When Slate writes about it, it’s entered the mainstream. In this case, that would be the “whopping” 11.5% year over year drop in the number of applicants to law schools nationwide. The headline is “Why the law school bubble is bursting,” and the theories that are advanced are all potentially plausible but expressed in terms that are rather shrill:
- Too many law schools. “Law schools tend to be moneymakers: They’re cheap to set up, and tuition runs high, even at poorly rated programs. Thus, universities have added them on with relish.” All too true. The number of ABA-accredited law schools in the US has increased 9% in the past 10 years and number of JDs awarded is up 13%.
Law schools are cheap to set up? You bet. No labs, no specialized classrooms, precepts and tiny classes are frankly optional, and adjunct and associate faculty members are readily available from the local legal market at rock-bottom rates. If you’re audacious, you can even ask them to teach for free (and some will bite, I assure you).
Actually, if you’re looking for a culprit in all of this, we have come to Person Of Interest #1: The schools themselves. Enormous caveat: Not all, and certainly not the top schools delivering extraordinarily excellent educational experiences while advancing research and scholarship in superb ways, while advancing the rule of law, legal clinics, pro bono and other laudable activities. No, I’m talking about the opportunistic bottom-feeders who have, among other things, prompted the ABA this past fall to call for reform and fuller disclosure on how many graduates are actually employed: Said ABA President Stephen Zack:
“”What’s out there right now is Boston Legal or L.A. Law,” said Zack, “There’s a total lack of awareness out there. They hear these astronomical salaries which reflect just the top 3 percent of students who go to the top 10 law firms.”
The ABA is considering measures to battle the problem. First is an effort dubbed “Truth in Law School Education” that would require law schools to disclose cost and job statistics to all accepted law school applicants.
The proposal would link the disclosure requirement with accreditation.”
Zack was even more candid than that: Speaking of post-graduation employment numbers, he said flatly: “I think some of the numbers are cooked.”
- Post-graduation prospects for most law students are looking poorer: “young lawyers face a glut of competition from other legal professionals; plummeting wages; a reduction in openings in and offers at big law firms; and cripplingly high student-loan debts. When the recession hit, thousands of young lawyers suddenly found themselves trying to work off six figures of debt in pay-per-hour assistant gigs.” While a bit breathless, these trends are all real, and most are new.
- Finally, a bit of transparency seems to have been introduced to the market, even if Slate sees it in somewhat ominous tones:
“But the biggest reason [for the decline in applications] may be cultural, not economic. In the past year or two, scads of blogs have committed themselves to exposing law school as a “scam,” and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have devoted thousands of words to telling readers why law school is a bad, bad idea if you do not actually want to be a lawyer. Look to any of a dozen blogs or news sites to explain how wages for legal workers might continue to fall, as automation takes over rote tasks and businesses increasingly refuse to pay obscenely high per-hour fees.”
So what’s actually going on here?
Markets are adjusting, and with welcome and unsurprising alacrity.
The decision to go to law school is a major one, not undertaken lightly. Students, common wisdom to the contrary, are not sheep, and law school is not the one and only “default” option for those who aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves after they graduate with a name-brand BA, or even a garden-variety BA. It’s a serious 3-year investment of time, opportunity costs, tuition, foregone income, and for what, precisely?
About 44,000 JDs were awarded in the US last year from ABA-accredited schools. Right before the meltdown, the NLJ 250 hired just under 10,000 graduating lawyers; it’s surely going to be fewer this year. As the man says, “Do the math.”
Turns out prospective law students are doing it.
Now, the key question: So what?
So, I actually believe, for the better. How so?
If students applying to and graduating from law school are more serious, in a clear-eyed way, about wanting to practice law, they should prove better-quality prospects for the NLJ 250 and AmLaw 200, and all firms, to hire. This is just a bet at this point, but a well-informed and calculated one which I feel confident about. That can only be good for the profession and for the prospects of students now or about to apply to law school.
Demand for JDs clearly contracted dramatically during the Great Reset, and there are reasons to think it might remain permanently reset at a lower level. If so, a lower supply is clearly in our future. It may be, if the 11.5% decline holds true, in our present. Not a bad thing at all.
Finally, we are not the newspaper industry and we’re not the CD industry. The demand for legal services, as globalization accelerates and regulatory complexity increases, will only grow.
About now, you might be wondering: So, Bruce, if you had it to do over again today, would you go to law school? Would you recommend to a best friend’s son or daughter that they do so?
And the answer is yes, and yes: With one enormous caveat, stressed far more strongly than 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Make sure you know what you want to do with your degree. Marking time for three years used to be indulgent and unsound; today it’s destructive and depraved.
