Total law school enrollment in 1971-72 (JD students): 91,225
Total law school enrollment in 2011-12 (JD): 146,288
Increase in law school enrollment between 1971 and 2011: 60.4%
The U.S. population increased by 51.2% between 1971 and
2011. This means that over the past 40 years law school enrollment has grown 18%
faster than the US population as a whole.
However the real rate of increase in law school enrollment,
relative to the size of the population cohort from which almost all law
students are drawn, has been much faster:
Approximate number of people ages 22-33 in 1971: 32 million.
Approximate number of people ages 22-33 in 2011: 44.4 million. The population of people ages 22-33 was only
30.6% higher in 2011 than in 1971 – not 51.2%.
(This is because by 1971 the front end of the baby boom had reached law school-attending
age). So enrollment in law school has
increased twice as fast over the past four decades as has the population cohort
from which the vast majority of law students are drawn.
If we assume 90% of J.D. students are between the ages of
22-33, there were 82,103 such students in 1971 and 131,659 such students in
2011. This would mean .24% of people
between the ages of 22-33 were JD students in 1971, and .30% of people between
the ages of 22-33 were JD students in 2011.
This means the odds that today somebody in the core population cohort from
which law students are drawn is going to law school are about 25% higher
than they were in 1971.
But phrasing the matter in this way obscures a key demographic
development: Men are significantly less
likely to go to law school today than they were 40 years ago, while women
are vastly more likely to do so (The
latter point is well understood. The former would, I think, come as a surprise
to most people).
There were about 17 million men in the core age cohort for
law school attendance in 1971. Assuming 90% of the men attending law school in
1971 were in this age group, this means 74,392 men ages 22-33 were attending
law school in 1971. Thus approximately .44% of men in the core age
cohort in the US were attending law school in 1971. There were approximately 22.2 million men in
the core age cohort for attending law school in 2011. Assuming 90% of the men attending law school
were in this age group, 70,223 such men were attending law school in 2011. Approximately .32% of men in the core age
cohort in the US were attending law school in 2011. A man
of prime law school attending age was 27.3% less likely to be enrolled in law
school in 2011 than in 1971.
Assuming 90% of the women attending law school in 1971 were
between 22 and 33 years old, there were 7,737 such women. There were about 17 million women in the core
age cohort for law school attendance in 1971.
Thus approximately .046% of women in the core age cohort in the US were
attending law school in 1971. There were
about 22.2 million women in the core age cohort for attending law school in
2011. Assuming 90% of women attending law
school were in this age group, 61,436 such women were attending law school in
2011. Approximately .28% of women in the
core age cohort in the US for law school attendance were attending law school
in 2011. A woman of prime law school attending age was 508.7% more likely to be
enrolled in law school in 2011 than in 1971.
What this means is that more than 100% of the growth in JD
enrollment at ABA law schools over the past 40 years is accounted for by the
increasing number of women going to law school. There were 55,063 more JD students at ABA
law schools in 2011 than 1971. 59,665
more women were enrolled as JD students in ABA law schools in 2011 than in
1971, while 4,632 fewer men were enrolled as JD students in ABA law schools in
2011 than in 1971.
Holding everything else constant, if the gender ratio
between men and women law students had remained the same over the past 40 years
there would have been about 86,141 people enrolled as JD students in ABA law
schools in 2011, and about 24,498 people would have graduated from those schools. This number of graduates is approximately 12%
higher than the total number of new jobs for lawyers (21,880) the BLS estimates
will become available on average per year for lawyers between 2010 and 2020.
Clearly, the fact that law schools have produced an enormous oversupply of people with law degrees over the course of the last generation has an extremely significant gender component. These statistics raise all sorts of questions, and in particular this one: To what extent has legal academia's over-expansion depended on the exploitation of the career aspirations of women in particular? Note that there's all sorts of evidence that egalitarian gender practices in regard to law school admissions have had a remarkably muted effect in regard to making law less of a male-dominated profession (For example, 35 years after women started going to law school in numbers not much smaller than men, 85% of the partners and 95% of the managing partners at large law firms are men).
Have law schools managed to expand far beyond the actual economic demand for law degrees in large part because of an always unstated and usually unconscious assumption that comparatively large numbers of women law graduates would drop out of the profession within a few years of graduation? One of the very few longitudinal studies of law graduate career paths suggests strongly this is the case. This study of the University of Virginia Law School class of 1990 found that while, 17 years after graduation, 98.7% of the men who responded to the survey were working full-time, approximately 63% of the women respondents who had had at least one child were not practicing law full-time. (By contrast, there was literally no correlation between the number of children a man had had and the likelihood that he would be employed full-time).
Obviously this is a complex and fraught topic, which for that reason ought to be the subject of much further study.
To many women, law school is the new finishing school.
ReplyDeleteIn my T14 class, at least one-third of the women openly admitted that they wanted to practice for only a few years. They would usually append that statement with "to pay off debt" or "for the experience before moving in-house." In reality, as evidenced by their subsequent actions, they meant "until I marry, particularly if I can land a fellow associate who appears to be on partnership track."
This was fine back when I went to law school during the boom.
But, in this economic environment, these women are consuming valuable T14/T6/T3 slots that should be accorded to men who will have to work a lifetime to support a family.
If women want a showy degree to act as a proxy for their intellectual ability, they should obtain an academic master's or doctorate.
I've seen this too. The "I don't really want to practice law" and the "I want to help people in some unspecified way" crowds were disproportionately female. If they're independently wealthy, nothing wrong with that. If it's debt financed, however, they're in for quite a wake up call when the bill arrives.
DeleteAnd to state the cruel hard facts of life, to many men older, professionally credentialed, and indebted, are not points in the plus column when looking for spouses.
Scathing, but true. This is part of what needs to be examined when talking about Degree inflation and such.
DeleteWomen have more opportunities than ever, and have taken great social strides, but scenarios as described above have become prevalent during the ascent of women's rights as well.
The catch being that so many men don't stick with a family for a lifetime - about half of them will leave before their children reach the age of 18, and subsequently the mother will be devoting more resources to supporting their children than the father. So saying it's men who need a 'family wage' rather than women is a very skewed view of the situation.
DeleteHow dare you claim that I went to law school for a husband?
DeleteThat is outrageous to me.
The reality is that women end up taking care of the children; if men would be more flexible and less driven, they could help out at home more so both people can have a career.
And how many men want to work in big law for a few years to repay debt and then go in house? Virtually every guy who ever did the math on TLS wants to be able to have slide at some point.
And since when is pursuing government work or public interest work a waste of a law school spot.
The problem here isn't women. The problem here are the men with their attitudes from 1950.
"But, in this economic environment, these women are consuming valuable T14/T6/T3 slots that should be accorded to PEOPLE [delete: men] who will have to work a lifetime to support [add: themselves, a partner, and/or a family.]"
DeleteFixed that for you, you sexist, misogynist, heterosexist sack of shit.
For those of us women who did go to law school hoping to find a husband, many or most of us also wanted to have a career.
DeleteFrom my class at Columbia Law School, and the younger classes, I think women have been exploited. The large law firms simply do not employ middle aged and older women in large numbers. It is staggering. They employ a large contingent of young women, but it does not matter to the firms because women count as women, no matter what the age.
Very few women in my class are paid salaries or guaranteed payments in the private sector that equal six figures. The women who were partner or counsel, who had good jobs for the first many years of practice, with the exception of a handfull of women who made it big, are largely stuck in eat-what-you-kill jobs in their own firms or firms no one has ever heard of.
If you look at the women in my class, the Columbia Law degree is a scam for a lot of the class. We are not welcome in law firms that pay anything because we have aged out of BigLaw and we are not welcome in house. In fact, older women lawyers who are not promoted to very high level positions are not a "fit" anywhere in the private sector except working out of their home offices. It has been that way for almost a decade now.
I would not tell any young woman to go to law school, even a top law school, today. It may get you a good job for the first several years, but after that you are likely be unemployed or underemployed.
I remember a few years ago, 60 minutes did a story on women who attended elite schools only to stay home and raise their children. There was on section about a YLS graduate who was obviously very smart but decided not to work after graduation.
DeleteWhat was particularly interesting to me was the reaction of many women to this story. My wife, a physician, commended the women portrayed in these stories as making personal choices that were nobody's business but their own.
But my mom, a lawyer and baby boomer, had a very different take. She was of the opinion that these women were setting a bad example for other women and setting the women's rights movement back many years. This sentiment was echoed by many other feminists I spoke to.
I learned from this experience that what seemed like an obvious issue to me about personal choice was not likely to be seen that way by many others, especially women who hold set expectations from educated women.
Grist for the mill as they say.
*for* educated women
DeleteYou nailed it, LawProf! Law school is indeed the new finishing school. This makes it really tough to stop the scam. . . .
DeleteOk, even assuming your sexist take is correct, if all these women are dropping out of the workforce after a few years, how does their "taking up space" in law schools hurt you at all? They're dropping out, so not competing with you for scarce jobs. Are you really that fretful that someone *who is no longer practicing law* went to a "better" school than you did? How could that possibly matter, if that person is no longer competing with you for jobs? Please try to at least make your woman-hating arguments more logically consistent.
DeleteHow is this "woman-hating" if it's true? I have hired both men and women for my practice. A much higher % of the women have quit. And I only require 1800 billable hours/year.
Delete"How dare you claim that I went to law school for a husband?"
DeleteNobody was talking to you, girl.
I suspect that you'd find similar skewed increases in the growth of male minority law students over that same time period. However, you'd also likely find those males still practicing, in large part. Comparing the growth in minority male law students and their long term law practice outcomes with the same stats for women would make for a particularly interesting analysis.
ReplyDeleteI agree that race/ethnicity would be very interesting to look at in terms of increasing law school enrollment.
DeleteI would guess that racial/ethnic minorities are disproportionately more likely to be enrolled at newer, lower-tiered law schools than at older, high-prestige law schools. Low-tier schools target people who are economically marginalized.
Minorities probably also hold a disproportionately higher percentage of law school student loans, if I had to guess. Predatory student loans affect economically vulnerable individuals the most.
The older minorities are non-existent in BigLaw. They are hugely underrepresented in house. The minorities in house tend to be young. My take is that minorities even from the top schools are struggling the same way most women from the top schools are struggling once they hit around age 40.
Delete@10:11, "older minorities are non-existent in BigLaw. They are hugely underrepresented in house"
DeleteYou've posted this same tripe repetitively. It's simply not true.
A few points.
ReplyDeleteFirst there is growing concern about the level of educational achievement among young men in general in the US and the declining level among working class and lower middle class white men in particular - in particular high school graduation rates and college graduation rates. It is thus hardly surprising that men form a falling proportion of graduate students in what are regarded still as competitive graduate programs.
Second, as a older lawyer I know once put it to me, getting a good legal secretary today is very hard, because all the women who used to become legal secretaries "up and went to law school." I remember as late as the 1980s and early 90s some law partners whose secretaries really did a lot of their jobs - with I could find such a paragon....
Guess they wanted to be paid for the work they were really doing. Too bad the jobs they were chasing didn't exist.
Delete"Anonymous" I think you are mixed up on this "education" thing....
DeleteI would be MORE worried about the poor female slobs who are getting tripped in the law school scam.
Evidently men are smarter than women, as they have slowly recognized the scam and not playing it.
To win at the law school scam, you have to REFRAIN from even playing it.
Instead of MORE men being in higher education, perhaps there needs to be LESS women?
It could be that. Or it could be that women have better numbers, so more are getting into top schools?
DeleteAnonymous 9:52 AM
DeleteAh, it could be, but I doubt it.
Perhaps you missed my subtle sarcasm...
Men are clearly moving in the RIGHT direction. As women hit 50%, or perhaps even MORE of the law school students, they are clearly moving in the WRONG direction.
As to higher education, it is the same thing. Men are moving in the right direction by generally not participating. When they do, they tend to go into STEM fields, which are generally well paying and produce an economic return on the investment of time & capital.
What needs to happen is that we have LESS women at ALL levels of higher education. Join your menfolk and live a better and more prosperous life.
We don't need any more edukation, we need more jobs.
"What this means is that MORE THAN 100% OF THE GROWTH in JD enrollment at ABA law schools over the past 40 years is accounted for by the increasing number of women going to law school." (emphasis added)
ReplyDeleteHow can you account for more than 100% of something? Normally, I agree with you 1000%, but, today, not so.
this isn't very difficult to understand. Total growth = increase in total enrolment. Paired with the fact that the ratio of men to women has fallen, this means that women account for 100% of total growth, while also making up for the drop in men enrolling. Total growth + compensation for drop in the number of males enroled = more than 100% of total growth. Voilà.
DeleteYou double counted.
DeleteMore than 100% of the growth was women because the total number of men decreased. The men's negative growth number must be offset by a number of women greater than the number of increased students total. Therefore women account for more than 100% of the growth.
DeleteMath isn't that hard.
Law is a tough profession for women, both emotionally and biologically.
ReplyDeleteIt delays their starting families and the time demands of the profession are very hard on families. In my experience, on average they also take the adversarial nature of litigation more personally than their male counterparts.
There are exceptions, of course, but it is not a good profession for your daughter to enter.
In life, your day job is secondary to your life. The '70s feminism kind of lost perspective of this and lost track of what really matters. I've seen plenty of women who excelled playing the game only to realize, at age 45, that what it got them was a childless career that they really don't like. To that end, law is kind of a fool's prize. It's a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie.
If a woman wants to be a practicing lawyer with all the good and bad that entails, bully for her. Yes, she might regret the decision at mid-life, but a lot of men regret their decisions, too.
DeleteThe problem is that many women use a J.D. from a selective school not as the entry credential into a career but as a signal of their worth to prospective mates. To many women, a T14 J.D. is a hypergamous tool intended to attract a higher calibre of man than would a B.A.
These are the women who (a) should be dissuaded from attending law school and (b) should be culled out during the admissions process.
I don't disagree with you but I'm not convinced of the wisdom in anyone getting a JD to signal their worth to mates. Going into mind-numbing debt is a red flag for prospective spouses... there is basically zero marriage market for anyone who is in massive educational debt.
DeleteYes, you fingered me out. I went to Columbia to prove to men that I was a worthwhile mate, should they deign to look kindly on my humble self.
DeleteI don't know how any man would think of me as worth their time without my law degree.
Thank goodness I was able to get a 178 on the LSAT, go to Columbia for free, and get a corporate job in big law so I have the proper signaling credentials.
A woman with a law degree signals that I should run the other way. It likely stands for: (1) a mountain of student debt; (2) indecisiveness about what she wants in life or else insecurity; (3) argumentative nature; (4) high demands from others and of a spouse; (5) a prelude to future fights about said law degree, whether it's used, how it's used, etc.; (6) anal retentiveness.
DeleteYou want a degree that sends a positive signal to the marriage market? Try: (1) veterinarian; (2) elementary ed teacher; (3) social worker; (4) pediatrician; (5) accountant; (6) fine arts.
LOL, and doesn't a man with a law degree send all those same negative signals?
DeleteYes it does. If you want a marriageable degree signal in men, look for: (1) M.D.; (2) accountant; (3) teacher; (4) any graduate level STEM degree.
DeleteUgh, the misogyny is disgustingly rampant in this thread. How dare you say that these are the "marriageable degree signals" for men rather than for both genders?
Delete1) M.D.; (2) accountant; (3) teacher; (4) any graduate level STEM degree.
Sexist asshole.
Yes, why would a woman expect to have some say about her own career and her own professional standing? Why would she expect her husband to be her partner and care about her success and well- being? Be believe it or not, there are plenty of men who want a partner not just a housekeeper.
DeleteWhy would you assume women lawyers are insecure or indecisive?
My wife is a legal secretary. Yeah - I drank from the firm fountain. Now my wife supports me in my chronic unemployment/underemployment. She has no debt. I have plenty. In a few years when I start my own law practice, I'll have an exceptional secretary/paralegal to boss around ... only to have the tables reversed when I get home.
DeleteI agree with some of the posters about women going to law school looking for mates. I always ended up dating the "do gooder" public interest, save the whales and "help people" types. These women should not be wasting their lives and money on such nonsense. Either you're going to go all the way and practice, or you're not. Stay home, in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Instead of save the whales ... SAVE A MALE's job.
And just in case you're wondering, I can't stand working with bitchy female attorneys. I won't be hiring any females as attorneys in my own practice - ever! Cliquey, catty, bullshit. Now hot secretaries on the other hand are a different story....
DeleteAnonymous @8:10 AM has it about right.
DeleteI also agree LawProf has a point that a lot of female J.D.'s don't practice very long, if at all. Maybe this has helped law schools expand way beyond the needs of the profession. This has certainly been the case with my law school class. Most of the ones not practicing are female. They wait tables / tend bar or they quit practicing to have babies. I've worked with a lot of female litigators who leave practice for something quasi-legal like a non-profit or government job.
I'm LOL'ing at most of the women in this thread. I'll hold my tongue and just say that there are a lot of hard truths about life that they don't teach you at the NOW convention.
"How dare you say that these are the "marriageable degree signals" "
DeleteNobody was talking to you, girl.
This would be more interesting if the gender dynamics were limited to law school but I doubt that's the case.
ReplyDeleteIf this is happening in all areas requiring post-graduate degrees, then it moves the issue out of the 'law school scam' arena.
@8:29 AM--you're right, it's not limited to law school. It even goes to the gender pay gap issue--most (not all) of the earning gap between genders disappears when one considers type of work and years on the job. For better or worse, women are more likely to choose lower paying careers/jobs, and to take time off to raise kids, switch to part time work, etc.
ReplyDeleteNow, more than ever, women can do anything that they set their minds to. But they can't do EVERYTHING that they set their minds to.
ReplyDeleteThat's because the men refuse to make room for them.
DeleteAnd I don't know what you mean about not having kids. Every women partner at my firm has kids. One is expecting her fourth and was named a lawyer under 40.
I'm sure they like the nanny who is raising them.
DeleteGosh, yes, how dare working women pay as little attention to their children as working men do?
DeleteI can tell you never had a nanny and have no clue what it means to have a nanny. You might be surprised to know that in New York plenty of women who don't work have nannies and housekeepers - no one is telling them that someone else is raising their kids.
DeleteMom is always mom.
You have no clue about this topic at all, but I'm glad to see your bias showing, just confirming my thoughts.
a non working mom who has a nanny is a lazy mom.
DeleteIf the kind of man who gets a law degree can no longer support a family with that law degree, then it serves him no purpose.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he feels superior with his law degree. Rational thought and economic analysis stopped motivating people to attend law school in 2007. Surely something else is driving it.
DeletePerhaps it's the grand lie that higher education adds value. "Over the course of their lifetimes, college graduates earn . . . more than those with only a high school degree." The fallacies and sampling biases in this statement are obvious, but the scam lives on. Long live the scam!
And no one will marry him either.
DeleteWomen are more likely then men to attain a liberal arts degree because (for whatever reason) they are less likely to go into math/science/engineering. And we all know what happens when you attain a liberal arts degree....
ReplyDeletetrue.
Deletelol.
Deletehttp://weknowmemes.com/2012/10/liberal-arts-major-vs-engineering-major-quality-of-life-graph/
Ha - I think that's spot on. Also, and this is a generalization based on my own observations, women seem more likely than men to thrive and succeed in an academic setting. Law school awards the academically successful - though of course the character and nature of those rewards are questionable.
DeleteI thought women went into nursing and medicine in large numbers . All of my doctors are women and they all have families.
ReplyDeleteI suspect their husbands aren't selfish workaholic jerks.
I think that medical school is now about 50% women- a steady increase from the 1980s when women were one third of all med students.
DeleteSo you are correct. This gender dynamic is playing out in many professional fields. It is just that medical school hasn't grown like law.
In medicine, women can work- for as long as they want and are physically able- and earn a six figure living.
DeleteThe same is not true for women who graduate from top law schools and are in the second half of their careers. While in the early years, law and medicine may seem more equivalent, the law degree is really a ticket to not being able to earn a living when one is older for many top women lawyers.
Unlike in medicine, in law it is very easy to get fired. You do not need to do anything wrong. Most of the women in my Columbia Law School class who were in the private sector were fired at one point or another.
The problem is that you are operating in an up or out environment with hordes of young people released on the job market each year by BigLaw. BigLaw does not want older women and in house has available to them tons of young lawyers with only one or two jobs coming out of BigLaw. That up or out factor makes it very hard for women particularly to work long-term in the private sector. If you lose one job, you may not get back in the legal profession.
My observation is also that women are fired at a much greater rate than men. Some of it has to do with balancing family and career, but a lot of it is just discrimination. On the business production side, it is much harder for women than men generally to bring in business. I think once a woman loses a legal job, it is hard to get back in. Older women are simply discriminated against. They are not represented in the private sector legal profession unless they attain very high level jobs. If not FAHGET ABOUT WORKING because no one will hire them.
DeleteAnyway, as I think we are not going to reform society in this blog- at least we might stick to law school for now-
ReplyDeleteAnother fun TLS thread is on whether Harvard is worth sticker!
And how high could Harvard raise tuition before someone wouldn't go?
The calculation is that Harvard will get you $100,000 a year for 45 years. (Which they think is a conservative number.)
So that makes Harvard worth more than a million , three hundred thousand more than they would earn if they stayed making $35,000 a year.
Problem is that a college degree from a whole host of top colleges will average a grad over $100,000 a year. If they are saying Harvard will produce an extra hundred for 45 years, maybe for men. Not as likely for women.
DeleteInvesting 4.5M for something that gives out $100,000 per year. The rate of return is barely above inflation. Might as well invest in AAA bonds.
Delete"Evidently men are smarter than women, as they have slowly recognized the scam and not playing it."
ReplyDeleteYes, must be that, and not, for instance, the fact that there is now a massive, lucrative information tech/computer science field dominated by men to the point of industry-wide embarrassment that functionally didn't exist 40 years ago.
That you immediately went to "men must just be smarter!" when, as has been extensively discussed on this blog and others, the kind of info we're discussing did not exist even 4 years ago, is pretty telling!
Thank you.
DeleteI prefer the women are smarter so they are supplanting men. Now that women will start to know the truth of law school, maybe they are the ones leaving in droves.
Are t women naturally more risk averse and less risk taking with men? Or so I heard.
9:56 here again. Smart or dumb doesn't really factor into it; it can't, when you're talking about systemic trends this huge.
DeleteThe biggest thing is "women got jobs". I've long thought any analysis of ANY economic trend over the past 40 years, good or bad, that doesn't either start with this or at least acknowledge it is missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
An interesting new paper:
ReplyDeleteNot a New Problem: How the State of the Legal Profession Has Been Secretly in Decline for Quite Some Time
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2173144
Would be great if this would become the #1 paper on ssrn (and no, I'm not the author).
The bigger question is why women would want to enter law now or, for that matter, why men would?
ReplyDeleteIt's expensive, the careers are not rewarding like they once were. The hours remain grueling. There is less professionalism. It's inconsistent with child care, which despite strides that society has made still falls disproportionately on women and likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
"How dare you claim that I went to law school for a husband?"
ReplyDelete"That is outrageous to me."
"Fixed that for you, you sexist, misogynist, heterosexist sack of shit."
"Ugh, the misogyny is disgustingly rampant in this thread."
"Sexist asshole."
Can't imagine where this stereotype of women lawyers as thin skinned, chip on the shoulder, adversarial types come from... ;-)
The fact is, like it or not, women are hard wired for nurturing in a way that men simply are not. They are then told by society that they can "have it all", but the truth is it is fiendishly difficult to juggle career and family if you want both a high powered lucrative career and a meaningful relationship with your kids. The feelings of guilt at having abandoned their kids to be raised by a stranger bother a lot of women, and ultimately most make a choice to prioritize either career or family. The ones who ultimately choose to put family first (the majority in my experience) seem to be happiest in the long run. Many, perhaps most men are not unduly bothered by such feelings and seem content to have a more distant role. You can get all hissy about this and claim it's all a result of institutional sexism if you want, but it's just life. Gender is not merely a social construct and men and women are very different creatures.
Law as a career is unfair to women. And increasingly unfair to men.
DeleteIt's a very important profession, that is decreasingly lucrative and increasingly demanding.
Women have flocked to law and to medicine. Oddly, they have not flocked to STEM graduate field (or to B-Schools) for some reason. I have no reason why this is the case, but as someone said in an earlier comment, women are overrepresented in BA programs and underrepresented in BS or B.Eng. programs. Perhaps that leads to the law.
If that's so, then women are disproportionately victims of the scam. Stop the exploitation of women! End the law school scam!
Your accusing me of not wanting a career and I'm being thin-skinned.
DeleteGender is a social construct. I don't know how anyone who has been alive for the past twenty years could think differently.
11:15 (and a great deal more of this thread) gives me hope that unemployed JDs are not getting hired in non-legal jobs not because the JD itself represents a black mark on the resume but rather a good many law graduates really are psychopaths.
Delete"11:15 (and a great deal more of this thread) gives me hope.."
DeleteHope? You must have a vested interest in the law school scam.
...*checks* Nope, not 'wired for nurturing', do not ever want a family. I spent part of my youth raising a younger relative - definitely not something I find fulfilling in any way. And I recall reading about a study a few months ago (that I sadly can't find on google - must be buried under other endless guff about childcare) that found that mothers find the time they spend with their children less enjoyable than any other activity - including jobs and housework. Having kids is a shit job you don't get paid for. Why so many people want to do it is beyond me, but being 'hard wired for nurturing' is a pile of essentialist bullcrap.
DeleteMaybe your wiring is off
DeleteEither that or I'm a person rather than a gender stereotype. Hmm, I wonder.
DeleteSo, 12:41, you are generalizing from the fact that you, *personally*, do not want kids to say that the observation that women *in general* are not biologically programmed to want to nurture kids is "essentialist bullcrap" (whatever that means). Apart from being illogical - mothers who are nurturing will, by the logic of natural selection, be more successful in passing on their genes - why does the suggestion offend you so?
DeleteAnd the same could go for men who are nurturing. Your point is?
Delete12:41: couldn't agree more. I'm a female litigator several years out of law school. I value my career and my partner, but I don't want kids - not now, not ever. I can't imagine a less fulfilling way to spend any of my time than being a mother. As for the "women are nurturing" nonsense, the average cobra has more nurturing instinct than I do. There's a nauseating amount of sexist tripe in this comment thread.
Delete"Your [sic]accusing me of not wanting a career and "
DeleteNobody's talking to you, girl.
"As for the "women are nurturing" nonsense, the average cobra has more nurturing instinct than I do. "
DeleteNobody's talking to you, girl.
"And the same could go for men who are nurturing. Your point is?" No, the same does not go for men who are nurterers. Those traits have not been selected for. I suggest you read up on some evolutionary biology.
Delete"12:41: couldn't agree more. I'm a female litigator several years out of law school. I value my career and my partner, but I don't want kids - not now, not ever. I can't imagine a less fulfilling way to spend any of my time than being a mother. As for the "women are nurturing" nonsense, the average cobra has more nurturing instinct than I do. There's a nauseating amount of sexist tripe in this comment thread." You are an outlier. And no, you are clearly not nurtering but thin skinned and defensive like so many of the women commenting on this post. Noticing that men and women tend to be different is not sexist, no matter how many times you repeat it to yourself like a mantra.
DeleteThe issue is whether gluttons should be publicly shamed.
ReplyDeleteA significant portion of Americans denigrate people who consume excessive resources. At various times, public shaming has been aimed at McMansion owners, SUV drivers, overeaters, sex addicts, people who put their bags on the subway seat next to them, etc.
Likewise, people who consume a limited and valuable resource -- the T14 seats which have the best chance of turning into legal careers -- should be criticized.
This is true for both genders. But a greater percentage of women than men attend law school without making law a career.
Ergo, the women who waste these valuable, limited positions should be, at a minimum, publicly shamed.
Now you want to shame women for going to top schools?
DeleteMaybe we can go back to the days of the scarlet letter and everyone can revile us for taking seats away from the men who deserve them.
Now if only those men had our credentials, they could get into a T6 on their own merit.
I do agree that women will be wishing up and fleeing law. So that will let the men flow right back in again.
A T14 seat is a valuable resource in 2012 just like a million-dollar home was a valuable resource in 2007.
DeleteThere's no need to shame the last of the suckers, no matter their gender.
I couldn't agree more! No one commented on the ridiculous TLS thread about Harvard being worth stoker because grads were sure to make at least $100,000 a year for 45 years.
DeleteThe only people to be shamed here are the law schools who lied for yers about employment and salary numbers
There is another side to this. If a man marries a driven woman with a high paying career and then assumes the role of primary child care giver or takes a job that is less demanding, society looks at him as lazy or an underachiever.
ReplyDeleteTrue dat.
DeleteBarefoot and Pregnant, that's what I say.
ReplyDeleteBarefoot Pregnant, Esq.
DeleteWomen were not created to have careers.
ReplyDeleteMan has a certain nature. Women have a certain nature. Everything has a certain nature that includes certain attributes and excludes other attributes. There is nothing wrong with this.
If men were men, and women were women, we could have avoided a lot of problems we have today. Too bad humanity is making war on nature today.
lol
DeleteCase you hadn't noticed, darling (or maybe you had but the concept was too taxing for your neanderthal brain), there exist much greater variations within genders than between genders. Attempting to impose one gendered norm on everyone is a recipe for misery.
I do have a certain nature, and it's that of an introverted workaholic. I don't plan to 'make war' on myself by squirting out babies just because asswipes like you think it's 'natural'.
I read this in the platform of my local chapter of NO MA'AM -- the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood
DeleteThanks 12:47 for not squirting out babies, you've done the world a favor there. BTW on what are you basing the statement that "there exist much greater variations within genders than between genders"? Why are so many women here unwilling to entertain the very notion that women are by nature different than men?
DeleteBecause it is an incorrect and gross generalization meant to explain why women have to give up their careers to raise a family. It completely ignores the social system and culture that creates this false assumption.
DeleteSo basically you have answered one generalization with another. Can't say I am overly impressed with your critical thinking skills. Women don't *have* to give up their careers, and indeed our current social system and culture does much to stigmatize women who opt out of their careers to be stay at home moms. It's simply that very many women, once they start having kids, decide that having a lucrative career requiring long hours away from their families is not as attractive a proposition as they thought. I understand that is not the way you feel and that is perfectly fine. But the fact that you don't feel that way doesn't negate the general trend. You say twice that it is false, but I don't see it as being based on anything other than your feeling offended.
Deletei have three friends that married female doctors. for what its worth, all three of them work less than 20 hours a week to spend more time with their kids while my friends work ridiculous hours to support them.
ReplyDeletemy sons peditrican office is one female dr with a stay at home dad and two part time female drs.
four very attractive females from my graduating class left good legal practices to be stay at home moms.
At some point biology takes over. Nothing wrong with that. Women are born care takers. my wife has a pretty good job and she is waiting for the day she can quite so she can take care of our son full time. many of her female friends are the same way and some resent the fact that they have to work.
This is just true. Culture can't explain it.
DeleteIf that's the case, why does our culture need to be so full of sexism, and why does it rush to defend itself whenever those barriers are threatened? Surely you don't NEED all that sexism if women are just going to ~~naturally~~ go off home and make babies, do you?
Deletebefore going back to private practice, i was in house counsel at two tier one fortune 500 companies. maybe its the nature of the auto business, but the females in high level jobs were generally not the nicest women. usually they had some serious attitude issues and chips on their shoulder. They generally had more masculine qualities than the average female. maybe they had higher testosterone levels than their females peers and thats why they werent bothered by the fact that they were never around to raise their kids. maybe its the testosterone or t/estrogen level that influences the nuturing gene that some women just dont seem to have/express
DeleteHmmm. Women going to law school to find a mate? I think there is a tendency to mistake some women's taste in men with the rationale for going to law school. White collar professionals tend to marry white collar professionals. Graduate students tend to, shock, get involved with other graduate students and given the usual age range for law students - 23-33 it is hardly surprising that many of the relationships result in marriage.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to law school and was a junior lawyer there was a little pack of mercenary women who hunted law students and junior lawyers (one was dubbed the "girl with the cash register eyes") but very few were in law school with us. There was a few little princess groups who as far as I could tell favored guys from equally rich backgrounds.
As far as women dropping out of legal practice, consider the harsh realities. To be successful as a lawyer means spending your years from 24-38-44 working very long hours, under a lot of stress and pressure. There are very few opportunities if anything to take any time out. Now consider how hard it is for someone who takes three-to-six-months off to get back into the flow of a law-firm - that is what the choice to take maternity leave for children means. Now look at how many male lawyers get divorced - why do you think that is? Because they ignore their families and personal life. And that is if you are successful....
If you are not successful, or you hit a rocky patch the stresses are even greater - financial, social, etc.
The issue though is that as long as the legal population remains out of control - as long as there is someone who must take the opportunity to grab the work of a woman on maternity leave, or a man who wants to spend the weekend with his kids, all this talk about quality of life is bilge. There is always someone who has no choice but to take the opportunity that any lawyer looking for a little quality of life leaves open.
http://www.catalyst.org/publication/208/women-in-medicine
ReplyDelete"Your accusing me of not wanting a career"
ReplyDeleteI said no such thing. I said that if you are like most women, as you progress in your career you will have some difficult choices to make. As others have pointed out, the legal industry is notoriously unresponsive to demands for work life balance.
"and I'm being thin-skinned."
Yes, yes you are. You are mistaking a general observation for a personal attack.
"Gender is a social construct. I don't know how anyone who has been alive for the past twenty years could think differently."
I've got two young 'uns at home and I can tell you that a very surprising amount of behaviour - including gender specific behaviours - is innate and not socially determined. Are you seriously suggesting that women are not biologically inclined towards nurturing? And I am at a loss as to why you seem to think that is a bad thing...
Because females in other species aren't predisposed towards nurturing.
DeleteOh wait.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665536
ReplyDelete(Are women overinvesting in education?, by M. Chen and J. Chevalier)
They note that a 2009 study showed that by their late 30s, while 94.2% of MD mothers remain working, only 79% of JD mothers and 72% of MBa mothers do.
Chen and Chevalier find that, for the median female physician, it is NPV negative to become a doctor rather than a physician's assistant due to gender per-hour pay disparities plus the lower hours worked by female doctors. At a 4% interest rate, the median female doctor does not work enough hours to amortize the greater up-front costs of becoming a doctor.
I call BS, I know plenty of female doctors in my partially wealthy/partially upper middle class neighborhood and trust me, they all have a NPV positive from attending medical school, lol...
DeleteI have yet to meet any woman, or man for that matter, anywhere in the Southwest (in AZ, CA, NV) who has ever regretted attending medical school, in the last 30 years. Now I have met (in the last 10 years) dozens of men and women who regret law school...
Well buckle your seatbelt. Recent laws will Obamafy the M.D. in a couple of years. That is to say, they will turn the M.D. into a solid turd that's worth about a nickel. It'll be worse than anything a Cooley grad has ever encountered. Hell, we may actually start seeing unemployed M.D.s start attending law school!
DeleteThe election of 2008 has swept away the sin of slavery forever and always. After four MORE years of this, blacks will need to start PAYING reparations to whites.
One reason why more women MDs would work is that the standards to become an MD are much harder than to become a lawyer. But a totally separate reason is that there is a big demand for doctors and much easier to hold a job and stay in a job than law. No such thing as up or out in most medical jobs. You can always get some type of 6 figure work as a doctor unless you are unfortunate enough to go into one of the very few specialties that have few jobs (nuclear medicine or pathology).
Deleteit is interesting, if you do end up in a dead end specialty, in medicine it is hard to get a residency to enable you to change specialties. It is not impossible though. In law, if your specialty goes down the drain, you are in trouble.
Mankind has been held under the thumb of, and has been generally oppressed by womankind since the cro magnum and paleo'olithic days, which were thousands of eons ago.
ReplyDeleteThat is why the more inventive and sensitive men, seeking somekind of escape from their mental anguish invented things that women can't stand generally, such as cheap malt beer with a kick, and chewing tobacco.
Also, generally, being assholes.
DeleteAnthropologists (a red hot intellectual field for those in the know who have real heads for knowing), get zillions of dollars in research grants if they discover the bones of a cave woman that was not only a queen, but a warrior priestess and also a shaman and leader of the tribe, and, last but not least, a lawyer.
ReplyDeleteAnd then all the wimins libbers go: "Hey! See that! I told you so. Women have been in charge since humankind crawled out of the slime."
It's all there at the big University, next to the department of meteors and alien remains from Roswell, third door down the hall, to the left.
and now, back to the scam .....
ReplyDelete....because this thread is giving a lot of people the opportunity to look like entitled buffoons, regardless of what's going on in legal academia.
DeleteThis is a very disappointing comment thread. I feel bad for LawProf, who will doubtless receive unwarranted criticism for the stupid sexist flame war that has ensued. The OP notes a statistical phenomenon that might help us better understand the profile of the tuition-paying students helping to prop up increased tuitions and increased enrollment numbers in seeming defiance of rational economic principles (e.g., that demand for law degrees should be dropping as their values are dropping). The questions he suggested, and others that logically flow from the data he noted, are indeed worthy of further discussion and study. Let's leave the misogyny, along with the feeding of misogynistic trolls, aside and get back to the discussion, please.
ReplyDeleteYeah it's probably the trolling work of some anon law professor, so now they can carry on with their "ZOMG everyone here is a psychopath" meme.
DeleteI agree, 1:16. LawProf tried to post something relevant and interesting on this subject a few months back, and the commenters really took it in an irrelevant direction.
DeleteWhen I read this post, I thought about the selective targeting of minority groups in the mortgage market in 2006 and 2007. There might be a analogy to draw there...
Agreed...
DeleteI've seen nothing to support the idea that women are being selectively marketed to for law school.
DeleteThe scammers from all law schools who consistently put out deceiving employment and salary numbers were not focusing on women. Those false numbers were published for everyone to view.
I also didn't see any statistics as to which group - men or women- have better statistics for law school admissions.
Maybe LSAC publishes data on scores by sex but I haven't really looked.
Do you really think the law school complex has been targeting women? I don't. Over the past several decades women have made gains in many areas in terms of employment and educational opportunities. The increase in female applicants seems natural to me. But the result is an increase in women facing a lifetime of debt.
ReplyDelete"Ugh, the misogyny is disgustingly rampant in this thread. How dare you say that these are the "marriageable degree signals" for men rather than for both genders?
ReplyDelete1) M.D.; (2) accountant; (3) teacher; (4) any graduate level STEM degree.
Sexist asshole."
Actually, doctor, accountant, and teacher were on his lists for both genders (and lawyers was, of course on neither). The only distinction he made was that he thought vet was a good signal for women, and STEM a good signal for men.
Women and Ladies: Over the course of 2 American generations, there has been incredible change.
ReplyDeleteWomen's rights, opportunities, education and incomes have all increased
But during this same time, we see other trends.
Decline of marriage: People don't want to get married anymore.
Decline of birthrates: The younger American generation is not reproducing like the prior generations.
Childcare: Raising children has been relegated to chore status. No one really wants to deal with it.
Single Parent households: Plenty of Single Mom's that go on there own without a spouse, or the guy is a jerk and abandons.
Lots of losers: Plenty of Single guys out there that would make good Dads but are left on the wayside due to lacking income/status/whatever. They called this downturn a "Mancession" for a reason, and Ladies picked up the slack and really kicked butt.
Marrying up / Marrying Down dynamic: For years, marrying up was the best method for a Lady to move along in life. It was a square deal; serve husband and children and have a family and home for life. The guy would be willing to "Marry Down" trusting the vows of marriage would be fulfilled. Problem is that it limits the potential of some very ambitious women. Today, a lot of Men have to consider marrying up to move along in life and may be put into a "Mr.Mom" role they are not prepared for. Regardless of social status, this is not something that Alpha male types (The one's that women observe for strongest mating potential) really want to be involved in.
Look Guys are dumb, Women are smart. Guys are running out of solutions, while Women have taken over quite a bit. But it's dramatic that this shift has coincided with the destruction of social norms that were perceived as unbreakable just 50 years ago.
Congratulations Women, you have succeeded so well, but there is still room to grow. The problem is us guys are too dumb to figure out how to raise a family or keep a marriage without you and your help.
Can you please help without subconsciously assuming we are wimps, or overtly accusing us of Misogyny? We can change a flat tire, install a window A/C unit, and fix stuff pretty well most of the time in exchange?!?!
The only thing holding you back is your attitude and your entitlement. Be a better person and women will be lined up around the block.
DeleteBe a better person? Don't make me laugh! No, the women will be too busy ignoring the nice guys, getting pumped and dumped by the bad boys, and incessantly claiming that they "can't find a good man" Sorry if that sounds cynical, but so many of the women posting here sound, quite simply, earnest to a fault, humorless and awful - just like the women I went to law school with, in fact.
DeleteHahaha this is truth.
DeleteWomen may be able to do well in school but men are more creative and independent-thinking. Women are more easily duped than men. Perhaps the whole women's movement was a ruse to get more women into the workplace so that they could be taxed. Most of the liberation movements were BS anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that anytime anything relating to gender is posted that the trolls come out in full force? The lawscam movement loses steam when all the unemployed people look like they're unemployed because of their hostile behavior.
ReplyDeleteI hope the horrible crime against Humanity called the law school scam will see true and Human justice someday.
ReplyDeleteI really do.
Humanity is at stake. If a country has no control over its own legal system, and is willing to decimate the lives of those that come to study under it, then the it must be a rogue country upon the rest of the world.
So basically, should women marry lawyers or Engineers?
ReplyDeleteEngineer-lawyers.
DeleteNow you know.
You're welcome.
"I call BS, I know plenty of female doctors in my partially wealthy/partially upper middle class neighborhood and trust me, they all have a NPV positive from attending medical school, lol..."
ReplyDeleteWell that's the thing about limiting your sample to "partially wealthy/partially upper middle class" people: practically everyone in this neighborhood is, by definition, NPV positive on their education.
Seriously, the big difference is that it is easy to make a good living as a doctor and very hard to make a good living as a lawyer. There is no doctor overproducation. The lawyer overproduction disproportionately affects women and disproporationately knocks highly qualified older women out of the legal professon. Many of these women worked like slaves when their children were young only to find their jobs disappear when the children headed off to college and they needed their jobs the most, both financially and on a personal level. I have seen this happen again and again. All non-cause terminations, but that is part of the legal profession churn that scams women and older women in particular.
DeleteRemember that apocryphal NYT headline?
ReplyDelete"World Comes to an End: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit."
I value LawProf's posts, but find it hard to take this one seriously. As men, we hear a kind of feminist triumphalism: women are an Irresistible Tide, one that will eclipse us in all fields and endeavors (It's the "End of Men", doncha know?)
Then, we're told that women are victims of the law school scam and the legal profession generally. Never mind that women flooding law schools was a feminist dream forty years ago.
In fact (dating myself here), one of their proudest achievements in the mid 70s at NYU Law was to take over one of the main men's rooms and put potted plants in the urinals. You go, girl.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAnd happy thanksgiving everyone!
Thank you law prof for writing this blog even though this post is way off topic. And thank you for writing the book based on this blog, which I hope will spread the word about the lying liars who lie and their endless lies about law school.
Thanks to DJM! To quote from the above, you go girl!
Actually, this post is not off topic. Law Prof writes: "To what extent has legal academia's over-expansion depended on the exploitation of the career aspirations of women in particular? Note that there's all sorts of evidence that egalitarian gender practices in regard to law school admissions have had a remarkably muted effect in regard to making law less of a male-dominated profession (For example, 35 years after women started going to law school in numbers not much smaller than men, 85% of the partners and 95% of the managing partners at large law firms are men)", which is an open invitation to commenters to speculate why despite the influx of women they are so poorly represented at the partner level. While there have been one or two intolerant remarks, admittedly, it also seems that there are more than a few who consider any explanation of the phenomenon other than "sexism!" to be "trolling". Obviously there is something about the practice of law that makes it unattractive as s long term career for many women, which should by rights be giving people pause to consider how the dysfunctional law firm business model might be changed, as it is obviously obsolete, for this and many other reasons.
ReplyDeleteI missed this. I stand corrected.
DeleteBut I admit I have way more faith in our ability to impact the law school sc than I do in our ability to remake the profession as a whole and particularly biglaw.
Stoping women from applying to law school by promoting the truth is a good first step, I guess.
The profession is not unattrative to women. Most women are forced out, before they become partner and many are forced out from partnerships.
DeleteThe work itself may not be unattractive, but the billable hour based business model certainly is.
DeleteI think LawProf should refrain from posting about gender issues on this blog. It just brings out the crazy woman haters, and really accomplishes nothing other than making everyone reading think that the commenters on this blog are unemployed for really good reasons.
ReplyDeleteAs a HYS grad/employed female commenter who does not want kids and who just read through this thread, I am feeling pure schadenfreude at the thought that some or all of the misogynist men who commented in this thread are unemployed. May they stay that way forever.
DeleteI feel you.
DeleteSeriously -- these guys are really sad.
Delete"I think LawProf should refrain from posting about gender issues"
ReplyDeleteReally, I thought it went pretty well. in fact, I was hoping maybe one on race next.
If I can distract from the gender wars for a bit, this is worth a read:
ReplyDeleteIn response to a post on TaxProf about the discrepancy between the number of law grads and number of practicing lawyers, Calvin H. Johnson, UT Law Professor, said the following:
"Lawyers leaving the practice of law to work for clients or to make money has been a source of pride for the profession ... the law degree has always been the license to make money. Law degree gets you to where the money tree is ..."
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/11/the-job-market.html#comments
http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/chj7107/
The money tree?
DeleteHow old is this guy, he must be the ultimate boomer completely out of touch.
Is it possible for us to start emailing these law professors who post junk like this on public forums?
Maybe we can start an email campaign of information to send?
My experience as a woman lawyer with a really good record who has devoted my life to my career is being forced into temp work as an older woman - by the same law firms that employed me on a full-time permanent basis when I was young and even promoted me when I was young. My experience in house is having half my group fired in less than a year after a new manager took over. The people fired were over 55, and the manager was under 40. The firings were all on account of "fit" and people being "comfortable". The people who got to keep their jobs were all young, like the manager.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying older men do not face problems working in the legal profession. However, older women face much bigger problems working. It is endemic in my law school class.
The only thing I can compare it to is this country in the 1940s and 1950s. My parents would go to a hotel and be told they cannot stay -"We're restricted." Only white Protestants were allowed to stay.
In the legal profession, you have a group of unemployed lawyers, mostly women and mostly minorities, who were employable by BigLaw when they were young finding every employment door closed to them several years down the road. The phrase "We're restricted" is an apt phrase when you are talking about older lawyers, especially women and minorities, and large to mid-sized law firms.
It is not like there are other employers out there to hire these lawyers. The jobs are not there.
So, it would appear that if most of these female law graduates had instead done something else, many more male lawyers today would have real legal jobs.
ReplyDeleteI dated a girl in law school who attended another law school, paid in cash by her dad, who never seemed serious about practing law and I don't think she ever did beyond a few short term associate jobs and I believe really just wanted me to pay the freight and she to "retire" to stay home with children on the north shore of chicago suburbs.
I'm all for good women who want to make a serious go of it- I've hired two myself. But this sort of frivolous law school attendance helped to create undersupply, reduce the value of most lawyer pay outside of biglaw, and stifle careers of young male lawyers
Isn't this blog about how there aren't enough jobs because there are too many grads? How would switching the gender of the person help?
DeleteIt would still be the same number of unemployed lawyers?
Blaming women for keeping someone from getting something they could have achieved on their own merit is just scapegoating.
It isn't my fault that I had better grades, LSAT then someone who couldn't get in. Why blame women for this? It isn't as if law school seats are so limited that a man can't find a school to go to.
I went to school with a guy whose dad is a boomer lawyer who stared his own energy company. He sent his son to Columbia law , just for the credential. This kid is going to work for his dad and didn't even take the bar exam.
So he really should have not taken a spot that could have gone to a woman who was serious about practicing law.
Agree. The commenters here are arguing from the assumption that law school places (and legal jobs) are a male entitlement, therefore they should go to men FIRST, and THEN, if there are any left over, women can have them. In so arguing, they are forgetting that it is no longer 1953. I really wish LawProf would shut this garbage down, but maybe he agrees?
DeleteThe fact that women drop out of the profession in large numbers does not mean that these women entered the profession with the aim of dropping out. There are many other reasons that could cause the drop-outs, such as: discrimination, the fact that it's very difficult to have primary child care responsibilities and work a big firm schedule, personal distaste for the practice of law, just to name a few. Sometimes women start practicing law and then realize 1. it sucks, 2. they have to deal with craploads of sexist treatment from their usually male bosses, and 3. no one at their jobs gives a crap if they need a week off to have a baby or god forbid need to be home by 8 p.m. to tuck the baby in after it's born. So after having a baby, it's a choice of stick with a crap job that treats you like garbage, or stay home with your baby. Making the choice to stay home in no way means that person "never wanted to practice law" or "went to law school to find a husband." Did you people learn no logic in your third tier toilet schools at all?
Letting people say stupid things is not the same as agreeing with them and your suggestion that LP should silence every comment he does not endorse is possibly the stupidest thing of all, but I'm thankful LP gives you a forum to say it.
DeleteIt is all moot if people do not use their T14 degrees. The whole point is the overproduction of T14 degrees relative to the number of jobs.
ReplyDeleteWell, at least we now know where all those Romney voters are. I can't decide if it's 1-2 guys writing all of these mouthbreathing comments, or actually as many as it seems, but either way, it's bad. One question, that I'm guessing none of you will attempt to answer: do you really think that if women were banned from the profession tomorrow, there wouldn't be thousands of male applicants rushing in to fill those law school slots? Lawyer overproduction has nothing to do with women finally being allowed into the profession. The real causes of it have been amply documented on this blog, in fact. So, ok, ban women, minorities, Jews, foreigners, and everyone who isn't a pinch-assed WASP upper class male from law. Problem solved? There are still enough of you arseholes to more than fill out the Cooley classes of the next decade. And I concur with others on this thread who said that the thought of you losers being chronically unemployed seems nothing but just to be after reading your vile spew. I wouldn't work with any of you scuzzbags.
ReplyDelete"I wouldn't work with any of you scuzzbags."
DeleteActually, they are your boss and your boss's boss.
Actually, two out of three of my bosses are women and the other one is a sentient man, so, nope.
Delete10:59, why don't you quit beating around the bush and tell us what you *really* think?
DeleteAncient mid 80s law grad here. It is shocking how many formerly practicing female lawyers live here in suburbia. So many of them are married law firm partners, doctors (surgeons, i.e. docs who make money) and banker/hedge fund men. At least in my generation loans were not such a big deal-it sounds crazy now to get that education and not work. I can't imagine how these women who are approaching or have reached 50 can ever get back into law. And by the way-many of these women went to top law schools. In fact, women who went to top law schools are much more likely to marry the above type of men and to not have to work. There really is such a concept as signaling.
ReplyDeleteYes, law as a profession has all sorts of problems for women. The root of it is that there is a huge glut of lawyers and part-time work is hard to get. Of course there is the issue of bringing in business. However, the issues are not the same for female medical doctors. They can get part-time, more flexible hours because there is not a huge oversupply.
"I think LawProf should refrain from posting about gender issues on this blog. It just brings out the crazy woman "
ReplyDeleteNo, there's a lot more than one of them.
You should have written, "the crazy WOMEN".
Well one thing is clear at least: people in general need to decide, before assuming a lifetime of debt, whether they would even be happy if they won the BigLaw lottery. While this is particulary true for young women, who have been conditioned to think they can "have it all" and often later find it difficult to satisfy both their career and family aspirations, this is also increasingly true for many men as well. I left the practice of law after three years as I got tired of working crazy hours on meaningless drudgery. I only came back to the law after a stint working in IT and then contracts management and getting a p/t MBA (paid for by my employer) and then being offered a corporate counsel 9-5 gig that allows me to actually contribute in a meaningful way to the raising of my children. But, I graduated from law school with no debt in 1997. If I were a recent graduate and had to service a huge debt load, I would not have nearly as many options open to me - and lateralling to a lower paying but more work-life balance friendly job would never have been a possibility.
ReplyDeleteThis article really brought out the misogynist assholes lurking in the ITLSS commenter pool. I guess even those smart enough to see how they are getting screwed by their law schools still fit the law student stereotype. Way to miss the point of the article.
ReplyDeleteWhat i do not understood is in truth how you are no
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