To more law schools.  A combination of two stories at the New York Lawyer makes the point I’ve argued here:  We don’t need more law school and we don’t need to continue to promote the notion that a law school degree is the ticket to fame and fortune.

New York, the law school state, fearing that some potential rival for the title will creep up on it and surpass it quietly, isn’t satisfied resting on its laurels.  No, it wants to add more law schools to its arsenal.  Perhaps the goal is to provide a lawyer for every resident.  Perhaps it means to send them out across the control, like sleeper moles, to awake one day and seize New Yorkean control over courtrooms everywhere.  Why knows?

But not everyone (aside from me) favors the idea:

The Bar Association of Erie County opposes “any and all plans to develop new law schools in New York State at this time,” according to a recent resolution adopted by its board of directors.

The Buffalo bar group’s resolution came in response to controversial budget items adopted by the Legislature in early April – allocations totaling $50.5 million toward the possibility of as many as three new law campuses. New York now has 15 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association, two of which are public institutions.

One argument in favor of adding 3 new law schools, two annexed to the State Universities at Stony Brook (on Long Island) and Buffalo Binghamton, and a third as part of a private college in beautiful downtown Rochester, is that there are only 2 public law schools in New York out of the existing 15, and these would offer a less expensive law school education to New Yorkers.

Are legislators trying to break the stranglehold of private law schools, offering access to the law to those who can’t afford the high price of a legal education?  If that was true, it would at least offer a rational basis for adding more law schools to a grossly oversaturated market.  But the alternative is that this is empire building (in the Empire State, get it?) by legislators trying to steer public monies, projects, jobs and control to their districts.

But simultaneously, the New York Lawyer points out that:

To hear many students tell it, law school is a guaranteed ticket to a well-paying career. So a recent milestone must have sounded like good news.

The United States last week became the world’s first nation of 200 accredited law schools, as the American Bar Association gave provisional approval to two North Carolina institutions.

Connect the dots here.  Two Hundred law schools put out a lot of lawyers.  Every year.  Year after year.  And they all have to do something with that degree.

But many students don’t realize at first that the high-paying law firms recruit almost exclusively at institutions ranked in the top 15 or so. Overall, the median salary for new lawyers is $62,000. For public interest law jobs, new lawyers can expect about $40,000.

Meanwhile, the average amount students borrow to attend a private law school surged 25 percent between 2002 and 2007 to $87,906, ABA figures show. For public law schools, borrowing averages $57,170.

“I think we have this fundamental disconnect between images of lawyers in the popular media, in the courtroom dispensing justice, where everyone seems prosperous and well paid,” said William Henderson, an Indiana University-Bloomington law professor who studies the job market. “The reality is for a lot of people, law school is a route to trying to start your own private practice, and that’s a very crowded business right now.”

Given the law porn that has become the weapon of choice for law schools to deceive solicit young people to send in that deposit, the dubious use of statistics to support the belief that law school is the academic alternative to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and the pervasive cultural belief that being a lawyer is a guarantee to a life of comfort, happiness and fulfillment, the creation of yet more law schools is like offering heroin to an addictive society. 

Contrary to popular belief, there is a saturation point in education.  Every American cannot be a lawyer, or a doctor, or an Indian Native-American chief.  Aside from the harm this does to the young people who are being led down the garden path to lawyer-misery, the dilution of the quality of the bar (that horse may have long ago left the barn) and the drain of talent from disciplines that would provide more societally beneficial skills, the creation of too many lawyers results in a mass of social problems created by idle lawyer hands. 

If the public authorities feel compelled to add new public law schools, then they should close two for every new one opened.  Or mandate lower tuition with increased entrance requirements.  But stop ignoring the reality in the name of urban renewal, local pork or better access for the poor. 

We are producing too many lawyers.  This isn’t helping anyone.