tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51648863908343866222024-03-13T19:12:49.457-07:00Inside the Law School ScamLawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.comBlogger499125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-54436125388133118912015-03-04T14:49:00.001-08:002015-03-04T14:50:07.847-08:00Halfway home "Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards."<br />
<br />
-- Max Weber, <i>Politics as Vocation</i> --<br />
<br />
For understandable reasons, the law school reform movement has traditionally been dominated by pessimism. Many critics have assumed that, as long as the federal government maintains its policy of lending the full cost of attendance (not just the full price of tuition) to anyone any ABA law school chooses to admit, no matter what that school chooses to charge, law schools would be able to more or less continue to conduct business as usual, as long as they were willing to continue to slash admissions standards enough to keep enough warm bodies coming through their doors.<br />
<br />
That seemed like a reasonable assumption, but it's apparently turning out to be mistaken.<br />
<br />
It's fair to say that admissions standards have now been cut as much as they can be cut, practically speaking. <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/12/road-toward-open-enrollment-american-law-schools">80% of all applicants</a> were admitted to at least one school to which they applied during the 2013-14 cycle. That number can't go much if at all higher, because a significant minority of applicants will only apply to schools that maintain various levels of real selectivity, and some of those people won't get into any of those schools.<br />
<br />
In addition, perhaps 5% of the applicant pool in any year consists of people who have such serious behavioral red flags in their files that no school, even though most desperate, will admit them, if only because of potential liability concerns.<br />
<br />
When it comes to law school admissions, we may not be at the metaphorical equivalent of -459.67F quite yet, but we're very close. Which means that any further declines in applicants are going to be matched by something close to an equivalent decline in matriculants.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, we're nearly three quarters of the way through the 2014-2015 admissions cycle, and applications are down yet another 7%. This means we can estimate this fall's entering class will be roughly around 35,300 1Ls, down from 52,500 just five years ago. Somewhere between 85% to 90% of those people will end up graduating, depending on various assumptions (Given the radical slashing of admissions standards at so many schools, it seems reasonable to assume drop out/flunk out rates may rise. OTOH every lost student hurts the already bleeding bottom line, so it's hard to say whether this will drive the historical non-completion rate below the 11%-12% it's been at in recent years).<br />
<br />
Even on the high end, that means no more than 32,000 or so graduates will come out of the class of 2018, of which (being optimistic again) perhaps 90% will eventually pass a bar exam. So that's around 28,500 or so new prospective lawyers going into a system that can probably absorb -- this has to be no more than an educated guess -- perhaps 20,000 per year. If you're so inclined you can also add a couple thousand more or less legit "JD advantage" jobs to that total, and suddenly things look very different than the pre-reform status quo, in which schools dropped 45,000 new graduates onto the market every year (Last year's graduating class will be the last for a very, very long time that will be that large).<br />
<br />
Now of course the massive contraction in law school graduates is only half the battle. For one thing, it needs to go further -- at least another 10% or 20% from where it will be three years from now, given current applicant levels. For another, and just if not more critically, law school tuition is still far, far too high -- <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/03/law-schools-priced-market-college-graduates">absurdly so</a>, despite increasing discounts off sticker by increasingly desperate schools.<br />
<br />
Given likely career outcomes for the vast majority of law graduates who won't get prestige-driven legal jobs (BIGLAW and BIGFED), law school tuition at non-elite schools should be no more than $10,000 to $15,000 per year. So there's a long way to go.<br />
<br />
But there's also lot to celebrate. The biggest of all the scam factories, Thomas Cooley, <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/12/nations-largest-law-school-fires-otherwise-terminates-extreme-prejudice-nearly-60-faculty">fired nearly</a> 60% of its faculty last August. Thomas Jefferson had to give its shiny new building to its creditors, and limps along on <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/worth-nothing-failing-law-schools-are-kept-on-life-support/?_r=0">life support</a>. Hamline is effectively <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/02/convergence-twain">ceasing to exis</a>t, after a face-saving (for its parent university) "merger" with William Mitchell, that will leave the combined institutions with the same number of law students Mitchell had last year. And after a <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/08/infilaw-bust-financial-structure-american-higher-education">hurricane of bad publicity</a>, the Infilaw scamsters are on the run.<br />
<br />
I continue to write regularly on these issues at Lawyers, Guns and Money, as do <a href="http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/">others</a> in various <a href="http://classbias.blogspot.com/">venues</a>. In the last couple of years I've also written a number of things regarding the law school reform movement for academic journals. For example last month I published <a href="https://articleworks.cadmus.com/geolaw/zs000115.html">an article</a> on the effects of stigmatization on lawyers and law graduates -- something that the commenters on this blog taught me a great deal about, and which might interest at least a few of them. (Anyone who doesn't have access to the article via Lexis etc. and who wants to read it can email me at paul.campos@colorado.edu, and I'll send you a copy).<br />
<br />
Wherever and whoever you are in this movement, keep up the fight. We're winning. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-57721819452800403772014-08-07T06:10:00.000-07:002014-08-07T06:10:06.393-07:00Looking back at ITLSSITLSS started publishing three years ago today. The blog featured roughly daily posts (500 in all) for nearly 19 months, through February of 2013. During that time it received about three million page views, and it generated nearly 50,000 comments. On the eve of another academic year, this post looks back on the project from the perspective of what's changed and what hasn't in the law school world since the summer of 2011. <br />
<br />
What's changed:<br />
<br />
The central theme of the blog -- that there's a genuine crisis in legal academia, because law schools are turning out far too many graduates and far too high of a cost -- has gone from a fringe position in the academy, to a widely accepted view within it, and something like the conventional wisdom outside it.<br />
<br />
Law school applications and enrollment have both plunged. The 2014 cycle featured about 55,000 applicants, down from 88,000 in 2010. Despite moderate to severe cuts in admissions standards at almost all law schools other than Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, the 2014 first year class will include somewhere between 37,000 and 38,000 students, down from 52,500 in 2010.<br />
<br />
After decades of non-stop growth, average effective tuition (sticker tuition minus discounts) has at least flattened out and possibly even declined slightly over the last two to three years. This is a product of the combination of schools continuing to raise their sticker rates at faster than inflation, but offering deeper discounts to a larger percentage of their admits. The net effect of this has been to keep average tuition from rising in real terms, although of course this pattern exacerbates the reverse Robin Hood structure of contemporary legal education, in which students with lower entrance numbers (and, crucially, lower SES backgrounds) subsidize the attendance of their better-credentialed, richer, and better-connected classmates.<br />
<br />
What hasn't changed:<br />
<br />
The legal hiring market remains weak. Only a bit more than half of all ABA law school graduates are getting real legal jobs (full-time, long-term, bar admission required), and this percentage drops to less than half at many schools. Only around 15% of graduates get jobs that pay salaries which make taking on $150,000 in educational debt (around the average for the 85% of graduates who borrow, once we include accrued interest and undergraduate debt) appear to be a good investment, at least from a short-term perspective. <br />
<br />
The long-term economic prospects of current law graduates remain very unclear, for many reasons. What's clear is that the high salaries paid to the "lucky" minority who initially get jobs with big law firms can be somewhat illusory (a 2013 Stanford law grad told me yesterday that several of his classmates who started in big law a year ago have already left, whether voluntarily or not), and that extrapolating the lifetime earnings of people who graduated from law school in 1974 or 1984 or even 1999 to people who graduated in 2014 is a form of methodological question-begging, if it's presented as doing anything more than presenting one piece of mildly suggestive but problematic evidence in regard to the answer to the question of what is going to happen to current law graduates in the long run.<br />
<br />
The fundamental economic structure of legal education -- in which most of the operating revenue for most law schools comes from federal educational loans subject to essentially no actuarial controls -- remains in place. Transparency in regard to employment outcomes -- which pretty much didn't exist three years ago -- has been in large part achieved, and it has accomplished quite a bit by itself, as evidenced by the plunge in application and enrollment numbers. But while the situation is better, it's still the case that far too many people are paying far too much to go to law school. (My back of the envelope calculation is that national first year classes ought to be around 25,000 matrics, and that effective tuition ought to be around $10,000 per year, if we want legal education to be a good investment for a large majority of prospective law students going forward).<br />
<br />
Looking back with the benefit of both three years' additional perspective, and the changes that have taken place over that time, I wish this blog had spent more time connecting the crisis in legal education to the crisis which is slowly but surely enveloping higher education in America in general. That latter crisis is a product of deep economic and cultural changes, which have left an entire generation of young Americans over-educated and under-employed (I explore the ways in which legal education is something of a proverbial canary in a coal mine for these much broader trends in a forthcoming article in the September issue of the <i>Atlantic</i>.)<br />
<br />
But hindsight is notoriously more accurate than foresight. This blog played its part in helping some people -- not least its primary author -- understand the troubled world of contemporary legal education. The thing now is to change it. <br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-61261981473286725382013-12-18T06:51:00.001-08:002013-12-18T06:51:11.925-08:00Progress reportA great deal has happened over the past ten months. This post is an update on developments, and an opportunity for members of the old ITLSS community to touch base with each other, and to perhaps learn of other venues where the conversation continues.<br />
<br />
Major developments:<br />
<br />
(1) As word regarding the employment situation for new and not so new law graduates percolates down into the general cultural conversation, law school enrollments and applications continue to decline sharply. <a href="http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/12/aba-law-school-.html">39,675 students</a> matriculated at ABA schools this fall -- a 24.4% decline since 2010, and the lowest total since 1975, when there were 40 fewer law schools.<br />
<br />
(2) Application totals continue to fall faster than law school enrollments. Preliminary numbers suggest that around <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/12/law-school-applications-continue-their-steep-decline">51,000 people</a> will apply to law school in this cycle, which in turn is likely to produce another 10-12% decline in enrollments next fall. Even if enrollment numbers level out over the next couple of years, ABA law schools are about to face a world in which they will have 95,000 to 100,000 JD students enrolled at one time, as opposed to nearly 150,000 in 2010-11.<br />
<br />
(3) Most law schools now appear to be <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/11/80-to-85-of-aba-law-schools-are-currently-losing-money">losing money</a>, and law school budgets almost everywhere will undergo even more severe stress as the entering classes of 2011 and 2012 are replaced by much smaller cohorts over the next two to three years.<br />
<br />
(4) The stress on budgets is a product not just of declining enrollment, but also of what at many schools is declining per capita real net tuition. A few schools have actually started to <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/u_of_iowa_to_cut_tuition_for_law_students_by_16.4_percent/">slash nominal tuition</a>, and many others have increased "scholarships" (tuition discounts) to such a degree that they are <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/11/the-end-of-dickinson">charging lower tuition in real terms</a> (discount and inflation adjusted) than they were two years ago. The combination of declining enrollment and stagnant or declining per capita real tuition has created formal and de facto hiring freezes at many schools. Entry-level hiring this year seems likely to be at around one third to one half of pre-enlightenment levels.<br />
<br />
(5) Although schools are going to extraordinary measures to disguise the fact, faculty layoffs have taken place at several places, in the form of <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2013/08/more-on-florida-coastals-rapidly-shrinking-law-school">offer you can't refuse "buyouts."</a> Staff firings are commonplace. It remains difficult to say when and if an ABA school will actually close, but expect to see some schools merge (constructive closures), and a couple of others spin off separate campuses into independent entities which will be allowed to disappear by their central administrations.<br />
<br />
Beyond these specific developments, it's fair to say that the general atmosphere in legal academia is radically different than it was three years ago. Back then, the crisis was invisible, because it was only affecting our graduates, which meant there were an almost unlimited number of rationalizations available for denying its existence. (It's a few malcontents, it's the recession, law degrees are versatile, network! etc. etc.). As always, we are all strong enough to bear other men's misfortunes, but to cut one's own finger is a different matter.<br />
<br />
In short, consciousness has been raised, and continues to be raised. For those who may have missed it, here are two new sites that are doing some fine work:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/">Outside the Law School Scam</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lawschooltruthcenter.blogspot.com/">Law School Truth Center </a><br />
<br />
For a dire but compelling glimpse into how much work remains to be done, see:<br />
<a href="http://lawlemmings.tumblr.com/"><br /></a>
<a href="http://lawlemmings.tumblr.com/">Law School Lemmings</a><br />
<br />
Older sites everyone should read regularly include, but are not limited to,<a href="http://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/"> Law School Tuition Bubble</a>, <a href="http://www.lawschoolcafe.org/">Law School Cafe</a>, <a href="http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/">Third Tier Reality</a>, and <a href="http://www.jdunderground.com/all/">JD Underground</a>. <br />
<br />
I'll continue to write on these issues at Lawyers, Guns & Money, and elsewhere. See you around.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-52102658074757960932013-02-27T04:43:00.002-08:002013-02-27T05:13:01.294-08:00Goodbye is too good a word<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I began this blog one summer afternoon in exactly way I’ve
started every other professional project I’ve undertaken which ever amounted to
anything: without thinking about whether doing so would achieve anything worth
achieving, or at least win the approval of important people.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I started it because I had something to say, and this seemed
a good way of saying it. For a few days I wrote anonymously – something I had
never done before – more as a stylistic experiment than anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But naturally people in legal academia
instantly became more concerned with Who Was Saying These Outrageous Things
than in whether those things might actually be true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I dropped the mask -- which ensured that a
few of those people would busy themselves henceforth with irrelevant personal
attacks, rather than substantive responses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
19 months and 499 posts later, it turns out that the core
message of this blog – that legal academia is operating on the basis of an unsustainable economic model, which requires most law students to borrow more money to get
law degrees than it makes sense for them to borrow, given their career
prospects, and that for many years law schools worked hard, wittingly or
unwittingly, to hide this increasingly inconvenient truth from both themselves
and their potential matriculants – has evolved from a horrible heresy to
something close to conventional wisdom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That enrolling in law school has become a very dangerous
proposition for most people who consider enrolling in one is now, if not a
truth universally acknowledged, something that legal academia can no longer
hide, either from ourselves, or – far more important – from anyone who doesn’t
go out of his or her way to avoid contact with the relevant information.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ITLSS has played a role in what can be without exaggeration
called a fundamental shift in the cultural conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How big of a role it’s not for me to judge. Within
legal academia, the pioneering work of Bill Henderson on the economics of legal
education, and Brian Tamanaha’s writing and research culminating in his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Failing Law Schools</i>, were both critical
contributions to that shift. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others
inside law schools – Jim Chen, Deborah Rhode, Herwig Schlunk, Akhil Amar,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ian Ayers, Paul Caron, Ben Trachtenberg, Orin
Kerr, and Jeffery Harrison to name a few – have moved the conversation forward
in various ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course Deborah
Merritt has lent her name and talents to this blog for nearly a year now as a
co-author, greatly enhancing both its intellectual and stylistic range.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Outside the legal academy, a diverse group of voices,
ranging from the scam blogs that had such a strong effect on at least Tamanaha
and me, to Above the Law and JD Underground, to the tireless unpaid labor of
Kyle McEntee, Patrick Lynch, and Derek Tokaz, aka Law School Transparency,
found their way into the pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street
Journal, and onto the CBS Evening News.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A movement that begun on the margins of the legal world, through the work of people like
Loyola 2L, and Scott Bullock of Big Debt/Small Law, and Nando of Third Tier
Reality, has gone mainstream.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This blog is now the length of about four typical academic
books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who wants to browse
through it will find posts touching on just about every topic related to legal
education and the legal profession regarding which I have something to
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Readers looking for a more concise
statement can buy or borrow a copy of my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don’t Go to Law School (Unless),</i> either in paperback or e-book
form.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of which is to say that I’ve said what I have to say, at
least in this format.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll continue to
write on this topic, both in academic venues, in the popular media, and even
from time to time in blog form, at Lawyers, Guns and Money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the time has come to move on from here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve never written anything about the professional and personal price I
ended up paying for starting to investigate, more than a year before I began
this blog, the structure of contemporary American legal education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps I’ll tell that story someday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For now I’ll merely note that if people
enjoying the extraordinary protections afforded by tenure aren’t willing to
confront institutional corruption, then academic tenure is an indefensible
privilege.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People have asked me how I can continue to be on a law
faculty, given my views.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This question –
when it isn’t simply a hostile attempt to derail conversation – is based on a
misunderstanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I very much believe
in the potential value of higher education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I believe that legal education can and must be reformed
radically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(On one level the most
important short-term reforms couldn’t be simpler:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the cost of law school attendance must be
reduced drastically, and the number of people graduating from law school must
be decreased by a significant amount. In the longer term, the American legal
system will need to confront whether it is either pedagogically justifiable or
financially viable to continue to require the basic law degree to be acquired
through postgraduate education). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">In some very concrete, practical ways, reform is much easier to achieve from the inside. </span>I’m proud of the fact
that, as of this coming fall, my law school is on track to have cut tuition in
real dollar terms over the past two years – something which perhaps no other
ABA law school will be able to claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
proud that CU Law School, which two years ago was publicizing highly inaccurate
employment information, is now one of the most transparent schools in the
country on this score.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t happen to
believe that I would be more effective working for reform as an ex-law
professor. Still, even if I did believe this, I’m well aware I wouldn’t have the
moral courage to quit. That makes my belief suspiciously convenient -- but it
doesn’t make it false.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, reform driven by forces both outside and inside
the law school establishment is essential, and it’s beginning to happen.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope and believe that, as the unsustainable and unjust
nature of the status quo becomes more and more apparent, more people inside law
schools will openly advocate for real change. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In closing, I would like to thank the commenters on this
site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nearly 50,000 comments have been
posted here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With very rare exceptions, I
chose not to censor what anyone had to say because one goal of this project,
both on this blog and elsewhere, has been to give voice to people who have been
carrying their anger, shame, and grief in silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helping to break that silence is what this
blog has been all about, and internet commenters, here and elsewhere, have
played a critical role in doing so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would wish everyone good luck but I won’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It sounds terrible when you think about it.</div>
LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com254tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-25226513229723727462013-02-26T11:03:00.001-08:002013-02-26T11:03:55.639-08:00The disappearedAs I've mentioned before, probably the most crucial knowledge gap that needs to be filled by people pursuing legal academic reforms is in regard to medium and long-term (as opposed to short-term) career outcomes for law graduates. Here's a letter that drives that point home with special force. It ends with a request for suggestions as to options -- one which I hope some readers can answer more usefully than I can:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Professor Campos:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a feeling you get a lot of e-mail messages like this,
and you probably do not have time to respond to them all, but I thought I would
give it a shot. I will try to give you an abbreviated version.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I graduated from [elite university] with a B.A. in [social
science major] in 1994. I was on scholarship, so I managed to graduate
with no debt. Not that these things matter 20 years after the fact, but I
had a 3.6 GPA and a 178 LSAT. I worked for [politician] between college
and law school. I graduated from [top ten law school] in 2000. My
GPA was a 3.5, which was well above the mean but not good enough for law
review. I clerked for a federal district court judge from 2000-2002,
during which time my law school loans were in forbearance. My point is
that, although my resume wasn’t printed with gold ink when I began my legal
career, my credentials were good.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After my clerkship, I went into private practice. I
have taken more than 200 depositions, argued motions in court more than 100
times, conducted several multi-day trials, propounded and answered more
discovery than I care to think about, and drafted countless briefs, motions,
and pleadings. Most of my work has been in business and real estate law,
so I have also drafted stock and asset sale documents, employment and
non-compete agreements, employee manuals, sexual harassment policies,
commercial leases, finance leases, business formation documents, company
minutes, trademark applications, loan documents, and deeds. In other
words, unlike a recent law school grad, I’ve been around the block a couple of
times, I have some experience, and I know how to do some things. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was laid off in late 2010, and I have been out of work
ever since. There were no accusations of misconduct, no complaints about
my work. The law firm was downsizing, and that was that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m 41 years old, I’ve been out of law school for
13 years, and I do not have a book of business, so evidently, my career as
a lawyer is over. I have a wife and 2 kids who need me to work, but I
don’t know how to do anything other than practice law. Instead, my wife
works, and I am a <i>de facto</i> stay-at-home dad. It’s not that I don’t
love being a dad (of course I do), but my family needs my income, and I need to
work outside the home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As depressing as my situation is, I know it is so much worse
for so many people. I have read their stories on your blog and in the
comments. At least I had 8 productive years as a working attorney.
I paid my student loans down from $120,000 to the current balance of $23,000.
As long as my wife has a job, we won’t starve. And our kids are
wonderful. Knowing how much worse it is for so many people, I feel
guilty complaining about my situation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For most of my career I have wondered, and occasionally
asked out loud, “What happens to all the lawyers?” Just based on my own
personal observation, I could see how few lawyers actually made partner.
So where do they go? Oh sure a few go in house, some end up working for
the government, etc., but just based on what I could see and the lawyers I
knew, the numbers didn’t add up. Lawyers just seemed to disappear, like
entrepreneurs in <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>. And then, of course, I
disappeared.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since I was laid off, I have floundered around, applying for
jobs, representing a few clients as a solo practitioner (not that that has been
lucrative – think very low five figures per year), and trying to figure out
“What happens to all of the lawyers?” Finally, a few weeks ago, a Google
search landed me on a scamblog (I don’t remember which one anymore). That
scamblog led me to another, then another, and another, and then your YouTube
videos of your interview with Blooomberg Law and your presentation at Stanford
Law School. Then Google searches for “Paul Campos” led me to your blogs, and
then I learned who Brian Tamanaha is, and then I read his book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, believe it or not, I had no idea about the scamblogs
until just a few weeks ago. It seems hard to believe now, but why would
I? I graduated from law school a long time ago now – <i>before</i> law schools
produced most of the glut of lawyers. Times were good when I was looking
for a job in 1999 and the early 2000s. I have been busy – practicing law,
having a family, then dealing with my own unemployment (for which I have blamed
myself). And after I was laid off, I have had very little contact with lawyers,
and I haven’t had contact with law school students or recent law school grads
in years. On the rare occasion that I do talk to a law school classmate
or contemporary, no one ever acknowledges any problems – everyone claims to be
on top of the world, knocking the ball out of the park. Now, thanks to
the scamblogs, I know that some (many?) of my classmates <i>have</i> to have
ended up like me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course the scamblogs, your YouTube videos, and Tamanaha’s
book are no comfort. Actually, they’re terrifying. But now,
finally, I have some idea about “What happens to all the lawyers?” At
least now I am dealing with reality. Before I was trying to solve a
problem (my unemployment) with bad information. Now, at least, I
know. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is tempting to let myself focus on my anger about the
injustice of the macro situation and my sadness about the hopelessness of my
personal situation. It infuriates me that my alma mater and the other law
schools have essentially ruined many of their alumni’s careers by actions they
took <i>after we graduated</i>. Yet my alma mater still relentlessly
solicits me to “give back” – as if I owe them something. You will not be
surprised to learn that my alma mater has never taken any interest in my career
– or even bothered to find out if I have one. As for my specific
situation, I feel like it’s hopeless, and I think I am a failure. I
literally have no idea what to do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My wife has not been especially understanding about my
situation. I think her thinking has been that <i>of course</i> someone
with my resume can <i>easily</i> find a job, and since I haven’t, the problem
must be that I am not trying very hard, which she resents. That all
changed, however, when I showed her <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reader-suggested-i-take-look-at.html">this</a>.
I had printed it out on paper, along with all of the comments that had been
posted in the first 12 hours. It was about 100 pages long. Someone
with better credentials than I is living in his father’s basement and has sent
out 700+ resumes with no results. Somehow it was comforting and made us
sick to our stomachs at the same time. Then there were your comments
about how little information there is about long-term career outcomes and your
question about what happens after the top law school and the big law firm –
yes, FINALLY, someone else is asking “What happens to all the lawyers?”!
Then the comments. So many comments. So many lawyers out of work,
in debt, with no hope. The stack of paper alone was enough to bring tears
to my wife’s eyes. When I told her that all of the comments had been
posted since 5:58 a.m. <i>that morning</i>, she broke down and cried. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, my efforts to keep this brief have failed, but perhaps I
can pull it all together with two points. First, thank you for what you
are doing. It has <i>mattered</i> to me and my family. And I am
sure it matters to many others. Second, do you have any advice, any at
all, for someone in my situation? I am not like a recent law grad who
laments that he/she can’t get a job and doesn’t know how to practice law.
My problem is the other way around: I can’t get a job, and I don’t know how to
do anything <i>except</i> practice law. I cannot hide my J.D. or the 13
years since I graduated law school. I am a real, live lawyer with a J.D.,
a license, and years of experience. But no one will pay me to practice
law anymore, and I don’t know how to do anything else. Yes, of course,
big changes are coming to law schools and the legal profession, many reforms
need to be implemented, and prospective law students need to be warned.
It’s not that I am not interested in those things, but I have more immediate
problems to solve. I have 2 kids, a mortgage, and 25 more years to work –
I can’t waste time being angry at my alma mater, wallowing in my sadness, or
pontificating about law schools and my profession. I need to find a way
to earn some money SOON. Do you have any suggestions for someone like
me? </div>
</blockquote>
LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com233tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-68138067027073066842013-02-25T07:56:00.000-08:002013-02-25T08:09:28.487-08:00This is not my beautiful houseThis<a href="http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/02/are-we-sustaining-a-vap-trap.html"> thread</a> on TFL provides a sobering glimpse into what's happening to both the legal academic hiring market and the market for high-status and otherwise desirable non-entry level lawyer jobs (BigLaw mid-level or senior associate, DOJ/USA/Federal agency jobs, cush in-house gigs with big companies, and so forth).<br />
<br />
Long story short: lots of people with golden credentials are doing Visiting Assistant Professor gigs, striking out in the increasingly brutal academic market, and finding that they don't have the option to return to their old jobs or indeed anything similar to their old jobs. The reasons will come as no surprise to anyone who has had much in the way of contact with the contemporary market for lawyers: openings for the kinds of jobs most VAPs had are scarce, and it's an extreme buyer's market.<br />
<br />
Hiring partners are generally suspicious of people who tried to bail for academia, are often openly contemptuous of the law school world, and usually have little interest in taking on expensive senior associates with no book of business. Government hiring is either completely frozen or extraordinarily selective at both the federal and state level, and if anything desirable government jobs are now even harder to get than big firm positions. Good in-house positions are coveted by top associates at elite firms, who are in a far better position to get them than itinerant quasi-academics on the lam from BigLaw. Etc.<br />
<br />
All this produces But I Did Everything Right syndrome on steroids: people with HYS law degrees, appellate court clerkships, several years of experience at V-10 firms, etc. etc., are finding themselves looking at flat-out unemployment, and are coming to the horrifying realization that, in this business of ours, a formerly golden resume starts spoiling faster than a plate of sashimi left out in a tropical sun. (Some current law professors will be finding this out first-hand soon enough).<br />
<br />
Adding to the angst in the VAP world are the realization that taking a job with a low-ranked school may well be a prelude to even more intractable unemployment a few years down the line; that, leaving aside the inherent risk of such jobs, lots of low-ranked law schools shouldn't exist anyway; that some VAP programs are functionally exploitative, in that they produce very little chance of getting a tenure-track job anywhere while extracting cheap teaching resources for academic hopefuls; that it's routine for people in the latter circumstance to have vastly superior entry-level credentials to those the senior faculty at the schools they're at had when they were hired in the palmy days when the Police were the hot new band; and that a career dedicated to successfully crafting a perfect resume can easily crash and burn for reasons completely beyond one's control.<br />
<br />
Needless to say this spectacle is producing waves of schadenfreude among the <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/10/vanguard-of-precariat.html">legal precariat</a>, and a growing sense of dread among all but the most purblind law professors, who realize we are increasingly becoming this generation's version of what a 50-year-old autoworker with an upper middle class salary and great benefits was back when the Police were a hot new band.LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com242tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-26746926394370315252013-02-24T11:41:00.000-08:002013-02-24T11:41:41.987-08:00Inside reportLegal educators are still fantasizing that law firms will create more positions for new lawyers. The latest <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/opinion/to-practice-law-apprentice-first.html?_r=0">pipe dream</a> suggests that big firms will "give talented graduates of less prestigious institutions a chance to shine" in residencies that teach lawyering skills. Although the firms will retain only some of the residents, a compassionate bar association will require those firms to "offer stipends to help those residents who don't make the cut but have debt burdens."<br />
<br />
Law firms, as I've suggested <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/01/to-professor-lawrence-m-solan.html">before</a>, must find this advice hilarious. Will partners eagerly step forward to train more associates than they need? Are BigLaw firms excited about teaching these extra associates how to handle eviction cases for low-income clients? Are bar members pining to reduce their income to help new lawyers pay off their massive law school debts?<br />
<br />
I think not. Law firms are businesses competing in a harsh climate. Law schools vie to land jobs for their graduates, but that's bush league competition: We only have to worry about jobs for one year, we can create low-paid jobs of our own, and we can <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-note-on-reliability-of-employment.html">play games</a> with the numbers. Law firms compete in the real market, one where the bills have to be paid every year, clients would laugh if you asked them to create some work for you, and playing games with the bottom line is fraud or embezzlement.<br />
<br />
For a glimpse of today's legal market, every law school dean, professor, student, and prospective student should read the <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/continuing-legal-education/executive-education/upload/2013-report.pdf">2013 Report on the State of the Legal Market</a> issued by Georgetown Law School's well regarded <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/centers-institutes/legal-profession/">Center for the Study of the Legal Profession</a>. That report combines considerable academic and professional expertise: <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/continuing-legal-education/executive-education/meet-our-team/James-Jones.cfm">James W. Jones</a>, the report's lead author, previously served as managing partner at <a href="http://www.arnoldporter.com/">Arnold & Porter</a>, Vice President and General Counsel of <a href="http://www.apcoworldwide.com/">APCO Worldwide</a>, and Managing Director of <a href="http://www.hbrconsulting.com/aboutus.html">Hildebrandt International</a>. On the academic side, Georgetown's <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/regan-milton-c.cfm">Mitt Regan</a>, an expert on the legal profession, contributed to the report. These are people who know about the legal profession, and who draw upon real data collected from real firms.<br />
<br />
The report recognizes that "since 2008, law firms have cut back significantly on their hiring and have gone through several rounds of lay-offs of both legal and non-legal staff." Despite those cuts, the firms still suffer from "overcapacity in terms of the number of lawyers available to perform the work at hand." And the problem isn't resolving, it's getting worse: "In the four years since [2008], with demand growth negative to flat, the overcapacity problem has become even more serious." (p. 16)<br />
<br />
What's the solution? "Firms have . . . begun to move toward more flexible staffing models, expanding their use of non-partner track associates, staff attorneys, and contract lawyers. Going forward, it is likely that firms will remain conservative in their hiring policies, even as demand begins to grow. As a result, firms probably will be relatively smaller in terms of the number of partners and traditional partner-track associates and relatively larger in terms of the number of other lawyers and non-lawyer professionals." (p. 16)<br />
<br />
So, yes, law firms are developing new staffing models. But these are not residencies designed to train new professionals or assist the poor. These are jobs that will help equity partners maintain their profits. And these jobs will not provide more opportunities for "talented graduates of less prestigious institutions" to show their ability. As jobs for conventional partner-track associates continue to decline, even T14 graduates will compete for these new positions--hoping for their "chance to shine."<br />
<br />
Law firms do find one bright spot in today's legal market: it is the oversupply of lawyers. The Georgetown report recognizes this quite candidly: "While excess capacity in the market is certainly not good news for young lawyers or, for that matter, law schools, it provides an environment in which law firms should have the flexibility to redesign their staffing models to respond to client demands. By embracing alternative approaches to staffing--including increased use of staff attorneys and non-partner track associates, contract lawyers, and part-time attorneys--firms can create more efficient and cost effective ways to deliver legal services." (p. 17)<br />
<br />
It's hard to find a more brutal statement of market reality than that one: the glut of lawyers created by law schools is allowing law firms to hire those graduates on increasingly contingent and unattractive terms. These new jobs are <i>not</i> designed to train new lawyers in skills they can take to other job sites. Once you have worked two years as a back-office document reviewer, what professional skills do you have--other than reviewing documents? These jobs will serve the economic interest of law firms.<br />
<br />
And before any legal educators get all huffy about how law firms should recognize their professional obligations rather than simply operating as businesses: How many law faculty are voluntarily taking pay cuts to reduce tuition? How many are contributing substantial amounts to loan-repayment assistance plans? How many are voluntarily changing what they teach, or the time they devote to research, in order to lower the cost of legal education? How many devote 40 hours a year (one week) to serving low-income clients directly? How many spend that time training or supervising other lawyers in providing that service?<br />
<br />
There are some professors who do these things, just as there are some law firm partners who forego income to mentor new lawyers. But there aren't very many. Law schools, just like law firms, have become full-bore businesses. The controlling members of these businesses, equity partners and tenured professors, serve their own interests and maximize their take-home pay.<br />
<br />
In a market system, there's nothing wrong with businesses maximizing profit. The problem, with both law firms and law schools, is that we clothe ourselves in the rhetoric and privileges of a <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1988414">profession</a> while pursuing market goals. As clients have gained the information they need to assert their interests--and <a href="http://www.axiomlaw.com/index.php/overview">new</a> <a href="http://www.rocketlawyer.com/">businesses</a> have <a href="http://www.legalforce.com/?gclid=CMHnsZzZz7UCFYXc4AodZFAAEg">emerged</a> to <a href="http://www.pangea3.com/">serve</a> those <a href="http://www.legalzoom.com/">interests</a>--it's our students and new lawyers who pay the <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2190398">price</a> for our duplicity.<br />
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
DJMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05131222175697527769noreply@blogger.com158tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-80168559327402482882013-02-23T10:12:00.000-08:002013-02-23T10:16:50.893-08:00A note on the reliability of the employment data reported by law schoolsYou can get a mordantly amusing sense of how reliable law school employment data has been by looking at the wildly divergent unemployment rates reported by otherwise very similar schools, and by examining what happens to those rates when US News changes its ranking methodology.<br />
<br />
As regards the first issue, here are the percentages of the previous graduating class reported as unemployed-seeking work as of February 15, 2010 at four law schools:<br />
<br />
Ave Maria: 33.7%<br />
Florida International: 0%<br />
<br />
Touro: 32.7%<br />
Pace: 3.6%<br />
<br />
What could possibly explain that <i>more than one third</i> of the class at an unranked fairly new Florida law school with an essentially open admissions policy was completely unemployed and seeking work nine months after graduation, while another unranked fairly new Florida law school with an essentially open admissions policy purportedly <i>did not have a single member of its graduating class</i> in this same situation? Why was the involuntary unemployment rate purportedly 90% lower at one horrible NYC area law school than at another such school?<br />
<br />
Many similar pairings can be found by anyone with an inclination to browse through LST spreadsheets.<br />
<br />
Here's an even more striking illustration of how phony much of the reported "employment" data from law schools has been: For many years, US News excluded graduates who were reported by their schools to be unemployed but not seeking work from the denominator when calculating graduate employment rates.<br />
<br />
After ceasing this practice for a year because of a change in ABA reporting practices, the magazine stated in 2008 that it was going back to doing so, but included a <a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2008/07/09/another-law-ranking-methodology-change">stern warning</a> to schools not to exploit this category in order to "spin" (trans: fraudulently mis-state) their employment rates). Subsequently, the majority of schools seemed to more or less heed this warning, as the median percentage of graduates reported to be unemployed not-seeking hovered around 2%, and the mode was zero percent. (For example in regard to the statistics above, in February of 2010 Touro reported having no graduates in the unemployed not-seeking work category, and Ave Maria reported just 2.3% of its graduates in this situation, even though a third of the classes at both schools didn't have jobs).<br />
<br />
But some schools, it appears, ignored the warning, and jammed large numbers of their unemployed graduates into the "not seeking" category. Indeed, in February 2010 <b>35</b> ABA schools reported having <i>more than twice as many</i> unemployed not-seeking graduates as unemployed-seeking graduates. (The Oscar in this category can be awarded to Santa Clara, which in 2010 and 2011 reported that 102[!] of its graduates were unemployed but not seeking jobs nine months after graduation, as compared to 29 unemployed graduates who were looking to acquire employment of some sort).<br />
<br />
Then an awful thing happened: in March of 2011, just after schools submitted their numbers to NALP and US News, US News announced that henceforth it would treat unemployed not-seeking graduates as simply unemployed for the purposes of calculating nine-month employment rates. Miraculously enough, in February of 2012 the number of schools that reported having more than twice as many unemployed not-seeking graduates as unemployed-seeking fell from 35 to 4.<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com83tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-55162397097661552552013-02-22T06:27:00.000-08:002013-02-22T06:35:17.468-08:00Doctors and lawyersSteven Brill of The American Lawyer and CourtTV fame has a<a href="http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/"> very long story</a> in the new issue of Time on some of the more absurd financial dysfunctions of The Best Health Care System in the World(tm). In short, TBHCSITW has managed to do to society at large approximately what law schools have done to their students:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of
who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first
question: Why exactly are the bills so high?</blockquote>
This is same question that ought to be asked of the many law school apologists who treat the increase in the cost of legal education as something akin to a law of thermodynamics, as opposed to a fabulously successful exercise in rent-seeking by people who have captured a regulatory process.<br />
<br />
Critiquing that exercise highlights how the law school cartel has managed to do something which has completely eluded the bar as a whole. A question well worth investigating is why the licensed members of The Best Legal System in the World(tm) have, in comparison to their medical brethren, been so unsuccessful at using their own cartel to protect the economic position of lawyers, as opposed to that of law schools.<br />
<br />
Consider some numbers:<br />
<br />
In 1989, legal services accounted for approximately $157 billion, in 2005 dollars, of US GDP. In 2011 that same figure (again in 2005 dollars) was $156 billion. Over this time GDP increased by 68% in constant dollars, which means that, as a share of the economy, the legal sector shrank by approximately 41% over the past two decades.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile law schools have increased graduate output by 24% over this same time frame, while the cost of private law school tuition doubled in real terms, and that of resident public law school tuition increased by a factor of nearly five. In other words, we've radically increased both the price and the supply of something (a license to practice law) whose relative economic value has been collapsing.<br />
<br />
The situation in the medical profession has been the precise opposite. After medical school admissions rose rapidly from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, the AMA reacted to warnings that there would soon be a "glut" of doctors by essentially freezing medical school graduate totals for three decades (Medical schools graduated around 16,000 to 17,000 people every year between 1980 and 2008. Finally, in reaction to new warnings that the country is facing a severe shortage of doctors, medical school admissions began to rise again about five years ago).<br />
<br />
The most striking contrast between the situation in law and medicine is, that while economic demand for legal services has, relatively speaking, been contracting radically (note to law school administrators: economic demand = people having enough money to pay for something they're willing to use that money to pay for), that for medical services has gone through the roof. Between 1980 and 2008, the proportion of American GDP devoted to the health care sector increased by an astounding 77.8%.<br />
<br />
Now of course doctors only captured part, and perhaps a relatively small part, of that increased demand in the form of their direct compensation. But what the AMA has been remarkably good at ensuring is that, with trivial exceptions, <i>everyone who graduates from medical school gets to be a practicing physician for more or less as long as they want to be</i>. That is, in the context of capitalism's gusts of creative destruction, an extraordinarily valuable benefit -- and it's why comparisons between the "average" compensation of doctors and lawyers, or, more far more accurately, between graduates of medical schools and law schools, are essentially meaningless.<br />
<br />
Here's Brill's description of the plight of large numbers of patients within the contemporary American health care system: "They are powerless buyers in a seller's market where the only sure thing is the profit of the sellers." That would also make for a good description of large numbers of law students within the contemporary system of legal education. Of course law school apologists would respond that buyers of legal education are not powerless in comparison to, say, buyers of health care who are suffering a medical emergency or from a serious illness. And that's true -- which is precisely why, now that the power of better information has been placed into their hands, applications to law school are collapsing even faster than the economic demand for legal services.<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com131tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-18120509844092950522013-02-21T05:32:00.002-08:002013-02-21T06:27:35.180-08:00An apologyDJM's new post below has alerted me to a very serious mistake in my post yesterday, in which I criticized two law school deans for touting, without any statistical basis, the purported versatility of JD degrees:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
Something that would be even more interesting to know is the extent to
which arguments that a JD is or at least was "versatile" have any basis
in reality, since as even Smith acknowledges there's simply no
longitudinal data on this issue.</blockquote>
<br />
I've just discovered NALP has done <a href="http://www.nalp.org/JDAdvantage">a careful and comprehensive study</a> of this issue, and is in the process of publishing its findings:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It turns out that the JD degree prepares you for a variety of exciting jobs and <a href="http://www.nalp.org/JDAdvantage#" id="_GPLITA_1" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">careers</a>.
While many law school graduates go on to practice law, many others go
on to play leadership roles in a variety of settings. Many law school
graduates obtain positions for which Bar Passage, or even a JD, is not
required, but their legal training is deemed to be an advantage or even
necessary in the workplace. As the saying goes "you can do almost
anything with a law degree!"<br />
<br />
You will see that JD Advantage positions are jobs that do not require
bar passage, an active law license, or involve practicing law in the
traditional sense. However, in these positions, a JD provides an
advantage in obtaining or performing the job. In fact, many graduates
view entry-level opportunities with the federal government or in
business/industry as a primary goal. <b>For every law firm, public sector,
or in-house legal position, there is an equally important law-related
position for which a JD is a significant competitive advantage. </b>(emphasis added)</blockquote>
It's hard to overstate the significance of this finding, since the federal government currently estimates that the economy is generating 21,700 new jobs for attorneys per year, which is slightly less than half the number of people graduating from ABA law schools. In other words, NALP's research has discovered that the combined total of new annual jobs that require bar admission, and those new professional positions for which a JD provides a significant competitive advantage is or should be close to providing full employment in appropriate positions for new law graduates.<br />
<br />
NALP's announcement is especially encouraging, in that the individual profiles it uses to put faces on this longitudinal study, which are no doubt representative of the underlying data, indicate that these "JD Advantage" jobs are especially advantageous to minorities, women, graduates of low-ranked law schools, and minority women graduates of low-ranked law schools. This finding makes me especially embarrassed that I asserted in yesterday's post that law school promotional efforts are intentionally targeting members of traditionally under-represented groups, who are especially vulnerable to suffering long-term damage from what I (mistakenly it turns out) characterized as the poor state of the employment market for new law graduates.<br />
<br />
I will post much more about this as soon as I have a chance to analyze the study itself, which does not appear to be linked on NALP's web page announcing these extraordinarily important conclusions. In any case, it appears this entire blog has been based on a serious misapprehension, and apologies are in order to a great many people within legal academia who have been arguing that a law degree remains an excellent long term investment for almost everyone who acquires one.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/lgl/3601269548.html">See also</a> (h/t commenter) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com211tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-40823668639288809292013-02-20T21:38:00.000-08:002013-02-20T21:50:43.239-08:00Choo chooDid you love playing with trains as a child? Would you like to drive a train? Can you imagine yourself tearing down the tracks at more than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles">350 miles per hour</a>? If so, I have great news for you: The unemployment rate for locomotive engineers and operators is really, really low. That's right, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323936804578229873392511426.html">1.2%</a> of locomotive engineers were unemployed in 2012! That's less than the unemployment rate for lawyers (1.4%), dentists (1.5%), accountants (4.2%), and lots of other boring occupations.<br />
<br />
This nonsense signals the fact that it's time for our semi-annual <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/08/unemployment.html">debunking</a> of the "unemployment rate" claim. Cooley Law School unveiled this pitch in <a href="http://www.cooley.edu/news/2011/081111_lawyer_employment_rates_high.html">August 2011</a>, reporting the BLS estimate that only 1.5% of lawyers were unemployed in 2010. <a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/admissions/learn/choosing-denver-law-myths-v.-facts">Denver's Law School</a> is the most recent enthusiast for this factoid. The statistic suggests that 98.5% of the people who want to practice law, and who have the proper license, are able to do so. Right?<br />
<br />
Wrong. The BLS number means that 98.5% of the people who have worked as lawyers, and who want to keep working, are able to work at least one hour a week in some job. They may have mowed their neighbor's lawn for $15. They may be working at Starbucks. They may even be running a locomotive, a job that requires only a high school degree and some hands-on <a href="http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/train-engineers-and-operators.htm#tab-4">training</a>. Heck, as NALP <a href="http://www.nalp.org/JDAdvantage">says</a>, "you can do almost anything with a law degree!"<br />
<br />
If you want to review (yet <a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/11/dear-prospective-law-students-do-not-reasonably-rely-on-cooleys-report-one.html">again</a>!) why the BLS unemployment rate is misleading, I invite you to join me <a href="http://www.lawschoolcafe.org/thread/unemployed-lawyers/">here</a>. Along the way, I note that the very same BLS numbers generating these positive-sounding unemployment rates also show:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The number of practicing lawyers fell during the last year, from an estimated 1,085,000 in 2011 to just 1,061,000 in 2012. That's despite all of those 2011 graduates who were sworn in to the bar in November 2011.</li>
<li>Although more than 100,000 women have graduated from law school during the last five years, there are 19,000 <i>fewer </i>women practicing law today than there were in 2008. </li>
</ul>
Bet you won't find those statistics on the law school sites touting the low unemployment rates for lawyers. Don't think of our graduates as unemployed lawyers; think of them as un...lawyers.<br />
<br />DJMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05131222175697527769noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-43557135337698112222013-02-20T06:32:00.000-08:002013-02-20T06:54:50.581-08:00Straight out of ScarsdaleA law professor forwarded me links to a couple of law school-produced podcasts/youtube videos flogging the "versatility" of what one of them actually refers to as the "magical" JD degree.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://lawreview.podbean.com/2013/01/09/should-i-go-to-law-school/">first</a> is from Cal Western -- a school whose 2011 graduates had average law school loan balances of around $175,000 when their first payments came due in November of that year, and whose employment statistics are morbidly fascinating in a car crash sort of way: 104 of 285 graduates purportedly got legal jobs, broadly defined, not counting solos, while 76 were either completely unemployed or simply untraceable.<br />
<br />
I got about halfway through the 27 minutes of it, but that's more than enough. Steve Smith, the dean of the school, talks at length about the purported versatility of law degrees, citing "being a CEO" or a "politician" as potential alternative non-legal careers (he discusses Barack Obama's career as an example of what you can do with a law degree other than practice law, in what appears to be a completely sincere and non-ironic way, although who can tell any more in this crazy mixed up pomo world of ours?).<br />
<br />
The really disturbing part of the thing involves an African American professor, who talks about growing up in south central Los Angeles, and overcoming adversity to become a lawyer. Although I have no basis for judging the sincerity of his particular mental state, one of the most deplorable things law schools are now doing as institutions is to cynically exploit the hopes and dreams of people from marginalized ethnic groups and modest socio-economic backgrounds. (In some cases ignorance rather than cynicism may be the formal cause of this exploitative behavior, and while this is the more charitable interpretation, we're reaching a point where ignorance is no longer distinguishable from the sort of willful blindness that is in some ways morally worse than conscious exploitation).<br />
<br />
As difficult as law has become as a career path in general, it's even more difficult and potentially catastrophic for people who don't have the sorts of family financial backing, cultural capital, and social connections that are proving ever-more crucial to success in a particularly hierarchical and status-obsessed profession. (It should be unnecessary to add that many of these vulnerable people are white. Nevertheless, I believe we law school faculty and administrators from ethnic minority backgrounds have a special obligation to do what we can to make sure our institutions are not exploiting vulnerable members of our communities, given that "ensuring access to justice" is such a politically convenient translation of "getting people to take out loans they won't be able to pay back.").<br />
<br />
The other paen to the versatility of law degrees is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxf2B8jzaKc">this</a> short Youtube video from Chicago-Kent, featuring Dean Harold Krent, who was last glimpsed at ITLSS <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2011/08/righteous-indignation.html">arguing</a> that getting a law degree was a good entree into the worlds of journalism, counseling, and investing. (Key words and phrases in the video: "network," "sports agent," "help other people," "intellectual firepower.") It's a semi-slick production -- although the sound quality of the dean's contribution is sketchy -- and it would be interesting to know if this kind of thing is worth the money the school is spending on it.<br />
<br />
Something that would be even more interesting to know is the extent to which arguments that a JD is or at least was "versatile" have any basis in reality, since as even Smith acknowledges there's simply no longitudinal data on this issue. This of course doesn't stop either him or Krent from arguing that it is, which tells you all you need to know about the extent to which intellectual integrity plays a role in these particular corners of legal academia.LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com111tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-58700963866823889312013-02-19T06:12:00.002-08:002013-02-19T06:56:59.329-08:00Live at the ImprovA law student writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
American University is holding improv lessons to help students learn how to network and interview. Sometimes when I walk around the school I feel like I must be in the twilight zone. There are postings all around the school for discussions on helping the poor and oppressed around the world without the slightest hint of irony.<br />
<br />
A fuller description of the nonsense is provided here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.wcl.american.edu/wcl_events/event_detail.cfm?event_id=35153" target="_blank">http://www.wcl.american.edu/<wbr></wbr>wcl_events/event_detail.cfm?<wbr></wbr>event_id=35153</a></blockquote>
<br />
(I recommend clicking on the link to get the full flavor of this. I would paste the linked material into the post except that it wrecks the formatting for some reason).<br />
<br />
Meanwhile a law professor writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We just got the nine month employment statistics for the class of 2012. The administration fired the entire CSO staff in the summer of 2011, and spent a lot of money hiring new, supposedly far better people, on the theory that the terrible employment outcomes for the 2011 class were in part a product of the CSO's ineptness. Now I have to admit the previous staff did strike me as inept, while the new people seem much better. The net result of all this is that the class of 2012 ended up with exactly one more person in a lawyer job than the class of 2011. </blockquote>
<a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/02/message.html#more"> Repeat as necessary. </a><br />
<br />
I was talking to a network news producer yesterday about which law school is going to be the first to go. I don't wish unemployment on anyone (OK I do wish it on some law school deans), but at the same time there's little doubt that the first ABA school to go under will, as Voltaire said, "encourage the others" in various beneficial ways.<br />
<br />
And while I don't think American will be the first to go, the school's increasingly grotesque behavior in the face of its absurd price structure and bottom of the barrel employment statistics makes it perhaps more deserving of this distinction than any other school -- or at least any other school whose <a href="http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html">very name</a> isn't already a mordant joke.<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com169tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-2602946461578887682013-02-18T08:12:00.000-08:002013-02-18T14:52:57.971-08:00The business of the academy<b> Updated</b><br />
<br />
In an example of what could be called the ongoing Dilbertization of
academic life, every year CU law school faculty members are required to
do a “self-evaluation,” which is supposed to supplement and enlarge upon
the formal report of professional activities which all faculty at the
university are asked to <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/#" id="_GPLITA_2" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">submit</a>.<br />
<br />
This year’s version of what seems vaguely like a hybrid between the rituals concocted by <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/#" id="_GPLITA_1" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">business consultants</a> and Maoist cadres contains the following question:<br />
<blockquote>
For the period since January 2011, please discuss your engagement in the life of the law school, focusing on the following:</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Please describe your support for and involvement with the effort to recruit admitted applicants (e.g., making <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/#" id="_GPLITA_3" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">phone</a> calls, meeting with interested students, participating in Admitted Students lunches, etc.).</blockquote>
I suppose it would come as a great surprise to the administrative
class that comes up with this stuff to be told that, under current
circumstances in particular, this sort of question is extremely
inappropriate. For instance, compare it with this hypothetical
question:<br />
<blockquote>
Please describe your support for and involvement with the
effort the convey to the larger community that the American legal
system is the best in the world. </blockquote>
Everyone, I imagine, would recognize that evaluating faculty members
on the basis of the extent to which they participated in such an effort
would be indefensible, given that such an evaluative process would
reward and punish faculty on the basis of their willingness to support a
controversial intellectual and political position, even though it’s one
that law school deans as a pragmatic matter treat as self-evidently
true upon certain occasions.<br />
<br />
Expecting faculty to uncritically “recruit” admitted applicants could
only be a reasonable expectation if, at a minimum, one takes the view
that literally everyone the law school’s <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">admissions</a>
committee decides to admit would be better off accepting rather than
declining that invitation. A significant number of the faculty at my
school disagree with that view, although perhaps only one of them would
be so tactless as to say so in public. Telling these people that
they’re being evaluated on the basis of their willingness to mortify
their consciences on this particular point is wrong. Actually doing so
is even more indefensible. (<b> Update:</b> This is not a hypothetical: I know of at
least one faculty member who was sanctioned in the evaluation process
for giving candid advice to an admitted student who solicited it, and
who enrolled subsequently at a top ten law school. For those interested
my response to the self-evaluation question was: “I believe this
question is framed incorrectly, as I don’t believe faculty members
should be ‘recruiting’ admitted applicants. I do believe it’s a faculty
member’s proper institutional role to give candid and helpful feedback
to admitted or prospective applicants when they ask for such feedback,
which I have done on numerous occasions.”).<br />
<br />
What I find particularly interesting about this is the extent to
which university administrators have now internalized the norms of
profit-maximizing businesses. In this evaluative context, recruiting
admitted students is thought of as moving product, and apparently it
would no more occur to an <a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/#" id="_GPLITA_4" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by Browse to Save">administrator</a>
that a faculty member would object to be asked to participate
uncritically in this enterprise than it would occur to the manager of a
car dealership that members of his sales force might object to being
asked to participate uncritically in the enterprise of selling the
dealership’s stock.<br />
<br />
<b>Update:</b> And of course this is not only a problem at law schools. As academia
gets increasingly indistinguishable from any other business, the tension
between the demands of profit maximization (in the context of technical
non-profits profit maximization means running the institution for the
financial benefit of its most powerful internal stakeholders, i.e.,
administrators, and to a lesser extent tenure-track faculty) and
intellectual honesty become ever-more severe.<br />
<br />
In the end, if universities are going to be run like businesses, they
should be treated as such — from paying taxes, to being laughed at when
they ask alumni for donations. After all, Toyota doesn’t call you up
five years after you bought a Corolla, to ask you to give them some
money out of sheer gratitude for the “quality” of their “product.”<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com139tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-66976692708406236112013-02-15T06:19:00.001-08:002013-02-15T07:30:25.100-08:00Transparency reduxA law professor writes:<br />
<br />
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I was thinking about asking my Dean to put the 2012 9 month
employment numbers up on the school’s website as soon as we have finalized
them, which should be any day now (if it hasn’t happened already). I
agree with you that that disclosure is a moral imperative. I suspect that
if the 2012 numbers are worse than the 2011 numbers, what I’ll hear back is
something like, “well, if we put our numbers up and our competitors don’t, then
(1) the students may be misled into comparing apples and oranges, and (2) it’ll
hurt our competitiveness. (If the 2012 numbers are better, which seems
highly unlikely, I suspect the Dean will gladly put them up.) These
problems would be resolved if the vast majority of respectable schools post
their 2012 numbers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">So,
how about a post suggesting that law professors have a moral obligation to
demand that their dean post their 2012 numbers? </span></blockquote>
Today is the official reporting date for nine-month employment numbers to NALP (I believe NALP gives schools a couple of weeks to get their information in.)<br />
<br />
I agree with my correspondent that legal academics have an obligation to do what we can, individually and collectively, to ensure that our institutions make the latest employment and salary data available to prospective and current students. Within the next month, every law school should post information for the class of 2012 which is as transparent as the information regarding the class of 2011 that can be found <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/law/sites/default/files/NALP2011.pdf">here</a>. (Note how the data schools report to NALP are much more granular than the <a href="http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/">numbers the ABA</a> now makes public regarding individual schools).<br />
<br />
A couple of further notes:<br />
<br />
(1) Reform-minded law school employees need to be especially vigilant about schools publishing misleadingly incomplete information, as almost all schools did until very recently. For example, it would be better for a school to publish nothing at all than to announce on its website that "92% of the 2012 class was employed nine months after graduation, with a reported average salary of X." Overall "employment" percentages mean next to nothing (especially given the <a href="http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/02/law-schools-.html">growing trend</a> of schools' employing their own graduates), and "average" salary figures are even more misleading if they exclude salaries, if any, for large percentages of the class, and omit median numbers in favor of means.<br />
<br />
This will especially be a problem at lower-ranked schools, where large majorities of each class have no reported salaries, causing the few reported high salaries to skew the data about an already unrepresentative subgroup of graduates.<br />
<br />
(2) I try very hard to force myself to be realistic about what prospective law students can be expected to know, and to resist the "individual responsibility" victim-blaming frame which American culture in general tends to impose on structural injustice. On the other hand, individual responsibility still exists. Anyone who enrolls at any law school this fall without first having extracted the relevant employment and salary information for the class of 2012 referenced above is engaging in reckless behavior, given that at this point any school that withholds this information (as large numbers of schools still do) is essentially announcing to prospective students that transparent employment and salary data regarding its graduates will incline reasonable people not to enroll.<br />
<br />
In other words, while caveat emptor has been a much-abused principle in the common law tradition, there is a point at which it ought to have some real force. That point was not the year 2000 or 2005 or even 2011. But it is or ought to be now. Of course caveat emptor doesn't excuse active misrepresentation, of which there's still plenty in the law school world, but my sympathies for people who enroll in law school going forward without demanding and obtaining the necessary information about outcomes first is going to be limited.<br />
<br />
<b>Update: </b>On reflection, the phrase caveat emptor, which has a specific legal meaning, was not the best way of conveying what I was trying to express. What I was trying to express was my own sense of exasperation at the cultural forces which create barriers to acquiring and interpreting information that, in theory, should at this point be easy to acquire. Example: if you google "should I go to law school" the first three links are to an interview with me in Newsweek about the book Don't Go to Law School (Unless), a link to that book, and a link to this blog. <br />
<br />
But as commenters have noted, my personal exasperation is beside the point, and irrelevant to the cultural fact that, while the law school scam is over from any perspective that assumes rational maximizers of their utility engaging in minimally prudent behavior, that's not actually what human beings, and especially recent college graduates in this culture, are like.<br />
<br />
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<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com156tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-59675140596571820772013-02-14T04:49:00.001-08:002013-02-14T09:30:00.204-08:00An unsentimental educationThere's an interesting<a href="http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=191564"> thread</a> on TLS about how GULC is going about distributing "merit aid" (cross-subsidized tuition discounts) this cycle. Here's one poster's description of the process:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some of us were contacted by email in early February and told that we
were being considered for merit aid. We were asked to reply by 2/4 and
give admissions an idea of "what level of funding" would make a
difference in our decision. Over the last two days, some of this group
got emails saying we are "finalists" for merit aid and have to submit a
150 [word] essay by this Friday morning. Others from the initial email group
just got a response saying they were not being offered merit aid at this
time.</blockquote>
<br />
The "us" in the first sentence refers to admitted applicants, although it's easy enough to project that the next step in this increasingly baroque process will be for law schools to start asking at least some applicants to make their first request for a tuition discount even before an admissions decision is made. (This would be ideal for yield protection purposes, and no doubt some legal academic glibertarian is already busy at work on an article explaining why such a practice would be Pareto optimal). <br />
<br />
What GULC is doing here is Game Theory 101: Force the other party in the negotiation make the first offer. A lot of applicants in the TLS thread are understandably upset by this whole process, which is making the putatively "holistic" admissions decision feel more like visiting a car dealership than applying to an Elite National Law School.<br />
<br />
The request for a 150-word [!] "essay" is a particularly clever touch, as it's obviously a stalling tactic to buy more time for the admissions committee before they cut real as opposed to nominal tuition more than they absolutely have to. Perhaps after tomorrow's deadline they'll ask a subgroup of this subgroup of what was already a subgroup of admitted applicants to submit a haiku regarding Why Georgetown? (<b>Update:</b> A commenter notes that the essay is supposed to be about the applicant's "most interesting mistake," which under the circumstances strikes me as a rather sinister topic).<br />
<br />
Or, if GULC really wants to ask people what they need to do to put them in a law school seat today, they could send applicants Philip Schrag's <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-should-50000-per-year-law-school.html">recent essay explaining</a> to prospective law students that they're not going to actually have to pay the money they borrow back. (An explanation of the new Pay As You [Hopefully] Earn plan is already featured prominently on the school's <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-financial-aid/office-of-financial-aid/Index.cfm">web site</a>. GULC's <a href="http://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-financial-aid/office-of-financial-aid/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=61621">calculator</a> of the total cost of attendance for the school projects total debt at repayment of $273,000 for 2012 matriculants who are paying sticker).<br />
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<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com149tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-36113938638233888452013-02-13T06:40:00.002-08:002013-02-13T06:47:29.289-08:00Thinking like a law professor<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the oldest platitudes in
American legal education is that the central task of the law school is to teach
the student to "think like a lawyer." This belief is captured
vividly by the words of the famous Prof. Kingsfield, who, although a novelistic
creation, is merely echoing conventional legal academic discourse on the
subject: "You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You
come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kingsfield is a parody (I guess),
but anyone who has spent much time in legal academia has heard something
similar repeated on many occasions. <a href="http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=4036">Here</a> is a criticism of Brian
Tamanaha's call for greater differentiation in legal education, in the form of
academically versus vocationally oriented law schools:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Regular; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">More than teaching students </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Regular; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to think, the law
professor must—like the old adage about teaching a man to fish so he can feed
himself for a lifetime—teach students </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">how </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Regular; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to think. Whether the client is a
corporation whose counsel would’ve emerged from one of Tamanaha’s elite,
three-year programs or an average Joe whose lawyer was herded through a
cut-rate, two-year school, </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">all </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: ACaslonPro-Regular; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">clients need and deserve a lawyer who thinks as well as she
can.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And <a href="http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2013/02/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-skills.html">here</a> is an argument that the traditional law school class focused on the
parsing of appellate court decisions teaches skills that are critical to the
practice of law:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Reading, writing, and reasoning skills, which
are covered by the conventional law school curriculum, are the sine qua non of
being an attorney: one cannot be an effective attorney if one cannot
read, write, and reason . . . Perhaps reading, writing, and reasoning skills
are still given too much space in the law school curriculum. But I do not
think so, for two reasons. First, I still encounter third-year students
who have not picked up these requisite skills on the eve of graduation.
For them, there is not too much of the conventional courses that teach how to
read cases, how to interpret statutes, how to see that one doctrinal line
dovetails or is in tension with another doctrinal line, and so forth – there is
too little of it. Second, if one graduates practiced in the art of
figuring out what the law is, one can pretty much figure out how to take a
deposition. But the reverse is not true: if one has practice taking
a deposition, but lacks the skills to be able to figure out what the law is,
the next deposition in an even slightly different area of law will be a disaster.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These sorts of arguments are no less
puzzling for being so commonplace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consider some questions:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*How plausible is it that law
professors teach adults who have enjoyed the benefits of a minimum of 17 years
of formal education before beginning law school “how to think?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*What does it mean to teach students
to think, or to reason? Does it mean teaching students logic, or rhetoric, or
what exactly? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*Does the traditional law school
classroom experience improve students’ basic reasoning skills? If so, how does
it accomplish this?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*What does it mean to teach people
to think like lawyers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How is thinking
like a lawyer different from ordinary thinking?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*Why is the modal law professor in
the contemporary American law school, that is, someone who is now years or
decades removed from a very brief encounter, if any, with a very narrow slice
of the very diverse world of legal practice(s), well-positioned to train people
to think like lawyers, given his or her extremely limited first-hand exposure
to that experience?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*Does legal education produce
significant improvements in reading and writing skills?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If so, how?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is the claim here that legal academics teach people how to read and
write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">like lawyers</i>? Again, how are
these skills different than reading and writing in general, and why are law
professors, given their backgrounds, qualified to impart these skills?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*More generally, how is it that law
professors are particularly qualified to teach anybody anything? It’s one of the curiosities
of the American educational system that, as one ascends in the hierarchy of
teaching, one needs less formal training in being a teacher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elementary and secondary school teachers are
required to study educational theory and to undergo formal
apprenticeships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most university faculty
have no formal training in education per se, but at least they usually acquire
practical experience in teaching as graduate students, before they become
full-fledged faculty members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
contrast, it’s not unusual for legal academics to have literally no teaching
background of any kind before they are unleashed on their students.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What law professors are good at is
mimicking the professors they had in law school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, they (we) are more or less good at
giving the impression that we know what we’re talking about when we talk about
law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is accomplished mainly by
donning various sorts of authoritative personae, which, while not often quite
as florid as that employed by the egregious Prof. Kingsfield, are, like his,
prone to being punctured by even a modicum of critical inquiry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I don’t mean to exaggerate: law
professors may often do a fine job of teaching their students a certain
vocabulary, certain stylized forms of argument, certain rhetorical devices,
certain modes of professional acculturation, and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if we teach students “how to think” (let
alone “how to think like lawyers”) I remain unaware of how this
impressive-sounding feat is accomplished – or indeed even what it means.</span></div>
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LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com147tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-67094735708337500362013-02-12T06:37:00.003-08:002013-02-13T04:39:51.231-08:00The function of criticism at the present timeYesterday there was some discussion of the extent to which it does or doesn't matter that various people within the law school world have or haven't been aware that the cost/benefit ratio of going to law school has gradually been changing for the worse over the course of the last generation, to the point where going to law school is now a bad investment for a very large percentage of law students.<br />
<br />
For example Orin Kerr writes:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Every law student learns that mens rea is the foundation of
culpability. As Holmes put it, "even a dog knows the difference between
being stumbled over and being kicked." Given that, it's misleading to
shrug and say "of course" it doesn't matter if you have been wrongfully
claiming that acts were intentional when they weren't. It doesn't
matter for some purposes, of course. But it does matter for purposes of
determining the responsibility of the individuals you are criticizing.
</blockquote>
I don't want to start quibbling about exactly how much intentionality I've ascribed to various inside actors over the course of this blog's existence, although I will note that in the very first post 18 months ago I described the situation this way:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For a very large proportion of my students, law school has become
something very much like a scam. And who or what is doing the scamming?
On the most general level, the American economy in the second decade of
the 21st century. On a more specific level, the legal profession as a
whole. But on what, for legal academics at least, ought to be the most
particular, most important, and most morally and practically compelling
level, the scammers are the 200 ABA-accredited law schools. Yet there
is no such thing as a "law school" that scams its students -- law
schools are abstract social institutions, not concrete moral agents.
When people say "law school is a scam," what that really means, at the
level of actual moral responsibility, is that<b> law professors are scamming their students</b>.<br />
<br />
We don't mean to, of course. Like my learned colleagues, I'm just a soul
whose intentions are good! And anyway it's mostly the dean's fault --
it's not like I was ever consulted about raising tuition 130% etc. etc.
. . .<br />
<br />
In the end, the fact that law professors don't intend to scam their
students is irrelevant. We are scamming them, or many of them, and we
know we are -- <i>or we would know if we paid any attention at all to the
current relationship between legal academia, legal practice, and the
socio-economic system in general, which naturally is why so many of us
avoid doing so at all costs.</i> (Emphasis added)</blockquote>
With the benefit of hindsight this still seems to me correct. In other words, law professors have been guilty, for the most part, of negligence, rather than of conscious participation in an increasingly unjust structure. (Law school deans are another matter, Unlike regular faculty, deans are paid to pay attention to exactly the things faculty have been allowed to ignore).<br />
<br />
But the situation today is drastically different than it was two years ago. Today negligent inattention is no longer possible, and any individual or collective failure to address the economic and social crisis of the American law school can be treated properly as a conscious decision to perpetuate an indefensible status quo.<br />
<br />
Here's my own take on a few things anyone on a law faculty should now be considered morally obligated to discover if he or she doesn't already have this information:<br />
<br />
(1) The employment outcomes for the school's most recent class at the most granular level available (this means at a minimum the NALP long reporting form which my own school <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/law/sites/default/files/NALP2011.pdf">now posts</a> on our web site).<br />
<br />
(2) The estimated actual average educational debt for the school's students. This can be extrapolated by taking the 2012 class's debt numbers (which every school reported to the ABA last fall although this information is not yet public), adding 15% for accrued interest, and between $10K and $30K for average undergraduate debt (the lower the ranking of the school the higher the latter number is likely to be).<br />
<br />
(3) The school's operating budget, at the level of specific sources of revenue and specific expenditures.<br />
<br />
This is the absolute minimum faculty members need to know to make responsible decisions. I'm aware that at some (many?) schools, administrators will balk at making some or all of this information available to the faculty. Such policies should be considered completely unacceptable by any faculty with a minimum regard for the idea of faculty governance.<br />
<br />
I don't want to sound sanctimonious about all this -- I had my head in the sand on these issues until a little more than two years ago. Like everyone else I had plenty of excuses: This is my 23rd year on the CU faculty, and for the first 14 of those years tuition averaged $5000 per year in nominal dollars (about $7200 in 2012 dollars), and it was considered completely normal for the faculty to have no information at all about employment outcomes or budgetary matters.<br />
<br />
That was then, this is now. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com227tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-17175012550853377942013-02-11T07:01:00.001-08:002013-02-11T07:29:40.870-08:00Innocent griftersI've been reading Michael Gard's very interesting (and surprisingly funny) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/End-Obesity-Epidemic-Michael-Gard/dp/0415489881">book</a> The End of the Obesity Epidemic, which has special interest for me because he devotes a chapter to critiquing the work of what he calls "obesity skeptics," in particular that of <a href="http://healthpromotion.asu.edu/directory/1263739">Glenn Gaesser</a>, <a href="http://political-science.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/oliver.shtml">Eric Oliver</a>, and myself.<br />
<br />
While Gard seems to agree with most of what the skeptics have to say, he does take us to task for going too far, in his view, in impugning the motives of those who are profiting from fat panic. On reflection I believe much of this criticism is well taken: after more than a decade of engagement on this issue I've come to the conclusion that outright corruption among what I think of affectionately as the obesity mafia is much less common than genuine ideologically driven and culturally determined delusion.<br />
<br />
A similar danger exists for critics of the current structure of legal academia. I named this blog Inside the Law School Scam for two reasons: to signal fundamental solidarity with the scam blog movement, and to indicate that, whatever the personal motives of people inside legal academia might be, law school <i>has come to function as a scam</i> in regard to the economic relations that exist between, on the one hand, legal academics and university administrators, and on the other, law students and law graduates.<br />
<br />
A disadvantage of this approach is what might be called the innocent grifter defense: if particular individuals or institutional collectives of such people have, in all sincerity, no intention whatsoever of scamming anyone, and indeed will be sincerely horrified by any suggestion that they are doing so, how can one properly call the activity in which they're engaged a scam?<br />
<br />
The answer, of course, is that from the perspective of the people being harned by the economic structure of the activity, it makes little if any practical difference whether those profiting from the harm have any intention of harming those people from whose injuries they are profiting, or indeed any consciousness that they are causing these harms.<br />
<br />
(The parallels with the most sincere obesity warriors should be obvious. I'm sure the last thing Michelle Obama wants to do is to stigmatize fat kids. I'm equally confident that this desire is fundamentally irrelevant to the fact that <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/childhood-shmomesity#">her campaign</a> to "end childhood obesity within a generation" does in fact have this effect).<br />
<br />
Arguments about the presence or absence of good or bad intentions are ultimately distractions. We could assume that every single person in legal academia who rejects the idea that law school has become indistinguishable as a functional matter from a conscious scam does so with utmost sincerity and the purest of hearts. Yet this would make no difference to the analysis, in the fundamental sense that such an assumption doesn't create a single new job or pay down a dollar of any graduate's debt.<br />
<br />
What this blog has been in large part about has been raising consciousness inside and around legal academia that what we intend our work to accomplish bears increasingly less relation to what our work does accomplish. And, in the language of tort law, once that consciousness has been raised sufficiently, our harmful actions become fully "intentional" in the sense that <i>we know what will result from them</i>, no matter how sincerely we may not intend that result.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com133tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-51025682418142871442013-02-07T22:28:00.000-08:002013-02-08T05:31:57.569-08:00Trust<div>
Practicing lawyers will tell you that trust is one of their greatest assets. If you shade the truth when talking to a judge, that judge will never rely upon your word again. If you mislead opposing counsel, whether through outright lies or too-clever omissions, you lose your colleagues' confidence. That loss hurts both the lawyer and all of her future clients. Every day, lawyers walk a fine line between representing their clients aggressively and damaging the trust they need to function in the profession.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Law schools also need trust--and, until recently, we've had it. Students trust us to teach them accurately and grade them fairly. Alumni trust us to use their donations for worthy purposes. When people read our scholarship, they trust us to be fair, to cite our sources, and to characterize those sources accurately. Applicants trust us to talk honestly about our institutions and what we have to offer.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're about to lose that trust, if we haven't already. LawProf has already <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/02/myths-of-sisyphus.html">exposed</a> some of the most egregious sleights in <a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/profile/martin-katz">Dean Martin Katz's</a> extraordinary <a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/admissions/learn/choosing-denver-law-myths-v.-facts">plea</a> for applicants. But I want to say something more about the opening paragraphs of that very misleading document.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Katz opens by appealing to authority. He tells potential applicants:</div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.4in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
Last year, Forbes
magazine – a respected source on value investing – touted the value of a legal
education, referring to law school as a “relatively low-risk investment that
will have an impact on your future and can pay exceptional dividends over a
lifetime.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.4in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
This advice seems to
fly in the face of the chorus of critics of legal education who would have you
believe that going to law school today would be a terrible investment. So who
is right? Forbes or the critics?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.4in 0.0001pt 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.4in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
Though popular
perceptions might lead you to follow the critics, the smart money should follow
Forbes’ advice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Trust Forbes, not the critics! It's a good line, except that Forbes did not endorse legal education in the way that Katz implies. The column cited by Katz was not written by “Forbes” or by any member of its editorial staff. It was written by a Forbes "contributor" named <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/people/shawnoconnor/">Shawn O'Connor</a>. O'Connor is the CEO of <a href="http://www.stratusprep.com/">StratusPrep</a>, a company that offers LSAT test prep classes and law school admissions coaching.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Stratus will happily charge you <a href="http://www.stratusprep.com/lsat-test-prep-pricing/">$1,599</a> for its basic LSAT prep course. If you want more, you can pay for plenty of other services--all the way up to <a href="http://www.stratusprep.com/l-discounted-package/">$7,180</a> for the "Diamond, All-in-One Package" that includes the LSAT class, 10 hours of LSAT tutoring, law school admissions counseling, and a law school "boot camp." Do you think O'Connor has a financial self interest in urging people to consider law school? Do you think his recommendation carries different weight than one from "Forbes"?</div>
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<br /></div>
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A sidebar to O'Connor's post explicitly <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/shawnoconnor/2012/04/05/grad-school-still-worth-the-money/">states</a> that "[t]he opinions expressed are those of the writer," not those of Forbes. That's a distinction that Dean Katz doesn't bother to make in telling prospective students that Forbes, "a respected source on value investing," has "touted the value of a legal education." If Dean Katz wants to tell applicants that the CEO of a company that makes lots of money selling LSAT prep courses has "touted the value of a legal education," that's fine. But he should be honest about his sources.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Forbes has published numerous columns about law schools and the legal job market. Contributor <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/people/petercohan/">Peter Cohan</a>, a management consultant and venture capitalist, asked just last week: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/01/31/does-america-need-202-law-schools/">Does America Need 202 Law Schools?</a> Cohan suggested that "law schools are highly profitable for the professors and administrators," that "radical changes in the way law is practiced means that the high tuitions imposed on aspiring lawyers to get that law degree are less likely to pay off," and that "law schools do not want to teach students the nuts and bolts of lawyering." </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
And then there was <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/people/jmaureenhenderson/">J. Maureen Henderson's</a> column headlined <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/06/26/why-attending-law-school-is-the-worst-career-decision-youll-ever-make/">Why Attending Law School Is the Worst Career Decision You'll Ever Make</a>. Henderson, another Forbes contributor, described the "misleading stats" disseminated by law schools, the "scant 8% of 2011 grads [who] are working at firms that employ 250 or more attorneys," and the "dismal" starting salaries for lawyers in small towns or rural areas.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There was even a column by my law school classmate, <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/people/deborahjacobs/">Deborah Jacobs</a> (who is actually on the Forbes staff as a Senior Editor) detailing <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2011/10/11/the-case-against-law-school/">The Case Against Law School</a>. In that column, updated just last week, Jacobs discusses the high debt incurred by law students, the "abysmal job market," and the ways in which technology, outsourcing, and other practices continue to squeeze that market.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
I'm not going to catalogue all of the posts about law school published by Forbes. There may be other contributors, like O'Connor, who think law school is a good investment. That's not the point. The point is that "Forbes" has not "touted the value of legal education" and Dean Katz should know that. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Good lawyers don't misstate their sources. They don't tell the court or opposing counsel that a precedent "holds X," when X appears only in a non-binding concurrence. Nor do good scholars misstate their sources. We don't say that "Forbes" has endorsed a position when the viewpoint comes from a single contributor with a financial interest in the position he advocates.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Trust. It's an asset that matters even more than tuition dollars, and it's declining fast.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br />
<b>Update [LP]:</b> The text below seems increasingly relevant to both this incident and several other recent public pronouncements by law schools deans:<br />
<br />
<b>ABA Accreditation Standards </b><br />
<br />
<b>Standard 509. CONSUMER INFORMATION</b><br />
<br />
(a) All consumer information that a law school reports, publicizes or distributes shall be complete, accurate and not misleading to a reasonable law school student or applicant. Schools shall use due diligence in obtaining and verifying consumer information. Violations of these obligations may result in sanctions under Rule 16 of the Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools.</div>
</div>
DJMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05131222175697527769noreply@blogger.com149tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-13440477940124507072013-02-07T06:09:00.000-08:002013-02-07T07:14:45.705-08:00Myths of Sisyphus<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last spring I participated in a “debate” with Martin Katz,
dean of the University of Denver’s law school, at a bar association event.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turned out not to be much of a
debate:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I presented the argument I
published subsequently in my <a href="http://www.mjlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Campos_MJLR_46.1.pdf">article</a> The Crisis of the American School, and
Katz, who had read a draft of the article, said he basically agreed with that
argument.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t actually know Katz, but from the few encounters I’ve
had with him over the years, he seems like a very bright guy, as well as a
pleasant, charming person. These qualities naturally made me want to think well
of him. On the other hand, because I realize such qualities are useful if you’re a
politician, or a university administrator, or an investment banker, or a serial
killer, etc., I’m also aware that as a rational matter being smart and pleasant
and charming has exactly nothing to do with one’s character, or lack thereof.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So reading <a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/admissions/learn/choosing-denver-law-myths-v.-facts">this</a> made me both sad and angry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It should make everyone who cares about
reforming legal education both sad and angry, because it’s really bad
stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(A distinguished colleague from a
distinguished law school located outside the great state of Colorado reacted to
it thus:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This is insane--so many
misstatements and omissions . . . Their selective reporting violates any
reasonable standard of professional ethics or academic integrity. Wow.”)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reading it also made me realize that, for those of us in
legal academia trying to do something about the mess we’ve collectively
created, every morning our rock awaits us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t have the patience to go through the whole thing line by line,
although practically every sentence in Katz’s argument features some sort of
statistical sleight of hand or methodological chicanery that does him no
credit. To put it bluntly, becoming a law school dean has either destroyed
Marty Katz’s reasoning skills, or his willingness to put intellectual integrity
ahead of the felt necessities of the time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Here I’ll focus on Katz’s treatment of DU’s employment and
salary data for the class of 2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Katz
argues that legal employment opportunities for new law graduates are on average
much better in Colorado than in the country as a whole:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>The math in Denver and Colorado is very different.</b> Here the
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment projects that there will be roughly
550 lawyer job openings per year over the next few years.[<a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/admissions/learn/choosing-denver-law-myths-v.-facts#footnote13">13</a>]
<b>This figure understates the job opportunities for JDs in the state</b>,
since it only counts jobs for which bar passage is required. (While some
critics scoff at jobs that do not require bar passage, many law school
graduates seek and enjoy such jobs. Even during the boom years, when law
graduates had fewer constraints, roughly 16% selected jobs for which bar
passage was not required.[<a href="http://www.law.du.edu/index.php/admissions/learn/choosing-denver-law-myths-v.-facts#footnote14">14</a>])
But even counting only the 550 bar-passage-required jobs projected each year in
Colorado, the situation looks good. When you consider that our state’s two law
schools, the primary suppliers for Colorado’s legal market, produce fewer than <b>450
new law graduates per year</b>, the math here looks favorable – <b>more
than one lawyer job for every law graduate in Colorado</b>. And most of
those jobs are in Denver.<br />
<br />
Of course lawyers move across state lines. So a comparison of in-state law
job openings to in-state law graduates may not fully capture the available jobs
situation. Because Denver is such a desirable place to live and practice law,
graduates from out of state law schools come here for jobs as well. In 2012,
roughly 1,000 people passed the Colorado bar exam. However, because of our
strong networks in the Denver legal community (roughly half of the practicing
lawyers are our graduates) and our strategic plan designed to produce
practice-ready lawyers, our graduates have a strong advantage in competing for
jobs in this market.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
This argument is weak well past the point of
disingenuousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presently about 1100
people pass the Colorado bar each year, so the ratio of available legal jobs to
annual bar passers is two to one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
figure should daunt the most special of snowflakes, but the actual situation is
far more problematic than that ratio suggests.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, lawyers from nearly 40 states can waive into the
Colorado bar if they’ve been practicing for at least five of the last seven
years, so the out of state competition for available jobs is hardly limited to out
of state people who pass the bar exam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Recently, I wrote a letter of recommendation for a 2011 CU grad who was
trying to get an “entry-level” DA job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The only entry-level feature of the job turned out to be the pay --
$48,000 – as it ended up going to a lawyer who had been a DA in a Midwestern state
since 2005, and who of course didn’t have to take the Colorado bar to get the
job).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And newly available legal jobs don’t just go to experienced
lawyers from other states. Some portion of those approximately 550 new jobs for
lawyers this year will go to licensed Colorado attorneys who are not currently
practicing law, and who have enormous advantages over new graduates in the
struggle for scarce positions (For one thing they have actually practiced law,
as opposed to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>being – supposedly -- “practice-ready”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the phrase “new jobs for
lawyers” is far from synonymous with “jobs for new lawyers.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for the claim that “many law graduates seek and enjoy”
non-law jobs, there’s an easy way to test this proposition, which is to look at
the employment statistics at a law school where almost all graduates have the
choice of taking a job that requires bar admission, and seeing how many choose
a “JD preferred” or completely non-legal position instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, in the Stanford class of 2011 a
total of nine people took JD preferred jobs, while one took a non-legally
related professional position, and no one took a non-professional job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By contrast at DU, 82 graduates took such
jobs (the percentages for the respective classes at the two schools who took
non-bar required jobs are 5.2% and 28.6%).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With the occasional exception of the person who enrolls in
law school to study international sports law in order to become Leo Messi’s
agent, people go to law school to be lawyers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Katz’s argument is that, as he’s
well aware, there’s no need to compare the total number of available legal jobs
in Colorado to the total number of DU and CU law grads in order to speculate
about how many local law graduates get such jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows the answer to that question: in the
class of 2011 140 of 287 DU graduates got full-time “long-term” -- meaning with
a term of at least year, so this counts state district court judicial
clerkships and the like -- jobs requiring bar admission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Almost everyone else in the class who was
listed as holding a bar-required job nine months after graduation was in a
short-term part-time position funded by the school itself).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Katz’s discussion of the “average” salary of DU law
graduates is also problematic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Katz
asserts that the average salary of 2011 DU grads nine months after graduation
was $70,922.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He even gives the
impression that he’s being conservative about this, since he then makes the
same adjustment NALP now makes with its salary data, which attempts to correct
for the higher reporting rates for high salaried positions, and asserts that
with this adjustment the average salary becomes $66,713 (What NALP does to
create its “adjusted mean” salary figure is to assume that, for example,
everyone working for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>firms of two to ten
lawyers is making the same average salary as the 35% of people working for such
firms who<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>do report their salaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is supposed to correct for the skewing
of salary averages that takes place because, by contrast to small firms, 93% of
big firm salaries are reported.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless
to say a lot of can openers are being assumed in all this, as there’s every
reason to believe that the reported salaries within cohorts are not
representative of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>non-reported
salaries within those cohorts).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how many 2011 DU law graduates were actually making $71K
or $67K in February of 2012?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can’t
know the exact answer, but we can make a pretty close approximation. 39% of the class had a salary reported, with a median of $57,500, so we could begin by observing that 19.5% of the class was reported to have a salary of $57,500 or more. Looking at the available data in more detail, the following graduates almost certainly weren’t being paid what Dean Katz characterizes as the “average” salary:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
19 unemployed graduates.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3 graduates whose employment status was unknown.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5 graduates who went back to school.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4 graduates who started solo practices.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
46 graduates working for firms of two to ten attorneys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(In Colorado these jobs usually pay between
$35,000 and $50,000).<br />
<br />
73 graduates working in various public positions (the 75<sup>th</sup>
percentile for the 39 reported salaries in this group was $53,000).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
28 graduates working in “academia” (26 of these jobs were
both short-term and part-time).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
59 graduates working in “business and industry.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It’s rare for a new law graduate to get an
in-house legal job, and even rarer for such a graduate to get a high-paying
non-legal job. Again for comparison purposes a total of nine 2011 Stanford
graduates took “business and industry” jobs, and Stanford is one of a tiny
handful of schools that does place a few graduates each year in high-paying
consulting jobs and the like).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This leaves the 32 graduates working for law firms of more
than ten attorneys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many of these
people were making what Dean Katz is characterizing as the “average” salary of
a 2011 DU graduate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can assume that
the 14 graduates working for firms of more than 50 attorneys were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nine graduates were working for firms of
11-25 lawyers, and nine others got jobs with firms of 26-50.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using NALP national averages for the class of
2011, we can estimate that three people in the former group and six in the
latter were making at least $70,000.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, by this estimate, it’s likely that somewhere around 23
of DU’s 287 graduates (8% of the class) were making $70,000 or more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now this estimate might be incorrect. It
might be 10% of the class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could
conceivably be 12%, if for example one assumes that a dozen of the “business
and industry” jobs paid at least $70,000 (This is extremely unlikely in my view.
Note that one graduate reported a salary of $350,000 – a figure that by itself
raises the “average” reported salary for the class by nearly $4,000, and which
suggests none of these figures should be considered models of scientific
accuracy).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But by no conceivable stretch can $70,000 be characterized
as an “average” – if by average one means in any way typical – salary for 2011
graduates of Dean Katz’s law school.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The saddest part of all this is that Dean Katz knows full
well how misleading his presentation of these statistics is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This wouldn’t necessarily be the case with
every legal academic: there are people on law school faculties who don’t know
the difference between a mean and median, and who believe that salary data
regarding graduates are comprehensive and reliable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever else one might say about him Katz --who
was a partner at a big Denver law firm before becoming a legal academic -- isn’t
a blissfully clueless idiot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What he is, I’m guessing, is increasingly desperate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And desperate people do desperate
things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
</div>
LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com144tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-22452079909889504182013-02-06T05:58:00.002-08:002013-02-06T06:39:01.464-08:00In the long runA reader suggested I take a look at Hamilton Nolan's <a href="http://gawker.com/5936244/unemployment-stories-vol-six-if-it-werent-for-my-children-i-probably-would-have-killed-myself-by-now?tag=hello-from-the-underclass">ongoing Gawker series</a> of unemployment stories. They make for harrowing reading, and a lot of them are from attorneys. Here's one from somebody still in free fall from a spot near the top of the profession:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Two years ago I was on top of the world – at least from
exterior appearances. Barely past 30, my salary was approximately a
quarter million dollars per year, I was living in a luxury high rise
with a view of Central Park from my balcony, and it seemed I was on the
fast track to a successful career. Now 18 months after losing my job at
the end of 2010, I've learned a lot of valuable life lessons but find
myself wondering, constantly every day, is there any hope left? The
Manhattan apartment is long-gone and replaced with a room at my father's
house in the exurbs of Atlanta, a house I helped him buy five years
ago. I've applied for over 750 jobs in the last year, but still I wait.
This is my story.<br />
We hear a lot of talk about the employment
crisis these days, from both sides of our so-called political spectrum.
No one has much in the way of solutions, and the options for the
unemployed seem to be Republicans that tell me what I need is to have my
unemployment cut off – then surely I'll be motivated to find a job.
Democrats at least don't think starvation will improve my job hunt, but
beyond affording me my luxurious life on unemployment, I hear scant
dedication to anything that might actually improve the employment
outlook. I remain a voracious consumer of news and from what I see and
hear portrayed in the media, the unemployed in this country are
generally older, often former factory workers. We hear much discussion
of how to address these workers in a nation that may no longer offer
employment they have experience in. I feel for these workers and don't
mean to diminish their situations – but I was supposed to be exempt from
that. In fact, based on what the media says, I don't exist. I attended
an Ivy League college and a top 5 law school (at least according to US
News' rankings). My first real job, which started shortly after my 25th
birthday, paid a salary of $125,000. That salary had doubled within 5
years. I was lucky enough to have the chance to go to some of the top
schools in America, and it seemed I was enjoying the rewards of
obtaining such a pedigree. Then it ended...</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
The question I find
myself grappling with these days is "is this the best we can do?" I've
spent months focusing on not being jealous or angry, and I've largely
succeeded. I really am happy for my friends that are having children,
and going on vacations, and otherwise moving forward and living their
lives. But is this a country where one false move (in my case, working
at the wrong law firm) can essentially end your chance at a productive
life? I admit I had an arrogance prior to my layoff – I never imagined
this could happen to me. I was no conservative, and I sympathized with
and believed we could and should do more to help the unfortunate in this
country – but I never believed I would be in that situation myself. I
was told from childhood on that a good education was the path to a
better life – and that if you were willing and able to work hard and had
something to contribute, you'd have opportunities in this country.
Where are those opportunities?</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
The most striking thing to me
during the coverage of the Occupy Movement last fall was the
"counter-protestors" (read: miserable assholes) yelling things like "Get
a job!" I would love one! As I mentioned previously, I've applied for
over 750 jobs in the last 18 months and continue to apply for 30-100
jobs each month. I've applied for jobs at law firms, scores of jobs with
the government, jobs at corporations, jobs at non-profits, jobs for
lawyers, jobs for non-lawyers, jobs as a paralegal, jobs as a writer,
jobs, jobs, jobs. I've applied for jobs from Seattle to Miami, from San
Diego to Boston, and I've applied to jobs overseas. Have work? Will
travel. Of course, while employment is improving marginally overall, it
hasn't improved in the legal sector. Total legal employment is lower now
than it was in 2008, despite the abundance of law schools in this
country pumping out nearly 50,000 new lawyers each year. I admit that I
have not yet applied to work in fast food or retail as I maintain the
hope that somehow, some way, I'll eventually find a position which could
eventually lead me back to a semblance of my old life. That said, I
don't see an abundance of "Help Wanted" signs at McDonald's or Best Buy.
The notion that people can just "Get a Job!" in this market is
laughable. The government's own numbers pretend that over 8 million
Americans have dropped out of the workforce in recent years; while you
may know of someone that struck oil in their backyard and actually
retired in their 30s or 40s, I'm confident most of these people are
simply unable to find employment. I wonder how they afford food – I fear
for my own future when unemployment is cut off. </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
I continue to
have some hope – I keep trying to tell myself that I have great
experience and a great background, and eventually that will mean
something to someone somewhere. I know I'm hard working - I billed well
over 2000 hours as my mother died of cancer in 2009 because the firm
expected nothing less. (For the non-lawyers reading, that translates to
working 60+ hours most weeks.) I also wonder and worry about the larger
country – if finding work is so hard and seemingly hopeless for someone
with my background, someone barely into their 30s, what is it like for
older workers with fewer credentials?</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
As another day starts in the
exurbs, I sigh. It's another day of nothing. I'll look at the usual job
boards. I'll read the 10+ emails I receive each morning with updated job
listings. I'll head to the gym. But in general, another day will come
and go and nothing will change. Maybe I'll receive a rejection letter or
two. Maybe I'll find a new posting for a job that would be perfect – if
only they decide to interview me. But really, I just wait. I watch the
clock spin in circles. I watch my life pass me by. I wonder how much
longer this can last. And I wait.</blockquote>
<br />
A few comments:<br />
<br />
(1) The most glaring gap in the relevant data for people trying to figure out what the long-term value of law degrees actually is these days is that we have so little information on long-term career outcomes. We have huge amounts of data -- much of it of dubious reliability, but still -- on immediate post-grad outcomes, which, as everyone outside the impenetrable special snowflake bubble now knows, look pretty awful.<br />
<br />
But what about nine years after graduation as opposed to nine months? One commenter on this site has posted dozens of comments about how law is a demographic pyramid, with fewer and fewer jobs available for middle-aged lawyers, and with rampant age discrimination simply being a standard feature of big firm and perhaps also in-house hiring and firing practices. As far as I can tell this perspective is anecdotal, which certainly doesn't discredit it, but we clearly need a lot of longitudinal work done on the subject. (Things such as <a href="http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/manuscandtablesMonahanandSwanson.pdf">this stud</a>y of the UVA class of 1990 are a start, but obviously a snapshot of one 23-year-old elite law school's graduating class 17 years after graduation in 2007 throws a very limited light on the present overall situation).<br />
<br />
(2) In particular, given that BigLaw is the only initial career option that makes any economic sense for anybody paying anything remotely close to sticker at about 75% of all law schools, we need more information on current as opposed to past exit options for BigLaw associates. Of course only about 15% of current graduates will ever work in BigLaw, but the importance of this demographic for law schools can hardly be overstated. Legal academics who complain about Kids Today thinking that a law degree should be a guarantee of a high-paying job need to answer this question: <b>Why exactly does it make sense for anybody to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct and opportunity costs by going to your law school, unless doing so guarantees at least a reasonably good shot at acquiring at least a temporarily high-paying job for at least a reasonable amount of time?</b><br />
<br />
Anyway, the "realistic" career path for students at the (12? 7? 4?) law schools that can still produce something resembling an actual answer to that question is:<br />
<br />
(a) Top Law School<br />
<br />
(b) Associate at V-whatever firm for X years, which will be dedicated to paying down debt and preparing for life post V-whatever firm.<br />
<br />
(c) ???<br />
<br />
How attractive (c) does or does not end up being for people currently in or considering law school is critical to the viability of what elite law schools are selling going forward, which in turn is for psychological/ideological reasons critical to the viability of what non-elite schools are selling, even though only a tiny minority of non-elite law school graduates will ever be on this particular career path.<br />
<br />
(3) A particularly critical benefit of their jobs that tenured legal academics tend to undervalue when they burble on about how they turned down lucrative careers for the vows of scholarly poverty is that their salaries don't have to be -- or haven't had to be until now -- discounted by any risk of falling to zero and staying there. It's hard to put a number on just how valuable that benefit is, not merely in terms of extrapolating income into the future, but in terms of the psychic benefit of not having the shadow of possible economic disaster constantly falling on whatever career success a lawyer is currently enjoying. This is just another way in which, as a practical matter, legal academics aren't really part of the legal profession at all.<br />
<br />
Today, thinking like a lawyer means thinking a lot about what will happen if and when you lose your current job. To the very limited extent that some legal academics may actually be starting to think about that, they are, in a sense, coming slightly closer to rejoining the profession they were so eager to escape.<br />
<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com246tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-68755717074431231732013-02-05T06:41:00.002-08:002013-02-05T06:41:42.854-08:00The American WayI have an <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/student_loans_the_next_housing_bubble/">article</a> in Salon on how the law school mess is an early warning signal for a system of higher education that is ultimately unsustainable, given the economic base from which its ideological superstructure (i.e., the axiomatic claim that educational debt is good debt) rises.<br />
<br />
In the short term, lots of institutions are banking (literally) on young people continuing to play a losing game because of poor information and -- even more crucially -- a widespread belief that with no apparent good alternatives, it makes sense to roll the dice by buying radically overpriced credentials, in the hope that something will work out.<br />
<br />
The other day, in the context of an argument about law school budgets, I heard the head of an admissions committee say with perfect complacency that there really wasn't much to worry about, because after all, what were these kids going to do, become investment bankers? This remark elicited an equally complacent chuckle from many of his colleagues.<br />
<br />
At that moment I had, perhaps for the first time in my life, a visceral sense of exactly why revolutions tend to be so violent. Not, of course, that I believe the lost generation is likely to head for the barricades any time soon. But if something cannot go on forever . . .LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com167tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-78689160291389530842013-02-03T19:07:00.002-08:002013-02-04T06:29:00.799-08:00The twenty-year dropThere was a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/education/law-schools-applications-fall-as-costs-rise-and-jobs-are-cut.html?_r=0">lot</a> of <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202585810784&slreturn=20130102145347">press</a> last <a href="http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/01/ny-times--10.html">week</a> about this year's dramatic fall in law school <a href="http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/three-year-volume.asp">applicants</a>. <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/01/update-on-collapsing-applications-to.html">LawProf</a> and <a href="http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2013/01/historic-levels.html">I</a> noted the carnage a few weeks ago: Law schools are about to hit a 30-year low in the number of applicants. The graph, if you haven't seen it, looks like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iGdiJkh-UWc/UQ1x6sjIElI/AAAAAAAAAHE/jQ13afxMbGg/s1600/Law+School+Applicants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iGdiJkh-UWc/UQ1x6sjIElI/AAAAAAAAAHE/jQ13afxMbGg/s320/Law+School+Applicants.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
That's pretty dismal. From a peak of 100,000 applicants, reached in both 1991 and 2003, applicants this year will drop below 60,000--and almost certainly below 55,000.<br />
<br />
But even this graph doesn't convey the full extent of disenchantment with legal education. The line looks vaguely cyclical. If applicant numbers rose between 1985 and 1991, and again between 1997 and 2003, won't they rise again? Is this just a temporary down-turn?<br />
<br />
To answer those questions, and understand the full extent of the shortfall facing law schools, we need to look at law school applicants as a percentage of college graduates. During the last thirty years, the number of college graduates has grown substantially--and those graduates form the pool of potential law school applicants.<br />
<br />
As the number of college graduates increased, the tally of law school applicants should have increased or at least remained steady. Instead, when measured as a percentage of college graduates, law school applicants have declined significantly over the last twenty years:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-In14dVZyDzM/UQ8hNN_KfdI/AAAAAAAAAIM/Tz3TnEAhOeo/s1600/Law+School+Applicants+as+a+Percentage+of+That.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-In14dVZyDzM/UQ8hNN_KfdI/AAAAAAAAAIM/Tz3TnEAhOeo/s320/Law+School+Applicants+as+a+Percentage+of+That.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In 1991, the high point for law schools, about <a href="http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0300.pdf">1,100,000</a> people earned college degrees. The same year, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/120669429/Law-School-Applicant-Volume">99,377</a> people applied to law school--a ratio of 9%. That doesn't mean that 9% of all college seniors applied to law school in 1991; each year's applicant pool includes older graduates along with college seniors. The ratio of applicants to contemporary college grads, however, is an excellent indicator of interest in law school.</div>
<br />
This year, approximately 1,750,000 people will earn college degrees. But we project no more than 55,000 law school applicants. The ratio for this year is 3%--just one-third what it was in 1991.<br />
<br />
Accounting for the growth in college graduates makes clear that law schools are not suffering a sudden or cyclical drop in applicants. Interest in our degree has fallen fairly steadily over the last twenty years. There was a small uptick of interest during the 2002 recession, but no increase at all during the Great Recession. At best, that more recent recession bought us a short pause in the decline.<br />
<br />
What if we measured law school applicants as a percentage of all adults with a college degree? This graph shows the number of law school applicants as a percentage of all <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/index.html">college grads</a> over age 25; it complements the previous graph by exploring law school's appeal to older applicants. Here, the decline is even steeper:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cfFO4wGda7w/UQ8QJmj14WI/AAAAAAAAAHk/jWgHpeozK7g/s1600/All+Bas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cfFO4wGda7w/UQ8QJmj14WI/AAAAAAAAAHk/jWgHpeozK7g/s320/All+Bas.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
These graphs persuade me that the drop in law school applicants is not cyclical; it's not related to the recession and jobless recovery; it's not even based solely on the most recent contraction in the legal market. College graduates have been losing interest in law school--compared to other graduate programs or workplace opportunities--for the last twenty years.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
What accounts for that decline? During those same two decades, law school tuition has risen extravagantly:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-akjGbowQM9o/UQ8S3nELCKI/AAAAAAAAAHs/HG3RdOKFOxs/s1600/Tuition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-akjGbowQM9o/UQ8S3nELCKI/AAAAAAAAAHs/HG3RdOKFOxs/s320/Tuition.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Even with student loans, we live in a market economy: When price rises, demand usually falls. Law schools thought their consumers were "price insensitive" and continued raising tuition. We didn't see that some students <i>were</i> price sensitive, and were turning away from our degree, because we were floating on a cushion of rising college graduation rates.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Now we've burned through the cushion. The steady decline has reached the point where we'll struggle to fill first-year seats. With poor placement rates, increased transparency about job outcomes, and ongoing shifts in legal practice, it will be very difficult for law schools to reverse this twenty-year trend. If we hope to do so, we have to look candidly at the roots of our long-term slide. One of those roots surely is the price of legal education. Rising cost, falling demand. Simple market economics.</div>
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<img align="left" height="640" hspace="12" src="file:///C:\Users\Deborah\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.png" v:shapes="Chart_x0020_1" width="0" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
DJMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05131222175697527769noreply@blogger.com167tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-10283822364100109112013-02-01T06:28:00.001-08:002013-02-01T07:23:57.700-08:00Wall Street Journal story implies we may not need more law schoolsThe Wall Street Journal has a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323926104578276301888284108.html">story</a> today on new law schools that are opening in Indiana and Texas, despite a cratering job market, skyrocketing debt, and a rapidly shrinking applicant pool.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Members of the law-school class of 2011 had little better than a
50-50 shot at landing a job as a lawyer within nine months of receiving
their degree, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis last year. At
the same time, some law graduates are saddled with as much as $150,000
in student-loan debt, in part because tuition is rising faster than the
rate of inflation.<br />
<br />
The statistics do give some educators pause. "It seems like the worst
possible time to open a new law school," said Brian Z. Tamanaha, a law
professor at Washington University in St. Louis and frequent law-school
critic who last year published a book titled "Failing Law Schools."</blockquote>
It's worth noting that, rather than representing anything like a worst-case scenario, $150,000 probably represents the<i> average law school debt</i> carried by 2012 graduates of private law schools at graduation. (The <i>average amount borrowed during law school</i> by 2011 graduates of such schools was $125,000, which doesn't include accrued interest. The average amount borrowed has been going up by about 5% per year, and accrued interest adds more than 15% to the principal at these debt levels. These figures don't include other educational debt).<br />
<br />
One feature of this subject that doesn't get much attention is the rate at which law school expansion has been accelerating. The number of ABA law schools increased by four over the course of the 1980s and by seven during the 1990s. Between 2000 and and 2009 the ABA accredited <i>18 new law schools</i>, even as the evidence of a hyper-saturated market for lawyers became increasingly compelling.<br />
<br />
BTW one myth purveyed by denialists -- Steve Diamond, who makes the claim in the WSJ story that "the financial backing [these new schools] have is presumably looking down the road beyond the downturn," is particularly fond of it -- is that the market for new attorneys was basically fine until it suddenly collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007. In fact a full third of all law graduates weren't getting legal jobs in the "golden years" prior to 2007. Here are the percentages from NALP of graduates whose employment status was known who had full-time jobs requiring bar admission nine months after graduation:<br />
<br />
2001: 68.3<br />
2002: 67.0<br />
2003: 65.5<br />
2004: 65.1<br />
2005: 66.7<br />
2006: 68.3<br />
<br />
This is an average for all schools. For the bottom 100, and especially for schools in the tier to which Indiana Tech and UT-North Dallas aspire, the percentage of graduates getting jobs was more on the order of 50%, even in the "best" of times. <br />
<br />
The 2007 financial crisis hit BigLaw hiring hard, and by extension the employment figures for elite and semi-elite schools, but of course the vast majority of law schools have never sent more than a small percentage of their graduates to large law firms. The crisis had only a marginal effect on the already-bad employment numbers of about 170 of the 200-odd ABA schools. <br />
<br />
As for the justifications for opening yet more law schools in the even more dire post-2007 environment, the WSJ story quotes the usual nonsense about access and affordability and practice-ready hands-on graduates:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ellen S. Pryor, associate dean for academic affairs at
UNT Dallas College of Law, said her school aims to serve local college
students seeking an affordable, hands-on legal education, and will draw a
different pool of applicants than other north Texas law schools.<br />
<br />
"I know applications are down," Ms. Pryor said, but "the fact that
nationwide numbers are down doesn't dishearten us from thinking we'll
get really good students and fulfill our mission."</blockquote>
UNT Dallas hasn't revealed yet what it plans to charge in tuition for its entering class of 2014, but Indiana Tech, which is putting forth precisely the same babble about why it's opening a law school, will charge nearly $30,000 per year to this fall's entering class, assuming there is one (andre douglas pond cummings, <a href="http://www.jdunderground.com/scam/thread.php?threadId=37274">his resplendent moniker</a> brutally subjected to abbreviation and capitalization by the capitalist capitalizers of the WSJ editorial staff, reveals that Indiana Tech is having quite a bit of trouble rounding up 100 intrepid souls for its entering class, so jah willing perhaps this particular farcical enterprise won't even get off the ground).<br />
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<br />LawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.com212