. Go outside and experience life instead of being the retarded gatekeeper of this blog. Nobody asked you and nobody appreciates it.

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  43. Stop this argument now. This has been happening for weeks on this site. A few people decide to turn this into their own discussion about transparency v. student loans and no one else wants to take part. You guys stifle all other discussion and this is in no way productive for the rest of us. If you want to continue this incessant fight, go somewhere else.

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  44. That's exactly what he said and when confronted with the ridiculousness of the statement he responded that we should only deny loans to programs that can't place their students - I.E. HE VERIFIED THE IMPORTANCE OF HONEST JOB PLACEMENT DATA.

    But please, how do you recommend reforming student loans without disclosing honest job data?

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  45. 12:55 - its one guy on here all day fighting with anything that doesn't conform to his moronic views. Sorry but this blog isn't changing or going to be productive in any way until he stops. Just sayin'

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  46. There is definitely more than one person advocating for non-fraudulent law school job placement data. There are lawsuits, organizations (LST) and possibly senate hearings on the issue.

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  47. "But please, how do you recommend reforming student loans without disclosing honest job data?"

    That has been discussed here many times and there are dozens of simple changes discussed everywhere that would reform the amount of loans while not limiting access. You choose to ignore them because you are fucking crazy.

    Ever think that maybe transparency AND loan reform would be a good idea?

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  48. Can you name one of them? Can you name a way to reform student loans without requiring honest job placement data?

    Because that question gets to the heart of the issue - that transparency is the end all and be all to the law school scam. If we can resolve that once and for all it would be nice.

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  49. @12;59 - only one person in the shrill, angry absolutist's manner that Transparency Boy argues for it. Thats the problem, not the argument. And that he fills up half the comments of each post.

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  50. @12:08

    In many other countries, students organize themselves into unions to defend their collective interests, lobby and protest when necessary. Perhaps similar organizations should form in the United States.

    I realise that "unions" are a dirty word ne US right now for some strange reason but perhaps you can call it AAUS, the America Association of University Students.

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  51. Why do you people post insult after insult while dodging the substance of the debate - the debate that you've decided we can't have on this blog.

    Again, can you name one of them? Can you name a way to reform student loans without requiring honest job placement data?

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  52. "Can you name a way to reform student loans without requiring honest job placement data?"

    You don't need data in order to limit tuition hikes across the board tied to some sort of living standard. But Im not getting into that argument with you again because its pointless with you. All the info is out there and has been discussed many times. If you choose to ignore them that is a comment on you. You're just a sad psycho who engages in circular arguments.

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  53. LawProf:

    The methodology police calls again.

    Point 3 fails to distinguish how rising law school tuition differs from ALL OTHER AREAS OF EDUCATION, including private primary and high schools, let alone other graduate programs for even more unemployable disciplines, like creative writing and sociology.

    Point 4 conflates the issue of INABILITY TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment with LACK OF DESIRE TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment. ("Meanwhile, it appears that around half these graduates will not have real legal careers, defined as long-term employment in jobs requiring law degrees. . .") If half of people decided to take jobs outside the law upon graduation, and the other half decided to go to firms, that would not be a problem from the point of view of value. If half of the half that went to firms later quit practice, *that* would not be a problem either. What you're really saying is that lawyers can't find jobs and those who do find them don't like them, but the latter is irrelevant to the former. The "practicing law is unsatisfying" theme is implicit in much of your campaign, but you can't possibly intend for that well-worn criticism to be a major part of it.

    Thanks.

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  54. Well if you have transparency AND student loan reform, as suggested above...what the fuck are you complaining about? Just shut up already.

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  55. "limit tuition hikes across the board"

    Yes let's limit the tuition of deserving educational programs that helped the economy, society and their students because of Cooley and NYLS's fraud.

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  56. "Well if you have transparency AND student loan reform"

    That's not what I'm arguing with. I'm arguing with the person who keeps saying that transparency doesn't matter and that we should focus only on loans.

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  57. "Point 4 conflates the issue of INABILITY TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment with LACK OF DESIRE TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment."

    In other words, Cooley and NYLS's graduates can't find legal jobs because they don't want them.

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  58. "Point 3 fails to distinguish how rising law school tuition differs from ALL OTHER AREAS OF EDUCATION, including private primary and high schools, let alone other graduate programs for even more unemployable disciplines, like creative writing and sociology."

    The difference between law school and e.g. a creative legal writing course is that the latter doesn't use fraud to get students to attend. The latter is a fun course that people attend for the joy of the topic. People go to law schools for jobs, based on the fraudulent statistics published by schools such as yours.

    No one goes to law school for fun. In fact, studies have shown that law school increases the rate of depression in students by a factor of 5 (from 8% pre law school to 40% by the 3L year).

    That's why you don't compare law schools to creative writing programs. One is honest and brings joy to the students' life. The other lies and brings misery to their students' lives.

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  59. "Yes let's limit the tuition of deserving educational programs that helped the economy, society and their students because of Cooley and NYLS's fraud."

    You clearly need an economics degree and not a law degree. What education programs deserving of $35 grand tuition?? And why?

    So let him think that transparency doesn't matter, you shrill annoying bastard. Your stupidity alone proves that something like transparency won't matter much....there will be idiots who look past it or not heed the warnings that are al over the internet and hope for that golden lottery ticket.

    Again, I have other things to do....as i said a few days ago I will check in again in a day or two and here you will be composing endless comments to anyone that dares disagree with your sophomoric views on reform. You are a very sad person. Get help.

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  60. Dear Law Professor,you raise some salient points,but there is a larger issue out there that needs addressing. The law school curriculum needs some major adjustments. Many of these other points I find are secondary issues to the core issue of curriculum.

    I am recent graduate, and hold several degrees. I have never sought or asked my college to get me a job. That I have always considered my responsibility. I have not asked or expected my school to adjust their tuition to the salary/market expectations. Had that occurred, I would never been able to obtain my Master's Degree, a degree which has no commercial value, but enabled me to succeed in life professionally and personally. Limiting Student Loans, is a paternalistic approach. While this is common mentality for the law field, life has taught me, there are other solutions available to resolve this problem.

    My issue right now with legal education is that you can graduate Law School, with great grades and honors,but be incapable of performing routine tasks associated with the position. You can pass the Bar and begin to represent people without a strong understanding of what is really expected of you or what you should do next. Without a mentor, or a person to bounce questions off of, starting your career creates difficult barriers that are intimidating to overcome.

    An error in this field has real reprocutions that are not easily fixable. It affects real people,and mistakes cannot be corrected. To much of law allows practioners only one-shot to get it right. it makes it difficult for people to learn, be creative, and take chances.

    As a former teacher and as a former IT professional, I could almost always correct a mistake. As a result, mistakes were true learning experiences. In this field however,mistakes are not easily correctable, and some mistakes can never be changed. The reprocussions of the mistake are felt not only by you, but also your client who may lose life, liberty, or property, or some combination of the three.

    It is these high stakes that creates the danager in the current curriculum from what I see. The Academy's resistance to teaching wide-spread practical skills and providing mentoring or guided practice to its students prior to graduation is a problem. The academies own bias and ignorance that enables it to ignore modern educational theory and best practices does at best a disservice to its students, and in worst cases-actual harm. The argument that practice is expensive is false. Education programs have been placing teachers for years in the field inorder to provide the hands-on-training necessary. Yes, it may mean that Law Schools will be less profitable, but last I checked, most of them are not-for-profit organizations. When you go into education in a non-profit institution, your goal should not to make a profit, but to take in only enough money to pay your expenses.

    It's easy for many commentators on this blog to argue the more transparency and less people to be admitted is the solution to the problem. But this only ends the attributes of the larger problem, it does not fix the core issue that created the problem. It just enables the existing model to continue longer without any change. All it does is exclude people to lower numbers, versus teaching them to be self-sufficient.

    If graduates who have past the bar are afraid to take the next step of representing clients on their own as a sole practitioner, then problem solving needs to occur on what the root causes of that fear are. The long and the short, my belief this is a curriculum issue and it must be examined. The statistics and other issues raised are only attributes of the poor curriculum problem.

    But then what do I know. Unemployed law student.

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  61. 12:08 here, does anyone know of an ABA-alternate body that is already representing the interests of young lawyers and law students? If not, is there one that we could co-opt? If not, I'd like to gauge the interest and get feedback on what such an organization would look like, how it could be financed, and what actions it should take. It appears we need an independent advocate for new lawyers and I'd like to move past the continuing transparency/student loan argument.

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  62. "What education programs deserving of $35 grand tuition?"

    Really? There is not one education program out there worth a $35,000 tuition? I can think of at least 6, really 10, law schools worth that tuition alone. Forget about educations in other fields.

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  63. "So let him think that transparency doesn't matter, you shrill annoying bastard."

    Can you please cool it with the bitter insults? Again, this is not your family's dinner table. You're communicating with people of various social backgrounds, and some are offended by your tone.

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  64. 1:15, Law School Transparency is the only organization I can think of, but they're pretty small. All other organizations seem to be tied into the ABA or corporate law firms, e.g. ABA young lawyers group or my city's bar association (which is dominated by biglaw).

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  65. I'm going to head off and get back to work, but I'm glad we got to the bottom of the transparency vs. loans debate.

    Transparency is the key issue because you can't reform student loans without either (a) having data on how graduates do i.e. having transparency or (b) making across the board changes to the student loan system that will punish deserving educational programs, like science and engineering programs, for the sins of a few bad actors, like Cooley and NYLS.

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  66. While i think the methodology policeman is an asshole, I hope Lawprof does respond to his points and I'm confident that he can. It's important for the case to be as bulletproof as possible.

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  67. I am glad we are getting back to basics. It is easy to get sidetracked by the "theory vs practice" debate, but in the end it really doesn't matter.

    I once was introduced to a law school professor at a cocktail party. She bragged that she could talk about Bugs Bunny all semester and she would be protected by tenure. This is the pervasive attitude of many law school professors --that they are the smartest people in the room and that no price is too high to pay for their intellect. The academy is designed to protect this entitlement at all costs.

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  68. You can have the loan reform before or without the transparency problem being settled...why do you refuse to accept the proposition that transparency is not the answer? It doesn't even have to be part of the answer, although it would help.

    If you NEED law schools to put out accurate numbers before any loan reform can come, then how do you explain the call for transparency or loan reform now? Somehow, people are aware that law school and law graduates are in a bit of a crisis...

    Do you think that maybe the fact that X number of legal jobs are "created" each year and there are 2X graduates pumped out each year might be a bit of data that the feds could use to determine who they want to loan money to? All of this data that is being reported shows that maybe it isn't wise to loan out a hundred grand to a person when the field they're looking to get into is over-saturated and becoming more so every year.

    Here's the deal...see if you can wrap your head around it:

    Full transparency ---> The students are still going to borrow and fill every seat. Sure, then you can truly say they "deserve their fate," but that there's still gonna be the indebted graduates, the 45K new JDs every year, and everything people are bitching about now.

    Smarter Fiscal Policy re. Fed Loans: If the students can't get the money loaned to them, then it'll be their families that get soaked. We'll still have the 45k new JDs, but we won't have the indebted graduates.

    PLUS, it is common knowledge that when people have to pay for something they do more research on whether it is a good investment. Student Loans are like casino chips...it just doesn't seem like real money until it's too late.

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  69. There's no need for seven rambling paragraphs when one question will take care of the debate: How do you propose reforming student loans without (a) collecting job placement data from the schools and (b) without punishing deserving educational programs for the sins of fraud schools like NYLS/Cooley?

    Can you imagine the absurdity of some science genius being unable to attend Caltech because he couldn't get federal loans, because of something New York Law School did? It's bad enough that toilet schools have stunk up legal academia. Let's not also allow them to affect the rest of academia!

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  70. Your answer: just as the poster mentioned above, just use the data that is already available. You don't need it to come from the law schools.

    Can't you read?

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  71. If the data is "already available" then why aren't law schools releasing it? Why isn't US News reporting it?

    Where is this accurate job placement data that only you know about?

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  72. P.S. I hope you don't mean that we do loan reform based on the fraudulent data. Have you heard of the expression "Garbage in Garbage out?"

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  73. The data is from the marketplace...read the blogger's post and you'll get an idea of what is already out there.

    What individual schools report doesn't matter if you can look to the real world that all of the schools shit their grads out into.

    You really have tunnel vision on this law school angle, don't you?!

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  74. Imagine your nephew comes to you and says he wants to borrow $30k a year from you for the next 3 years so he can go to Transparency State University Law School.

    Would you loan it to him today?

    If so, then why are you arguing?

    If not, then what are you basing your answer on when there is no good "school-released data" out there? So, again I ask, why are you arguing?

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  75. "The data is from the marketplace...read the blogger's post and you'll get an idea of what is already out there."

    I see, so rather than doing student loan reform based on easily collectible data, we rely on data implied by blog posts in the internet.

    Of course, you've implicitly already admitted the importance of transparency because you acknowledge the importance of having job placement data. You just want to go about it in a ridiculous manner. In addition to getting data from blog posts, should we also hire psychics?

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  76. "Imagine your nephew comes to you and says he wants to borrow $30k a year from you for the next 3 years so he can go to Transparency State University Law School."

    I'd tell him I want to know how well this school places its graduates.

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  77. So you don't trust numbers regarding the GDP re. law services and from BLS, but you will trust "accurate numbers" that someday might come from the law schools?

    Okay...no wonder you got scammed.

    Transparency is useless when the numbers need to be digested by people like you :(

    Better hope that loan process gets reformed.

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  78. No I don't think it's a good idea to change the entire educational loan system based on a post on this blog. Sorry.

    And it doesn't need to be "someday" that accurate numbers come from law schools. It can happen tomorrow with the stroke of a pen.

    Unfortunately, it won't happen because law schools are fighting tooth and nail - in courts, at the ABA, and apparently on blogs - to prevent disclosure of accurate job placement numbers.

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  79. You sure have a problem with restating what someone else says into a barely recognizable exaggeration of what was actually said, don't you?

    Seriously, are you retarded? It's okay if you are--just let us know what we're dealing with here.

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  80. "Seriously, are you retarded?"

    I don't know what kind of back woods ghetto background you came from, but at some point you might want to read a book on manners.

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  81. Oh no, I dun fahgot bout dad dere "R-Word" bein bad nawl.

    Sorry.

    Seriously, are you mentally disadvantaged?

    Is that better?

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  82. What a disgustingly uncouth and poorly raised person. Good day. I'll be back if anyone wants to discuss anything of substance.

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  83. I sincerely doubt that access to federal loans for Caltech would be disrupted if we removed the federal guarantee, just like loans to Harvard and Stanford law schools would not be disrupted. NYLS and Cooley are on a whole different planet.

    1:06: The onus is on you and the profs/deans to show that people taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-dischargable student loan debt to attend law school are doing so without intended to take jobs that require a JD. The fact that the vast majority of law students take the bar exam (an unnecessary step if you want to pursue a non-law career) would seem to contradict your point.

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  84. "I sincerely doubt that access to federal loans for Caltech would be disrupted"

    That's great but we can't make decisions based on your whims and hunches. In fact, we don't know how much Caltech students make upon graduation. Some probably don't make much, even though they contribute tremendously to society.

    -----------------

    "if we removed the federal guarantee"

    Again, we get back to an absurd across the board change that affects programs and actors completely unrelated the scam committed by NYLS and Cooley.

    Ignoring the debate for a second, which is over and moot any way because there is no way the government will change the entire educational loan system become of wrongs committed by some low ranked law schools -- ignoring all that - where do you get the gall to demand changes to programs and lives that have nothing to do with law school, all because a few law schools like Cooley and NYLS?

    The federal loan guaranty affects industries, programs and people far more important than law or lawyers. It affects programs that law students weren't bright enough to get into.

    What is wrong with the mentality of law school academics - that rather than fix their own problem - they would rather make the whole world suffer for it?

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  85. The part about Caltech students not making much is true. If you hang with hard core scientist types, you'll see that they abhor money. They're in it to help the world, impress their peers, invent things and win Nobel prizes. They're not in it to line their pockets.

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  86. "Point 3 fails to distinguish how rising law school tuition differs from ALL OTHER AREAS OF EDUCATION, including private primary and high schools, let alone other graduate programs for even more unemployable disciplines, like creative writing and sociology."

    Law school tuition has risen much, much faster than undergraduate tuition. It's a platitude that it makes no sense to get a Ph.D. in the humanities or social sciences if you have to pay for it in anything other than opportunity cost. In any case even if these things weren't the case why would that make any practical difference to the question of how law school education ought to be reformed? It's rather odd how the reflexive reaction of many legal academics to the dysfunctions of law school is to point out that lots of other institutions are screwed up as well, as if that somehow adds up to some sort of defense.

    "Point 4 conflates the issue of INABILITY TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment with LACK OF DESIRE TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment. ("Meanwhile, it appears that around half these graduates will not have real legal careers, defined as long-term employment in jobs requiring law degrees. . .") If half of people decided to take jobs outside the law upon graduation, and the other half decided to go to firms, that would not be a problem from the point of view of value. If half of the half that went to firms later quit practice, *that* would not be a problem either. What you're really saying is that lawyers can't find jobs and those who do find them don't like them, but the latter is irrelevant to the former. The "practicing law is unsatisfying" theme is implicit in much of your campaign, but you can't possibly intend for that well-worn criticism to be a major part of it."

    If half the people who graduate from law school "decide" to take jobs they could have gotten before they went to law school then they've wasted three years of their lives and an enormous amount of money. People generally don't "decide" to do something like that -- that decision is made for them.

    The problem of lawyers being miserable in their work is a serious (and related) issue, but ought to be treated separately for analytical purposes.

    The capacity for rationalization in this business never ceases to astound me.

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  87. Transparency Boy, endlessly repeating the same arguments day after day doesn't magically make them coherent. Just ask Ron Paul.

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  88. Since the ABA is not going to "cowboy" up, and shut down the lowest ranked law schools. (say #150 to #200) the next rational step would be to limit the number of individuals who receive federally subsidized loans to go to law school.

    This could be done by selecting a number reflecting the actual number of new law jobs available each year and saying that the taxpayers will only fund the number of law students which our society needs. Once this number is set, there would have to be a screening agency which would set the criteria for who would receive these federally subsidized loans based on LSAT scores, GPA, quality of one's course of study, and institution, and diversity considerations, to be funded by a non-refundable payment made by each applicant.

    If you didn't qualify for federally subsidized loans, and still wanted to go to law school you would need to line up all private loans or pay for your studies through your, or your family's resources. This would probably drop the number of law students from 45,000 to 35,000 a year which would be a marked improvement.

    The problem with this plan is that even if it were enacted, it would quickly be subverted by congress critters who on behalf of their local law schools would seek carve outs for specific law schools. "I'm the dean of Thomas Cooley, I demand 2% of all authorized federally subsidized loans on behalf of the people of Michigan and Florida" this is a craptacular agument but all the state U's will make this pitch.

    Unfortunately the cleanest solution is to end federally subsidized loans for law school education for say, five years, while setting up a foundation to make sure there was a way for under represented groups such as african americans to pay for law school.

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  89. "the cleanest solution is to end federally subsidized loans for law school education"

    Ignoring the obvious insanity of your "solution" (that you yourself know is insane, because you wouldn't dare sign your name to it, ever) --

    How is punishing the entire law school student body for the fraud committed by a few scam schools a "clean solution?" It seems to me to a very dirty and needlessly imprecise solution that will only cause the best and the brightest to go to other programs where they can get loans.

    Let me put it another way, if you have a spot of skin cancer - do you have that spot removed - or do you set your whole body on fire?

    But congratulations on moving from the completely insane "end all federal loans" argument to the slightly less insane "end all law school federal loans" argument. You've become a tiny bit smarter.

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  90. P.S. Here's where you will eventually - hopefully - end up: Something like "end federal student loans to schools where the students can't pay them back, as measured by some statistic measuring their earning power, i.e. transparency."

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  91. 8:06, Barack Obama couldn't have gone to Harvard Law School without federal student loans.

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  92. Exactly, and neither could numerous senators, congressmen, federal judges, business people, or other high achievers. But hey - why to worry about educating our nation's high achievers? Let's give some lunatic like 7:54 the power to take away their federally education money because his infirmed brain decided it's "the cleanest solution."

    Dear Lord.

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  93. LawProf:

    Methodology guy here. Agree to disagree on Point 3. I think if you want traction, you need to show why anyone should give a damn why your corner of an industry has gotten worse at something (overcharging for tuition) in much the same way that other areas of the larger industry have. B school is $80K a year now, all-in. Where's the outrage? I know, break out the violins for the banker wannabes. But the point is, *law school tuition increases are unremarkable compared to increases in other programs' tuition.* Merely being a law professor does not entitle you to zero in on your sector's problem when it is indistinguishable from a broader economic trend. Again, apparently we agree to disagree.

    I'm pleased you essentially conceded my criticism of the fourth point.

    You say: "If half the people who graduate from law school "decide" to take jobs they could have gotten before they went to law school then they've wasted three years of their lives and an enormous amount of money."

    You're making some logical leaps here. There are jobs you can get out of law school that are not practicing law but that effectively require law school or something similar (e.g., b school). The most obvious is McKinsey but I would add various other banking as well as policy jobs. You may claim these are the exception to the non-law norm; I'm not so sure. But regardless, non-law does not equal "could have gotten without a law degree." That's simplistic.

    "The problem of lawyers being miserable in their work is a serious (and related) issue, but ought to be treated separately for analytical purposes."

    I'm pleased we agree. Now please proceed to separate that from the actual issue of whether those law graduates who wish to obtain law-related employment upon graduation can do so.

    Finally, I like how you have pointed up the longevity issue. Not many have discussed people's ability to *maintain* law jobs past the 9 month mark. (Again, excluding those who leave by choice.)

    Thanks.

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  94. *I would also add that in addition to not being a waste because it helps you get worthwhile non-law jobs (several friends have such jobs), law school is not a waste because it really does sharpen your mind. I can hear the groans of the chorus, but note that I am not saying $150K is a good deal for that benefit alone. I am simply saying it is a real benefit and spending three years becoming analytically smarter and a better writer and researcher while qualifying yourself for a variety of interesting, reasonably well-paying non-law jobs - whether immediately after graduation or after a few years in practice - is not necessarily "wast[ing] three years of [law students'] lives and an enormous amount of money."

    You have legitimate criticisms of the system -- many of them, including transparency and the falsification of data. I think the practical skills schtick is overdone, but fine. Stick to those criticisms. These editorials about how unhappy lawyers are and how the vast majority of those not practicing law must have either hated it or failed to get a law job and therefore must have considered law school an epic waste are a digression at best.

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  95. Methodology guy,

    Doesn't your statement, "B school is $80K a year now, all-in. Where's the outrage?" answer your question as to why legal academia can be distinguished from other areas of academia? The outrage against legal academia is rooted in its fraud, and such fraud does not exist in other academic fields (actually such allegations of fraud do exist in culinary school academia, which has received the same sort of critique).

    But I'm more curious about your statement, "The most obvious is McKinsey but I would add various other banking as well as policy jobs." Out of curiosity, do you teach at a top law school? You're right that a top law degree can be an entry-point into McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or policy jobs. But I don't think those are the people we're thinking of when we describe "scammed" law graduates.

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  96. "law school is not a waste because it really does sharpen your mind."

    What are your thoughts on studies demonstrating that the rate of depression grown from 8% (when measured in 0Ls) to 40% (when measured in 3Ls) to 18% (when measured in people two years after graduation)?

    How can something that so severly increases the rate of a terrible mental illness be good for your mind?

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  97. A paper citing the various studies connecting law school with severly increased rates of depression:
    http://www.law.fsu.edu/academic_programs/humanizing_lawschool/images/benjamin.pdf

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  98. Here's a perfect example of why law graduates are outraged where as business school graduates are not.

    Look at Seton Hall's business school. I surfed their website for five minutes and could not find job placement statistics anywhere. http://www.shu.edu/academics/business/mba/careers.cfm It's not fraud if you don't say anything.

    Now look at the law school's job placement statistics. http://law.shu.edu/publications/upload/career-services-facts_Remove.pdf

    They claim that 41% of graduates are employed in the private sector making a median of $125,000 per year, 11% are in business making $80,000 per year, 8% are in government and a whopping 36% are doing judicial clerkships (and it can be inferred that once the clerkship is over they will get a good law firm job).

    What rational job seeking person would look at those numbers and not choose the law school over the business school? The problem is that the law school's salary data is completely and totally fraudulent, because it's not based on all the graduates or even a random sampling of graduates - rather it's based on a biased sample chosen in a manner that picks students with the highest salaries.

    That's fraud and that's why a graduate of the law school will be outraged where as a graduate of the business school will not be.

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  99. In response to methodology guy,

    Do you have any response to Lawprof's point that being part of a larger trend is not a defense? I think the point you are making would make more sense if it were accompanied by a call to arms to rise up and tackle the even larger problem. But I'm not sensing that from you, nor from any of the others I've seen make that point. Instead, the point is made as an attack on Campos, to demonstrate that he doesn't understand the problem he's critiquing, and to generally try to shut down discussion instead of encourage it.

    Now as far as law school grads being qualified for other jobs, you really show your hand with this sort of remark. You are not a recent graduate. And if you are, you are not a recent graduate from any school below 20. There is no demand for law school graduates from non-elite schools and they aren't being hired by non-legal employers for "interesting, reasonably well-paying" jobs. Yes, there are going to be exceptions, but this is not the norm. It is far from the norm. I can say this only from experience, I cannot prove it to you, and part of the problem is that law schools are fudging the numbers in ways that make it very hard to prove this point.

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  100. Let me rephrase my response to methodology guy about the availability of interesting, reasonably well-paying jobs. This is a crucial issue to this entire "scam" allegation, but the fact is that we really don't have any good data one way or the other. Law schools are either not getting it, or not disclosing it. So all we have are dueling anecdotes based on people's subjective experiences. I think that to a certain person from a certain school at a certain point in history, this might be true. But to others at other times, it is not true.

    I would be happy to stop pretending like I know what kind of outcomes are in store for today's graduates if everybody else would too. Unless and until we have better data, we just cannot say that grads are getting (or not getting) interesting and reasonably well-paying jobs. I strongly suspect that they are not, and I believe that assuming this and repeating it as if it were true is a large part of the problem.

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  101. 3:40 and 4:05 again, with one last thing.

    I think methodology guy is saying that even if half of all law school graduates are not getting legal jobs, that is ok, because they are getting the interesting and reasonably well-paying non law jobs that their education qualifies them for and that this is a perfectly fine result. This is true even if the half that aren't getting legal jobs would prefer legal jobs. We can't always get what we want, and anybody with an interesting, reasonably well paying job really can't ask for much more.

    If this were true, I think I'd agree with it. I think the reason why you're hearing so many complaints from graduates is because it is not true, because these consolation prize jobs haven't materialized.

    This relates to a topic that I wish Lawprof would devote a future post to and that is the perception of law school graduates by non-law employers. One might assume that non-law employers would see law school graduates as a prize, and value them highly for their analytical skills and training in research and writing. But it is the experience of many (again, I can only speak from the subjective experiences of myself and others I know) that law school graduates experience the problem of being "overqualified" for non-law jobs. For a host of reasons unrelated to their skills, employers see law school graduates as potential problem employees.

    This leads many to conclude that if you fail to get a legal job after law school, you are actually in a much worse position than if you had never gone. Jobs that you might have been able to secure with just a BA are now actually out of your reach, your JD is now disqualifying.

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  102. @LawProf: You must be an intelligent guy, and since you've been a LawProf for a while you must know other intelligent men and women in the legal field.

    Why don't you get together and draft a bill to address the issue in some way instead of only drafting blog posts? If you can gather together a bunch of distinguished law professors you're bound to gain some traction with the senators and congress-folk in several areas.

    There are a lot of good points made here, but it's really just all talk. You're in a better position to get something done, so rise up and become more than just another scamblogger.

    By the way, did the CBS piece get buried?

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  103. As a part of the hiring process at my non-legal job, I can say that we no longer prefer law graduates for the following reasons: (1) generally, they have zero real world experience, and have in some cases been disruptive to the office (asked to resign after four weeks); (2) new law school graduates think that menial tasks are beneath them, even if they are happy to do the job for the money (N.B. we pay north of 70K starting). I don't want a crew of patent clerks who think they are Einstein. I want hard working patent clerks.

    There are notable exceptions: those with work ethic evident on their resumes; and those with real world experience prior to, or during law school. Personally, I had a math background and worked labor jobs before law school. I am a craftsman, not an artist.

    In sum, four years of liberal arts college, three years of law school is not enough. Mostly because I know that to get in law school you need to pay 3K for an LSAT course, and to stay in law school you need a pulse and a signature on the loan documents.

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  104. "Mostly because I know that to get in law school you need to pay 3K for an LSAT course, and to stay in law school you need a pulse and a signature on the loan documents."

    Sad but pretty much true.

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  105. Methodology guy did you read 5:39?

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  106. Regarding the notion that law school teaches you how to reason and think - what is that based on?

    When has a legal mind ever fixed or solved anything? Legal types do not have the mental discipline to break things down mechanically, which is a necessary step in fixing anything that is broken. They call that "black and white" thinking.

    Law school may teach you how to argue, but the world doesn't need any more rhetoric and lies - it needs solutions.

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  107. "the cleanest solution is to end federally subsidized loans for law school education"

    Ignoring the obvious insanity of your "solution" (that you yourself know is insane, because you wouldn't dare sign your name to it, ever) --

    How is punishing the entire law school student body for the fraud committed by a few scam schools a "clean solution?" It seems to me to a very dirty and needlessly imprecise solution that will only cause the best and the brightest to go to other programs where they can get loans.

    Let me put it another way, if you have a spot of skin cancer - do you have that spot removed - or do you set your whole body on fire?

    But congratulations on moving from the completely insane "end all federal loans" argument to the slightly less insane "end all law school federal loans" argument. You've become a tiny bit smarter.


    At November 28, 2011 8:11 PM , Anonymous said...
    P.S. Here's where you will eventually - hopefully - end up: Something like "end federal student loans to schools where the students can't pay them back, as measured by some statistic measuring their earning power, i.e. transparency."


    At November 28, 2011 8:33 PM , Anonymous said...
    8:06, Barack Obama couldn't have gone to Harvard Law School without federal student loans.


    At November 28, 2011 8:47 PM , Anonymous said...
    Exactly, and neither could numerous senators, congressmen, federal judges, business people, or other high achievers. But hey - why to worry about educating our nation's high achievers? Let's give some lunatic like 7:54 the power to take away their federally education money because his infirmed brain decided it's "the cleanest solution."

    Dear Lord".

    Reading the above responses my pithy response is:

    1) There is no constitutional or common law right to a graduate education of any particular type in America.

    2) My argument only applies to federal funding for legal education. It is quite arguable based on supply and demand, that the Federal government should increase aid for graduate students studying STEM subjects and decrease the money available for studying the law.

    3) If we use a public policy argument that law school education needs to be taxpayer funded for the good of society, this is no longer the case because we have an extreme lawyer and law student glut in this country. If we were interested in the common good, we would increase funding to legal aid which would hire more lawyers who were actually helping the economically disadvantaged.

    4) Under my proposal Barack could have applied for federally funded law school aid from a foundation designed to provide funding to groups under-represented in the legal profession. As we all know, there is a shortage of african americans in the law school profession.

    5) Having many lawyers in congress does not necessarily produce good results. See Michelle Bachman. Highly driven people could and would go to other programs such as business school or study engineering and then run for Congress creating similar if not better political results then what we have now in Washington.

    6) The readers of this blog appear to believe that there is something intrinsically more worthy about receiving a law school education then other courses of study. In a rational society we would be having a discussion about how many engineers we need to produce verses the number of lawyers a year, but since the system will not allow us to close law schools or most likely calibrate the numbers of law student Federal loan recipents to available legal jobs, I am in favor of market shock treatment to let the system reset.

    Oh, and with fewer law students graduating each year, your law degrees will greatly increase in value and you will find it easier to pay your law school loans.

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  108. "Under my proposal Barack could have applied for federally funded law school aid from a foundation designed to provide funding to groups under-represented in the legal profession."

    Oh yes, you allowed a provision of aid for African American law students. But you miss the point. What about the white Barack Obama? What about the brilliant but poor legal mind who - if not for federal loans - would not be able to attend law school?

    That person is likely brighter, more capable and more talented than you. Who are you to take his federal loan money away, all because of the sins of a few schools like Cooley and NYLS?

    This is a problem that affects all with a "regulatory mindset." Rather than craft narrow and tailored regulations that affect only the wrongdoers, they choose instead to craft broad regulation that negatively impacts the lives of people who had nothing to do with the problem being addressed. What's funny is these regulations don't even fix the problem they're trying to solve.

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  109. This blog sounds quite interesting. I was searching this kind of information. I will share this information with friends.

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  110. My proposal is not regulatory, It simply removes the US government from subsidizing legal education for a number of years until the number of law schools declines to a point in which we are not producing almost twice as many new lawyers as we can currently employ.

    It also removes the main cause of rapidly increasing law school tuitions, which is the availability of paying students for all ABA approved law schools no matter how much they hike their prices.

    The poor but brilliant legal mind can go get a federally subsidized degree in public policy, economics, or business, or alternatively a real merit scholarship from one of the surviving law schools.

    It would be preferable for the ABA to shutter the 50 lowest ranked law schools but they are a captured private regulatory agency and are not going to do anything that would hurt ANY tenured law school professor.

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  111. "My proposal is not regulatory, It simply removes the US government from subsidizing legal education for a number of years"

    That sounds like a new regulation to me.

    "The poor but brilliant legal mind can go get a federally subsidized degree in public policy, economics, or business, or alternatively a real merit scholarship from one of the surviving law schools."

    Who are you to tell someone who is brighter and more important to society than you will ever be where he should go to school? Again, if you want to deal with Cooley and NYLS then that's one thing, but once you stick your grubby and incompetent paws on the next Barack Obama you need to be given a reality check regarding your place in society.

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  112. Who am I? I am a taxpayer, and I was one before I went to law school. As such I, and every other taxpayer and voting citizen can decide to support policies that make decisions concerning where we should spend educational dollars and provide educational subsidies. No one is entitled to funding for a subsidized graduate level education, and had we spent our educational dollars more wisely we might have cheaper law schools, fewer lawyers, and more scientists and engineers providing more value to our society then the current lawyer glut. If some brilliant people don't get to go to law school as a result, that's a trade off, I'm comfortable with.

    I think your reliance on Mr. Obama is misplaced. He's a nice guy but he has been an ineffectual president because he does not understand political leverage and get habitually rolled by the Republicans who are more ruthless and effective at pushing their agenda. So please spare me your Obama worship.

    Finally Cooley and NYLS would tell you to keep your grubby hands off their graduates because there is no way you can know whether they recruit brilliant lawyers other schools miss and you are not worthy of passing judgment as to their own worth to society.

    If you wish to exempt federal law loan subsidies from critical examination, don't then claim to be able to pass judgment on some law schools but not others.

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  113. LawProf et al:

    Methodology guy here, haven't checked this in a few days, and now seeing (quite happily) further debate on the issues I raised with LawProf's methodology.

    3:40/4:05/4:21 from 11/29: please re-read my comment from 11/28 1:06 carefully. I was *not* saying that the fact that half of all law grads are not getting law jobs is ok b/c they are getting worthwhile non-law jobs. I will repaste below what I said below; note the "if's" preceding each statement. The point is simple: LawProf views the inability to find or maintain legal employment as being indistinguishable from the desire, whether upon graduation or X years into practice, not to seek or maintain legal employment. Now, for the unemployed '11 grad who would take anything short of Starbucks, these may not seem distinct, but they are of course very different. He's claiming the fact that many law school alums do not work in law is evidence that law school employment outcomes are not good. This is simply untrue.

    What I said earlier:

    LawProf's "Point 4 conflates the issue of INABILITY TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment with LACK OF DESIRE TO FIND OR MAINTAIN legal employment. ("Meanwhile, it appears that around half these graduates will not have real legal careers, defined as long-term employment in jobs requiring law degrees. . .") If half of people decided to take jobs outside the law upon graduation, and the other half decided to go to firms, that would not be a problem from the point of view of value. If half of the half that went to firms later quit practice, *that* would not be a problem either. What you're really saying is that lawyers can't find jobs and those who do find them don't like them, but the latter is irrelevant to the former. The "practicing law is unsatisfying" theme is implicit in much of your campaign, but you can't possibly intend for that well-worn criticism to be a major part of it."

    11/29 5:39 (guy who works at patent clerk's office) (11/29 5:56 suggested I read your comment): these criticisms make sense and I can only assume your new hiring tack is working out for you. For 5:39, I would just say this doesn't really address the point I was making, which was that law practice is not the only successful outcome for a law graduate, particularly not one who is, say, 5 or 10 years out. Campos' methodology (or, "methodology") assumes the existence of each non-practicing law alum suggests a defect in law school by definition. It is this enormous logical leap that I am concerned about.

    11/29 3:40 asks what's wrong with attacking a small piece of a larger problem, i.e., why do I keep saying LawProf's narrow focus on rising law school tuition is inappropriate when all other tuitions have been rising very quickly as well?

    Look, let's say there's a flood in your town. The first floor of your house is underwater. Now, sure, the minute you're rescued, your concern turns to your house first, not the neighborhood or the town. But does it make any sense for you to talk about a solution to the crisis facing your house? No. It's a consequence of the same tidal wave that has flooded all the other houses too. It's just somewhat narrow-minded and short-sighted to, say, petition your congressman about the crisis facing your house. The problem isn't that your house needs more sandbags, it's that the levee that was supposed to protect the entire town is broken. So LawProf's not *wrong* that the vast hikes in tuition he mentions are a problem at law schools, it's just only one problem. And it's actually layered on top of the undergraduate debt problem since by the time people start law school they have much more debt now too. I believe LawProf has said he discovered the skyrocketing price of tuition this year or last. With respect, it's a broader problem than he appears to appreciate.

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  114. LawProf, my last, long post appears to have gotten caught in your spam filter. Thanks. -Methodology guy

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  115. Sarcasm does not change the fact that "Methodology Guy" is right when he says it is wrong to assume that the inability to find or maintain legal employment [is] indistinguishable from the desire, whether upon graduation or X years into practice, not to seek or maintain legal employment." It is inherently problematic when people who want to find work as lawyers can't do that. It is not inherently problematic when a person gets a job practicing law and then decides years later that he/she wants to do something else.

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