Several people sent me this yesterday.
Some lowlights:
Prospective student: Thank you for hosting this event. I was wondering what the job prospects are like for Davis grads. How did the class of 2011 do in securing full-time legal work after graduation?Dean Kevin Johnson: Great question! The latest information that I have is that more than 90%-plus of our 2011 grads have legal jobs. It has been a challenging job market but things are looking up.Another prospective student: You stated it has been a challenging job market. What are some of the hardships students are running into? How can UC Davis help with getting thru those challenges?Dean Johnson: UC Davis has revitalized and expanded our Career Services office to assist students in their job search. It is now headed by a former hiring partner at a major Silicon Valley law firm. We have expanded our externship program in Washington, D.C. (UCDC) to expose our students to new and exciting possibilities. (One of our students worked in the White House.)Another prospective student: Many reports have shown that the legal market, especially in the Bay Area, is very saturated with new grads and grads from the last 10 years looking for new jobs. Would you say a legal education is still a financially sound investment?Dean Pinkney, Director of Admissions: Yes, definitely. Because law graduates do more than practice law, there are a myriad of career opportunities available. The career services office would be able to provide you with statistics on actual salary information, however, I believe you should also consider the fact that lawyers are still able to practice in a variety of areas of the country where salaries change according to the size of the market. Further, lawyers tend to find value in being able to help people at many levels in society.
Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who
were employed in full-time long-term -- this means for at least one year, so it
includes one-year clerkships, fellowships etc -- legal jobs in February
2012: 56.4% I would be surprised
if “the latest information” Dean Johnson has is in any material degree
different from this figure.
Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who
were employed in jobs in February
2012 that were both part-time and short-term: 20.5%
Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who
were known to have employment of any kind nine months after graduation (legal,
non-legal, professional, non-professional, full-time, part-time, long-term,
short-term): 90.8%
Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who
were known to have a salary of at least $70,000 nine months after
graduation: Approximately 9.2% 23.6% (Edit: I initially misread the 25th percentile of firm salaries as the 75th.)
Non-resident tuition and fees for
2012-13: $58,815
Resident tuition and fees for
2012-13: $49,564
If we assume (optimistically) a
combined 3.5% annual increase in tuition and cost of living in each of the next
two years, current 1Ls at UC-Davis who debt-finance their attendance will have
about $247,000 in debt when their first loan payments come due if they’re
California residents, while non-residents will incur loan balances of $282,000.
Yesterday a commenter was whinging
about how it doesn’t make sense to spend time criticizing “for-profit” schools
like Phoenix for continuing to push phony employment stats to prospective
students, because everybody knows that for-profit schools are a scam. Phoenix is near the bottom of the law school
hierarchy, and UC-Davis is, at least mathematically, fairly close to the top –
a “top 30” school. And it, like almost
all law schools, and therefore like almost law schools with similarly
catastrophic relationships between their cost and the employment outcomes for
their graduates, is a “non-profit” institution.
In the context of higher education,
the distinction between for-profit and non-profit institutions is becoming
increasingly meaningless. Kevin Johnson –
one of the “25 most influential people in legal education” -- got paid $310,150 last year, which sounds pretty profitable any way you slice it.
What I don’t quite get is why people
like Johnson and Pinkney continue to indulge in this kind of misrepresentation. By this point, anybody with a lick of sense
is going to recognize that attending UC-Davis at sticker or anything remotely
close to that is basically insane, unless you happen to be independently
wealthy and/or already hooked up career-wise, and merely need to pay a
six-figure entrance fee.
Would it really make much if any difference to this particular non-profit enterprise if they just told the truth when asked? For instance, Johnson could have said something like, "A lot of our graduates are struggling to get legal jobs. However a person who finishes near the top of the class still has an excellent chance at securing legal employment." The kind of person who would at this point consider going to Davis without a massive tuition break will hear that and think, "OK, I'll just finish near the top of the class."
Would it really make much if any difference to this particular non-profit enterprise if they just told the truth when asked? For instance, Johnson could have said something like, "A lot of our graduates are struggling to get legal jobs. However a person who finishes near the top of the class still has an excellent chance at securing legal employment." The kind of person who would at this point consider going to Davis without a massive tuition break will hear that and think, "OK, I'll just finish near the top of the class."
Furrrrrst
ReplyDeleteThat email response from the dean contains a few classics, including "a law degree is versatile" (no, it's not). Then there is "lawyers tend to find value in being able to help people at many levels in society." WTF? Im sure they do but if you want to help people, you don't have to take on 300K in non dischargeable debt (and give up 3 of the best years of your life) in order to do so. If you want to help people, why not volunteer at a soup kitchen, teach illiterate people how to read, etc?
ReplyDelete"When there is "lawyers tend to find value in being able to help people at many levels in society." WTF? "
DeleteBamBam - haven't you heard? You can eat contentment, you know. Very (ful)filling.
Hmmm . . . the answer the dean gave was for "legal jobs", which would seem to include all bar passage required and JD preferred jobs, full time and part time, long term and short-term - 87.2% of grads had these, including those employed by the school itself. The question he was asked was "full time legal jobs", which includes all full-time bar passage required and JD preferred jobs, long term and short-term - 67.2%. The answer he gave was 90%+, and he'll probably just try to explain his answer - if he explains it at all - by saying that 87.2% is pretty close to 90% and he was answering off-the-cuff. I don't think it's going to be easy to pin him down on admitting that he was actually over-stating the correct answer to the question by more than 20%.
ReplyDeleteI think it's awfully generous to categorize "JD preferred" jobs as "legal jobs." Even so he was asked about full-time legal jobs and gave an extremely inaccurate response even if you give him every interpretive benefit of the doubt.
DeleteWe need to be more careful. "Legal jobs" is too loose: it could include positions as a lawyer's secretary. Instead, we should use something like "stable full-time employment as lawyers at a salary sufficient to support the average graduate's debt". That will exclude unpaid positions (prettified as "internships"), dead-end temporary shit, "public-service" work paid for by the school, generously interpreted "JD-preferred" positions, eat-what-you-kill arrangements, so-called solo practice (which is worse than unemployment), and other ruses designed to perfume the shitty prospects of graduates even from upper-fourth-tier institutions such as UC Davis.
Delete"(W)ith a lick of sense" is where your hypothesis fails to capture a sufficient portion of the incoming 1L population.
ReplyDeleteSometimes in a poker game, a novice (or "fish") will pull in a big pot because of a lucky break, and an allegedly better player will chastise the fish for playing as he did. While it might make the loser feel better to vent at someone who was rewarded for making a mathematically unsupportable play, it doesn't make him any more money to make a fish question his own terrible play, who might after all learn something from having it called to his attention. This phenomenon is called "tapping on the aquarium."
DeleteTo the extent you and David Segal have tapped on the aquarium of incoming law students, you have seen the smallest pool of new fish in more than ten years with the bottom for this trend nowhere in sight. Johnson needs to attract new fish who have LSATs roughly comparable to the outgoing fish, and even giving slight credence to what you're saying is like emptying out the aquarium on the floor.
well said
Delete"the distinction between for-profit and non-profit institutions is becoming increasingly meaningless."
ReplyDeleteIt is meaningless and has been ever since Congress guaranteed student loan origination and it/the ABA failed to provide any oversight of tuition costs to ensure the profession is in good hands. There is no difference between School A charging 40k a year so it can use the excess to cross-subsidize its other "academic missions" and/or enrich the pockets of faculty and trustees and School B charging 40k and paying the excess as a dividend to shareholders.
If anything, the for-profit institutions are being more honest about what they're doing.
^^ This captures the truth of the situation in a way that 99% of the population will never understand.
DeleteCro-Magnons will always say "nonprofit, GOOD. for-profit, BAD."
Welcome to the "real" 1%.
Publius Lex
I will also reiterate this point, that the "non-profit" label is false.
DeleteAny institution within a capitalist economy must operate on a for-profit basis; it cannot survive otherwise.
All economic actors are shaped by the external, profit-seeking pressures of capitalism, regardless of their supposed goals or identity as "non-profit".
All that "non-profit" means is that they manage to get rid of all the money every year. Big fucking deal: any idiot can waste money, such as by paying this liar Johnson hundreds of thousands a year in salary and benefits.
Delete"Non-profit" status requires an IRS tax exemption, which is subject to a *large* number of requirements.
DeleteAnybody want to bet that law school behavior has edged up to and over the line of violating one or more of these requirements for "non-profit" status?
An effort to strip "non-profit" status from one or more "law" schools would send titanic shockwaves through the whole rotten system.
And, at a minimum, it would draw massive press.
Davis might not be the best test case as state actor status might complicate matters.
But nailing Cooley, etc. for non-profit violations would not face the same issue.
It is time to get creative and aggressive about ending this rot at the heart of American legal education.
All,
ReplyDeleteHow does the law school industry get the ear of the NY Flippin' Times? Here's another pro-law school article in Dealbook:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/in-lean-times-for-law-schools-an-opportunity/
From Glater, a professor at Chemerinsky's unaccredited vanity project.
Deletecorrection: ABA provisionally accredited vanity project.
DeleteThis article is such crap. The main point is that "fewer students with high LSAT are applying, so lucky for YOU!" The worst thing the guy's got to say about the market AFTER you've piled up all that debt is that it's "uncertain."
DeleteHowever, the piece IS open for comments. Party on.
Yes, please comment on the NYT pro-law school piece linked above.
DeleteThe fucker considers 130 on the LSAT a "middling" score.
DeleteThe joke about bankruptcy at the end is especially tasteless and cruel in light of the fact that student loans are not dischargeable in the US.
8:54, I think you missed the joke...
DeleteI didn't miss it; I just consider it unfunny.
DeleteThe high LSAT scorers not going to law school are the canaries screaming in the coal mine. If the best people walk away because of their prospects, that means the opportunity doesn't exist, not that is a lucky break for someone with an average score to hit the big time.
DeleteThe people who are not gong are the ones with the best advisors and the ones that are best plugged in to the reality of a career in law. They should cause others to pause and consider their choice, not cause others to think that this is a great opportunity .
Actually, I disagree. I regret that the law school scam coverage (which I think is otherwise very good) has scared away some of the top scorers who would be solid admits at HYSCCN and who would have a lot of career options open to them. Those are the folks who should attend, and to the extent that they are being deterred by the scam coverage, it is a great and unnecessary loss to our field. But I definitely agree with your point that their absence does not mean that this is a "lucky break for someone with an average score to hit the big time" - and those people should stay away. This is a saturated profession. We do not need more average people, period - let alone average, unemployed people.
DeleteSusan is right.
DeleteIt's a pity that many of the strongest candidates are deciding against the legal profession. But can you blame them? A person can excel at HYSCCN yet still find no work, or else end up out on her ass in a few years. Even in this difficult job market, lots of average—and even worse—people who happen to be rich and well connected are getting jobs while some of the best people are not.
Shouldn't the ABA be concerned about this? Both from Phoenix and Davis?
ReplyDeleteWhy is Davis not giving out accurate stats as they give to the ABA ??
And what makes you think they're reporting accurate stats to ABA either?
DeleteHonestly, they have no incentive to tell the truth and the lie makes life easier. The schools are not being held accountable for their lies so why stop telling them. If a lie can get the school a few more high scoring kids and keep it in the top 30, why not? Our class action suits are dismissed with prejudice and our online advice to future potential law students is criticized as the rants of a few failures.
ReplyDeleteThese people are children---until a few of them get their hands slapped, they will not stop. They justify their lies because its what's good for them and their school. And, if a law grad can't get a job, it's his or her fault not the school's, right?
I help people at various levels of society as a volunteer for the Red Cross. My training was mostly free. I did pay for a first aid and CPr course which cost about $70.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my church allows me to feed homeless people and give gifts to children of incarcerated parents. I even took a child to visit the prison! This cost me nothing.
As I lawyer I have done volunteer work for immigrants seeking asylum. That training was free from the bar association. ( I got my T6 degree for free - or at least debt free - I lived at home )
What the dean meant by "legal jobs" was "not illegal jobs."
ReplyDeleteExactly the thought that I had. He meant doing something legal as opposed to being a drug dealer, a hitman, a hooker, etc. Too bad that the employment date and median income for the people doing "non-legal" work is higher than that of graduates from his school...and their work is much more fulfilling and appreciated by their clients.
DeleteVery skilled, attractive 25-year-old hooker = $500/hr+ and baby boomers who can't get laid will gladly pay every cent.
DeleteVery skilled, attractive 25-year-old attorney = $200/hr and baby boomers who can't get laid will scrutinize every penny. Either that or bum clients won't pay it.
The odds of being a successful solo are much higher in the high-class prostitution business, and I think pimps/madams may be easier to work with than BigLaw partners.
Brings a new meaning to the phrase "making partner" . . .
DeleteHelping people. Caring and good people. Nurturing people. Thoughtful people and kind people.
ReplyDeletePeople need people and are the luckiest people in the world.
Then there are wicked people. Evil people. Lying and greedy people.
And, strangely enough, the wicked, evil, lying and greedy people that like use and destroy other people love to talk about how good it is to "help" other people the most, and they also love to place people in a position where they cannot help themselves, let alone other people.
Cut off the student loan spigot and all of that will stop.
Returning consumer bankruptcy protections would achieve the same goal.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who were known to have a salary of at least $70,000 nine months after graduation: Approximately 9.2%"
ReplyDeleteImagine trying to pay off the huge, non-dischargeable debt load - while also trying to make a living in pricey California.
Well, Davis IS a lot less expensive than LA or SF. A lot more boring too.
ReplyDeleteraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading.
ReplyDeleteExcept, as we've seen, with law schools, who have the 'we trained you, judge, and can give you a cushy retirement job' exemption.
DeleteI thought Kevin Johnson used to be a point guard for the Phoenix Suns. He was pretty good. Kevin and Jeff Horacek made a mean, sharpshooting backcourt
ReplyDeleteSo does this direct lie from. T30 dean count as something that is so obviously a lie that no one should believe it?
ReplyDeleteWhere do we get to the point of a lie being a misrepresentation that someone could reasonably rely on?
Is it the case thy it is better for schools to tell huge lies? Because then they won't be accountable at all?
This increasingly false distinction between "for profit" and "non profit" schools reminds me of Charlie Sheen. Someone asked why a rich, handsome Hollywood celebrity would pay prostitutes, when he has thousands of women willing to be with him for "free". He responded that with the prostitute, he knows upfront exactly how much it's going to cost him - in other words, the prostitute is at least honest about her intentions. You could say that at least the "for profit" schools are honest that the degree is nothing more than a transaction between provider and consumer.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned yesterday, that Phoenix place even identified its students as consumers in one of its publications.
DeleteInstitutional ejookayshun remains caparisoned in a lot of ivy and (overpriced rented polyester) academic gowns. The time has come to see it for what it is: a commercial enterprise. The law schools no longer harbor Scientia and Iustitia; they've become purveyors of snake oil, or carbolic smoke balls.
"carbolic smoke balls"
DeleteWhich is what law school deans put on display when discussing placement stats.
Great big ol' carbolic smoke balls.
I believe the NYT article is on point and aggrees, in part, with lawprof:
ReplyDelete"Still, the decline in interest in legal education is likely the result of different trends. The cost has soared; the so-called sticker price of attending law school now approaches $50,000 for each year in a typical, three-year program. Students may be reluctant to borrow when their employment prospects after graduation appear very uncertain. Those who thought of law school as a haven to ride out a downturn may have reconsidered in light of the risk of student loan debt.
The prolonged downturn, which has not spared law firms, also must play a role. The legal profession no longer appears to offer a guarantee of upper-middle class security, especially to those with sizable debts.
Law schools’ self-reported statistics on the success of their graduates’ job searches have come under intense scrutiny. The New York Times published a series of articles questioning the accuracy of law schools’ employment claims and the quality of real training provided."
Did anyone read the article written by a UCI professor(wash post or NYT) basically begging for people to apply?? UCI picked a WRONG time to start a law school. They are going to get hammered as their 20 million they got in donations has run out.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why their professors are promoting law school. Someone's job is on the line.
DeleteFinancially sound investment? "Yes, definitely. Because law graduates do more than practice law, there are a myriad of career opportunities available."
ReplyDeleteOne could say the very same thing about any field of study. "Financially sound? Yes, definitely. Because history graduates do more than practice history, there are a myriad of career opportunities available." That doesn't prove that the course of study is financially sound, never mind that it constitutes an investment.
Note also this: "We have expanded our externship program in Washington, D.C. (UCDC) to expose our students to new and exciting possibilities. (One of our students worked in the White House.)"
Why is it necessary "to expose our students to new and exciting possibilities"? Didn't they go there in order to practice law? Did they expect to have to take an "externship"—presumably a code word for an unpaid job—on the other side of the continent rather than finding relevant paid work in the legal profession?
And the focus on one student who "worked" (unpaid?) at the White House is obvious pandering to the vanity of special snowflakes. There's no indication of what that person did, whether the work was paid or not (I'm willing to bet that it wasn't, and that not even travel from San Francisco to Washington was covered), or, crucially, who that person was and how she got the position (probably because of Daddy). All that matters is that one person got some sort of résumé fodder involving the White House. Never mind that scores or hundreds of others couldn't find any sort of work in law after graduation.
The person who worked at the White House probably had their own connections. And, working at the White House doesn't mean anything in terms of hiring.
DeleteI am positive that the Davis career service people didn't hook this person up with a job - which may have been an unpaid internship- working next to Obama on crucial matters of domestic policy.
The "Career Development Office" at my law school has told me point blank that its mission is not to help me find a job or even to help me determine where to look for work.
DeleteI personally know the student who worked at the White House. She participated in the UCDC program during a semester of her 2L year. It was unpaid. She got school credit for the externship. It has nothing to do with post-grad employment opportunities. It was a completely tangential anecdote when discussing post-grad employment.
DeleteSince she got school credit, it was actually the law school that was paid for that position, since she was charged for the credits.
DeleteJesus.
"What I don’t quite get is why people like Johnson and Pinkney continue to indulge in this kind of misrepresentation."
ReplyDeleteBecause they want to lure the sorts of people who ask those difficult questions. Oh, yes, there's a shortage of jobs—but rest assured that our glorious academy is scarcely affected. Come here rather than going to the toilet down the street.
But they're taking a risk by lying in print. If I were so vile and contemptible as to be a tout for a law school, I'd say what you suggested, Prof. Campos: the ones at the top of the class have a good chance of finding work. That alone would attract a veritable blizzard of special snowflakes, each of whom was confident of finishing at the top of the class (despite a "middling" score of 130—the second percentile—on the LSAT).
Something that I forgot to mention earlier:
ReplyDelete"[L]awyers are still able to practice in a variety of areas of the country where salaries change according to the size of the market."
1) Lawyers? Which lawyers? All, or even most, recent graduates?
2) Still able to practice? For how long? Under what conditions? Being able to practice isn't the question; being able to earn a respectable living at it is.
3) Areas of the country where salaries change according to the size of the market? Doesn't that include all areas? The point is that the size of the market is rapidly shrinking. I'd like to know precisely which areas of the US still have good opportunities for lawyers. By the way, the size of that $300k debt doesn't change according to salary or prospects for employment.
I still find it ironic that Prof. Campos expends a great deal of his time vilifying the law school paradigm, admitting that he doesn't spend a lick of time teaching, but yet continues to draw that fat paycheck from CU -- a top "50" school that is not immune in anyway from his own criticisms. To say he is a hippocrit would be too obvious.
ReplyDeleteNot so obvious as your illiteracy.
DeleteMy use of "hippocrit" was intentional. He is a bloated sac of protoplasm.
DeleteWe've been over this a hundred times before. I'm not going to discuss it with you.
Delete9:35,
DeleteYou'd get a better reception if you focused on why that matters. If LP's data is wrong point it out.
AnonymousDecember 6, 2012 9:35 AM
DeleteBetcha that you're a law professor.
A "hipocrite" like Campos who exposes the law school scam while still continuing to be a law prof is still orders of magnitude better than people like Dean Johnson who actively promote the scam.
Delete"The latest information that I have is that more than 90%-plus of our 2011 grads have legal jobs."
ReplyDeleteOkay, ignore the plain fabrication and focus on "more than 90% plus".
Is "more plus" a double positive?
Like as in "double plus"?
But he's telling a big fat lie, so does that make his statement actually...
...DoublePlusUnGood?
In other news, Dean Kevin Johnson has just been appointed Section Leader in MiniTrue.
Congratulations, Section Leader Johnson.
"What I don’t quite get is why people like Johnson and Pinkney continue to indulge in this kind of misrepresentation. By this point, anybody with a lick of sense is going to recognize that attending UC-Davis at sticker or anything remotely close to that is basically insane"
ReplyDeleteSorry, Campos, but this is just plain wrong.
Boomer parents urging their boomer-issue children to attend law school, and those boomer-issue children themselves, will continue to look to "authority figures" like Johnson and Pinkney for information.
Likewise, they will continue to believe that "authority figures" like Johnson and Pinkney will be honest and tell them only the truth.
After all, surely if "authority figures" like Johnson and Pinkney were telling LIES, wouldn't SOMEONE (like their accrediting agency, the ABA), come and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE LIES?
Of course the ABA would do something if people were lying.
Therefore, QED (assuming boomer parents and their boomer-issue children think to themselves in Latin - a dubious prospect I admit) these "authority figures" like Johnson and Pinkney must be telling the truth.
Neither you nor some vaguely remembered NYTimes or LATimes articles about "tough" legal hiring markets will overcome the direct lies told by "authority figures" like Johnson and Pinkney.
So you're wrong. Plenty of people with a "lick of sense" will continue to believe the lies they are told.
It's not that they have no sense - it's just that in any rational world, to their way of thinking a body having the duty to police certain actors will do so.
So if the law school deans have been for more than ten plus years telling the public the doubleplusgood lies that more than 90 percent plus grad get law jobs, surely the ABA would have done something about the situation if it were not true.
I agree that people are mostly self-delusional, not necessarily dumb- an inability or unwillingness to question authority and analyze society's narratives.
DeleteFOARP above notes (sentence order reversed here)
ReplyDelete"The question he was asked was "full time legal jobs" [whereas] Hmmm . . . the answer the dean gave was for "legal jobs", which would seem to include all bar passage required and JD preferred jobs, full time and part time, long term and short-term ..., including those employed by the school itself."
What strikes me is that what the dean gave was a perfect "dodge the real deposition question" type answer.
The TTT I went to (University of Tulsa College of Law) actually had the nerve to post the NYT piece by Lawrence Mitchell "Law School is Worth the Money." It was posted on their main page on December 3, 2012.
ReplyDeleteTulsa also boasts its transparency for employment.
All schools are desperate. Top 30, TTT, etc.
http://www.utulsa.edu/law
Indeed, that would be "news". Kind of like the blog post about that schmuck "choosing" to open up her own firm. Best of luck.
DeleteShameless whores. The very fact that they feel compelled to post an article entitled "Law School Is Worth the Money" shows that law school is not worth the money.
Delete"Kind of like the blog post about that schmuck "choosing" to open up her own firm." (Emphasis is added)
DeleteDon't know if it's Freudian or not, but it is funny that you use the word "schmuck" and her name (BION) is "Schmook".
But note that dear Ms. Schmook is also a CPA.
So she might not actually starve to death.
10:59 Tulsa grad here again. Most of the people that I still keep in touch with that graduated with me in the early 2000s do not practice law. We either could not find jobs that paid well (30-40K range) or could not find legal employment PERIOD. The only people (that I know for sure) that make a good living practicing law are the top 5%. Most of my colleagues have six figure debt and are drowning in it. I wish I could turn back the clock. Law school was the biggest mistake I ever made and I will be paying my loans forever.
DeleteI get depressed because of the debt. Even though I make decent money, the debt weighs me down. I feel like I will never have a normal life (owning a home, marriage, kids) because of the debt.
When I applied to law school, I was foolish to believe the statistics in the application packet and brochures.
A law degree is NOT versatile or a good idea. People who aren't hip to the scam assume you are a failure if you aren't practicing law.
I get so angry when I look on my alma mater's website and watch them post garbage stories to attract more suckers. They are disgusting and shameless.
I suggest everyone visit the Tulsa site and take a look at it. Everyone send a note to the Tulsa employee at the bottom of the offending page.
DeleteI think boomer parents and their kids believe the lies because it is too painful not to. After getting a highly expensive and economically useless Liberal Arts BA degree they refuse to believe the Law School escape chute to the upper middle class has been concreted over.
ReplyDeleteI'm 36 but have a fair number of friends in their late 40s/early 50s, with kids in high school or college. They are still taken by the illusion that if their kids just get into the "right" schools and get the "right" credentials, they will have the cozy upper middle class life, with a McMansion, 2 new cars and plenty of vacations. This is true even of the boomers who have seen their own careers implode in the past 4-5 years.
DeleteI think the reality, which is that the only jobs this country creates at this point are shitty service sector jobs that won't justify really any amount of educational debt, is too bleak for a lot of people to endorse. And so in spite of any facts I (or the NY Times, or LawProf, or the Washington Post, etc.) might put in front of them, law school still looks to these well-meaning parents like a life raft, rather than the albatross that it will be for their kids.
This is sad but true. After a certain point in life, people stop being free thinking or open minded. They fall back upon a set of ideas that they've shaped from their experiences.
DeleteBoomers were born and raised in the education good, education good, more education more good, law prestigious mantra. They are very difficult to persuade otherwise. To them, it may be more competitive, but that only means that the mantra holds true but for FEWER PEOPLE.
So education good, top rated education very good, graduate education very good, law pretigious for many, is the new, modified mantra.
When reinforced by the NYT, it's hard to get them to ignore the siren's song.
^^^^.This
DeleteTry telling this to a millenial thinking about law school:
Delete"Your mom called. She wants her safe career plan back."
Aw, c'mon, dear fellows! What is is with all this ageism stuff?
DeleteNext thing you know the Stellar GPA and LSAT Student From The Top Law School Who Can't Get An Interview Because He's 48 Years Old will be back here crying at you.
So knock it off.
I think there is an element of what is socially acceptable when you are at college in all of this. A huge percentage of each college class at Harvard, Yale and Princeton applies to law school. It is sort of my two best friends are doing it, so I am doing it.
DeleteThere was also socialization against being a dentist at these schools. No one went to dental schools from Harvard, Yale, Princeton up to now.
At some point, there was a breakdown in the information chain being fed to students.
Knowing what we know now, how many people would become lawyers if they could instead become dentists?
The distribution of professions from Harvard, Yale and Princeton would change drastically if all information that they need to know to make an informed decision was known by these grads.
Just to tell you, I told my kids not to go to law school. No one is going to law school. They have seen me suffer terribly in an oversaturated market. They are doing something else, not law.
DeleteI have two baby boomer friends whose kids did not listen to their parents recommendation not to go to law school.
One child went to HYP after having a parent from a T14 who suffered incredibly with a series of jobs that never worked out for reasons totally beyond the parent's control. Finally the last job worked out for several years, but it was years of on and off unemployment and jobs that outright disappeared again and again, and this occurred many years ago, when the market was less saturated then now. I give that child no more than half a career in law. No way it will work out long-term, but the child has a bad case of special snowflake syndrome.
I have another bsby boomer friend who went to a T14 and had a great career until suddenly being fired from a top job. That person's child wants to go to law school. The baby boomer parent said no way, do not do it. Baby boomer child does not listen.
You can lead a horse to water, but cannot make it drink, as the expression goes. The market in law was much less saturated when the boomer parents were working than now. The baby boomer kids do not want to understand. They are special snowflakes.
"Percentage of 2011 Davis grads who were known to have a salary of at least $70,000 nine months after graduation: Approximately 9.2%"
ReplyDeleteCan someone explain how Prof. Campos arrives at the 9.2% number from the link provided? I copied and pasted the link here: http://www.lstscorereports.com/?school=davis&show=NALP
I'm not that good at stats.
What I can see that is 57 grads are in private practice with reported salaries that are $70,000 at the 25th percentile.
DeleteThis means that 42 grads make at least $70K - out of a class of 192 grads, thats alot more than 9.2%
I misread the salary chart by reversing the 25th and 75th percentiles for firm salaries. So there appear to be 42 people working for firms and four in "business" making at least $70K. OP is edited to reflect.
DeleteFrom what I can tell from the UC Davis Career stats, out of 195 graduates, 16 are making over $100K.
Deletefake it till you make it to top14!! - Dean of UC Davis
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to consider, and both Law Prof & DJM have spoken about this at length, is even if you get these great "Big Law Gigs" you will most likely be miserable. After spending a Friday evening with 4 friends who graduated from Loyola Law (Los Angeles), who secured decent law jobs, all of them appeared to be clinically depressed. It was odd when one of the people in the group (a female) said, "I am satisfied, I passed the CA BAR & now have a job" then gave this laugh of desperation, it was truly sad. The state of this profession (if you want to call Law a profession) is incredibly dire. On one end, you have half of the law school graduates who are struggling to secure A Job, let alone a legal on, then on the other side, you have many (if not the majority) of grads who do secure legal jobs who are just absolutely miserable.
ReplyDeleteIt is awesome to see these people exposed for who they are, especially this place. The UC system itself has become nothing but an elitist parasite on the state and federal taxpayer, as it wraps itself in liberal idealism. It stopped serving the citizens of California long ago, voting itself pay raises while the state approached bankruptcy, not cutting tuition with the passage of prop 30.
ReplyDeleteHow many out of state students these days? How many courses taught with grad students? Like law prof said, law schools are the canary in the coal mine
No kidding. How DARE the same professors that demand 100% top pay annual pensions for life and free healthcare (and who are useless in the wake of the advent of google scholar findlaw, and LIBRARY CARDS) stand up everyday and pose as the champions of social justice?!
DeleteUC HASTINGS is FILTHY, and DAVIS is FILTHY and CAL is filthy. They have turned to well and truly praying on diversity admits. They should be run out of the State.
"No kidding. How DARE the same professors that demand 100% top pay annual pensions for life and free healthcare (and who are useless in the wake of the advent of google scholar findlaw, and LIBRARY CARDS)"
Deleteum, just like Campos at CU and DJM at OSU?
oh, yeah, wowie, 3:06, wut uh zeengar y'all put out there.
Deletewowie.
yeah.
THIS is why UC Professors are the filthiest, although I know of some other reasons too. http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-president-to-act-on-executive-pension-demand-3438850.php
Deletefuck this trap school.
ReplyDeleteProblem is that the job market in law is much worse than for BAs. Much much worse. The jobs in law tend to be short-lived, with so many ants swarming out of law school. People who go to law school need to understand the oversupply - almost 800,000 people in the U.S. with law degrees who do not have legal jobs and ask themselves if it can possibly be true that they have a 90% chance of getting a legal job with a law degree.
ReplyDeleteDepends on the definition of "legal job". As mentioned above, Dean Johnson could always claim that he meant "legal job" as in legally allowed work, as opposed to "illegal jobs" like prostitution.
DeleteI don't think that that would work in this context. It's clear that the question from a prospective law student was not about legal as opposed to illegal employment.
DeleteThe difference is that if you are a BA and get a non-sales job in a large organization that is corporate so to speak or in a very profitable organization, you are unlikely to face "up or out."
DeleteI think law has become more like selling insurance or real estate. You only survive if you can sell except for the small number of lawyers who land jobs in house and keep them long-term (likely a small percentage of in housers from my empirical observations) or who land in the government and can stay. Everyone else has to sell to survive. Not really what you expect when you sign up for law school.
"if you are a BA and get a non-sales job in a large organization that is corporate so to speak or in a very profitable organization, you are unlikely to face "up or out." "
DeleteSorry, I call BS. Corporate organizations are very much "up and out". You either advance and take on more management roles, or you're out and replaced by some newgrad who costs a whole heck of a lot less.
You're not a special snowflake just because you're a lawyer.
Up and out is a fair description of corporate America.
Stop whining.
The executive and professional jobs in major U.S.organizations are surely not supposed to be "up or out".
DeleteLaw firms actually have an exemption from the federal age discrimination laws on account of their up or out or so-called bona fide seniority policies. If all of corporate America was in fact praticing up or out, that would be a big age discrimination problem - someone over 40 or older could not work anywhere in corporate America if they were not earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. All of the middle managers and professionals would be under 40, 50 or whatever age you pick.
I agree that many corporations do work as you describe. They run up or out policies in their executive and legal ranks in fact.
It is surely not supposed to be that way in large corporations. Law firms are up front - if you are a lawyer and do not make partner, you almost always cannot stay
The truth is that before law became so overpopulated, there was not a practice of replacing older lawyers with new grads in most legal jobs. Now there is in fact a practice of if you do not advance as a lawyer to the highest job level and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in the private sector, your days are limited.
DeleteI do not think it is whining by the way to observe that all law jobs in the private sector are up or out. That is something that 0Ls do not understand. All sorts of smug 35 year olds post as to how great their in-house jobs are. The 55 year olds who have not reached the pinnacle of the profession have no jobs at all. Comes down for most people to only a fraction of the 40 year career unless you can go to government or small business.
DeleteKevin Johnson needs to return to his old role of being Charles Barkley's sidekick. Man, that was a fun team to watch.
ReplyDeleteThis is practically karmic payback as the University of California law schools have always been pretentious. In the early 90's, I met a UC Davis law school student who had his undergraduate degree from Harvard. A college friend of mine was wait listed at Boalt Hall and was admitted to Stanford Law School in 1994. UC Davis Law School was a reasonable investment back in the 90's when tuition was under five thousand dollars. At the current price point, it is an insane investment.
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase a lot of what I have read on the blogs:
ReplyDeleteIf there was no internet and blogging, would the law school scam go on, and unchallenged indefinitely?
In other words, did the uncontrolled internet and blogging make challenging/exposing the scam possible for the first time in two or maybe even three decades?
A very historical and amazing thing actually.
no, it was a confluence of factors, especially the severity of the implosion of the 2008 economy.
DeleteThere was a time, in the crash of 1987, when the law market contracted and then came back. However, there was not the level of unemployment and underemployment among lawyers back then as now. I remember someone describing how associates at one of the top law firms left for a couple of years, and then the market opened and they started leaving.
DeleteMy observation is that this will not happen this time. An oversupply of more than double the lawyers the economy needs is not going to disappear any time soon. This time the oversupply is much worse and beyond the point of economic cycles.
Sorry, meant to say no associates left for two years.
DeleteThe internet has been around since the year 2000 or even earlier. I started e-mailing at work in the late 1990s. I think the internet and the recession are big factors, but the biggest factor is the growth in the number of lawyers being produced by all the law schools for a very small market for lawyers. The courageous people who spoke up first deserve the honors for exposing this scam.
DeleteIn my baby boomer class at Columbia Law, I did not know anyone who did not get a job with a large or midsized law firm, unless they got a federal clerkship, or in the case of a handful of rich women, did something else, like working for a non-profit, working I believe part-time or not working. Most of these women were older and had successful husbands. The few who did not have husbands and I believe did not go to large or midsized law firms or clerkships appeared to be very rich.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what the few minorities in that class did right off the bat, although some might have done public interest work over the summer and right after graduation. It was not a big number of minorities in that class.
I never heard of anyone being unhappy because they did not find a job they wanted.
In other words, right out of Columbia Law School, back then, there was no law school scam. This was more than 30 years ago though, so who knows when it changed.
It has clearly changed and the market is not as good (and for many people is downright bad) either for new grads of Columbia Law or of older grads, including my classmates.
The commentators of this blog are always asking for a more transparent picture of T14 graduates' careers one or two decades out. Tell us about your classmates, not from an anecdotal standpoint, but from a general standpoint.
DeleteDo you think it is worth emailing the Dean and asking him to explain?
ReplyDeleteSure,what do you have to lose I've emailed many of them when they are mentioned here. You have to make them start thinking about what they are doing.
DeleteI'm so shocked that they're putting their best foot forward. You think they would understate their placement, so AS TO ATTRACT FEWER STUDENTS AND MAKE LESS MONEY.
ReplyDeleteWow you people are clueless about the way the world works.
See, law is in theory supposed to be held to a higher ethical standard.
DeleteThat standard seems to apply to lawyers, law students and law applicants, but not to individuals at a single law school.
The total trashing of any semblance of ethical conduct is what disturbs me the most. Would he make these false statements under oath? If he did, he could be disbarred. Somehow lying to people who look to you as a mentor and advisor seems to have no repercussions at all.
If a seller of goods and services, say a used car salesman, told you the car had only 100k miles on it and rigged the odometer when it actually had 250k miles on it, that's not putting your best foot forward, that's outright lying and consumer fraud.
DeleteI doubt that used car salesman could defend himself by saying he was simply "putting his best foot forward" by trying not to "overstate" the mileage b/c they were all highway miles or some such.
So why are law degree salesmen given any more leeway to lie and deceive???
When Ponzi and Madoff persuaded people to invest in their schemes were they "putting their best foot forward" or telling lies? There's a difference, I think.
ReplyDeleteIt is like your healthy daughter going to the local college clinic for pre-enrollment physical exam and they amputate her leg because they had a surgeon available who needed to make some money and she had really good insurance.
ReplyDeleteAs a 2011 Davis Alum, I have to say Johnson's estimate of the 90% now in legal employment sounds pretty accurate. I do not know of a single unemployed grad (perhaps they are hiding). It took a while for some to find jobs and not everyone ended up where they dreamed to be. Nonetheless I wouldn't be surprised if Johnson's representation about employment was accurate.
ReplyDeleteSincerely, US Davis Employee. That's pretty funny, because I know A LOT of unemployed UC Davis grads.
DeleteMaybe you hang out with the wrong crowd...
DeleteWho cares if it's 90%? What matters are the KIND of jobs that people managed to get.
DeleteThen why are the numbers repoted to the ABA different than what he told the group of prospects?
DeleteYou know the outcome of everyone in you class? Please report the results here. How many got biglaw? How many clerked? How many are working at midsize firms? How many in firms of 10 or less?
DeleteHow many passed the bar?
One of the admins on TLS is a Davis grad and he confirms Lawprofs idea that getting a job is difficult from Davis.
@ OP - I am also a 2011 grad from King Hall. I went through each of the alum on the alumni directory and did an internet search to see where they all ended up. I used linkedin, avvo, state bar website, facebook, and other resources.
DeleteHere are some of my findings (Correct me if I am wrong or if you have more info):
Out of 192 graduates:
24 grads are in BigLaw
18 are in Midsize firms
14 are in Small/boutique firms with relatively prominent attorneys
28 are in small firms with attorneys that are not as prominent
3 are with Big 4 Accounting Firms (Tax ppl)
4 are clerking with Article III or State Appellate level judges
3 are clerking with lower level judges (magistrate, state superior, etc.)
2 are with the US DOJ
5 are with the Fed Gov't (non-attorney positions)
6 are with the CA AG or with another State Department
4 are in-house (2 of them with an insurance company)
9 are either D.A.s or P.D.s
11 are in Public Interest
16 are with non-profits/NGOs
4 are in post-grad/LLM programs
3 are solo practitioners
35 are either unemployed - practically confirmed (I know some of them, they are looking) or are those that I could not find on the internet anywhere - which seems kinda odd, given that if someone was working, they would want others to know.
This does not seem like a good enough outcome for a school that charged $42,000 during our 3L year.
Blame the economy, but don't defend those that do not tell the full truth about their career statistics.
For the record - I am employed in a full-time, long-term legal job.
http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/current/career-services/statistics.html
ReplyDeletedon't forget this at UC Davis
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmfIuKelOt4
UC Davis undergrad here. Our administration is overflowing with incompetent assholes in every office, all aspects of our institution are horribly overpriced, housing costs are astronomical, and our law students are miserable people whose Plan A is to work for free for their state legislators until they finally land a 30k-per-year job. I honestly do not believe the statistics LawProf dug up. UC Davis Law cannot be that good.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to a pre-law adviser who was a law student, they explained that it was really hard to find a job because of the competition from the McGeorge School of Law (apparently McG's students network better and get all the good jobs in the Capitol).
Affirmed. The competency of this place is not consistent with its cost or arrogance. The administration is an absolute confederacy of dunces.
DeleteHere is a question, and the academics can sit this one out.
ReplyDeleteDid all of the "oversupply" of "extra" lawyers after the "crash of 2008" make it harder on all of the lawyers from all generations (boomers included) that exist and of all ages, or does the oversupply after 2008 merely affect the batch that came out of law school from 2008 to the current day?
In other words, and regardless of respective school ranking, does the oversupply of lawyers in the marketplace being produced now have any effect on seemingly "established" lawyers/people actually practicing and/or working in the legal profession?
If so, that might explain why so many older lawyers seem to take an avid interest in commenting on this blog.
Unless they are taking an interest out of simple human kindness and sympathy want what is best for the profession for all who are in it. But that sounds a little naive, doesn't it?
I don't know the reasons why established lawyers take an interest in this. I do know, from recent experience, that unemployed scam victims have good reasons to avoid commenting on (or even reading) blogs like this. Recent graduates (defined loosely) really don't want to accept that the things said in this blog are true. They would much rather believe the likes of Dean Mitchell than Professor Campos. They want to believe that they are just experiencing a rough patch right now, but "in the long run", their legal education is going to pay off and they are going to find career success.
DeleteSo it would not surprise me at all to know that most of the commenters here are established lawyers who don't have an emotional stake in whether Campos' depiction of the situation is accurate. They can see the evil in the scam while, at the same time, not getting terribly depressed about the significance that evil has for their own lives.
I think it is like being in a public restroom with a bad stall. As you are walking out and see another gal walking in you say "I suggest going to a restroom on another floor if possible. . If you go in there, don't use the one in the middle. Someone took a huge crap that won't flush, peed on the seat and puked on the floor in there." I really have no reason to warn her other than to be kind, so she doesn't have to peek in that stall - except maybe to indicate that I am not the one who left the mess. I guess I am also telling her about it so I have an opportunity to share my disgust with the whole situation.
DeleteNot really, new law school graduates don't really compete with older ones, except on a very few fronts (low-cost criminal defense comes to mind) so oversupply caused by new graduates doesn't really hit them that hard, though oversupply of experienced lawyers certainly does. I was skimming through the classified section of my bar journal and was surprised by how many lawyers are competing in even niche fields of law.
DeletePersonally, I've left the field (to go to a funded PhD program) so unless my life takes a horrible turn the law school scam has already done it's damage to me, and the continuance of the scam doesn't really impact me.
I remain fascinanted/disgusted by the issue and come here for two main reasons:
1. The sheer villainy displayed by those supposed pillars of society, the law school deans and faculty, is breathtaking, and makes me angry. I want to see them get what's coming to them in the end and I think that's going to happen. And this blog is where it's going to be played out. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is one thing, intentionally lying to people to get them to support your cushy lifestyle is something completely different. A law school dean with integrity would reduce salaries and increase teaching loads, and a law professor with self-respect would accept that and still be grateful they were able to keep doing their job. When law schools start to close the greed of these people is going to catch up with them, 80% of law professors are going to be unemployable either elsewhere in academia or in the non-academic job market.
2. Yes, sympathy for recent grads. They're getting a rotten deal, though at this point most of the people currently in law school have been given enough information to have avoided it. And, as anyone who's been to law school has realized, a good chunk of people who self-select to go there are kind of jerks. But being a jerk should not be punished by having your life ruined by debt.
Not human interest. There is a growing supply of older lawyers who are just as affected by the surplus as younger lawyers.
DeleteMy practice area, which most people start at in big law firms, has few open jobs for experienced lawyers. It also has a pretty big up or out factor in house, with the difference between law firms and in house being that up or out in house really takes hold in one's 50s and thereafter. If you are trying to work in the last third of your career in house, it is going to be hard to keep that job absent manager status, where you are in a very high level position.
It is very hard to work as an experienced lawyer in what I do. Half maybe of my peers are unemployed or in temporary work. Not what one signed up for unemployment or temporary work when they went to law school.
I had other options at college - good science and math skills and could have pursued just about any career. law was a huge mistake.
Yes, the oversupply does affect older lawyers too. As an "older" (10 years out) lawyer, I have been stuck in a job I hate, which I STUPIDLY accepted in 2008, right before everything went to pot. I work for a federal agency, but I hate the practice area and the overwork/stress. I have been actively looking for another, better job pretty much from my second or third month in this job. For 2008-2011, there was nothing to look for, so my search didn't take up very much of my time! No jobs posted, no jobs available, nothing. This past year I have expanded my search to a new city (DC) where most of the federal jobs are. Despite that, I had only 5 interviews last year, and 3 of them were initial telephone/screening interviews. Fed. government is a little different in that many jobs can be filled at a variety of grade levels, so I actually am competing with newly graduated attorneys, all the way up through attorneys with decades of practice. Everyone wants in. I consider myself lucky to even have had the number of interviews I have had. I was doing a similar search in 2006-07 (when I ended up getting the current, ill-advised job) and it was totally different. Easily got multiple interviews in various cities, even with no connection to the city. Had two job offers, one federal, one from a firm. Jobs were willing to look at you even if you didn't have the exact precise practice experience relating to the job. Now, I have 4 more years of experience, and I get half the consideration I got last time. The only way I can think that this oversupply would NOT affect older lawyers is if those lawyers had no desire to ever leave the jobs they are in. And even then, as others note, they can still get pushed out.
DeleteRepasting my comment from above:
ReplyDeleteI am also a 2011 grad from King Hall. I went through each of the alum on the alumni directory and did an internet search to see where they all ended up. I used linkedin, avvo, state bar website, facebook, and other resources.
Here are some of my findings (Correct me if I am wrong or if you have more info):
Out of 192 graduates:
24 grads are in BigLaw
18 are in Midsize firms
14 are in Small/boutique firms with relatively prominent attorneys
28 are in small firms with attorneys that are not as prominent
3 are with Big 4 Accounting Firms (Tax ppl)
4 are clerking with Article III or State Appellate level judges
3 are clerking with lower level judges (magistrate, state superior, etc.)
2 are with the US DOJ
5 are with the Fed Gov't (non-attorney positions)
6 are with the CA AG or with another State Department
4 are in-house (2 of them with an insurance company)
9 are either D.A.s or P.D.s
11 are in Public Interest
16 are with non-profits/NGOs
4 are in post-grad/LLM programs
3 are solo practitioners
35 are either unemployed - practically confirmed (I know some of them, they are looking) or are those that I could not find on the internet anywhere - which seems kinda odd, given that if someone was working, they would want others to know.
This does not seem like a good enough outcome for a school that charged $42,000 during our 3L year.
Blame the economy, but don't defend those that do not tell the full truth about their career statistics.
For the record - I am employed in a full-time, long-term legal job.
Also, to add to this comment, I do not know if the jobs above are part-time/full-time, short-term/long-term, salaried/hourly, etc.
DeleteI do have some anecdotal evidence about them, but that's hearsay
Even not accounting for errors in method (not everyone is on the Internet - some are pursuing more schooling and others have chosen to just be stay at home moms) this is still at least 80% employment. Not ideal but not what the professor claims which is a statistic based on 9 months post-graduation. The class of 2011 is the last class that made the commitment to law school while the legal market was still good. Each class enrolling after that had the opportunity to see or find out that the market was contracting. Nonetheless, no one claimed that it has been easy to find employment and many have struggled in the past year.
ReplyDeleteYet even with a surplus of lawyers, how is it still that the majority of people cannot afford even the most basic legal services. Yes, people should be properly informed prior to making the decision to take on an expensive professional degree, but there is an opportunity for the surplus of those looking for work to be pioneering
I agree that my method is not scientific, but its hard to believe that a JD has ZERO internet presence, specially if that JD has a job.
DeleteThe numbers that I have include jobs that are short-term, part-time, low-pay, etc., specially the small firm positions. The 56-percent figure that Campos cites from LST includes only full-time, long-term legal jobs.
The 90% is misleading at best.
As for the affordability of legal services, it is very hard to bring low-cost legal services to the market. Just ask any public interest lawyer how they are coping.
After reading the transcript of this online "chat" it is more than obvious that the whole thing was a fake with all of the questions and answers probably typed out in advance. I know two people who were logged in an they said they could not get their questions taken, and thought it was a phony live event.
ReplyDeleteThis Job offer in alaska looks quite interesting.http://agency.governmentjobs.com/northslope/default.cfm?action=viewJob&jobID=564603
ReplyDeleteJobs like these would make me want to go for the Alaska bar exam. 3500$biWeekly is a pretty good salary. The only problem is: who the hell has 2 years of LEGAL experience other than the graduates who's dads/dads-friends own law firms?