Deborah Jones Merritt has just posted a new piece on SSRN (as well as a related blog post) that’s well worth looking at for anyone interested in the state of the legal job marketplace – and the implications for law schools.
Taking advantage of the wealth of information now publicly available on the internet, Merritt conducted a down and dirty longitudinal study of those admitted to the Ohio bar in 2010, when the full impact of the recession had hit legal hiring.
She finds that job outcomes nearly five years out are poor. She compares the 2010 Ohio figures with the 2000 national figures from the After The JD study, and finds that those who started out in Ohio in the midst of a recession in 2010 were in worse shape four and a half years out than the national cohort of those who started out in the 2000 recession.
From that, combined with a look at the changing structure of the legal marketplace, she draws a bigger – and undoubtedly more controversial – conclusion, which is that the contrast most likely is explained by the changing structure of the legal services marketplace, where US lawyer jobs are being replaced by everything from outsourcing to software. Put differently, she concludes that her Ohio figures provide data to support the claim that structural change is depressing job prospects for young lawyers.
Last but perhaps not least, she digs in to what this implies for law schools.
Merritt’s methodology is both clever and simple – in today’s world, job information can be found on the internet from a variety of sources. Those actively admitted to the Ohio bar are required to provide their employment information to the licensing authority; beyond that, sources such as LinkedIn and law firm web sites provide more detailed information on almost everyone engaged in practice.
As she notes, this method has its limitations. Her method provides no information on income or job satisfaction. Not everyone is traceable via the internet, and it is theoretically possible, however unlikely, that young lawyers of a generation that grew up online might have brick and mortar practices with no online footprint. More likely, her method may overstate job outcomes – young lawyers may present part time jobs in ways that make them seem full time, and may take a good long while to post job terminations. Law students who did not pass the bar – a small but not insignificant group, and perhaps poised to grow larger as admission standards slip – are not included at all.
There also is an obvious limitation in trying to draw conclusions about national trends from a study of one state. As states go, Ohio is as representative as any. It provides a home to large firms such as Jones Day, but it is not dominated by one big city market. Rural and small town lawyers fit into the mix. An argument could be made that its rust belt location skews results, an argument best answered by similar studies in other states.
What Merritt finds is that things started badly for the class of 2010, and, unlike in prior recessions, did not get much better. At a national level, nine months after graduation less than forty percent of graduates held jobs in law firms, barely two thirds held jobs that required a law license, and ten percent were altogether unemployed.
Four and a half years after graduation, Merritt finds, things have not rebounded, at least in the state of Ohio. One fifth of the 2010 cohort work in jobs that require no law license. Just shy of 50 percent were in private practice, but of those almost one fifth (9.1 percent of the total) were in solo practice, a category that, like consultants, includes some thriving professionals as well as some not so fully employed. Just under 15 percent were in legal jobs in government, and eight percent in legal jobs in business. Just over eighteen percent were in jobs not requiring a law license – and while she didn’t uncover any law graduate barristas, the ‘business’ jobs held by some graduates suggest to her that the category is not just fanciful. More than six percent were unemployed.
Merritt compares these outcomes to the results of the 2000 graduates tracked by the After the JD study, and finds that the 2010 class did less well at rebounding from a poor start. For example, the percentage employed in law firms for the 2000 cohort was at 48.7 percent nationally at the same time, compared to only 39.5 percent for the 2010 cohort. Of those in private practice, they skew toward smaller firms and solo practice compared to the 2000 cohort. Another sign of employment stress is that job changes for this cohort are much more frequent than prior national averages.
Merritt concludes – with caveats – that the outcomes for 2010 signal a structural change in legal employment. The lack of recovery comparable to the 2000 graduates, the decline in law firm unemployment, the percentage altogether out of legal employment, all signal to Merritt that a structural change is probably underway. She doesn’t ignore the possibility that the most recent recession was just deeper or recovery slower, but concludes in light of a shifting legal services marketplace that her results probably reflect a structural change in the market.
Those who would argue with Merritt’s conclusions need to take into account her review of the changing legal services marketplace. The positioning of lawyers as competitors for legal services business has changed since 2000, and Merritt relies on this along with her Ohio data in concluding that her 2010 lawyers were not just facing a tough economy.
If she’s right that recent graduates are already suffering from a structural change in the market, arguments and studies that assume that the current value of a law degree matches historical norms require adjustment. While I'm in the structural change is happening camp, I’m not prepared to say that the evidence the market has changed is conclusive — but Merritt’s data suggests it may have passed the point where structural change can be assumed away.
If legal employment has undergone structural change that depresses job prospects, the implications for law schools as we now know them are obvious. If there are fewer good long term legal jobs, there will be less demand for law graduates, which will inevitably continue to put pressure on law schools.
Merritt reprises a proposal she has made before, which is that costs can be lowered and the social purpose of law school better served by offering a first year of law school in undergraduate school. For those not going on to law school, the legal training will make them better citizens and at least partially prepared for many JD Advantage jobs. For those pursuing a full JD, the cost would be lowered by cutting the length of post graduate studies.
Merritt’s article won’t be the last word in this debate. I’m quite certain that the law school scam crowd will hail it as definitive proof that end times are near, and that those in full defensive mode will latch on to the limitations Merritt herself identifies in her approach to argue her findings away. It does add unfreighted analysis and fresh data to a discussion that too often sees only heat and ungrounded opinions.
Who is the "law school scam" crowd?
Anyone who is critical of the status quo? Anyone who doesn't despise Paul Campos?
Your "analysis" (such as it is) suffers because you throw around a slur in your conclusion, expecting that "everyone" will "know what I mean." You did a fairly good job, IMHO, of summarizing someone else's work, but then spoiled the whole read with your "analysis" at the end.
Now that she has the data, I would hope that Professor Merritt would post the specific 5 year outcomes for her own school, Ohio State.
This is why some law professors who sympathize with law school critics are staying silent in public. Deborah Jones Merritt is one the most outspoken figures pointing to bad employment outcomes for law school graduates and recommending significant changes to how law school works. She posted extensively at Paul Campos's blog. And she just sank months into a detailed, ground-level survey establishing convincingly that things are hard for recent graduates, much harder than they used to be.
What does she get for it? A comment saying she should look more closely at Ohio State. Why? Is Ohio State more problematic than the other schools she studied? (If anything, it probably has better employment outcomes.) No. It's purely because Deborah Jones Merritt teaches there. The question comes with an implied accusation of hypocrisy: law professor, fix your own school before you cast stones. This is a mild version, but something similar and usually worse happens to everyone who engages.
Law school critics, think carefully about this. If you want more law professor allies, you need to stop making the conversation about individuals. When we speak up, we make ourselves instantly unpopular with our colleagues. If it also makes us targets for public criticism from the critics we substantially agree with, there's every incentive to stay silent. That makes meaningful reform harder.
I'm not asking for garlands and champagne. But hold your fire a bit. You are scaring away people who would otherwise be helping.
@A Prof/10:47 a.m.:
Being criticized by anonymous Internet commenters at a blog that almost no one outside of the industry reads? That is what is "holding back" some law professors who sympathize with law school critics? Whatever will law school critics do without the contributions of some law professors?
Professor Merritt is an adult. I am sure that she knew to expect little or no reward for pointing out how poorly the class of 2010's passers of the Ohio bar has done in the five years since graduating, except perhaps to convince others of the necessity for change. If it helps the rest of you get on board, I offer my sincere congratulations and undying love to cancel out one anonymous Internet commenter if you duplicate her efforts for the class of 2010 in your state.
This is a really good study, and as a member of the class of 2009, I would venture to say that the class of 2009 probably fared about the same as the class of 2010. It would be really interesting to see what types of loan balances these students are carrying. My experience with colleagues from the class of 2009 is that many of the solo practitioner or small firm attorneys (firms of 2-20 attorneys) earn anywhere from 20k to 60k a year and many of us haven't been able to earn enough to pay the interest that accrues each month on our law school loans. So while many of us graduated with 150-200k in education debt we now owe more than that because each month the accrued interest increases.
To A Prof:
If you read my comment as an attack on Professor Merritt, it was not meant as such. Everyone should post their own school's 5 year outcomes if they have them. She, apparently, has them. I have no idea if they are any different than the Ohio overall results or not.
You realize that the law school scam crowd stems from virtually every law school lying about employment outcomes for years.
I hope no one on the faculty or administration of a law school continues to support this practice.
Yes, we should applaud professors who take a sincere interest in analyzing students' employment outcomes, especially when so few seem to really care about that or even value the practice of law.
Maybe more professors should consider researching their school's five year employment outcomes. More data can only help.
A Prof, I am puzzled by your comment statement,
"Law school critics, think carefully about this. If you want more law professor allies, you need to stop making the conversation about individuals. When we speak up, we make ourselves instantly unpopular with our colleagues. If it also makes us targets for public criticism from the critics we substantially agree with, there's every incentive to stay silent. That makes meaningful reform harder."
What law school critic attacked Professor Merit? Both she, Brian Tamahama and Paul Campos have displayed considerable professional courage in criticising the status quo, which has been greater by attacks on their personal integrity, in many instances organised by individuals not very distant from this forum, some who post regularly here and who have, allegedly (but pretty convincingly) been abetted by people who cannot be named because of the infamously protective "spam filter."
One in particular, a rigorous denouncer of anonymous post game and sock puppets turns out to have a drawer filled with odd socks that specialised in the very attack you complain of, i.e., the Campos/Tamahama/Merritt is a hypocrite line. In short your objection may be very misdirected. Look closer to home….
Thank you prof Merritt. Fiat Lux!
Is there any faculty member that honestly believes that certain schools did NOT engage in a scam? Or puffery if the term scam is a little too bold for polite company.
I agree with almost all the comments above.
It simply isn't enough to say "the scammers will say this" and the "defenders" will say that. (Note the difference there.)
The data either proves something, proves nothing, or points to a conclusion that the author asserts. What is the point here? The first alternative means that the author should say forthrightly what the data shows, the second alternative means the data is meaningless, and the third alternative cries out for more than a few throw away lines about "this group of reviled person will say this" and "this group of credible law professors will say that" and "I just don't know what to make of all this work."
For example, did so many validly write incessantly on this site that there will be full employment for attorneys in about two years? Does the data support those claims, or, were those claims sort of, well, let's think for a while … what would be the word? Just how appalling would it be if, after all the hoopla for literally years, persons in authority in legal academia engaged, so recently, in those sorts of almost per se irresponsible representations (while literally flying off the handle and sometimes using obscenities when responding to anyone who dared to point out the obvious).
Yes, let's applaud efforts to take publicly available information and summarize it. (Not sure how vigorously the applause needs to be here, but it is to a valid end, one supposed.)
But let's also hear some "knowledge generation" in the sense of advancing understanding by way of reasoned, expert analysis, not just statistics.
A mistake so many profs make on this site is posting incomprehensible (to most) fancy looking charts and graphs (as if staring at a series of little thumbnails with lost of dots will reveal a number or something, like the old tests for color recognition) – charts and graphs replete with a discussion involving the jargon of statistics, but to no real effect in advancing understanding of anyone about anything – which leaves the impression that an amateur is dabbling in a field of study not taught in any depth at Yale Law School, or any other law school for that matter, and beyond the ken of most JD law professors, especially those whose field of interest has NOTHING to do with such studies.
Not sure we need studies to demonstrate the obvious. What we instead need is lower tuition and law schools focusing their efforts on securing employment for their students post-graduation.
Law professors need to take statistics. Her analysis is silly — even if there has been a structural change.
you say potato, I say potato. I look at her "results" (it really is an extended blog post certainly not an academic paper) and it shows that most kids found jobs. Since she has no income data we don't know if they are doing better or worse than the kids who came earlier. But I fail to see the "ills" she speaks of. The percentage working as lawyers (i.e. excluding business jobs) appears exactly in line with longstanding national averages that reach back decades (ref. S&M II).
"Law professors need to take statistics. Her analysis is silly"
Unfortunately I am not well versed in statistics, as I suppose (perhaps unfairly) are most readers here.
Could you please explain why her analysis is silly from a statistical standpoint?
Thanks!
anon
You are stating conclusions. Congratulations!
Unfortunately, you have no basis to so conclude, based on the post above, the referenced study and, especially, "S&M II" …
You "fail to see the 'ills" she speaks of."
Exactly.
QED.
"it really is an extended blog post certainly not an academic paper"
Seriously? From scattered sources she built a database tracking the job outcomes for more than 1,000 new members of the Ohio bar over 4.5 years. That would be a heck of a blog post. It seems like a serious project to me, and one that often would be supported by grant money.
Is it that studying the profession of law itself – which includes looking at professional outcomes – is beneath the dignity of legal scholars? Are we being dismissive because her interpretation of the data runs counter to the "best time ever to go to law school" narrative or because looking at what people with law degrees do is appropriate for casual blogging but not serious scholarship?
It's revealing that some people are still willing to push the "most kids found jobs" line. That's so 2011, when everybody was still reporting 96% employment nine months after graduation etc.
The national unemployment rate for 25-34 year olds, including everybody from high school dropouts to SCOTUS clerks, is 5.8%.
A particularly interesting stat from the paper is that 41% of the cohort that had jobs as lawyers with large law firms were staff attorneys rather than associates. It would be interesting to know if Ohio is unusual in this regard, or if this reflects what's happening with entry-level hiring in BIGLAW at the national level.
Professor Campos,
Dayton, Ohio is the back office with staff attorneys for Wilmer Hale. I don't know if other big law firms are there as well.
This must skew the stats for Ohio and any other state with back office locations, like West Virginia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/business/24lawyers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Anon,
Why are you so dismissive of her work? What do you think the small firms in Ohio are paying? (This is not a rhetorical question.)
And her percentage of those working as lawyers ignores those grads who never pass the bar.
Final question, even if everything you say is true, why do you find this level of employment coupled with this level of debt acceptable?
Wilmer Hale has its back office in Dayton Ohio. This must skew the number of staff attorneys in big law in Ohio.
It is also useful to note that Ohio has a quite astonishing number of law schools for the size of the state and its economy – 9 ABA accredited schools and is bordered by a few states with equally ludicrous numbers of law schools, i.e., PA with 8, Michigan with 5, Indiana with 4 and is not far from Illinois' 9. It therefore sits in a very over-law schooled region (but see California and Florida) and that is before you consider the seriously national schools that compete nationwide.
Mack – What states are under-law schooled?
Does this article or extended blog post tell us something we did not know and which is relevant? Seems like we have been talking about the employment issues for law grads for years. Why would anyone spend hours and hours adding numbers to figure out what every school knows is a problem.
A better issue is what do to about it. You can either decrease the numbers admitted (supply) or decrease the number who apply (demand). The problem is the either one has an impact on employment for law professors and that generally is where the conversation ends.
Big Bob: I would bet that Prof. Merritt felt compelled to do this because the law school establishment still denies the existence of a problem.. It is all cyclical, the scam bloggers are behind it, etc., etc.
Given that those who question the status quo are called scambloggers, I think that the "other side" needs an equally derogatory name. Any suggestions???
Just saying…
"Law Spivs" Spivs was a phrase for dodgy businessmen who sold vaguely rationed goods, typically overpriced, with unreliable claims as to their value, comparability with the brandname product, etc. Very common during WW II and rationing, they avoid actual service in the trenches looking instead to profiteer. The term Spiv is of British origin – the Oxford dictionary describes it as a man, typically a flashy dresser, who makes a living by disreputable dealings.
Big Bob – at least one pair of writers, Simkovik and McIntyre, have now published two papers purporting to show that a law degree is worth $1 million and more recently that graduating law school in a recession has only a $30,000 negative effect on a lawyer's lifetime earnings. I think Prof. Merritt's article is a needed corrective. The Law Spivs love S&M, but then it has always been referred to as la vice anglais.
Big Bob:
Law is going through structural changes.
Also, there are very few studies of actual employment outcomes 5 or 10 years after graduation.
Students and potential students want to look beyond the initial employment numbers from 9 months out. There is virtually no data on the longer term outcomes from individual schools.
Oh, thanks. Wow, am I out of touch! I did not realize the scammers were the bad guys but now that I think about it, it makes sense. The other side are the "truthers." Are there actually really any law school truthers — those who do not think the sky is falling or is at least lower than ever. Or are the truthers more clever so they talk about the opportunities for legal minds in gardening, the Ice Capades or cattle branding and think the future is bright?
As for for what happens in the longer run, I am not sure 5 years is much of a long run and any current applicant who needs this study to show things are grim has not been paying attention at all. I'm sorry all you law profs but I think the professor could have used her time more wisely. Unless, of course, the leg work was done by a staff of RAs.
It's amazing how little we actually know about legal employment – either the job outcomes for those who graduate law school, or what lawyers actually do in their day to day jobs. Even folks like me, and I was a big firm partner, only know what we did when we did it, and no one is typical. The sociological studies and surveys are relatively few, and some way out of date. This leaves the field open to folks led by their agendas, whether it is to trash law schools or to oversell the value of a legal education.
I don't think there's any question that legal services is undergoing structural change. Staff attorneys, legal process outsourcers, LegalZoom, globalization, etc., are all taking market share from US lawyers. Over the horizon is the possibility of the kind of regulatory change the UK has seen, which would open the door to direct competition with more non-lawyer competitors.
What we don't really know is what impact all the structural change is having, and will have, on job prospects for young lawyers. Congress keeps passing complicated laws, and the reach of law goes deeper into day to day life all the time. There are those who argue that this guarantees an evergreen source of business for lawyers, once the unpleasantness of the recession is behind us. Others look at the shift of work to non-lawyers and even to software, or to the price pressure services like LegalZoom put on fees, and think that while legal services might continue to grow the share done by lawyers is likely to decline, with some sectors being less remunaterive than they used to be.
I'm more evidence driven than agenda driven, which is why I think Professor Merritt's study is a nice step in the right direction. She pioneers a methodology that can be replicated in any state of the union. While it has the disadvantage of not having income or satisfaction data, it has the advantage – one not shared by surveys such as After the JD – of capturing fairly close to 100 percent of the job outcomes.
If she's right that the data suggests we are already seeing job opportunities depressed by structural change, it's important. As an internet entrepreneur, I lived through the dotcom era, and I saw from brick and mortar merchants and physical magazines the kind of denial I am now seeing from law schools. Like the internet in 1997, when I got going, the newlaw competition is in its infancy, and if there will be impacts the full force of that is years away.
In my internet life, some of those brick and mortar companies did just fine. They had strong brands and adapted their business models in time. Others, not so much. For both publishing and retail sales, the business today is way different from what it was in 1997 because of the structural changes brought by the internet.
The point is, for the health of law schools along many dimensions it would be smart to know more than we do about how graduates do job wise as well as more about what they are doing. A study like this is not a waste of time; it's a brick in a wall that very much needs building.
Thanks, Ray, for posting such a thoughtful and succinct review of my article. And thanks to the commenters, as well, for their input–I hope there will be even more. Here are a few thoughts to keep the discussion going.
First, and most important, what should we do about this situation? I offer several suggestions in the article. I calculate that the market is unable to support more than about 29,250 new lawyers a year in jobs that require a law license. If prospective students are willing to accept a job ratio of 85% "lawyering" jobs during the first few years after graduation, we're still admitting classes that are a bit too large. (I account for attrition and other factors in the paper.) I think law schools will have to maintain their current reduced class sizes or shrink further.
I also predict that tuition will have to remain in its current discounted rate or fall even lower. There's some worthwhile lawyering work to do, but not for the type of debt students are currently accumulating.
As Ray notes, I also suggest moving the first year of law school into the undergrad curriculum. We do a great job of teaching law in a liberal arts manner during that year, and law schools can build on that strength. Students who go into the workplace with that BA would have had a fine liberal arts education (1L plus all of their other college courses) and would have skills they could apply to law-related jobs or other lines of work.
For those who want to be licensed lawyers, we could offer a 2-year JD (with the undergrad major as a prerequisite). These 2 years would stress education for practicing law.
For students, this would mean that a law license required 6 years rather than 7 years of higher ed, and 4 of those years would be at BA prices (which helps at some schools, but not others). It would also give students a better opportunity to figure out how much they like law and to make better judgments about whether a JD is worthwhile for their career goals.
I know it isn't as catchy as "scammer" but the word that fits is "reactionary," which is defined as a person or a set of views opposing reform.
This is a distinct and recognizable form in legal academia. As the number of persons applying to law school falls to levels not seen in decades (when there were about 25% fewer schools, btw), these persons see only blue skies and sunny days.
A law school admission director might enter this site to actually claim (it is difficult to believe that this could actually have happened) that "now" is the time to attend law school. A law professor might attempt to back up that claim. A law prof might incessantly cherry pick quotes from studies showing the dismal state of legal education to claim that all is well, alleging that "scammers" were always wrong (though, in truth, the claims that law schools were misrepresenting employment numbers have been validated time and again).
And so forth. Perhaps most egregiously, as stated above, wildly exaggerated claims about the actually quite modest claims made by S&M are touted as the gospel by reactionary members of the law school defense team (who must not have carefully read their papers and who have afforded an authority to their conclusions in light of their experience that bears some thoughtful consideration!)
Readers of this site know full well that the reactionary and sort of thin nature of these defenses is obvious. To respond in any manner other than to recognize that something must be done to change the status quo is silly. Persons in growing numbers are holding legal academia in disrepute and simply riding this all out – claiming in the face of contrary facts that all is well – isn't a good strategy. A simple mea culpa, combined with a pledge to do better – to do SOMETHING other than engage in dishonest denial – would solve so much of this.
But humility is not a quality that is seemingly much valued by legal academics. They are, after all, "rock stars" and "best athletes" chosen because of their vastly superior intellects and educations to enjoy a life characterized by hubris and disdain for others – others exemplified by all those evil "scammers."
I posted a comment earlier, but it seems to have disappeared into the spam filter. So let me be briefer! First, thanks very much Ray for your thoughtful and succinct outline of my article. And thanks to the commenters as well; I enjoy discussion on all of these issues.
What do do now? I calculate in the article that the market can support no more than about 29,250 new lawyers (i.e., in jobs that require bar admission) per year. After accounting for attrition and other factors (such as what percentage of bar-required jobs might draw students to law school), I suggest that the current 1L class is still a bit too large. So law schools will have to stay where they are with class size or reduce further.
I also predict that schools will have to maintain their current level of effective tuition or move it still lower. The jobs available just don't line up with higher tuition and debt levels.
And, as Ray notes, I briefly sketch my idea of moving the first year of law school to the undergrad curriculum. Our approach to that year has always struck me as more liberal arts than professional; why not capitalize on that strength–and then focus a 2-year JD on professional education? This would also be considerably cheaper for students: just 6 years total to become a licensed lawyer, with more of an opportunity to assess whether the full JD is worth shooting for.
Deborah
I like your proposal in theory, but wonder how it would actually work out.
THe first year, focused on the "core" courses (i.e., contracts, torts, prop, crim law and procedure and civil procedure) is intense and something of a "boot camp" that introduces students not only to the law, but also to the rigors of law school.
Many students decide in their first year that they made a mistake – they hate it (but can't necessarily back out, because of parental pressure, etc). Others thrive. Most just get by and move on to the upper level courses with something of a background in law school expectations.
Ideally, the next two years should be designed to serve the needs of the vast majority of law students, by preparing these students to become attorneys and not law professors (future law professors really don't need a law school designed to suit their particular needs, as they have such superior intellects, they can succeed in any milieu and will be prepared upon graduation to opine on any topic).
Preparing an undergraduate student to actually practice law, on the other hand, is a daunting task – as some law profs recognize.
Now, how would a bunch of "law" courses in the senior year of college, followed by two years in law school, better serve the need to prepare law students who attend law school to become attorneys (i.e., the needs of nearly all of them)?
It's quite telling that law professors aren't aware that Wilmer Hale has its back offices in Dayton.
The derogatory name for the other side is the law school industrial complex or the Law Debt Quislings.
What are "back offices" and what do lawyers do in them?
Debby actually interviewed the e-discovery manager from WilmerHale on LST's podcast. Check out episode #9 on lstradio.com or on iTunes
Yes – even law professors who genuinely care about employment outcomes seem to not know that much about actual employment options for law students. I think there needs to be some type of CLE requirement that has exposes professors to the actual state of legal practice and the "real world."
When I say "we" don't know as much as we should, I don't mean just law professors. I include practicing lawyers, which I once was. When I was an equity partner at a big firm, I knew what I did, a fair amount about what some of partners did, less about what others of my partners did, and very little about what someone holding the same license did when they got to work in a strip mall office five miles from the skyscraper where I sat. You can know a lot about a particular practice, and some law professors do, and yet not have a clear picture of the profession as a whole. Add time issues, and the issue is compounded – I think a lot of what I did litigation partners still do, but there are other aspects of the job that have very much changed since I moved on.
To fill in the picture takes rigorous study, regularly updated, especially given that the nature of legal work is changing. WE have anthropological/sociological studies like John Flood's of a Chicago firm, and surveys such as After the JD, but these go out of date pretty quickly. After the JD tracks 2000 graduates, and there is a fair argument that the career trajectories of more recent and future classes are likely to be quite different.
I think we could do with a few less articles parsing one Constitutional rule or another, and more like Professor Merritt's, but there are structural impediments. As you've seen in this thread, some professors view this kind of work as not real scholarship. More importantly, the students running law reviews have the same mindset. Although it would help students a lot to have more articles out there that look into the nature of the profession, you don't see many of those in law reviews, top or not so top. Professors who need to publish or perish get the message and give the student editors what they will publish.
Deborah–I think a 6-year BA/JD would be great, with the first year of law school being the last undergraduate year. But I have two worries. First, this might actually result in an increase in lawyers each year, as it would reduce the cost of legal education. (Yes, I'm all in favor of reducing the cost of legal education, just pointing out a side effect). Second, undergraduate schools might fight against it, as it would presumably direct tuition from those schools to law schools. Any thoughts about these? Thanks.
I have my doubts about the 6 year BA/JD – but this may be because of my area of practice which is best described as international technology law.
First, we put a very high premium on lawyers with a STEM background, preferably a degree in physics, math or chemistry. Most of our work requires the ability to understand the technology involved. We have two BSc/PhD's in physics on the team. (We also put a premium on international backgrounds.) We recognise that our clients also are looking for this.
Second, we have observed that in the UK and Ireland, where the basic model is a 3/4 year BL plus 2-3 years of traineeship (i.e., apprenticeship) the graduates who have followed the other track, i.e., an undergraduate degree that is non-law, a 2 year conversion course in law followed by the traineeship are often better lawyers than those who came out of the straight law track. Those with backgrounds in various useful subjects are certainly very attractive candidates, while the straight law graduates often seem callow and dare I say, overly academic as lawyers. Inter alia, when the conversion approach was introduced 20/30 years ago, straight law graduates tended to deride those who took the conversion course as "retreads," but that jeer has pretty well disappeared.
Now to be fair, this may be a somewhat exotic end of the profession, but still it raises an issue. I deeply dislike the legal professions obsession with prestige – in the US demonstrated heavily by "sniffiness" over where someone went to law school – and do not like the idea that there will be first, second and third class lawyers, or that poorer people will have to take lesser lawyers. I'll admit that as a large number of law schools go to virtually open admissions, this may in effect becoming institutionalised (the selective law schools and the rest.) Still, I worry that there is a real risk that a lot of the proposals to shorten law school seem to run the risk of further institutionalising that division in the profession.
There really are few alternatives to cutting the cost of law school and reducing output to what the profession can absorb. We have reached a situation where despite a glut of law graduates, people are not being served. Now there are substitutes for lawyers showing up such as the Limited License Legal Technician http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/closing-the-justice-gap/2015/03/13/a5f576c8-c754-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html
I agree with anonprof06. Anything that increases the number of lawyers is a bad idea — so high tuition, admission standards — play a positive role in reducing the number of applicants. I would also think that undergrad faculty, with their own agenda, would not take to the idea of a 6 year program.
It appears that I am back in the spam filter, hey D, see how easy that was.
I made a comment that DF chose to delete or filter or both.
So let me make the point again – perhaps shorter this time.
1. At least for our practice we would not be keen on 4+2 or 6 year law school. We place a high premium on STEM backgrounds and international experience.
2. In the UK and Ireland the experience in the 20-30 year that non-law undergraduate have been taking diplomas in law over 1-2 years and then going to legal training is that law firms are pretty enthusiastic about hiring them – regarding the non-law undergraduate degree holders as often brining something more to the table and to the profession.
3. There is a real concern about the possibility that, in a profession that is already very prestige conscious, a different legal training will lead to more than one class of lawyers.
4. That some law schools have gone to essentially open admissions is already creating a split between the selective schools and the rest.
5. There is now the advent of the Limited License Legal Technician, which may create yet another strata in the already stratified profession, while competing with the already struggling but indebted law graduates.
The only real solution is restructuring
a. law schools need to cut attendance costs drastically to align with what lawyers can earn,
b. reduce the number of graduates so as to allow more lawyers to get decent jobs in a shrinking market, and
c. reduce the number admitted so that selectivity is restored.
Mack, it's me on the spam filter, not Dan, and no one is targeting you. I'm in China with sketchy internet access and I get to it when I can. It's trapped every message I posted on this thread, not to mention those of Professor Merritt, so you are not alone.
Ray,
sorry, but after past experience and the need to use this stupid bracketed name, I tend to assume the worst is still continuing.
Now would Dan fix the silly name additions to the spam filter and announce he has done so.
Ray: " I’m not prepared to say that the evidence the market has changed is conclusive…"
How many years of miserable outcomes are needed before it is conclusive?
Big Bob: "As for for what happens in the longer run, I am not sure 5 years is much of a long run…"
I'm sure that you are not, and I'm also sure that a 10 year follow-up would also not be considered so by you.
I know WilmerHale's Dayton office quite well: I have several former students who work there and, as Kyle mentioned, have interviewed the director of that ediscovery team. I don't think that the WH office skews the results because there are lots of BigLaw firms with concentrations of staff attorneys in a particular place. It's not always a designated office like WH's Dayton one; sometimes it's part of a regular practice office
For example, Littler has an office in Cleveland, and three of the associates in my database work there. But Littler doesn't have any of its ediscovery attorneys in Ohio–and they have quite a large team. So in many states, there will be associates from one BigLaw firm and staff attorneys from another one.
It's also remarkable how the associate/staff attorney division has spread beyond BigLaw. Take a look at Kellogg Huber, the elite litigation boutique in DC. They have 20 staff attorneys, and 28 associates. Browse through the bios and notice the very different JD schools.
In any event, if you remove the WH staff attorneys from the calculation, then staff attorneys make up 27.8% of the Class of 2010 lawyers working at BigLaw firms in Ohio–probably still a lot higher than most people would think.