tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post5122427654132127566..comments2023-10-30T08:41:06.178-07:00Comments on Inside the Law School Scam: Thinking the unthinkableLawProfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-68929484449962045902013-01-23T17:40:20.325-08:002013-01-23T17:40:20.325-08:00I definitely believe a lot of whats stated here. I...I definitely believe a lot of whats stated here. I will share this to my friends. Thank you very much.<br /><br />Check this out:<br /><a href="http://www.ironcomet.com/Medisoft/" rel="nofollow">Medisoft</a><br /><i>Most widely used medical software</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-52959241900710771952012-05-10T14:08:34.764-07:002012-05-10T14:08:34.764-07:00Anon @12:24am, isn't that pretty much how thin...Anon @12:24am, isn't that pretty much how things are now?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-41666658596308234502012-05-10T11:55:06.735-07:002012-05-10T11:55:06.735-07:00Feeling guilty much?Feeling guilty much?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-18543340275587722522012-05-10T08:11:05.175-07:002012-05-10T08:11:05.175-07:00Hey guess what - apparently I was a fool not only ...Hey guess what - apparently I was a fool not only for paying so much for private law school (T2/3) but for completing my bachelor's degree as well!<br /><br />This online law school says you can get your JD admission after just an associates! or less!!:<br /><br />"A Bachelor's degree is not required for JD Law Admission. The Law School requires only one of the following to be admitted to Novus Law School:<br /><br />An Associate’s Degree or<br />60 semester units or <br />Passed School Exam or<br />Five years professional or technical management or administrative experience"<br /><br />Geeze.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-71632100231403885872012-05-10T01:27:59.312-07:002012-05-10T01:27:59.312-07:00Things will never be how they once were, the "...Things will never be how they once were, the "profession" is over. Calling oneself a lawyer is like a chiropractor calling himself a doctorAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-6823990090672042622012-05-10T00:24:12.140-07:002012-05-10T00:24:12.140-07:00THE SOLUTION
-------------------------
Rewrite t...THE SOLUTION<br /><br />-------------------------<br /><br />Rewrite the laws ANNUALLY, and RANDOMLY and make it illegal for any non-lawyer to attempt to interpret or apply them.<br /><br />Booyah, full employment + huge huge demand for law schools. <br /><br />YOU'RE WELCOME.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-89292426486579229422012-05-10T00:21:44.632-07:002012-05-10T00:21:44.632-07:00"No, the current ratio of law school tuition ..."No, the current ratio of law school tuition to jobs and salaries definitely cannot continue at any school."<br /><br />Sure it can, easily. Taking out loans to attend a shit law school still beats working at walmart for $7 an hour, even if this vacation only lasts 3 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-18463183668613112842012-05-09T21:05:29.704-07:002012-05-09T21:05:29.704-07:00No, the current ratio of law school tuition to job...No, the current ratio of law school tuition to jobs and salaries definitely cannot continue at any school. "Half as many (or less) for half as much (or less)" as LawProf has offered. I am employed again for several years after a few months on the street unemployed after 11 years experience, but the partner I was hired to work for has not been consistently employed since then and he/she isn't a lot older than me. I have tried to make the point repeatedly for months now that even as bad as the first job statistics are, they get even worse long term. Only a small percentage of graduates get high paying jobs at all, and a much smaller percentage remain employed in high paying jobs over a period of 10 or 20 or 30 years. I have made that point to my own law school dean via conversations, and I intend to make it known to the law school faculty who taught me. I have confirmed my anecdotal observations with my law firm colleagues and law school colleagues. The status quo is ruining tens of thousand upon tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of lives based upon assumptions that are no longer true. There are far, far too many lawyers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-46647825333592511772012-05-09T20:48:08.280-07:002012-05-09T20:48:08.280-07:00@DJM
As a 1992 graduate I think it important to ...@DJM <br /><br />As a 1992 graduate I think it important to recognise that 1990 was a really great year to have graduate from law-school. 1988 and 1989 OCI at say Georgetown was crammed, associate pay had soared to $60,000 to $66,000 and it seemed that everyone who could walk and chew gum at the same time got jobs. 1991 was a bad year to graduate - OCI was way down (about 1/2 or less), job offers were being rescinded and by 1992 the market had cratered and never really recovered and OCI was at about 2-30% of the level it had been. Two years made a huge difference. 1993 was a trainwreck.<br /><br />A survey of 1990 graduates would seem to me to be to be at a moment when graduates to some degree have had a charmed moment - never to be repeated.MacKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10442386017204584747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-33998497017135841372012-05-09T20:43:26.807-07:002012-05-09T20:43:26.807-07:00@7:40/8:20, ouch, I'm really sorry to hear tha...@7:40/8:20, ouch, I'm really sorry to hear that--although not surprised. My law school classmates are now in their late fifties, and I've heard about a surprising number of "retirements" during the last three years. Some of them are people pushed out of BigLaw firms--the few who persevered through to partnership years ago only to discover that partnership isn't nearly as secure as they once thought.<br /><br />And the selfishness of the "haves" in this recession has really surprised me. I'll have to look back but, when the legal economy slowed in the early 90s, I remember faculty salaries freezing--and I think tuition froze as well. During the last four years, schools have blithely continued raising tuition and faculty salaries. There's been no sense of helping one another (i.e., our students and recent grads) through bad times. The same seems to have been true at many big firms. I don't know if I'm falling prey to the nostalgia trap (people were kinder and gentler then...) or if it's a real difference. But the current ratio of law school tuition to jobs and salaries definitely cannot continue at most schools.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-62383621755964868562012-05-09T20:21:11.988-07:002012-05-09T20:21:11.988-07:00"I came out in the early 1990's when the ..."I came out in the early 1990's when the job market was terrible (it had tanked really in 1991 as I recall), but not as bad as it is now."<br /><br />That's correct. It probably bottomed out around 1993 or 1994, and remained depressed for a couple of years after that, not getting back to something resembling normal until 1997.<br /><br />With regard to the survey under discussion, though, Virginia may have been highly ranked enough to have been largely unaffected by the down job market of that era. That's one thing that makes the current down job market different from past ones. In the early '90s, the T14 probably barely noticed that anything was amiss. In the current recession, I'm not sure if any schools can say that; at most, maybe HYS can.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-56426625382874118062012-05-09T20:20:41.224-07:002012-05-09T20:20:41.224-07:00DJM, it's 7:40 here again, you are absolutely ...DJM, it's 7:40 here again, you are absolutely correct that many more experienced grads have experienced shockwaves since 2007. I know some of them. I was reading an article from BCG Attorney Search today entitled "Are You About to be Laid Off" which discussed some of the unfortunate changes in the law business as it became a pure business and much less a profession progressively since the 1970's. Lawyers are no longer carried very long by a firm, at least biglaw, once the work decreases, which most often is a pure product of the economy, not the lawyers affected. The relatively rosy results of 2007 are unlikely to remain so true in 2012 among the respondents. For instance, I'll share a personal example. I was hired via a headhunter to a very biglaw firm. They paid 60K to the headhunter to hire me. One small group of partners took over the work that historically had been done by another partner because their litigations had gone away unexpectedly, and whoof, I was put on the street less than 2 years after being hired....given all of 2 months to find another job though it took this really biglaw 3 months to navigate their own redtape to hire me and pay the 60K for the privilege of doing so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-67979476646001131762012-05-09T20:17:15.554-07:002012-05-09T20:17:15.554-07:00fat guy, I think the downturns in the 90s and earl...fat guy, I think the downturns in the 90s and early 00s were different in both kind and scale from the current downturn. I don't have the data yet to support that but my personal impressions are of great difference.<br /><br />I was thinking just today, with our graduation on Friday, that over the last two years I have stopped asking graduates what they "are doing next year." That's no longer a happy question to ask at graduation; there are just too many graduates still looking for jobs. <br /><br />That wasn't true in the 80s, 90s, and earlier part of this decade at either the U of Illinois (where I taught before) or Ohio State. Even during the downturns, I routinely asked grads about their jobs and most had them. Quite a number didn't get the jobs or salaries they wanted, especially during the lean years, but almost all of them had legal jobs to point to.<br /><br />It says something dramatic, I think, when a professor at a top-50 school no longer feels comfortable asking graduates "so where will you be working next year?" And, of course, the even scarier question would be, "so, when do you think you will finish paying off your law school loans? Any chance you'll finish before you send your own children to college?"<br /><br />What this says is just what LawProf and others have been saying for months/years now. But it struck me how the questions I ask grads have changed so much. "Where will you be studying for the bar? Will you have a chance to relax this summer? Do you have any travel plans?" Those seem to be the appropriate "happy" questions for graduation 2012-style.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-39834811449203734472012-05-09T20:15:13.199-07:002012-05-09T20:15:13.199-07:00Leaving BigLaw is a nonissue isn't it? I mean...Leaving BigLaw is a nonissue isn't it? I mean, is there really anyone who honestly thinks they have a chance at making partner? I thought it was common knowledge that you go to BigLaw to get the training and skills and then leave / get pushed out and go do something else. Now, whether or not those "other" opportunities are still around is the question although it appears those opportunities were around for the people in this study.fat guynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-38864564574584704162012-05-09T19:55:25.122-07:002012-05-09T19:55:25.122-07:007:40, I think your observations may connect with t...7:40, I think your observations may connect with the timing of Monahan and Swanson--they collected their data in 2007, when the profession was at the height of a boom. It might be informative to survey the same Virginia graduates now to see how they have fared after the big bust of 2008. Still much better, I'm sure, than new grads coming into the market after 2008, but these more experienced grads must have felt some shockwaves.<br /><br />Your comment reminded me of some other interesting points from Monahan and Swanson. First, consistent with your view of turbulence, only 14.6% of the respondents were still working in their first post-clerkship job at the time of the survey. In other words, even after disregarding clerkships (as inherently time limited), about 85% of the respondents changed jobs at least once.<br /><br />Second, consistent with comments posted here before about how many associates leave BigLaw, 57.6% of the respondents took their first post-clerkship job in a large firm, but only 27.6% were working in one of those firms 17 years later. Even those figures don't tell us about BigLaw because M&S defined a large law firm as one with 100 lawyers or more.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-69895566186511711162012-05-09T19:48:44.215-07:002012-05-09T19:48:44.215-07:00DJM,
Wouldn't the study reflect the downturn i...DJM,<br />Wouldn't the study reflect the downturn in the 90's along with the downturn after 9/11? <br /><br />With regard to point #1 on your list, earning a high salary generally requires time and attention commitments that are inconsistent with being the primary care provider for children.<br /><br />However, I would note in addition to your points that tuition has increased dramatically at UVA even from 2006 when I started (about $30K) to $45K for this year.fat guynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-84050407404331615972012-05-09T19:40:25.049-07:002012-05-09T19:40:25.049-07:00I have read this study regarding Virginia graduate...I have read this study regarding Virginia graduates before, and I was honestly shocked by it. I went to a solid second tier school and was very near the top of the class (5% or so). I came out in the early 1990's when the job market was terrible (it had tanked really in 1991 as I recall), but not as bad as it is now. Admittedly, few of my school's graduates had ever gone to biglaw in New York or Chicago or Washington or Los Angeles. Hence, I don't know the New York corporate and financial crowd. However, I went into the patent field first in Los Angeles, then Washington and then Silicon Valley during the technology boom of the late 1990s, first a large patent (IP) boutique and then biglaw. At that time intellectual property was arguably the hottest subspecialty and still is warmer than most subspecialties. There was a lot of movement and growth in that field, and admittedly firms grew and shrank (mostly grew and a lot), and the landscape changed rather quickly. During the last almost 20 years, I witnessed a lot of job changing on both coasts and encountered plenty of t14 graduates. My experience is that there are many of those once highly sought after IP attorneys, t14 included, associates and partners alike, who are not presently working at all, who are severely underemployed (as in billing a number of hours that would not be enough to remain employed in biglaw for very long), or who are working in corporations where their compensation does not compare favorably to that reported for the UVA graduates from 1990. Many/most of my colleagues have had rather booms and busts in their career, and unfortunately a very large percentage, perhaps a majority, are in a bust currently. For what it's worth, the compensation reports of the UVA graduates does not appear to me to be representative of the people that I know, largely 1990-2000 graduates, t14 included and biglaw included. I'm just saying, the Monahan and Swanson report does not resemble the reality I know.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-88972606028333704792012-05-09T19:37:14.632-07:002012-05-09T19:37:14.632-07:00And now a few negative items from the Monahan and ...And now a few negative items from the Monahan and Swanson study; these are data points suggesting that, even for Virginia's class of 1990, things weren't entirely rosy in 2007 (the high point of the legal market). Monahan and Swanson themselves note these facts:<br /><br />First, the women in this class had a hard time combining work and family. Only 61.1% of the women were employed full-time in 2007. The most common reason for part-time or no employment was to care for children. That's a choice that the women made, but we have to think about the finances of a professional system that offers high salaries to some but makes it difficult--as a practical matter--for people to earn those salaries if they want to spend time with family. <br /><br />Second, although the mean salaries sound relatively rewarding, they appear to mask large variation. When asked to identify household income (which would include the salary of any partner, as well as the grad's own salary), ten percent of the grads reported a pre-tax household income of $75,000 or less. One quarter reported a household income of less than $150,000--that's after 17 years in the workforce and including the income of any spouse.<br /><br />Third, although four fifths of the respondents said they were satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer, about half of those respondents (38% overall) were just "moderately satisfied." That still leaves 43% who were "extremely satisfied," an impressive number, but the "moderately satisfied" group might be less enthusiastic than the overall "81% satisfied" summary suggests.<br /><br />Finally, there's the question of the 28% who didn't respond to the survey. Are their views similar to those expressed by the respondents? No one knows for sure with a survey like this. If they're just like the respondents, then 81% of the class overall was satisifed with their decision to become lawyers. If the nonrespondents are so happy practicing law that they couldn't be bothered to respond, then about 86% of the full class is satisfied. On the other hand, if the nonrespondents hate their decision--and threw out the survey in disgust--then only 58% of the class is satisfied with their decision and 37% are somewhat or strongly dissatisfied.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-43590376156013032422012-05-09T19:36:49.970-07:002012-05-09T19:36:49.970-07:00Waiting for the negative interpretation of the stu...Waiting for the negative interpretation of the study...don't leave us on a cliffhanger here.fat guynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-40587767617725980632012-05-09T19:25:27.041-07:002012-05-09T19:25:27.041-07:00It's kind of hard to see how a comparison to a...It's kind of hard to see how a comparison to a study done 20 years after students graduate with "law students today" is helpful. This is not to deny the problems that have been recounted here, but the fact is that we do not know what is going to happen over the next 20 years. We just don't. We can guess, and may turn out to be correct. But you can't know. So, the Virginia study is interesting for its time. We can't have a 20 year out comparison until today's grads are twenty year out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-42207509050772170672012-05-09T19:24:04.390-07:002012-05-09T19:24:04.390-07:00DJM, I agree that the UVA study is interesting but...DJM, I agree that the UVA study is interesting but limited for the reasons you note -- conditions in the legal profession as a whole are very different today for entrants in general, and of course graduates of elite national schools are in many ways an unrepresentative subgroup. <br /><br />A side note: I worked on the Chambers study the authors cite (I was Chambers' RA) and this is an area of special interest for me.LawProfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05174586969709793419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-23371302390132005012012-05-09T19:03:58.582-07:002012-05-09T19:03:58.582-07:00Oops, a correction on the data from Monahan and Sw...Oops, a correction on the data from Monahan and Swanson: The graduates were surveyed in 2007, twenty years after they began law school (rather than twenty years after graduating). The difference between 17 years in the workplace and 20 probably isn't much, but the particular timing of the survey is: Monahan and Swanson had no way to know that the legal market would crash in 2008, but of course it did. So all of these grads were surveyed before they experienced any fallout from the great recession.<br /><br />Sorry to be posting so many comments in a row, but I thought I'd answer the question about Monahan and Swanson.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-8272360392078180462012-05-09T18:56:51.786-07:002012-05-09T18:56:51.786-07:00The "positive" way to interpret the Mona...The "positive" way to interpret the Monahan and Swanson study is to accept the data as the authors report it: Twenty years after law school, 81% of Virginia's 1990 grads were satisfied with their decision to become lawyers and 86% were satisfied with life more generally. The average 2010 salary of grads working full-time in big law firms was $523,000, with lower means in other fields. But even in government (the lowest paid category), mean salary was $129,000 twenty years after law school.<br /><br />Notably, these grads also thought very highly of their law school preparation. 38.9% strongly agreed with the statement "the University of Virginia School of Law prepared me well for my legal career," and another 45.9% agreed. Only 4% disagreed with that statement.<br /><br />If these findings are representative of the class, then they're a pretty happy group. And that can be a problem when challenging the conditions in law schools today: The picture conveyed by this study corresponds very well, I think, with the image most professors have of law school graduates. Most professors graduated from T14 schools (like Virginia) and most graduated in times much more like 1990 than 2012.<br /><br />My guess is that recent Virginia grads face many more challenges than these 1990 ones. 78.6% of the 2011 class graduated with law debt, and that debt averaged $117,886. Nine months after graduation, 17.3% of the class was working in fellowships funded by Virginia itself. Those fellows earned from $27,000 to $40,000, with the majority earning the lower figure.<br /><br />Yet it is hard for faculty to discard their image of law school careers as they used to be for graduates of T14 schools. The positive interpretation of Monahan and Swanson supports that image--and distracts us from addressing today's practice market for today's graduates at a large range of law schools. Now, remember, that's the "positive" interpretation....DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-23448893811506823032012-05-09T18:31:02.283-07:002012-05-09T18:31:02.283-07:00The Monahan and Swanson study is very well done. F...The Monahan and Swanson study is very well done. For those who haven't looked at it, they surveyed Virginia's class of 1990 twenty years after graduation. 72% of the class completed the survey, which is a very high percentage for most social science studies. And the survey was conducted by an organization independent of the law school, with strict assurances of confidentiality, which should have increased the candor of responses.<br /><br />But even a well done study like this has serious limits when examining today's law schools--as the authors themselves acknowledge. In separate comments, I'll explain two ways to interpret Monahan & Swanson, both of which can lead to pessimistic views of different types. (I've learned to keep these comments short(er) to avoid the spam filter, so on to a new comment....)DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5164886390834386622.post-47981565318866880342012-05-09T16:12:47.048-07:002012-05-09T16:12:47.048-07:00@2:21 p.m.: The faculty prism, I think, is much mo...@2:21 p.m.: The faculty prism, I think, is much more insidious than "less work for me." The faculty want to hire five new colleagues (most or all of whom would be replacements for retirements) because more faculty means "better rankings and more prestige." And it's relatively easy for faculty then to persuade themselves that better rankings and more prestige are good for our students and alumni--not just for the faculty themselves.<br /><br />For faculty inclined to think this way, the prism has several facets that seem quite rational. More faculty do, in fact, tend to produce higher rankings (or at least maintenance of current rank in competition with other schools who are also hiring). Students and alumni do care about rank, and the school's ranking can even affect job prospects for new grads. <br /><br />That's one reason it's so hard to shatter the prism--self interest combines with factors that have superficial appeal and may even have made sense 20 years ago. I do think the debt and salary numbers are striking (and very surprising to many faculty) so I keep plugging away with those. But even there, I think there's the delusional hope that if we just raised our ranking a little, then our students would get much better jobs, and everything would be fine with the world again.DJMhttp://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=38noreply@blogger.com