Trick or treat

For Halloween, Professor Brian Leiter revived an exchange I had in late August with an anonymous poster at the TaxProf Blog. I guess this is the day that scary things rise from the dead.

And this anonymous poster, "Anon," was scary. He or she cited the Bureau of Labor Statistics' low unemployment rate for attorneys, which is misleading for these reasons. At the same time, he/she ignored BLS's projections about how many lawyers our economy can support. Anon misstated basic facts about NALP employment reports, such as whether the category of "full-time, permanent jobs requiring bar admission" includes judicial clerkships (it does, but he/she thought it did not).

Anon also pushed the IBR magic bullet, suggesting that "[w]orst case scenario, [law school graduates] have 10% less income than they would have had without law school for 10 to 25 years." Anon is a business professor with a strong redistributive bent: He/she wants the taxpayer to subsidize law schools and their graduates, regardless of the macroeconomic consequences.

Perhaps most troubling, this ghoulish Anon insisted that "there is no crisis," "it's highly unlikely that anyone's life was 'ruined' by debt," and that any crisis talk is based on employment rates "in one single year for one class--2011--in a time of recession." Leiter endorses the last point, concluding that Anon won our debate, despite some of his "dubious" claims, because of the "weirdness of drawing dramatic conclusions from a limited data set, in the middle of a recession, and of failing to draw meaningful comparisons between JD outcomes and other professional outcomes for those who forego a JD."

These are the zombie propositions that just won't die. You can stake them in the heart time and time again with the facts, but they keep rising from the dead. Let's try again:

• The economic downturn began in December 2007; that was five years ago. At least for lawyers, there is no end in sight. If we are in the "middle" of a recession after five years, does that mean employment will improve in another two years? Three? Five? At what point does a sustained period of economic hardship become more than "a limited data set"? I think five years are more than enough.
• Employment outcomes for law graduates have declined every year since 2007, whatever measure you choose. Total employment, nine months after graduation, fell from 91.9% in 2007 to 85.6%, with declines registered every single year. The percentage employed in jobs requiring bar admission (including short-term, part-time, and/or ones funded by law schools) fell from 76.9% to 65.4%--again, with drops every single year over the full period. And the percentage of graduates not working nine months after graduation rose inexorably from 5.8% in 2007 to 7.7% in 2008; then 8.7% in 2009; 9.4% in 2010; and 12.1% in 2011. Limited data set or five-year trend line?
• I don't know anyone who thinks that the Class of 2012 fared better than the Class of 2011; we'll have those data to add to the set in February. Today's 3Ls, the Class of 2013, look stricken. The 2Ls, Class of 2014, are reeling from a particularly brutal season of OCI.
• The Executive Director of NALP, James Leipold, sees more law school employment statistics than anyone. Based on those data, Leipold emphatically rejects the notion that changes in the legal job market stem from the recession. "[O]ne thing we know for sure," he recently counseled placement directors, "is that [the employment market for the classes of 2016 and 2017] will be different, and probably dramatically so, than it was for the Classes of 2006 and 2007." 
• There are reasons why the JD job market has contracted and will continue that process: the reduction of BigLaw associate positions; creation of more contract and staff attorney jobs in private practice; outsourcing of all types of legal work; freezes in government hiring; and the ability of computers and nonlawyers to perform an increasing number of legal tasks at all levels of the practice hierarchy. These forces are dramatic, but they're real. They certainly don't stem from a single year.
• Finally, let's examine the question whether JDs fare better than "those who forego a JD." Undoubtedly some of them do--including some who never practice law. But there are others who don't. The key questions for law schools are: What amount of financial hardship are we willing to tolerate among our graduates? And how much more of their potential income will we appropriate through tuition increases that continue to substantially outpace inflation and JD starting salaries? I see little discussion of those issues by Anon, Professor Leiter, or others who claim that law schools are the best of all possible gardens.  
• Professor Leiter teaches in a very sheltered ivory tower, at a school that continues to produce strong employment outcomes for almost all of its graduates. That's terrific for the University of Chicago and its students. But graduates of other schools aren't doing nearly so well. Here's an updated version of the table I posted earlier this week; to the "every fifteenth" schools I selected for that table, I've added the school I teach at, as well as Drexel's Earle Mack School of Law (where Professor Leiter's co-blogger teaches). These are the percentages of the Class of 2011 who, nine months after graduation, worked in part-time jobs, held temporary positions, or were unemployed:

School	PT/Temp	Not Working	Total
UCLA	25.6 %	7.0 %	32.6 %
Fordham	17.3 %	5.7 %	23.0 %
Ohio State	19.5 %	5.2 %	24.7 %
Colorado	22.7 %	6.8 %	29.5 %
Temple	23.7 %	4.4 %	28.1 %
Tennessee	13.8 %	16.8 %	30.6 %
Hofstra	21.3 %	6.2 %	27.5 %
Drexel	21.4 %	19.1 %	40.5 %

Sure, this is one year of data. But, at best, it's in the "middle" of a very long recession. At what point do we say "enough"? When do we stop raising tuition, every single year, at rates that exceed inflation and starting salaries? When do we think about the toll on our graduates? When do we grapple realistically with the forces reshaping the legal profession?

Trick or treat is over. It's time to face facts.