Thursday, January 14, 2016
Harper: The Law School Crisis Is Over ... For AALS President, But Not For Students
Steven J. Harper (Adjunct Professor, Northwestern; author, The Lawyer Bubble), The Crisis in Legal Education Is Over!:
Wishful thinking is never a sound strategy for success.
“I don’t see legal education as being in crisis at all,” said Kellye Testy, the new president of the Association of American Law Schools and dean of the University of Washington Law School. She made the observation on January 5, 2016 — the eve of the nation’s largest gathering of law professors.
Perhaps her declaration made attendees more comfortable. Unfortunately, it’s not true. ...
Perhaps Dean Testy is right and there is no crisis in legal education. Or perhaps it depends on the definition of crisis and how to measure it. When a problem gets personal, it feels different.
Since 2011 when the ABA first required law schools to report the types of employment their graduates obtained, over 40 percent of all graduates have been unable to find full-time long-term employment requiring bar passage within ten months of receiving their degrees.
Now let’s make those numbers a bit more personal. Saddled with six-figure law school debt, many recent law graduates might consider crisis exactly the right word to describe their situation. Where you stand depends on where you sit.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/01/harperthe-law-school-crisis-is-over-for-aals-president-but-not-for-students.html
Comments
I'm still waiting for that link to that $130K law gig.
Posted by: Captain Hurska Carswell, Continuance King | Jan 18, 2016 1:02:30 PM
Data, Hours, Paycut, and Options, all of whom are almost certainly the same poster (and my guess is Steve Diamond, but who knows and besides it doesn't really matter) have me convinced!
Posted by: all settled | Jan 18, 2016 11:25:18 AM
Professors work long hours.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings
Dollars per hour, working for a law firm is a much better deal.
Posted by: Hours | Jan 18, 2016 10:10:44 AM
@ Harper
" the vast majority of graduates will not get full-time long-term jobs requiring bar passage. As those schools lower their admission standards to keep classrooms full, the decline in bar passage rates for first-time takers should come as no surprise."
Again, you're focusing on first time bar passage rather than long term, which is high even for students with low LSATS. The fact that students 9 months after graduation may not have a "full-time long-term jobs requiring bar passage"
does not mean that over the long term they won't earn enough extra money because of their degrees to come out ahead on the investment.
Which gets back to the point about your disgusting elitism.
Posted by: data | Jan 18, 2016 9:54:28 AM
@ Harper
"Relying on the study’s generalized conclusions about value perpetuates the fallacy that there is a single market for legal education."
S&M report a quantile regression, so they're looking at the bottom and top of the market, not just the middle. Speaking of fallacies, you've been called out repeatedly for ignoring this aspect of their study.
AJD breaks students down by tier of law school and GPA.
No one's pretending there isn't variation in law graduate earnings, so there's no fallacy for you to respond to. The data and research all shows that even toward the bottom, most law graduates are still doing quite well relative to their less educated peers with similarly limited earning potential or similarly bad luck.
Data is always about the past. If you think that's an argument against data, they you believe in fictional story telling and not facts or data.
Posted by: data | Jan 18, 2016 9:49:41 AM
@ Harper
You're right that S&M 2014 (The Economic Value of a Law Degree) stops with 2008 graduates--although they have earnings data through 2013.
S&M have a followup, on SSRN, "Timing Law School" which addresses the arguments you're making.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2574587
They use another data source to look at post 2008 graduates, and they look at whether graduating at the "right time" makes much of a difference.
They find that
1) Post 2008 law graduates have just as big of an advantage over bachelor's degree holders as those who came before them
2) Graduating in good times vs. bad doesn't make that big of a difference after 4 to 8 years. 12 years out at After the JD III, we're well past the point when the year people graduated is going to make a difference in their earnings advantage relative to BAs.
People have been crying "structural change" since 2010 and 6 years later, there's still no evidence of it. It's not an intellectual argument, it's a doomsday prophecy.
The economy is worse, so everyone is having a harder time, but law graduates have the same advantage they've always had.
Structural change throughout the economy will probably mean that law graduate and other highly educated workers get an even bigger advantage over the less educated. At least that's what the economists at MIT who study automation and outsourcing keep saying.
But even if it doesn't, law graduates are doing so well compared to everyone else, and getting such great return on their education, they could absorb a really big hit and still come out ahead.
There's no sector in the economy where there aren't occasionally layoffs. You can find examples of doctors being laid off.
The difference is doctors and lawyers make more money than most other people, and they have a better chance of finding good jobs to replace the ones they've lost.
Posted by: data | Jan 18, 2016 9:43:57 AM
Data,
PLEASE send me a link to that $130K law job you speak of. I am tired of driving my '05 VW with 249,000 miles and an exhaust leak. Ice Cold Air, however. Signed, a Paul Campos statistical solo.
Posted by: Captain Hurska Carswell, Continuance King | Jan 18, 2016 8:46:15 AM
And pace S&M's "the legal profession can never see structural change because [undisclosed reasons]," well, here's the header to Reed Smith's recent layoff announcement: "The legal industry has experienced a fundamental shift in the nature of the demand for, and the delivery of, legal services in recent years. Like all profitable businesses, Reed Smith must be attentive to market demand and industry changes and make necessary adjustments to remain competitive." See also any recent study on the demand for legal services by Citi or Altman Weil or similar.
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 18, 2016 7:26:15 AM
Ugh. So very much that is incorrect, duplicitous, or naïve in Data's many, many posts this weekend. I'll just discuss a few:
1. Lawyers at large law firms don't have time to write screeds on the Internet all day Saturday, unlike law professors who work far less hours and have no billable pressure. Self-awareness is key.
2. Data just tried to pass off a comparison between the BLS average attorney wage – skewed by high earners, excludes the 40-45% of law school graduates who can’t find work in the profession, excludes most solos, and 1) attempted to pass it off as the starting salary for new graduates and 2) had the gall to compare it to per-capita income, watered down as it is by America's many millions of children, retirees, stay-at-home parents, and so forth. Seriously?
3. Hey, what's a more accurate barometer of what law school student debt is TODAY - the debtloads of 1,382 law school graduates from 1992 through 2008 (kinda; IIRC, S&M only had 13 Class of 2008 data points) or the student debt loads of every member of the Class of 2014, as disclosed to the ABA? Hmmm....
4. Your assertion that law school debt is not too high because the default rate for law school graduates is low is bone ignorant of student lending policies and terminology. Once the Department of Education finally breaks down and responds to one of the many FOIA requests for IBR/PAYE/PSLF enrollment information, this will become very clear. As I have walked through in previous threads, a student at Seton Hall – the employer of the law professor whose study Data keeps quoting as some manner of Gospel – who received the median tuition discount (and <2/3 of Seton Hall students receive any discount) and landed a job at the school’s median starting salary per NALP (a mere $54k) will find that her standard student loan payment will be about 2/3 of her takehome salary in New Jersey. So off to IBR/PAYE she will go. And you know what? If she eventually gets up to that average lawyer salary of $116k, she will 1) still be eligible for IBR/PAYE and 2) will never come within a country mile of touching her principal under those plans. On the contrary, she will gain another six figures in interest on the balance over 20 years, and ultimately be facing down a tax bill on the quarter million dollars in principal and interest she will have forgiven at the end of that period. But hey, she wasn’t in default, amirite? Law School Premium!!!
5. “@ Steven Harper… Which raises the question: Do you not understand basic economic concepts?”
Steven Harper has a master’s in economics and the fellow you are citing only has a bachelor’s in economics. Harper also has roughly 30x the experience practicing law of said individual. Do you really think it likely that of those two, Harper is the one who is confused? It does, however, remind me of one of Harper’s criticisms of S&M: “One of the more perplexing criticisms in Simkovic’s Leiter blog post was that I was wrong about half of all JD-degree holders finding themselves below the median for all JD-degree holders. My statement simply embodied the definition of a median – half above and half below that midpoint.” http://thelawyerbubble.com/2013/09/03/once-more-on-the-million-dollar-jd-degree/. Oof. One is not overwhelmed with confidence in Harper’s anonymous (but not really) online critic.
6. “Alabama isn't know for being a hotbed of legal activity”
And yet it has a Top 25 law school. Are you suggesting that they are also the “bottom of the barrel?” You may want to wrestle with this bit of cognitive dissonance for a while. Also, you still seem unaware that the unemployment rate for each of the last 4 or 5 years of law school graduates has been higher than the unemployment rate for each of the last 4 or 5 years of four-year college graduates. Doesn’t speak real highly of the “versatile JD,” does it?
7. As for hotbeds of legal activity, I am in Massachusetts, one of the nation’s largest legal markets. Per your LinkedIn claim, I dare you to post five recent Massachusetts-sited Linkedin lawyer job postings that DO NOT REQUIRE PRIOR LEGAL EXPERIENCE. Actual entry-level jobs, in other words. Your silence on this matter will be considered an inability to find them. Good luck.
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 18, 2016 7:21:50 AM
I’ll conclude my contribution to this thread with three observations:
1. “After the JD III” included 3,000 responding graduates from the class of 2000 (down from almost 5,000 graduates who responded to the first AJD survey in 2002). As American Bar Foundation faculty fellow Ronit Dinovitzer noted, “These are the golden age graduates….” (http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/twelve_years_after_the_jd_20_percent_arent_practicing_law/)
2. The study that “Data” offered to declare the debate about the value of a law degree “settled” itself has two caveats worth mentioning. (References are to current ssrn version)
First, at Page 13: “We estimate the earnings premium associated with a law degree by using earnings, education, and demographic data from four panels (1996 to 2008)….” Footnote 31: “[T]he most recent law degree holders in sample will have graduated in 2008. “
2007 was the last year of Dinovitzer’s “golden age graduates.”
Second, at Page 49: “We also cannot determine the earnings premium associated with attending a specific law school. “
Relying on the study’s generalized conclusions about value perpetuates the fallacy that there is a single market for legal education. Identifying the different submarkets is not elitist; it’s just recognizing reality.
3. Data can be interesting historically. But they may not be relevant to current prospective law students contemplating six-figure loans to attend bottom-feeder schools where, within 10 months of graduation, the vast majority of graduates will not get full-time long-term jobs requiring bar passage. As those schools lower their admission standards to keep classrooms full, the decline in bar passage rates for first-time takers should come as no surprise.
Posted by: Steven J. Harper | Jan 17, 2016 7:03:46 AM
"it is not still a great bargain today"
"There's a simple reason higher education costs more than it used to--because it is worth more than it used to be worth."
"Completion rates are higher even though incoming students are a lot more diverse and less elite than they used to be. Career services and student support are better. Technology is better. Faculty and administrators are better. Facilities are better."
Absolutely hilarious! Forget about baby boomers' costs then... Once again, I mentioned all of higher education as being a problem, so don't get confused that I'm picking on law school. I gradauted UCLA 12 years ago. Someone going there now has a bill 4 fold compared to what I pay. It is laughable to think that their degree is worth that much more due to these supposed value-add ons that Options mentions.
@ Paycut,
Outside of the very elite, no law schools have maintained standards. There are schools I didn't gain admission to 11 years ago that now would offer full scholarships for my metrics. Now you're resorting to saying the bar exam is racist, and there is no connection to LSAT scores and bar exam passage rates. Maybe there's not- it could be you've become worse at teaching??
As far as the laughable assertion on your paycut- you chose to forsake lucrative careers at prestigious firms, and many of you are doing so to teach at schools you never considered attending, and are still better off than "the average worker," or as the AALS President said, still better off than the third world living on a dollar a day.
Posted by: Cent Rieker | Jan 17, 2016 5:31:25 AM
There are 1.2 m lawyers. 600k are "employed". Solos aren't included but neither are partners or retirees or non practitioners. Solo income may have declined but partner income is likely much higher.
While 40K or more graduated recently that number was in the 30s a few years ago and is heading down sharply now. Over a 20 year period it has averaged less. Given those who don't pass the bar together with those who choose freely not to practice plus retirements and promotions to partner or other exits like deaths the market has - on average - been able to absorb new entrants while supporting the earnings premium discovered by Simkovic and McIntyre.
Posted by: Anon | Jan 16, 2016 10:04:35 PM
Correction--the median law professor makes around $110K per year.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes251112.htm
Law grads from top schools with good grades are making median ~$200,000 per year according to AJD III.
So law professors are taking ~a $90,000 paycut just to teach, with the size of the cut likely to grow as they gain experience.
Posted by: Paycut | Jan 16, 2016 6:00:15 PM
" maybe law faculty wouldn't mind taking a hair-cut in compensation as opposed to allowing open-admission policies to keep the tuition dollars flowing"
According to after the JD, graduates of top law schools with good grades typically earn $200,000 per year 12 years after graduation. Law professors are lucky if they make 2/3 that amount.
On top of taking a paycut just to teach, they've clearly sacrificed a lot financially to maintain standards over the last few years.
First year enrollments are down by around 1/3 since 2010, and grants and scholarships are up.
The irony is that rich lawyers are accusing poor teachers of making too much money.
Posted by: Paycut | Jan 16, 2016 5:55:12 PM
@ Harper
According to After the JD III, graduates of Fourth Tier ABA approved law schools with mediocre grades working full-time typically make around $100,000 per year 12 years after graduation.
Where exactly are these "problematic" institutions?
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 5:28:27 PM
Cent Rieker
Cent I'm sure we all wish we could go back in time 40 years and invest in Berkshire Hathaway or Palo Alto real estate when prices were rock bottom. But we can't. Just because something used to be an amazing bargain in the past doesn't mean it is not still a great bargain today.
There's a simple reason higher education costs more than it used to--because it is worth more than it used to be worth.
Completion rates are higher even though incoming students are a lot more diverse and less elite than they used to be. Career services and student support are better. Technology is better. Faculty and administrators are better. Facilities are better. Faculty are more devoted to their students and their institutions, since they aren't really adjuncts who earn a living practicing law and teach as a low-priority hobby. Long-term connections with the legal community are better.
If you want to experience the low quality, low cost legal education from olden times, pick a non-ABA approved California law school and enjoy!
Posted by: Options | Jan 16, 2016 5:21:16 PM
@ Steven Harper
"law schools fall into distinct submarkets that serve different constituencies and produce dramatically different graduate outcomes."
There's nothing in your argument that gets at whether differences in law graduate outcomes at graduation are caused by differences in incoming students and equal value-added by the law schools or are caused by differences in the value added by the law schools.
Which raises the question: Do you not understand basic economic concepts? I don't mean this as an insult--I think it's a very real possibility and it makes you more sympathetic than the alternative.
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2013/07/repetitive-and-avoidable-mistakes.html
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2013/10/the-economic-value-of-a-law-degree-means-medians-modes-.html
Because the alternative is that you are just an incorrigible elitist who thinks it's distasteful for people who aren't rich, white, and have high standardized test scores to attend law school, even if it's their best option financially.
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 5:08:42 PM
Data,
How many Baby Boomers needed the length of a mortgage to pay off their higher education loans, if they even had any?
There is a reason why there is a (bipartisan) outrage on exponential tuition increases, and yes that is accounting for inflation- you can pull up the CPI and check for yourself, since you are now an economitrician well versed in the inner-workings of BLS data, including its limitations in sampling. This is not solely the fault of law schools either. Frankly, there are too many worthless degrees being peddled at loan-shark prices, which impairs the economy due to the $1.2 trillion and growing debt.
Since you also like to give lectures on how much better even "bottom of the barrel" lawyers have it compared to the average worker, then maybe law faculty wouldn't mind taking a hair-cut in compensation as opposed to allowing open-admission policies to keep the tuition dollars flowing?
Posted by: Cent Rieker | Jan 16, 2016 10:43:14 AM
"LinkedIn has thousands of job openings for lawyers"
"And there are in excess of 1.3 million JDs."
Yes, most of whom already have far better jobs than most people. Thus the large number of job openings and high earnings for lawyers.
This debate has been settled by the peer reviewed economics literature.
http://law.shu.edu/uploads/Simkovic_McIntyre_2014_The%20Economic%20Value%20of%20a%20Law%20Degree.pdf
The earnings premium for law graduates is huge, even including the ones not practicing law. Which means there are a lot of great opportunities for law graduates, whether practicing law or doing something else.
There are always going to be a few people who are unemployable, but if you have a law degree and you can't find a job, you're toward the very, very bottom of the barrel.
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 9:00:58 AM
It's not what I say they make. It's what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau says they make based on a gold standard scientifically valid study. With all due respect to the Alabama Bar Association,
(1) Alabama isn't know for being a hotbed of legal activity
(2) Most lawyers are concentrated in other areas
(3) if they're getting numbers that are very different from the BLS OES and from the Census state numbers, they're probably doing something wrong.
If you want to know what "lawyers" make, you use national data. If you want to know what lawyers in Alabama make, you use BLS OES or Census data for Alabama. The mean lawyer is making $113K in Alabama, which is around $20,000 lower than the national average, but a heck of a lot of money for someone working in Alabama.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes231011.htm
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 8:55:21 AM
Here's per Capita income:
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/
$30,000.
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 8:48:12 AM
$51K is median household income, which is a household with two working adults.
Per capita income is $30,000.
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 8:42:11 AM
"Actually, "Data," $115k is not necessarily enough to lift full-boat-paying law school graduates"
You're just wrong about the math.
Even without IBR, net of inflation, law school graduates typically only need to pay around $5,000 to $7,000 per year on their loans if they want to repay them over 30 years.
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2015/06/understanding-student-loans-in-the-context-of-legal-education-2-of-2-michael-simkovic.html
That's probably why so few law students default on their loans, even at the bottom ranked law schools that are so often criticized.
Posted by: Data | Jan 16, 2016 8:41:01 AM
The “all-is-well” comments from Data perpetuate the analytical flaw that infects virtually all so-called legal scholarship on this issue, namely, that there is a single “market” for legal education. There isn’t.
Rather, law schools fall into distinct submarkets that serve different constituencies and produce dramatically different graduate outcomes. In a recent ABI Law Review article, I suggest three submarkets: National, Regional, and Problematic. The persistence of the weakest schools in the Problematic Submarket is the biggest contributor to the ongoing crisis in legal education. See “Bankruptcy and Bad Behavior – The Real Moral Hazard: Law Schools Exploiting Market Dysfunction” in the ABI Law Review (Winter 2015) {http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2599627)
Posted by: Steven J. Harper | Jan 16, 2016 8:23:45 AM
Actually, "Data," $115k is not necessarily enough to lift full-boat-paying law school graduates these days out of the partial financial hardships of PAYE or IBR, but your sad attempt at a strawman is noted.
AGAIN, the median salary for Americans is $51k, not $30k, as you postulate. I already stated this upthread, after which you lowballed it nearly 50% out of ignorance or duplicity. If this is the best law school defenders can muster, just take your ball and go home. And no, Virginia, LinkedIn absolutely does not have thousands of openings for new lawyers - which is why you once again conflated new graduates with the entire profession. Pathetic.
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 16, 2016 5:51:16 AM
Data,
Here's some data -- from the Alabama bar association.
http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2012/04/alabamas_legal_profession_hit.html
Lawyers do not actually earn, what you think or hope that they earn. So says the data.
Your proffered salary stats are offered for one of three reasons: 1, you are a grifter and want to mislead young marks; 2, you are ignorant of the current legal labor market; 3, you know the truth, but hate or fear reform and just want to poke the critics.
If you are just unaware of how much the reality of the market has changed, I challenge you to post a dummy job to craigslist or the local bar journal. Set selective Criteria (law review, prior experience required, etc.). Set a low salary, like half what you think such a person should command. Be horrified at the number of top candidates who apply.
Posted by: Anon | Jan 16, 2016 4:23:48 AM
"LinkedIn has thousands of job openings for lawyers"
And there are in excess of 1.3 million JDs.
Who, bt*w, paid a *lot* of money for their advanced degrees (usually in reliance upon fraud-driven stats from the gatekeepers of the profession)...something the $30k median US worker (HS grad at median) hasn't had to do.
Stopping shilling for some of the richest, most corrupt institutions in the US.
You are embarrassing yourself, both intellectually and morally.
Posted by: cas127 | Jan 16, 2016 4:02:34 AM
"A median average of the salaries of all JD graduates would be much more informative. Which is why you'll never see it. "
Sure you will. Look at either After the JD, After the JD II, After the JD III or The Economic Value of a Law Degree.
4 studies.
Posted by: Data | Jan 15, 2016 5:42:46 PM
The median for lawyers is $115,000 according to the BLS, which is plenty. If you look at CPS or ACS--which include solos and law firm partners--you get pretty much the same numbers. AJD includes solos and partners as well. Law graduates are making serious money 12 years after graduation, even the ones near the bottom of their class at bottom schools.
Do you know what the median person in the U.S. makes? $30,000 per year. And that's someone in their 40s with kids to support, not a kid straight out of school.
You'll forgive me if I don't shed tears for 25 year olds who start out making twice as much and can realistically expect to make 4 or 5 times as much.
LinkedIn has thousands of job openings for lawyers.
Posted by: Data | Jan 15, 2016 5:18:59 PM
Data: if you're someone being pedantic with BLS statistics on TaxProfBlog, I assume you're smart enough to know very well that a mean average is not representative of an expected individual outcome in a field where the top earners make millions but vast numbers of bottom outcomes are recorded as "$0-DNF-Barista" and are therefore excluded from the calculation.
A median average of the salaries of all JD graduates would be much more informative. Which is why you'll never see it. Law continues to be an excellent career path for the people talented to win the entire pot of a zero sum game against a vast number of participants, none of whom have been explained the rules by their law schools.
Posted by: Pff | Jan 15, 2016 3:48:01 PM
Well, I think we can all agree that $50K is not the $95K - $135K that many of these same schools posted as the typical starting salary outcome over the course of the entire decade that preceded the organization Law School Transparency ($135K showed up towards the end), artificially attracting double the number of law school students than would otherwise exist.
Also, consider that this job is in a city where a studio apartment can typically run you $2,500/month ($30K/year), so if large monthly student loan payments were due this could be a tough sell.
Posted by: anon. 25 | Jan 15, 2016 6:22:26 AM
Data,
BLS does not utilize income data from Solos, which are approximately fifty percent of all attorneys. Do you know what else BLS says about the law profession? "Competition for jobs in KEEN" because the profession is not growing as quickly as the "numbers of expected" entrants or graduates. To my colleagues, a 50K job is now the golden ticket.
Posted by: Captain Hurska Carswell, Continuance King | Jan 15, 2016 6:20:43 AM
Data,
Really 130K? Do you have a link to that job? Would you give me a recommendation? I have another friend who is a much better attorney than me who works at Target to make ends meet. I would like to give her that job.
Posted by: Captain Hurska Carswell, Continuance King | Jan 15, 2016 6:15:05 AM
Oh, the irony - a commenter named Data uses cherry-picked data points. Of course, s/he could have mentioned that although the legal profession netted a gain of 10,000 jobs last year, it also added another 40,000 law school graduates, in addition to the preexisting backlog of what, eight years' worth of graduates now? Or that the BLS $136 average salary figure 1) is not a median, 2) does not the 45% of law school grads who fail to find jobs in the profession as lawyers and 3) considers all levels of experience. Even per the cheerleading NALP, the median starting salary for law school grads is $63k, with an unemployment rate of 10%. That's higher than the unemployment rate for recent four-year college graduates. And I have no idea what s/he means by "$50k is the 10th percentile of pay," as the median income (that means the 50th percentile, Data) in the United States is $51k. Oh, and bonuses are at record levels? That's wonderful for the 36 annual USSC clerks, but not really relevant for the bottom 99.9% of law school graduates. Oh, and since you obviously brought up record bonus levels as an indicia of high demand for law school graduates, why don't you tell us when large law firms last raised the market salary? That's right, January. Of 2007. Nine years ago. Some shortage...
Oh, and Steven Harper has a MS in Economics from Northwestern. One wonders where "Data" got his or her master's education in economics, given the paucity of their rebuttal to his article here.
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 14, 2016 10:03:36 PM
And in the land of data, the number of lawyers is higher this year than the last, and the average lawyer is still making $130,000+ per year.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes231011.htm
Bonuses are at record levels and lateral hiring is heating up.
$50K is the 10th percentile of pay, so yes, a low entry level salary with room for growth.
Posted by: Data | Jan 14, 2016 7:26:56 PM
Many law school professors and administrators would love nothing more than to be divorced from any connection to, or responsibility for, students' employment outcomes (and the cost of legal education for that matter). After all, there is no "scammer" movement going after liberal arts schools' for the poor outcomes of their humanities majors, so why law schools?
It seems, in their minds, that the only "crisis" is the dangerous notion of responsibility for cost and outcomes being unfairly heaped upon them...
I'm grateful that there are more than a few law professors out there that embrace that responsibility ask the hard questions....
Posted by: Anon | Jan 14, 2016 2:20:01 PM
A friend posted a $50K associate opening in a major U.S. market this week, and applications have flooded in, including from T50 graduates. This even surprised me, only slightly.
Posted by: anon. 25 | Jan 14, 2016 2:15:37 PM
Exhibit 1. My buddy and great lawyer out over 30 years from a Top Tier school can not find work. Exhibit 2. My Schedule C from the last several years as a Solo has not risen above 40K. Exhibit 3. Yellow pages listing for attorneys from your jurisdiction.
Posted by: Captain Hurska Carswell, Continuance King | Jan 14, 2016 1:16:43 PM
“Again, you're focusing on first time bar passage rather than long term, which is high even for students with low LSATS. The fact that students 9 months after graduation may not have a "full-time long-term jobs requiring bar passage"”
And you’re ignoring the MOUNTAINS of peer-reviewed studies by actual economists about the viability of the long-term unemployed, which kicks in after six months. To wit: it explains why the change from reporting jobs data nine months after graduation to ten months after graduation didn’t really matter. If you don’t have a meaningful job as an attorney nine months after graduation, your legal career is pretty well over. And of course, the S&M study doesn’t bother itself with the long-term employment prospects of the classes of 2008-15, a period which every other legal observer says has been one of structural and permanent change. Deborah Jones Merritt conducted a study about the five year-out status of Ohio bar passers in 2010. Most are still struggling mightily, even though Ohio is home to some of the nation’s largest law firms (Jones Day, for example) and corporations (P&G, Federated, Krogers, etc). Ghayad and Dickens found that employers would rather leave a job unfilled than hire a member of the long-term unemployed, which (again) starts at six months out. And as I wrote upthread, law school unemployment nine months out is higher than four year-college graduate unemployment a similar period after graduation and has been for years now.
“Graduating in good times vs. bad doesn't make that big of a difference after 4 to 8 years”
I have read more than a half dozen studies written by people with actual doctorates in social sciences that contradict those findings, for everyone from undergrads to Stanford MBAs (who woulda thought a degree as bulletproof as one from SBS has a $6 million lifetime earnings gap between boom and bust-era graduates?). Yale professor Lisa Kahn’s “The long-term labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy” is probably the most famous, but there are many similar studies out there. Again, “Data” is displaying remarkable naiveté and reliance on the work of one very junior professor with no graduate training outside of the JD. This should be very insightful to anyone paying attention…
“People have been crying "structural change" since 2010 and 6 years later, there's still no evidence of it.”
There’s been mountains of evidence. I cited some for you upthread. You chose not to respond to it. But it still exists, even if you say it doesn’t. What there aren’t are any meaningful citations or analysis in the S&M paper showing that there isn’t and can never be structural change in the legal profession.
“Structural change throughout the economy will probably mean that law graduate and other highly educated workers get an even bigger advantage over the less educated. At least that's what the economists at MIT who study automation and outsourcing keep saying.”
Again, you are completely incorrect. Maybe try reading some more. Reading is fundamental. Try the Nobel Prize in Economics recipients Michael Spence or Paul Krugman, who have both lamented how technology is and will continue to kill high-skill white-collar jobs. How about Erik Brynjolfsson? He is a MIT professor and “one of the most cited scholars in information systems and economics.” Guess what? I don’t even have to go to my notes on his and fellow MIT prof Andrew McAfee’s eye-opening book “The Second Machine Age,” because it says right there in the synopsis that “Professions of all kinds―from LAWYERS to truck drivers―will be forever upended.” Then there is “The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks” by Beaudry, Green, and Sand, which found that demand for skilled labor in the US has been declining “precipitously” since 2000. This is a sentiment echoed in Martin Ford’s “Rise of the Robots,” voted Best Business Book of the Year by none other than McKinsey. And Nicholas Carr’s (former executive editor of the HBR) “The Glass Cage.” Or read virtually anything Maurer School of Law professor William Henderson has written over the last few years. The profession of law is getting eaten alive by the business of law. I could give you more citations, but I think I’ve made my point here.
“Professors work long hours.” Data then cites a study of the hours put in at Boise State University, which is famous for NOT HAVING A LAW SCHOOL. Facepalm. The linked article also explicitly states that the author “said he didn't know how representative the findings were of institutions others than Boise State.”
“Which gets back to the point about your disgusting elitism.”
I often find that the ad hominem is almost always the first resort of those with no ability to give a substantive response. And since when has law not been elitist, anyhow? You are the one claiming everyone’s law salaries kinda even out in the long run, which begs the question: at what point does the legal profession stop being elitist?
And I see you failed to find even five entry-level lawyering jobs in Massachusetts on Linkedin, despite your bluster about thousands of lawyer postings on the site upthread. Shocker. Too bad, especially seeing as nearly four people pass the MA bar each year for every such job. And no, the three of four left out in the cold don't all get jobs at Bain Capital or BCG or Harvard University or something.
Posted by: Unemployed Northeastern | Jan 18, 2016 4:17:31 PM