It was really only a matter of time before lawyers' salaries began to decline dramatically, and astute young people began to realize that a $70,000 to $90,000 investment in law school may turn out to be a very bad deal.
The fewer lawyers the better.
The real error in these decisions to go to law school to “make money” is that people haven’t closely examined the distribution of law school graduate pay.
There’s one very large law firm in NY that pays new hired very well, and other than that, the new grad salaries are very much under $100K for the numerical majority of law school grads.
http://www.nalp.org/08saldistribution
the thing is, this kind of thing isn’t restricted to lawyers. There’s a growing legion of professionals competing for shrinking pool of entry level professional jobs. The economy doesn’t need more professionals right now, it needs more jobs, blue collar and white collar.
Before the recession, the ABA cites statistics that show an average starting salary for an associate of a large law firm of about $160,000 a year. But by 2009, about 42 percent of graduates began with an annual salary of less than $65,000.
There’s not a first-year lawyer IN THE WORLD who’s worth $160K. And it’s the ABA’s fault salaries got that high to begin with. Another in the list of reasons I’ve never been a member.
Colonel, USAFR
Imagine what would happen if they simplified taxes with a flat rate or VAT. Millions of jobs would vanish. I sometimes suspect that half our GDP is real, the other half parasitic, in terms of government regulations, cronyism, and outright corruption. Excess lawyers is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
When I entered law school in 1996, there were 170 accredited law schools. Since then, the ABA has accredited 30 more. (There are still more in the pipeline)
Moreover, the ABA is driving up the cost of legal education through accrediting mandates and educational experiments — such as the massive cost of legal clinical education — much of which adds little value to legal education.
The top salaries are not just a handful of NY firms, but scores of big firms in every major legal market. Having said that, firms like my former firm — now an AMLAW top 15 firm, are paying associates in some markets 20K less than they paid me ten years ago. Think about that, 20K less than I made 10 years ago.
Yet, the ABA is pushing to relax standards for entry into law schools, including eliminating the LSAT.
Lowering standards and dumping supply in any market will not improve quality or sustain pricing.
The good news is, you can now get a crappier lawyer for less money. :-)
We could probably increase the quality of lawyering, reduce the false expectations of big money, and have a better, more ethical brand of lawyer by shutting about 100 law schools.
Having said that — people are and should be free to spend their money on the education of their choice. We should not regulate stupidity.
It’s a start, but I prefer a bus at the bottom of the bay approach.
There are too darned many lawyers, anyway.