The legal field is currently suffering from a huge excess of lawyers, and attending a law school outside of the top 10 (arguably top 20 with scholarships) is generally considered a poor investment. It's good for the legal field as a whole to see many of these T-3/T-4 Law Schools slim down and stop churning out so many law students that end up, unfortunately, unemployed (or in a job that doesn't use their JD in a meaningful way).
To compound the problem, every South Middle Tennessee State -type school opened a law school during the glut because it was a huge cash cow for the parent university... so other than a complete collapse of admissions, there is no impetus for these T-3/4 schools to close. It's not uncommon for students to come out of these schools with 200+K in student loan debt and no job prospects to speak of.
It's unfortunate, but the Legal Academy was all to happy to get drenched from the firehose of unemployable vague humanities majors that US Higher ed produces - now, at least, some of the students are starting to get a more realistic picture of what that undischargeable debt means for their future - but the damage is done.
It's odd that we would both comment (at the same time) regarding TN, would you mind giving me your opinion of my post below? I'm referencing people who did moderately well at a non-top teir but established institution with a cost of 40-60k total and vacant positions (albeit contract type) at $40/hr minimum.
Perhaps it's also a pride and expectations issue? I know that in TN there is a lack of available lawyers for certain court case work, especially juvenile court and family cases. The pay isn't stellar for a lawyer but it's a solid 40 out/50 in-court. You go down and sign up for dates and the cases are assigned as they come in to the lawyers signed up for those days. I think there have recently been some changes in one court in one county to limit but mostly, it's sign up, get work. I know a few years ago you could get a degree from a capable, long term in-state institution for ~40k tuition (3 years). You weren't "allowed" to work first year so that could cause an increase.
When the economy went south, law school seemed like a "safe bet". This turned out to be a catastrophic mistake, as it came at the peak of the bubble in law school enrolment. There had never been such a gap between the number of students and the number of legal jobs.
Articles starting appearing circa 2010 that described a nightmare of $160,000 debt and no legal job. As students began to realize the world had changed, the decline began.
Parents are a big part of the problem. The boomers largely haven't caught on that a BA and a JD are no longer the good choices they were back in the 1960s and 1970s.
I'm in LSAT prep and I talk to a lot of pre-law applicants. They're now generally far more aware of what's at stake. But I only talk to the ones who are good at planning – I expect there's a decent amount of students who go into law school without realizing it can ruin their life.
Here on HN, we're in a bubble. Recruiters are a constant complaint. "Ugh, I hate all these people trying to offer me well-paying jobs".
Consider what's it's like to be 26 years old, with a BA and now a JD. You have about $160,000 that cannot be removed through bankruptcy. You have no assets and no marketable skills. You can't get a legal job, for structural reasons. And non-legal employers now give you a wide berth because you're overqualified.
Worse, you did everything you were "supposed" to do. Turns out it was cargo cult advice.
That's the situations thousands of young people find themselves in. Even going for one year and quitting can be crippling. You get $40,000 of non-dischargeable debt for your troubles.
If you happen to be giving career advice, here are the circumstances under which you should go to law school:
1. You have a burning passion to be a lawyer.
2. Said passion is based on actual knowledge of what lawyers do.
3. You can get into a T14 school, OR
4. You can get into a T100 school with a full scholarship, OR
5. You can get into a school very well regarded in the local area where you want to practice, OR
6. You have a legal job more or less in the bag upon graduation, through family, OR
7. You are rich and want to be a lawyer for what prestige it still carries
That's about it. It's a terrible, terrible choice for anyone else.
We need lawyers, and at some point the legal education market will sort itself out I'm sure. Schools will close, people will realize they need to do the math. I expect tuition will drop eventually.
But while the bubble is bursting, potential law students need to exercise extreme caution.
I would add a number 8: If you're interested in public service and would like to be either a lawmaker or a government official--but the above passion/connections still hold. (That's the value-neutral version compared to 'power-hungry pol' or 'ambitious bureaucrat'.)
If you want to run in those circles, you need to know how to keep yourself and your employer/patron out of court, and be able to squeeze the opposition--legally, of course.
The trick remains managing the school debt during the apprentice/ladder-climbing years--but at least you can still think of yourself as a lawyer. Because you are. Until you take the fall. But if you don't see it coming, you aren't much of a lawyer.
#2 should be based on actual knowledge of what lawyers, that work in jobs similar to the one you are likely to end up in, do. Your colleague that's sold his last start-up for eight figures has a lawyer spouse that works at a small not-profit for 35 hours a week working on issues of internet freedom. That's not a relevant data point for you unless you too have such a spouse. More explicitly, if you fall into category #3 (outside the HT) you should know what BigLaw is like and want to do that. Because that's where you are going to go if you want to pay off that debt.
Speaking of category #3 T14, which always manages to be 16-17 schools, it is a too broad in my opinion. Yale is in a class by itself and opens doors that are difficult or impossible to open otherwise. Harvard Law has the most generous loan forgiveness program I've ever seen. To be honest I don't know much about Stanford Law, but that's usually included in the Holy Trinity. Beyond that, if you get no money, you really should consider the schools on an individual basis based on where you want to practice and what you want to do. Many should really be put into the #4 (scholarship) or #5 (regional powerhouse) rule.
Regarding #4, a full ride only covers around 2/3rds of the financial cost and none of the opportunity costs. I'd restrict this category quite dramatically (though keeping in mind #5) to maybe 30 or 40 schools including the t-14, and exclude schools that have several higher ranked competitors in the same city (sorry Fordham).
Finally, I'd add one more category -- people with a fair amount of experience in a particular industry that know exactly how a law degree will help them advance in that industry and can easily slot back in. Some people I went to law school with that would qualify along those lines were real estate developers and talent agents.
I can't edit the original, but those are good points. That's actually what I meant on #2. I left it out for concision, but I should have specified.
The rest are good points. I normally shy away from admissions advice as my expertise really is the LSAT + I'm Canadian. Things are much less stark up here, though Ontario has a bit of a bubble.
In truth, I really wouldn't recommend anything beyond T3 or T14 full scholarship. I'm very debt averse.
Anyone considering this needs to seek out even more specific advice than mine (like the above) and also recognize that you're probably prone to the common "I'm an exception. I'll work hard and beat the odds!" bias.
Problem is that everyone is thinking it. Mathematically, only a small percentage of applicants are correct. And they mostly got into the T14.
This, this, a thousand times this. I graduated from a T25 school in 2011. I was one of about 15% of my graduating class that had a job lined up going into their third year, a time when strong candidates were typically choosing between several competing offers.
The proportion of people in my cohort not working in the law (including myself) is small only in comparison to the proportion who regret their career decision now that they've experienced the reality of legal practice.
For anyone considering law school, take a hard look at the criteria above and give yourself honest answers. Appeasing family members isn't worth committing yourself to a career you despise or ruining your finances indefinitely.
Why is that number ridiculous? At ~1% of the workforce, this means that the average American laborer needs 2.5 days/year of lawyer time to keep them fully occupied, which honestly doesn't feel like such a stretch to me, given that they need to be involved in hiring/firing, expansion, policy changes, deals closing, etc.
Also - note that not all licensed attorneys are practicing, so it may even be more like 1 lawyer-day/year per worker.
The problem is it's not being automated. Does every apartment complex in NY city really need a significantly different lease? I can buy I car without a lawyer why not a house? Do I really need a lawyer before highering a housekeeper?
Something like LegalZoom seems like a reasonable option for 80+% of all deals that currently use a Lawyer.
Edit: As to policy changes, a trade association could reasonably cover all most / all cab companies or even Hospitals.
The whole point of hiring a lawyer is to get customized legal advice or documents that pertain to your situation. If you're happy with using general advice/documents that may not actually fit your needs, you're free not to hire a lawyer.
It's basically the same as the choice between using stock Wordpress or hiring a developer to customize it for you (or to make you a custom CMS), except that the consequences are usually more dire.
Also, some of your examples are a bit odd. I don't know anyone who's hired a lawyer to buy a house or hire a housekeeper/nanny/gardener--is that some sort of weird Silicon Valley practice?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, ask a lawyer acquaintance of yours instead of trusting me if this is any more than idle curiosity.
A lawyer's job when buying a house is mostly dealing with the mortgage. They can explain the mortgage paperwork to you, and find traps like balloon payments or weird escrow structures that a layman might miss. If you pay out of pocket, there's generally a lot less for a lawyer to do.
There are of course exceptions where a lawyer is very important, like reviewing the bylaws of a condominium or homeowners' association, or explaining unusual clauses in the sale contract. Unfortunately it's hard to tell when you've run into one of these without having past experience or hiring a lawyer.
I would suspect that it has something to do with the fact that a scam artist seller will hurt you a lot more with a bad deal on a house than with a bad deal on a car.
IMO, a large part of that difference is from how involved the State government is when selling a car. Property can also have far more limitations like a local homeowners association or right of way easement. Still, taxes can also be vary complex but few people need a Lawyer to look at them.
Simply covering the 80% case can add a lot of economic efficiency.
2.5 days of lawyer time at $350/hr comes out to be $7000 a year which is a lot of money to most laborers. Even if the distribution of lawyer time is skewed, it's still a very high number.
I have a friend who sometimes asks, to stoke conversation: "What's one thing you believe that no one else does?"
One answer? The law school boom isn't over.
I have a J.D. from Stanford (though I spend my time investing and working on my own projects), and though the legal education industry is in many respects quite hidebound and deserving of a downward correction, there is one swift wind filling the sails.
It's what Milovan Djilas[1] called "the new class." Djilas was a Yugoslav Soviet dissident. For a brief instant he was a true believer. But Djilas saw by 1954 that a large government tasked with redistribution was giving rise to a new elite: the redistributors. He wrote articles about "the new class" and was kicked out of the Party.
A friend of mine, a law professor in Knoxville, wrote about this in USA Today yesterday:
"Here in the United States, a lot of programs officially aimed at the poor look suspiciously like subsidies to the New Class, too. Among "means-tested" programs, Food Stamps, now officially called SNAP, cover about 46 million people up to 125% of the poverty line (set at about $16,000 for a single mother and child). Other programs, such as the Earned Income Tax credit, cover people at slightly higher incomes, up to 200% of the poverty line. When federal spending on the dozens of programs are added up and state and local contributions included, the budget for assistance is about $1 trillion.
"If we simply handed those people, perhaps 60 million of them, their share of the cash, that would be more than $16,500 each. A single mom and her baby would get over $33,000, twice as much as a poverty wage. A family of four would land more than $66,000, $15,000 more than the average family income.
"So where's the money going? To people who aren't poor, such as doctors paid through Medicaid or landlords paid through Section 8. And to tens of thousands of members of the New Class, people like social workers, administrators and lawyers who run more than 120 different means tested federal programs."[2]
And law school is the gate to a federal job. That's a powerful expansionary force supporting legal education.
Also, a Maserati dealer has just opened in Arlington, Virginia.
Note that it includes programs like Medicaid, which are more efficient than private sector insurance: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4023. It also includes things like the earned income tax credit. Is there an army of federal lawyers involved in distributing that money? Probably more like some code in some program. It also includes programs like TANF, where only 12% of grants can be allocated to overhead.
> And law school is the gate to a federal job. That's a powerful expansionary force supporting legal education.
Except federal and state government legal hiring is trending down massively (except in immigration enforcement).
Not to change the topic but Medicaid is more efficient than private sector insurance?
Most docs I've talked (I talk to a lot through my job), tell that for the most part they lose money on every Medicaid patient they see. Medicaid is efficient because it pays less than the actual costs incurred.
Most docs stay afloat because they see enough commercially insured patients to cover the loss.
I'm certainly not arguing commercial insurance is a finely tuned machine (it's not), but I found the Medicaid claim a little misleading.
Doctors don't have to see medicaid patients. They do so because overall they make money on them. Even when they lose money on a majority of medicaid patients, a few outliers and diabetes maintenance patients can more than make up for it.
Most of the doctors I've talked to see Medicaid patients for two reasons:
(1) They consider it a form of charity or service to the community (they usually limit the number of Medicaid patients they see)
(2) They were pre-existing patients who at one time weren't on Medicaid
I'm not arguing all Medicaid patients result in a loss, but the vast majority do. I would challenge you to find a doctor who sees nothing but Medicaid patients and who is staying afloat without some sort of financial assistance (be it charity or government funding).
If you do poorly on your boards you are likely to get matched to a rural area serving lots of medicaid oeople--I'm assuming you aren't talking to these doctors as regularly as you are talking to surgeons in big cities or something.
"Is there an army of federal lawyers involved in distributing that money? Probably more like some code in some program."
I don't know the degree to which this is the case with EITC, but automation doesn't mean there aren't armies of lawyers involved - they may be engaged fighting over the shape of that code.
(They may, of course, not be. There being automation doesn't imply their presence either.)
The idea of just cutting all those social programs and handing out the cash instead seems like a huge vision for a new, freer, society. I really like that.
OTOH especially the health sector does not work as a market, as demand is for health services for sick people is simple infinite (e.g. they pay every price).
Not to turn this into a basic income thread, but one concern I would have with it is, what do you do with people who take their $16K and spend it all on drugs or alcohol or gamble it away? Tell them "tough, that's all you get?" and let them die in the street? You'd still need social programs for those who can't/won't take on the responsibilities of daily living.
I don't think many people would have the stomach for that.
If someone is given the resources they need, and cannot manage them effectively, then they have bigger problems than simple provision of more resources is likely to help with. They can hopefully get the help they need in some more hands-on charity, from friends or family, from mental health programs, or from some other program more targeted at addressing their issues. Which is to say, of course, that yes - some kind of further assistance is eventually necessary in some cases, but let's not drown those cases in people who simply need access to more resources.
well, don't give it to them all at once. pay everyone biweekely or twice a month or something similar.
you'll still have idiots doing stupid shit, but less people spending their entire income on a Yaris in January with no thought of how they'll feed themselves in December.
"...to tens of thousands of members of the New Class"
Well, I mean, they are citizens too. And they are doing work, automatized as it may be. Though their phones may be more useful and cheaper in this function, the way things are currently, they do deserve to be paid more. They do have the responsibility to hand out the checks, and as such, deserve more than those just getting them. With responsibilities must come privileges. How much? I mean, really, in many cases your phone will work just as well. So, what, a dollar more then?
I remember, though I cannot find the citation, a quip about that old Larry Page saying: "The next sexy job in 10 years will be statisticians." He said that in 2003, and sure enough, Nate Silver, for a little while, was the darling of jocks and nerds. The quip was about the next sexy job: Mayors. It boiled down to : "Mayors are the next statisticians. They control the tiny pieces of public codes, regulations, or forms that will be the biggest block to many hit new things getting passed. If you can control some portion of that system, you'll have it made." Though it speaks openly of bribery, it rings a bit true. You can block some new subway tunnel with an environmental impact report, you can control the speed of licenses with long lunches, you can take apart some new start-up or mom and pop deli with a crappy stenographer's report.
Yes, lobbying, I know. But this is more personal. It's not an uber powerful deal maker thing. It's a thing poli-sci majors could do, easily. Just work as a clerk or whatever for a year, and blammo, elected to the dog-catcher's bench with 50 votes and you are the guy we all have to go through to clear a parade or scout meeting in a park. You know, just to make sure the city isn't sued.
You are correct, the long view here is ever increasing bureaucracy, and the key into that kingdom is the law degree.
Basic universal income for all is redistribution -- assuming that it is supported by a tax system that doesn't make it completely pointless instead. E.g., if you do it in a system where the only tax is a straight no-exceptions, no-variations capitation and the taxed population and the recieving population are the same, then its not redistribution, but its not actually doing anything but altering the effective amount of the capitation, either.
Could this be a hog cycle thing? Just a short while ago, we were reading about all these law school grads who couldn't get jobs, because there were just too many of them. So in the next cycle nobody enrolls.
