Is Law School a Losing Game? (Yes!)

New York Times ^ | January 8, 2011 | DAVID SEGAL

[reaganaut1]

...

To judge from data that law schools collect, and which is published in the closely parsed U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, the prospects of young doctors of jurisprudence are downright rosy.

In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.

And with corporations scrutinizing their legal expenses as never before, more entry-level legal work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India. It’s common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry decades ago.

But improbably enough, law schools have concluded that life for newly minted grads is getting sweeter, at least by one crucial measure. In 1997, when U.S. News first published a statistic called “graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation,” law schools reported an average employment rate of 84 percent. In the most recent U.S. News rankings, 93 percent of grads were working — nearly a 10-point jump.

...

Apparently, there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available. But the legal market has always been obsessed with academic credentials, and today, few students except those with strong grade-point averages at top national and regional schools can expect a come-hither from a deep-pocketed firm.

[The Pack Knight]

Precedents should be the judge's job and should be optional for the person filing the complaint.

So the plaintiff should be able to choose which law applies to his case? I'd hate to be a defendant in that system.

In reality, judges are corrupt and when people go to courts expecting justice, the judges come up with frivolous technicalities to not take up the case on its merit.

Have any real-life examples? After all, a lot of people say little things like the 4th Amendment are "frivolous technicalities".

Many times, these are appealable but the plaintiff gives up because of the amount of money already lost.

So you think the system is skewed against plaintiffs? That sure makes the whole push for tort reform a head-scratcher.

[decimon]

FYI - in California, those who graduate from non-ABA accredited law schools must take and pass the same bar exam as ABA-accredited graduates. The Board of Legal Examiners only administers one type of bar exam.

Yeah, that's been brought up in some distance learning forums. They also have a 'Baby Bar' exam (First Year Law Students' Exam).

A search came up with little on non ABA law programs outside of California. Either I'm out of date or just had it wrong.

This is interesting:

"The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has waived the usual requirement that all takers of the state bar examination must be graduates of an ABA-accredited law school for a licensed California attorney who got his law degree in 2004 from Concord Law School, a non-ABA-accredited online institution."

Cont... ABA Journal

[DrC]

“I know only what I’ve read of this and what I’ve read is that people graduating with such degrees might work in the background doing research or other scut work. And that may be entirely wrong but I don’t know.”

From the standpoint of efficiency, it’s probably a very good thing. Just as a nurse practitioner is just as good as an internal medicine doc for giving a routine physical, there’s no need to be squandering high cost resources on doing work that really doesn’t require that high a level of education etc.