When Mark Greenbaum’s Op-Ed in the L.A. Times appeared, arguing that law schools produce too many lawyers and, given the ABA’s conflicted interest and willingness to continue to allow new schools to open and produce far more lawyers than society either needs or can even absorb, I yawned. It’s not that Greenbaum’s point wasn’t well taken. but that this is old news.
With 45,000 new lawyers emerging annually to fill 30,000 jobs, how much of an argument does it take to suggest that the numbers don’t work? And that doesn’t even address whether those 30,000 jobs are really needed, or can be successfully absorbed into the market. Bear in mind that we’re talking jobs, which means we’re ignoring the starving solo practitioners sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. Or brainstorming his next twit in the hope of scaring up a case.
The immediate reaction from those whose livelihoods depend on the constant influx of new children into the meat grinder was as anticipated: They don’t see a problem. Paul Cassell at VC had this to say about too many law schools and too many law students:
Perhaps, as a law professor, I’m biased on this. But I don’t see a general market failure requiring federal government action, although perhaps (as the author suggests) regulation of self-reported data on job placement should be considered. The author also contends that the ABA has a conflict of interest in regulating law schools. I agree — but not because (as the author maintains) the ABA is allowing too many law schools. If there are too many law schools, prospective law students can surely figure that out. The problem with ABA regulation is that it seems to get diverted from focusing on educational issues to extraneous, political issues.
Pity the poor lawyers whose wages are being “suppressed.”
Even if lawyers’ pay were to go down significantly, they would still be near the top of the income distribution, and would still be making more money than liberal arts graduates without science, engineering, or math skills could earn in most other fields. Obviously, the present recession has lowered wages and increased unemployment among lawyers. But the same can be said for virtually every other profession. The bottom line is that most lawyers are extremely well off, and don’t need any special government assistance to prop up their incomes.
Meanwhile, Devan Desai over at Concurring Opinions argues that the education law schools are providing is wonderful, despite all the griping by lawyers that they’re not only turning out too many products, but lousy ones at that.
Law school doesn’t work. The model is broken. We need to train students to be ready to practice as full lawyers right out of law school. These are, of course, slightly hyperbolic reductions of some of the current claims and possible crises in legal education. Nonetheless, there has been discussion of whether the downturn means that law schools need to rethink what they are doing.While Desai’s “the grass is always greener” argument is a defense of the status quo, his resort to extremist positions, false choices, reveals the desperation within the Academy. Since when does critical thinking skills preclude competency at the performance of some minimal level of practical lawyering? Forget “full lawyers right out of law school,” and think any viability as lawyers at all.
I have written before that I think law school offers a special skill better than other schools: critical thinking. None of which to say that legal education could not improve. But insofar as that drive to improve is a claim for more practical training, there is another reason to pause. Business schools and at least one business leader seem to say that what they want is someone with, wait for it, great critical thinking skills. What? Yes. Excellent critical thinking skills are requested. And it gets better. Business schools are under criticism for, wait for it, being too practical.
The parallel profession of law professor is at stake here, and it’s lifeblood is students willing to risk their financial futures and three years of their lives to engage in a course of study that prepares them to do little more than take the bar examination, the reward for which is to enter a field that doesn’t have enough jobs for them and join a society that has no use for them.
Lest the starving lawyers say “right on,” bear in mind that you were the fodder in the law school machine a few minutes ago. So now that you’ve got your ticket, shut the doors and stop the influx? What makes you think that society needs you any more than it needs next year’s class?
All these spilled words ignore the obvious. There are far too many lawyers, and the conflict is between an institution that exists to produce them and a society that can’t take any more. But Dan Hull, whose love of small furry animals and desire to cuddle with saucy women allows a clearer vision than most, gets to the heart of the solution at What About Clients?
Or, “You Got Anyone On That Campus Who Can Chew Gum, Cite-Check, And Look You In The Eye At The Same Time?”. We note that practical skills are being mentioned more in writings about law school education. Bravo. Show us. We’re tired of wasting our money.* Last month we wrote about American law schools–and this time only a few people complained. More recently we noticed these: “ Problems in the law school ‘business plan’” at From Burke to Kirk and Beyond, which shares a few things in common, mostly good, with this blog, and “ The changing face of the early stages of law practice” at Libertas et Memoria, which comments on the recent ABA story about a possible new premium placed on practical skills that got us so excited we forgot to fire people last Friday.
Finally, an interesting excerpt from FBTK :Law schools will be the last to abandon speculative debt as the means of financing themselves through their willing applicants, because a very large number of applicants are smarty-pants who couldn’t make it as scientists, engineers, bankers, financiers, etc. The applicant doesn’t realize how speculative his investment is until he is one to four years in.
*WAC? could care less about student debt. Your problem, Teacups. Don’t any of you have family money? Enrique, would you be good enough to decant the Port? Kindly leave the bottle as well.
Forget the ABA. Forget the lawprofs. Forget the crippling debt that law students will carry with them as they pursue their careers in used car sales, enhanced by their critical thinking skills. And forget the lawyers who sit waiting by the phone for someone to feed them a case so they won’t starve. None will save the legal profession.
Law school, and the legal profession, has become a crap shoot thanks to all of the above. Few law students, just as few lawyers, belong in the profession. It’s time to come to grips with the fact that we not only produce far too many lawyers, but far too many lawyers who either lack the ability to practice law, are too selfish or narcissistic to put in the effort demanded of an excellent (or even competent) lawyer or lack the mindset to be a professional whose responsibility is to serve their client.
The future of the law is survival of the fittest. Law schools will churn out as many lawyers as they can, no matter how unneeded, how ill-prepared or how ill-suited to the profession. The ABA will continue to approve new schools as long as they can draw a picture on the back of a matchbook. Lawprofs will continue to lecture on the theories behind Law and Television Sitcoms, while Biglaw collapses, solos sit by the phone and social media gurus craft websites to make dumber than dirt lawyers look like Learned Hand.
Our own inability, more precisely refusal, to recognize the obvious will bring this house of cards down around our heads. So mommas, save your retirement funds for that new Cadillac, because throwing it at junior to make him a lawyer is a total waste of money. But if you decide to do it anyway, you’re the one who will have to live with the bad bet. I know it’s harsh, but Malthus had a point. Not everybody can be Super Super Lawyers.
Got it, Teacups?
Unfortunately a lot of these will “mutate” into politicians!
Only the ones with low self-esteem.
OK- I hear this all the time, and I don’t get it at all.
1) Of course law students are not prepared to practice right out of law school. But the same is true of every other profession out there. Med students graduate and then do 3-8 years of residency and fellowship before they are ready to practice, MBA’s are all shuffled into middle-management, a strata that exists only to teach college graduates how to function in a business environment, even plumbers have to do an apprenticeship after trade school before they can be licensed. Why should we expect law schools to churn out fully-functional lawyers?
2) Lawyers make a ton of money. I make about the least money that a lawyer can possibly make (slightly under 40k), and it’s still more than most people in my (admittedly poor) town. And from where I am now, it’s only possible to move up. For that matter, if they lay me off when the new budget comes down (very possible), I could teach high-school and make the same amount of money. It’s not big money, but it’s plenty for most people- hell, I even own a BMW like a real lawyer (1989 325ix).
3) At this point, debt is for rich people. I know it was different in the past, but the CCRAA set things up so that there’s no excuse to whine about debt. You graduate and start paying 15% of the portion of your AGI that is above 150% of the poverty line. If you are in any kind of public-service job (law-related or not, being a school janitor counts) your debt is wiped clean after 10 years, if you’re in the private sector, it takes 25 years. So unless you are making a bunch of money, in which case you have nothing to complain about, the loan payments are minimal. For reference, I owe about 180k, and my loan payments are slightly less than $250 per month. I know people who spend that kind of money on their cell phone bill.
I’m the guy who all this whining is supposed to be about. I went to a third tier school (by choice, not by necessity), I graduated with close to 200k in debt, and I took a job that paid about the same money as I was making before I started law school (public defender). But I switched from a profession (teaching) where salaries top out at about 60k to one where you really can make a LOT of money as you get experienced, my debt is totally manageable, whatever I haven’t paid will disappear in nine more years, and I fucking love being a PD.
Just to be clear, this is not an endorsement of law schools. I hated law school. But it taught me what I needed to know in order to get started, and it was about as painless as it could be. All I’m saying is that the people who can’t get jobs are largely not looking in the right places (we have openings going unfilled at the moment), the debt should be a non-issue at this point, and being a lawyer is a blast. I don’t see what’s to complain about.
Scott,
I think I’m missing something here and I’d appreciate it if you clarify it. What’s the problem with too many lawyers? What I mean is, if the issue is that there are no jobs for these folks (or no prospect of a successful practice for lack of work) – well, that’s a marketplace issue and hey, you signed up for a packed marketplace, good luck. If the point is that the number of lawyers out there forces a worse product (worse lawyering), that’s not a law school problem – that’s a welcome to the bar association problem.
I’m not writing to espouse my thoughts – I’d like to hear what you think – but for me, I’d rather see a more stringent barrier to the marketplace (mandatory apprenticeship, harder bar exams, regular testing) instead of limiting the number of law school graduates.
Plus, would you agree that there aren’t a lot of good (read: competent) lawyers? Can’t I just be a competent lawyer and so none of this will affect me.
Thanks for your thoughts –
Victor
Is it all just a marketplace issue? Idle hands and all? Or do underutilized lawyers wreak havoc on society and themselves, cannibalizing professionalism, compromising ethics, sacrificing clients, in the name of earning a living?
If the only by-product of having too many lawyers (and too many incompetent lawyers) was that the undeserving go hungry, then I’m with you 110%. But that isn’t the only by-product.
And given the great homogenizer, the internet, there is suddenly a way for the best lawyer and the worst lawyer to appear the same: Just change the name at the top of the webpage. If anything, the worst lawyer has a leg up since he’s got far more time to work on his SEO, while the best is busy representing clients.
The permutations of the problem are endless, but pervasive.
No, law students aren’t like med students, and neither are like MBAs (hint: they aren’t licensed professionals). No, lawyers don’t make tons of money. What constitutes a ton of money to you may change in a few years. Give it time.
If you are happy with how your life and career are going, that’s great. But you aren’t the measure of the profession, so you cannot extrapolate from your personal happiness with you lot in life that there is no problem, except from a uniquely narcissistic slackoisie perspective.
You raised a lot of points, most of which are easily disposed of and most readers will see the errors of your understanding without my having to add my 2 cents, so rather than belabor the point, I merely add my personal congratulations on your achieving slackoisie nirvana. Enjoy the Cheetos and the BMW.
The problem of an oversupply of lawyers could be solved easily. Right now we taxpayers subsidize student loans.
Get the government out of the student loan business, and the oversupply problem would be solved quickly. Sure, the richies would still be able to float through law school. The poor and middle class kids would have to find a way. Heck, I graduated college with zero student loan debt and zero outside help. There’s always a way.
Won’t happen, of course, as then law schools would be forced to respond to market pressures. Tuitions would decrease, which would cause a grave injustice: Law professors would no longer earn $120,000-$180,000 salaries for teaching six hours each week, and b.s.’ing with students (aka office hours).
As with most problems in the United States, there is an obvious solution. Yet the problems will persist.
We are a nation that lacks will.
I agree with you that lawyers should serve some sort of residency. They do in Canada (“articling”). That’s part of the argument to bring some practical education to law school. But I disagree with you about pretty much everything else. I’m with SHG on this issue.
Glad you got into the PDs office. I’d love to get into the PDs office, but I have a better chance of buying my way into the Senate at this point. Cook County’s broke and hasn’t hired many new PDs in, oh, forever. I have law school classmates who interned with PDs office both summers who didn’t get hired. Moving anywhere else in Illinois isn’t an option for someone with a family already established in Chicago.
My student loans payments are alot more than yours (even with less debt) because I can’t get a public interest job. I’m struggling as a solo because there were no jobs when I graduated and there are still no jobs.
My critical thinking skills are pretty good, thanks to law school. Learning something practical in law school would’ve been rather helpful, especially for someone without any experience in another firm. My guess is that you had some supervision and guidance before being thrown into your first bond hearing or preliminary hearing or arraignment or trial. Not everyone has had that luxury.
Glad you’re happy, but I have to disagree with you that you’re the one “all this whining is supposed to be about.” You’re not–you just think you are.
If the gov’t gets out of the student loan business, banks will step in, lend to students who won’t be able to pay back the loans, the banks will be left with a bunch of worthless paper, they’ll go to the gov’t and say we’re too big to fail, we need some money, gov’t will bail out the banks, and the gov’t will have taken the backdoor back into the student loan business. At least if recent history is any guide.
The beef I hear most often when someone (usually Mike) writes about eliminating government sponsored student loans is that only the rich elite will be able to afford law school, leaving the poor and middle class unable to join the club, and hence unable to fill the roles that the rich elite aren’t interested in (such as public defenders).
There’s merit to the argument, but it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. A collateral issue to Mike’s is that the government funds all comers, meaning that there’s no barrier to entry for those who don’t really want to be lawyers but end up in law school because they couldn’t pass biology, or those who just don’t have the chops to be a decent lawyer.
But then, the only way to distinguish those who have no business in law school is for schools to wash out the inappropriate students. That would mean cutting their own revenue, and slitting their own throats. It’s not cheap or easy to keep a lawprof in the lap of luxury, you know.
Perhaps it could become easier to keep a lawprof in the lap of luxury if the entire model were rethought, and more, if not all, law school classes were taught by practitioners who when not teaching, were practicing law, instead of writing scholarly articles. Fewer schools with fewer students, students actually getting trained (even if it takes four years), we might be getting somewhere.
Law school cannot be even remotely analogized to a trade apprenticeship.
Before I enrolled in law school I spent a summer as an electricians apprentice (long story). Apprenticeship was fulfilling. Everything I learned had a direct impact on the craft. Apprentices GET PAID! They do not go $120,000 in debt for the privilege of learning nothing of relevance. Apprentices are in the direct purview of one or more journeymen. The journeyman is responsible for the apprentice’s work and development. Contrast that to 1L classes with 120+ people in them.
Union apprentices are virtually guaranteed jobs upon completion of apprenticeship. Law students are clawing and fighting for scraps.
Frankly, lawyers could learn a lot from the apprenticeship model.
I cannot imagine why you are tolerant of the obvious fraud perpetrated on you (and me). You admit that graduating from a school that left you with 200k in debt did not prepare you to be a lawyer. What did that money do? Was it just hazing? Did your law license really cost 200k? What did you get for 200 thousand dollars besides 3 lost years of your life?
Did you realize that was what you were buying into? Cassell seems to believe that law students know exactly what they’re looking at. Is he full of it? Knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Would you have been happier if some lawprof took you aside in year 1 and said, “be a plumber; you’ve got no future in the law?”
The money certainly got you a lot closer to being able to practice law than you would be without it. I don’t understand all this fraud business. The truth is out there for anyone who wants to find it.
Law porn (the crap law schools put out to induce students to apply) includes all sort of rosy stats about how many students are employed within 12 months of graduation and salaries. It suggests that law school is a great investment, for your $200k (that’s a bit high but doable), you will turn a tidy profit in 5 years and live a life of luxury thereafter. Alas, it isn’t necessarily so, and this was before the downturn.
The truth is out there, but are law students looking? Should they doubt the law porn? What are lawyers telling them, with proud mommy standing right beside, aside from “isn’t that wonderful?”
Most law students are not looking. I’d say 100% of law students plan to be in the top 10% of the class, so employment stats for the bottom 90% of the class aren’t relevant to them.
And lawyers often don’t tell them the truth. I’m not sure why, but people don’t like to admit they were duped or are unhappy, so the truth never quite trickles down.
As for whether students should doubt the law porn, on the one hand, no. After all, a law school is ultimately run by lawyers who adhere to a certain ethical code, right? On the other hand, I’d like to think that the questioning/cynical nature/eye for detail that might make one a good lawyer would lead a prospective student to say ok, I see your brochure tells me I’ll make 160K next week, let me see if I can find an independent source to verify that.
I realized before I came to law school that it was basically b.s. – but I do not think I realized the extent of the b.s.
Would I do it again? Sort of. I would still go to law school, but I would have gone to a cheaper (significantly lower ranked) school that was local to me. Instead, I let my ego get the best of me and wanted to go to a Top XX law school in a new city. That was dumb.
I would have told your hypothetical professor where he could stick his opinion. I’m doing ok for myself. That is not the issue. I have a job, but it is in spite of law school, not because of it.
I’m angry because I just made the most expensive purchase of my life. It is likely to be the second most expensive purchase I will ever make. And I cannot figure out at all what I got for it. I suppose I’ve earned the right to take the bar exam. Whoopety do. I guess I learned some about torts and contracts.
But my larger point was that the apprenticeship model actually works. I could have learned everything I learned about torts or contracts or whatever else and much more in a much shorter amount of time by following around a veteran. Thats actually what I did do. It didn’t cost me money, it actually earned me some money.
A simplistic defination of critical thinking is thinking for yourself.
Since all schools Law included rely on learning facts and rote reciting them rather than using them to think out of the box.
Leaders think outside the box, sheep repeat what they were taught.
Years ago Lawyers were thinkers it is evident from opinions they wrote.
Now days lawyers generally cant even write a simple complaint, forget a concise brief!
The Times, up-to-date as always, has just noticed the problem.
And there’s the perspective of Legal Tease, the poster child for the saucy slackoisie, whining that a six figure salary really isn’t that much when you divide it by the number of hours she has to work, all the while worrying deeply about whether the pimple on her forehead will impair sex with an upper level associate. How to make situation worse in one easy lesson.
WE NEED AN ORGANIZATION THAT UNITES ATTORNEYS AGAINST ABA. If med schools can limit their number to 131 and Dentists can limit dental schools to about 58, then we can surely keep the number of law schools under control. The whole thing is a scam. I graduated from Texas Southern University law school – some of my professors were barely literate. Except for a few good professors, most did nothing for me. They have a mysterious double grading system that undercuts students who secure good grades on their merit. There are other terrible law schools out there and plenty of terrible lawyers because of it. The law schools, including mine, inflate their post-graduation employment figures by hiring graduates from menial temporary jobs or by outright lying. ABA leadership is heavily composed of law school administrators and Big Law attorneys, while majority of Attorneys in america dont fall into the big-law category and these are the people who are struggling to find jobs. The average lawyer is severely unpaid, her/his pay undercut by the huge numbers of graduates being churned out of diploma mill law schools every year. On top of that , ABA has allowed outsourcing, this has severely cut the basic work unemployed attorneys depended on – document review. The average attorney is squeezed from all sides with ABA doing more to hurt her/him. The medical field takes care of its own. The dental field takes care of its own. But the only people the ABA takes care of are 1. the deans of trashy law schools like mine who make a million or more a year and 2. the Big law firms that benefit from getting their document work done by ridiculously underpaid attorneys in the US or abroad. ABA, please stop this madness! stop this corruption! You have destroyed not only our livelihood but the prestige we worked so hard to get.
Your hyperbole aside, the ABA does not now, nor has it ever, spoken for the majority of American lawyers. But the only aspect of lawyer life that it has any meaningful control over is law schools, which continues to crank out far more lawyers than any nation can absorb.
It’s not just young lawyers who suffer for the oversupply, but a public who wallows in litigation caused by underutilized lawyers. Idle hands bring frivolous litigation. And yet, instead of cutting back on the numbers, the ABA is busy accrediting new law schools to bring us ever more lawyers. It’s unlikely to stop until we are buried to our necks in unemployed and underutilized lawyers, unless students get smart and realize that law school isn’t a panacea and find a more fruitful direction for their lives.
There are far, far too many lawyers, and even if you get a job out of law school, the chances of having that job or any job decrease with each passing year. I bought a law degree on credit in the early 90s and have remained employed for all but a total of 11 months since then. However, it was a very bad investment, even then, and the job market is much worse now than then. I went to law school thinking, as I was told by college professors, that you can do anything with a law degree. Except practice law, you can do nothing with a law degree that you cannot also do without a law degree. Further, the statistics published for potential law students are flatly wrong and fraudulent. Law firms are pyramid schemes, and with each passing year out of law school, there are fewer opportunities for holders of a JD. The scam needs to be exposed on this website and elsewhere, and frankly most law schools need to be closed down completely while the others are forced to reduce their class sizes. They are committing a heinous crime on students, the young, naive, ones who could use their student loan money and talent to go into fields where there really is demand, e.g. medicine, nursing, allied health professions, teaching, engineering, etc.
I agree with you. I live near Knoxville, Tennessee where there are now two major law schools within one quarter mile of each other. A few years ago someone at least had the sense to make one drive across the state if you did not get into the flagship University of Tennessee. People that did not get in, I was wait listed, often chose to go to the University of Memphis because they were told by U.T. and U of Memphis that they were qualified but there were just too many applicants.
I was somewhat certain that graduating from law school, even if it was a “second/third tier one that I still was getting a “ticket” to make a living.
Well, making a living just for the sake of making a living is not the most fun way to make a living. But when when the bills start piling up and the phone rings less… not more the awakening is rude. Practicing law is a stressful endeavor when one is making money but when the money is not flowing practicing law is bizarre to put it mildly and hellish to put it bluntly.
SL
Well – I’m in pharmacy school, so I don’t count – but I do have two lawyer parents, and one of them teaches law school right now, and let me tell you they do NOT make $120 to $180k. This parent teaches at Kent, as well, which apparently is supposed to be decent.
Since there are too many lawyers…you guys should start by reducing your fees
Some might see this as an idiotic troll comment, but it gives me an opportunity to explain how economics happens. Lawyers go through seven years of post secondary education, all of which has to be paid for. The first four, college or university, is common, so it doesn’t count, but the last three suck up three years of working, which means they don’t get to earn a living, and three years of tuition, usually paid for by borrowing. That money has to get paid back.
Then they need to pay for office rental, phones (hard line and cell), telephone/internet/cell service, computers, paper, copiers, printers, faxes, scanners, desks, chairs, and all the nice people who use them. Then there are books, research, required fees and malpractice insurance. Then, once all of this is paid for, they get to take some money home to feed their families, buy shoes for the kids, pay the rent or mortgage, clothing, and all the other nice stuff the ordinary people get.
And when all that is paid for, they get to put money away in their 401(k) or IRA because they get no pension. And then, if they’re really lucky, they have enough left over to pay for a movie and dinner at a moderately priced restaurant. The average lawyer income in the United States is $79,762. So you want lawyers to reduce their fees? Then you get no competent lawyers, because we would do better as assistant manager at Dairy Queen, and we wouldn’t have to spend our days listening to people whining about how much we charge.
There would probably still be lawyers, but they would be the people who didn’t make the cut for the assistant manager job at Dairy Queen, and probably wouldn’t be the brightest bulbs. They would charge less, and they would be worth it. Is that what you want? If so, I can find you a really cheap lawyer now. He’ll suck something awful, but he’ll be cheap. And have holes in his shoes. Your choice.