As number of law school grads rises in Florida, demand drops

Miami Herald ^ | July 27. 2014 | SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Ask Jason Fraser how many jobs he applied for after graduating from a St. Petersburg law school last year and this is what he says:

“Maybe 10 or 20 when it was some place I wanted to work. Maybe 50 when I started getting desperate.’’

After searching as far afield as Ocala and Miami, Fraser finally landed a public defender’s post in Pasco County in June. But his months of job-hunting raises another question, one that nags at many in the legal profession:

Does Florida have too many lawyers?

Since 2000, the number of licensed attorneys has swollen from 60,900 to 96,511. In the same period, five new law schools have opened, cranking out even more lawyers to join those bemoaning the diminished rewards of their chosen career.

“Now it seems you work harder to make half of what you did in 1998,’’ said Angela Wright, a Tampa criminal defense lawyer. “The economy is a reason but also the fact there are a whole lot more attorneys.’’........

[Zuse]

A small town had one lawyer with nothing to do.
Then another lawyer moved in and they were both very busy.

[sitetest]

In Florida, there’s an inch of doctors listed in the Yellow Pages, and two inches of malpractice lawyers.

I guess the state has reached the saturation point with lawyers, at least.

[Paladin2]

Maybe the State can cut back on the number of Laws too.

[jumpingcholla34]

Corporate clients don't want to pay for the overhead of traditional law firms, and those firms are downsizing and slashing their hiring. It's amazing how little infrastructure it really takes to practice law these days, and savings can be passed on to clients. (You'd better be offering savings, or you won't get hired.) I left a big firm in Washington last year and got a DC mail drop, a VOIP phone with a DC area code, a malpractice policy, stationery and a web site. I cut my hourly rate and, although I'm not getting rich (I never was, so nothing there), I keep my bills paid and I run my own show. Most days, I just work from home.

When I started out as a lawyer, before word processing and the Internet, I could not have done this without at least a secretary, a permanent office and an expensive hard-copy law library. Now, I can compete with the big boys by working for the clients who got to know me during my big-firm days, and offering those clients a much-reduced hourly rate. I also don't have to share my fees with a group of high-level partners who take 1/3 for themselves and 1/3 for the firm's expensive overhead, leaving me with 1/3 of the money I busted my butt to earn.

[Milton Miteybad]

Really, in this day, the only people who bother to believe the canard about a J.D. being a “versatile degree” are 1) those selling legal educations and 2) those gullible enough to become their prospective marks. You may want to check out the law school scamblogs for further detail.

[dfwgator]

Does Florida have too many lawyers?

Does a bear.......

[dfwgator]

A lot of the grunt work that associates used to do can now be offshored.

[morphing libertarian]

Can’t we close all law schools for 20 years and prohibit attorneys from holding public office?

[MaxMax]

Kids coming out of Law school are not lawyers, they're green as green gets.
Most didn't work hard but expect that fat check and job on graduation that the schools
promised them. Not in the real world unless they're connected. Then there's
the issue of passing the Bar which most students will put off until they find a job.

Meanwhile they're so stacked with debt the search become hopeless. The smart ones will
take their work ethic to other areas and not really seek to become a Lawyer. Law enforcement
will hire them but Florida has recently cut back 250 officers in Miami, not sure about elsewhere.

In 2011 there were about 50k graduates from Law school, 2014 may be more.
Almost as useless as Liberal Arts.

[Rodamala]

I would trade my cell phone, laptop, iPad and desktop for a secretary pool in in miniskirts. I would even buy all of them fancy IBM Selectric typewriters to use.

[kaila]

You need the right amount of balance with doctors- too many and they lose their skills, especially with surgeons. Not enough patients to keep up the skill set.Having too many doctors is not a good thing. Rethink your statement.

[Rodamala]

In Florida, they need throngs of Government-Medical Industrial Complex Zombies to act as front line death panel facilitators. The goal is to extract all the finances of the retirees in the nursing homes. No English Speaking skills required, however applicants with experience sexing baby chicks and drowning litters of kittens in burlap feedsacks will be given preference. Applicants will be required to demostrate proficency in maximizing pai and humiliation using catheters, and syringes.

[Leaning Right]

now lets make it happen with doctors

I don't know how true it is, but I read somewhere that the AMA uses its influence to limit the number of med schools. If that's so, it's a sin because Obamacare will explode the demand for doctors.

[scottteng]

yes the AMA “the doctors union” deliberately keeps the number of seats in medical schools very low causing an artificial shortage with the accompanying high prices. The issue is not creating more surgeons which is a high skilled subset as I understand the shortage is primary care doctors. I would like to see each state establish 2 new medical schools enrolling students right out of high school and cranking out 100 call them PD’s for practical doctors each in five years. Doctors would be plentiful prices would come under control. Think of it most of us already are being seen by a similarly educated person in PA’s or ARNP. This would not interfere much with the current food chain in the medical industry and give average people much easier access to basic care.

[Gene Eric]

Your point is the relative wasted her time earning the degree?

[kaila]

PAs and ARNPs are supervised by MDs generally. Even if you don’t see the MD, they are held liable for the noctors ( not doctors) care. They sign off the charts after the noctors have seen the patient.. So, you cannot increase noctors without increasing the number of physicians, because they will not take on a huge noctor load due to liability and workload issues. Also, the number of seats in medical schools are low because it is very expensive and labor intensive to train a doctor. That is why they come out of medical school with huge debt. If you increase the providers too much, their exposure to different disease processes are very limited. I want to see a doctor who has seen it all, so he/she can better diagnose me. I think PAs and ARNPs are fine for very minor issues, but they dont get much training to be independent right out of school, and they rely on MDs to teach them. I see this everyday. They really dont know all that much without a lot of MD help.

[Gritty]

I read a couple of years ago that the United States has more lawyers than the rest of the world combined.

I doubt that ratio has diminished in the intervening years.

[randita]

The word is getting out that finding a law career is much harder than it used to be and much less lucrative.

It’s going to take a couple of years to find a job unless you graduated in the top 10% of your class in a 1st or 2nd tier school of law.

Paying on $150,000-$200,000 in school loans can be extremely demoralizing and depressing when you send out resume after resume and don’t even get a call for an interview.

If I know of anyone who is considering going to law school, I am going to do my darndest to convince them not to. The only exception to that would be someone who has a decent paying day job and goes to law school part time. That’s hard to do, but not as hard as facing daunting loans with no job prospects at all.

[Milton Miteybad]

No, I am saying that when someone tells you that a J.D. is a "versatile" degree, they are probably trying to sell you on the proposition of paying for a legal education.

There are, however, thousands of newly-minted law school graduates who, upon finding themselves largely unemployable, would in fact say that they wasted 1) hundreds of thousands of tuition dollars and 2) three years of their lives they can never get back earning a degree that makes them less desirable for non-legal jobs than their competition who a) now have an additional three years' work experience advantage on them, and b) aren't financially crippled by astronomic levels of student loan debt that isn't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

And to pre-empt the next point, this is not to say that every law school graduate regrets his/her decision. But a surprising number of them do...a number corresponding to the 80% or so of law school graduates who, upon graduation, cannot obtain employment that enables them to establish independent households, families, and simultaneously service the massive student debt they have accumulated.

They don't call it "the law school scam" for nothing, you know.

[Gene Eric]

Well, I’m one that mentioned to another here the degree was versatile without this specific quality being mentioned to me beforehand. And since I’m not trying promote the high cost of education, I must conclude you’re probably mistaken in your supposition — at least in the context of my post you criticized. Furthermore, the type of degree was never specified despite your restriction to J.D. Where was the relative’s graduate-level costs of education stated — a vital factor to your complaint?

I gather you’re not familiar with the value of business professionals educated in law, especially in the areas of contract, health, and patent law.