The LSAC is now reporting that “As of 6/5/15, there are 327,793 fall 2015 applications submitted by 50,269 applicants. Applicants are down 2.5% and applications are down 4.6% from 2014. Last year at this time, we had 95% of the preliminary final applicant count.” If this year’s applicants follow last year’s pattern, there will be approximately 52,915 applicants this year. The last post in this series is here.
As I’ve said before, I think we’re about at the bottom of applicants and enrollment now. This is a little above where I thought we’d be when we hit bottom. I had thought that the low in enrollment would be about 35,000 first years — and it looks like we’ll be 1000 or so above that this fall. Next year applicants may be down slightly, about the same, or up slightly. It’s too early to tell now. We’ll know a lot more after we get data on the number of administrations of yesterday’s LSAT.
Declining numbers of applicants (and therefore three years hence number of entry-level lawyers) is good news for those who’ll be looking for jobs in 2018. There will be less competition.
For me one of the continuing questions is what does this decline in applicants mean for the fortunes of law schools. How will they adjust to the substantially smaller classes? And I’ve got to think that the decline in revenue will be greater than just the smaller number of students would suggest, because those attending will have more leverage in negotiating for financial aid. Schools are proving remarkably resilient, but perhaps we’ll see some more closures (or mergers). (Though as close readers may recall, I think schools have a ways to go before they have to close.) Faculty salaries I should imagine will shrink. The easiest to cut are summer research grants, which I intuit are already on the way out at many schools. But I should also imagine that salaries are going to decline, too.
I think deans who are pleading the case of their schools to central administrations will use what appears to be a stabilization of applications as a sign that things aren’t going to get a ton worse. They may not be improving any time in the near future, but if I were a dean involved in tough conversations about the future with my central administration I’d be arguing that applicants are stabilizing and that things are unlikely to get worse. That may not be good enough for some central administrations. My guess is that we’re not going to see more than a dozen or so law schools close and that all of those will be in the “rank not published” tier of U.S. News.
I agree with most of this, but I'm not so sure that whatever closures do occur are certain to be in the "rank not published" tier. A number of schools in the 75 to 150 range are also on the list of schools with the largest enrollment declines since 2010 or 2011 (there are various lists covering various periods). E.g., Catholic; NYLS; Northeastern; Dayton; UNH; Vermont; Albany. I don't think those schools are any safer if their enrollments stabilize at current levels than are unranked schools with greater institutional support. One ranked school that saw a large enrollment decline, Hamline, is already the subject of a merger. It seems to me that enrollment decline v. overhead, applicant market saturation, and prestige value of the school to the parent institution (if there is one) are probably stronger indicators than USN rank outside of the top 50 or so schools.
Imagine a kid who usually gets a 90 or so on his math tests. Then one week he gets an 86. It's a red flag, but not entirely out of reason. Next week an 82. Uhoh. Then a 79. Now the parents take away his cell phone and tell him he can get it back when he pulls his grades up. Next week he gets a 76. Then a 74. Finally, he comes to his parents and says "Next week I'm projecting to get a 73. Since I've turned things around, can I please have my phone back?" Yeah, I don't think so.
If law schools are going to plead their case, they're going to need something a lot better than "Next year we're only going to slightly worse off."
Derek
Good analogy … but, no one has taken away anything from law schools.
For all the hue and cry, the loss of millions of dollars and the incalculable loss of prestige and reputation associated with the pure nonsense (combined with anger) promulgated by so many in legal academia, there have been NO tangible consequences.
Sure, as Al mentions, "The easiest to cut are summer research grants, which I intuit are already on the way out at many schools." Wow! "Giving up" a payment for performing a pre existing duty, during an extended vacation that no other "full time" employee would expect or pretend to be entitled. This is precisely the sort of self referential arrogance that has destroyed legal academia.
Add to that "loss" bs titles bestowed to fleece additional dollars, foreign "study" programs, vanity "centers" ("Hey, I'm the Director!), endless travel budgets on expense accounts, teaching two or fewer courses per semester, etc. etc. Take all this "away" (it hasn't happened folks) and still NO tangible consequence. This is simply restoring sanity, not making a difference.
Al is right: law schools can cut expenses without "closing" because there is so much waste, based on nothing more than greed, to cut.
But, is this the best the legal academy can do? After all this, has the legal academy no shame?
Not one word about how self improvement might turn things around. Not one word that recognizes the responsibility of law academy for creating the conditions that left it so vulnerable. Very telling.
Derek, add to your analogy the student's explanation: "It was the economy."
The decline of applicants with LSAT scores above 160 was still over 5% this cycle. This means that semi-elite schools (T15-T50) will likely continue to see major declines in the pool of applicants they consider admitting.
We will continue to see precipitous declines in law school applicants from highly prestigious undergrad institutions. Consider a strong (but not extraordinary) candidate from a school like Harvard or Williams. Numbers probably look something like 3.7/168. Under today's admissions standards, this means either (A) Full price at a T5-T14 school; (B) half price at a T30; or (C) Full scholarship at a lower ranked school. Students from terrific undergrads have the most to lose by going to a less prestigious grad school. However, the debt from a prestigious law school at full price will likely exceed $200k unless they are drawing on major financial resources. So the first 5 years of private practice will be spent getting back to square one, which is about the time where most associates are forced to leave or cannot take it anymore. Going the public interest route and relying on PSLF is a huge gamble that this type of individual will be averse to.
As tuition at top schools rises, so will the disincentives to attend for top undergrads. These kids have good options, so why would they take such a risky bet. Only the kids from rich families that can pay sticker price without a problem will choose law.
Expect the Baby Boomer generation in Biglaw and the Federal Courts to be absolutely mystified that the pipeline of their usual talent has run dry. They will be forced to replace them with scrappy overachievers that may be honored to be there but lack the real high end talent to do the work BIGLAW/Fed Courts require.
@ JM
Actually the decline in test takers with high LSAT scores was much greater than 5%, as reported by LSAC.
160–164 6,723 -5.6%
165–169 4,124 -12.3%
170–174 1,965 -10.4%
175–180 484 -19.7%
So it looks like the students who would probably gain the most from the current admissions environment (large scholarships at good schools with good employment prospects) are the ones turning away the most. My guess? These students are finding employment opportunities right out of college making them less likely to seek a graduate degree. My other guess – in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits.
JM, we won't have the talent that big firms and federal judges require? Even if you exclude the two affirmative action hires on today's Supreme Court, do you honestly believe that the current make up far exceeds the quality of the Hugo Blacks and Robert Jacksons that came up through night schools and third rate law schools in the past? As for plain old litigation, I'm tremble with fear that we may have to rely upon future Abraham Lincolns and Clarence Darrows because Princeton grads refused to attend law school.
JM
Most who have practiced with (and, more particularly against) BIGLAW lawyers know that the myth of extreme competence in those firms is just that. Proof? Let's start with Wall Street. There's a bastion of genius and competence. Then, let's move out to the rest of corporate America. These are the clients advised by the "best and brightest" from the "finest" law schools, and the results are obvious.
(Let's leave aside avarice and amorality, taught so well at "elite" law and business schools, let's focus here on failing on such an epic, historic scale on Wall Street.)
The true quality and depth of legal academicians' thinking and arguments is often exposed here in the FL and elsewhere. Most of them don't know what practice entails, as they spent their brief time in practice basically doing low level work. That is the reason they trained the "elite" attorneys in BIGLAW to be so oblivious to the reality of their failures.
Legal academicians don't seem to realize that, in BIGLAW, the turds produced may be more highly polished, but the smell of them is nonetheless unmistakable. Instead they focus on the values so obviously important to them: prestige and money.
@ Steven Freedman – Thanks for the clarification. Those numbers are striking.
@ PaulB – I believe that the current makeup of the Supreme Court is by and large excellent, including the two affirmative action hires. I think they are equivalent to their predecessors. There are no future Lincolns or Darrows because everyone must attend law school and basically run the same gauntlet. The one's who went to lesser schools just ran a bit slower (or had scholarships).
@anon – There is intelligence, if not competence. They perhaps don't desire to do anything productive with their intelligence. Nevertheless, a huge qualification for the job is to be smart enough to obfuscate issues in front of intelligent people (clients, judges) and create plausible counterarguments when clearly in the wrong. By the way, I too am not concerned that BIGLAW and Fed Courts won't get their little geniuses. In fact, I think it is hilarious. They are going to offload giant research/writing assignments on super highly paid associates while they go skiing for the weekend, and when they get back they will have to redo everything.
JM
Point taken. I agree that lack of "intelligence" (as defined, by and large, by prep and then private school preparation leading to doing well on standardized tests, combined with attendance at elite UG schools, where "good grades" are the norm) is not the issue in BIGLAW.
What is at issue is the IMplausibility of so many of the arguments, when clearly in the wrong, propounded by BIGLAW attorneys. Anyone who has practiced with (or, as stated above against) these attorneys understand that, unfortunately (fortunately for BIGLAW attorneys) the playing field is level: these "giants" do the dance they have been trained to perform, and the judges deal with what they are dealt (most of such judges are products of the same backgrounds, training and experiences).
The result? Well, for one thing, the biggest collapse of the financial markets in nearly one hundred years. This was directly a result of, among other factors, the utterly incompetent and amoral training and ethos imparted to the relevant actors by elite law and business faculties.
Where are law schools on this? The collapse of the economy did indeed have an effect on law schools. But, contrary to the incredible assertion by so many law school status quo defenders that good economic times lead to reduced enrollments, and that bad economic times lead to the opposite, the effect isn't as direct as all that, and the cause of historically declining enrollments, while the government is still shoveling out dollars as fast as it can to anyone who cares to apply, is something quite different.
The collapse of the financial markets has helped to expose that law schools were engaging (and to some extent still engage) in the amoral, greedy practices that led to the collapse of those financial markets. Legal academicians are still, in the main, unwilling to confront the deep self inflicted wounds caused by their privileged and arrogant attitudes and the amoral and devious means to which they have resorted to preserve their privileged positions. The values that they imparted to their graduates led to the collapse: exposures caused by the collapse have helped to reveal the arrogant and cloistered society that produced the responsible actors.
Instead of copious mea culpas from the law academy, combined with sincere and demonstrable efforts to reform, we hear mainly shrill rejoinders, bogus defenses and assurances that all is well when all is demonstrably not well.
Just like on Wall Street and from its BIGLAW defenders.
deletethesewordsthengoto-abovethelaw.com/2015/04/good-grief-these-law-school-debt-per-job-numbers-are-ugly/
Steven, my guess is that many of the students in the higher LSAT group have decided on a graduate degree other than law.
"My guess? These students are finding employment opportunities right out of college making them less likely to seek a graduate degree."
Don't really need to guess, specialized Masters of Business degrees have been on the rise. (Not to be confused with an MBA, these are things like an MS in finance or management.)
"My other guess – in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits."
That's pretty hilarious given how limiting having certain graduate degrees can be on career building. But, Steve, I'd like to hear just what specific hurdles you think the non-graduate degree holders will face down the road in their careers. I've been on the career hunt lately (just landed a second job, if I get a third I can make rent!) and companies requiring a graduate degree are few and far between. Those preferring one aren't much more common. Almost universal is a requirement or preference for work experience.
Law school is fool's gold. It doesn't prepare you to practice law, and critical thinking and analysis skills can be developed as easily by taking a few rigorous philosophy courses as an undergraduate. Would be students: abandon hope all who enter.
"My other guess – in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits."
I think you mean "My other *hope*" Admissions Dean Freedman.
Jojo, there is an ongoing shift occurring in legal education resulting in law schools emphasizing legal practice, be it with respect to the courses they offer, the faculty they hire, etc. Perhaps more important, all schools now place much greater importance on securing strong career outcomes for their students than at any time in the past. Yes, students need to carefully think through their law school choices, and yes certain schools' employment outcomes are quite poor, but to state that law school is "fool's gold" is, with all due respect, hyperbole.
Right on, Derek. Many graduate degrees are worthless to employers and students are now beginning to catch on. In no profession was the almost-automatic masters more prevalent that in K-12 education. In NY,for example, a masters was tied to an increase in base pay and thus pension benefits, too. Many districts are eliminating this perk because they have come to realize the degree does not produce a better teachers — experience does. Business executives have long derided the MBA, a Masters in Library Science is the worst in terms of ROI, etc., etc.
@ Derek
You asked what hurdles someone might face without a graduate degree. I'd identify struggling to advance beyond entry or mid-level positions as one hurdle.
I don't think it's controversial to say that in many fields a graduate degree is either required or highly preferred in many hiring decisions, particularly once workers seek to move beyond entry level positions. Just to use my own profession as an example, there are very few jobs in higher education administration above entry level that do not require or strongly prefer a graduate degree. I've hired several people with the requirement that they have a graduate degree. I spent some time in the corporate world too, and I can guarantee you that a graduate degree can be very helpful or even necessary to rise in the ranks at many corporations.
Anon,
"all schools now place much greater importance on securing strong career outcomes for their students than at any time in the past"
If we're looking at schools in the aggregate, this is pretty unimportant. The market (basically firms and the government) decides how many new lawyers will get jobs. Increased efforts by career services is worse than zero sum. No new jobs are created, they're just changing who actually gets them. And, students at all schools are picking up the tab for increased staff expenses. Unless CSO are calling up small firms and convincing them to hire more people than they initially wanted, the whole thing is a net loss for students.
Probably the best role for CSO (again, in the aggregate, not in regards to giving one school a competitive advantage over another) is helping students who strike out in the legal market to find a soft landing in a JDA position. That's where there's not already a cap in the number of JDs getting hired each year.
"there is an ongoing shift occurring in legal education resulting in law schools emphasizing legal practice, be it with respect to the courses they offer, the faculty they hire, etc"
And it will be very interesting to see what effect this actually has. In the sort term, again, we're probably just looking at a competitive advantage to certain schools and students, but not an improvement in the employment situation at large. In the long term, this may result in increased demand for legal services.
Perhaps I'm naive to think this, but I imagine that if lawyers are more competent and efficient (and clients perceive them as such), they will increase their demand for legal services. I know this goes against the conventional wisdom preached at many schools that demand for legal services is inelastic, but I think such a view ignores the DIY model that's grown quite a bit in the last few years.
I'd compare it to something like the market for fast food burgers. Burger King and McDonalds can increase the quality of their product, work on marketing, etc, but doing so won't do much to increase the number of people buying fast food burgers. All they change is which place those customers actually go to. But then Five Guys enters the scene. Because Five Guys is so much better, it not only gets a significant share of the existing fast food burger customer base, but it increases the customer base, attracting people who wouldn't otherwise even want a fast food burger, or fast food at all.
The reason Five Guys is able to increase the customer base is because it's a difference of kind, not just of degree. It's simply a different type of product, competing in both the fast food burger market and the delicious food market. For law schools' emphasis on legal practice to really affect the market, it has to produce a similar sort of differentiation. Having students who are just marginally better than the competition won't do it. They need their graduates to be so much better that they're a different sort of thing, such as producing the unicornesque Practice Ready Graduate. Achieving that is going to mean doing a lot more than retooling 6 or 9 credit hours for a student.
Steven,
I'm not sure your response does any more than just restate your original position. (I'd imagine most people have getting a promotion in mind when they hear about career building.) The actual nature of the hurdle is what I'm after. When you require someone to have a graduate degree, why is that? What specifically are you hoping they will have learned during their Master's program which is essential to their job function?
And just for fun (I have a sick definition of fun), I looked at a bunch of job postings on my school's career web. First I filtered for those requiring 7+ years of experience, so I think we can call those beyond entry level, and then ignored a few non-professional jobs (such as personal assistants) and those that for some reason didn't think to include any requirements. Out of 25 postings:
8 required only either a Bachelor's or mentioned no educational experience, and did not state a Master's is preferred.
6 required a Bachelor's but said a Master's is preferred. Only one of these said a Master's would substitute for experience.
9 required a Master's (in every case it was a specific Master's rather than a general requirement). Of these 9, 3 preferred a PhD.
2 required a PhD.
So, do candidates with a Master's have a competitive advantage? Maybe. We also have to remember than they have several years less experience. It's not 7yrs vs 7yrs+MA, it's 10yrs vs 7yrs+MA. We can presume that all the jobs preferred a Master's would also prefer more experience, so it's very hard to say who comes out on top. Also, nearly all of these jobs required a certain number of years of very specialized experience. People with more time in the workforce may have the advantage there.
Now you might be thinking "Sure, the guy with 10 year experience has an advantage, but that person with 7yrs and a Master's will eventually get to 10 years, and then he can move into jobs that the person without a Master's is excluded from." But, that guy with only 10 years of experience can also decide to get a Master's. I don't know of any company that prefers specifically K-MA.
Finally, you have to consider that the recent college grad doesn't know if he's going to hit an education ceiling in his field, and doesn't know exactly what degree would crack through it (if you asked me 10 years ago when I graduated if a PhD in Composition Studies would be incredibly useful, I probably wouldn't have thought so). But, the student can go to work for several years, learn more about what education would be useful, and if a Master's becomes desirable, go get one. That seems like a monumentally better decision than going straight from undergrad and into a Master's program.
But Steve, which graduate degree is useful to rise at many corporations.
Take the typical STEM graduate. There an advanced degree, an MSc or PhD is often required to rise to management of a lab – but not a JD. Similarly, the MBA was originally designed to provide knowledge of basic business tools to engineers and others whose undergraduate education did not cover things like accounting, marketing or finance – again, companies will often want to see someone without a BBA get an MBA or executive MBA to teach the relevant skills that they would need as a manager,
But a JD? Yesterday were were having an interesting discussion at an office lunch about the fact that music schools have business-of-music course, acting schools business-of-theater and art schools business-of-art but the typical law school has no business-of-law course whatsoever. Don't kid yourself, businesses are not queuing up to see aspiring managers march off to law school.
Derek:
I remember the very first Five Guys – I ate in one when the brothers were still running it. When you say: "The reason Five Guys is able to increase the customer base is because it's a difference of kind, not just of degree. It's simply a different type of product, competing in both the fast food burger market and the delicious food market" I kind of get your point, up to the delicious food line. Their burgers are pretty greasy and nasty.
MK,
Before this devolves into something particularly ugly (people do get defensive about their burgers), let me note that the absolute quality of Five Guys isn't important, only the relative value. You can still think they're not very good; what matters is that it is so much better than McDonald's and Burger King as to draw from a different customer base, rather than being marginally better and competing for the exact same pool of customers. (Or pick another example; Chipotle vs. Taco Bell; True Detective vs. Every Other Police Procedural.)
I do agree with your assessment of the JD as a tool for advancing in a company. All the listings I saw that required a graduate degree wanted something very specific, like a STEM degree, econ, public health, etc. None of them wanted just any degree, nor did they want a JD.
Steven- Getting a JD out of college or after a couple years in some other unrelated career is a much different story from picking up an MBA or a MPP or a PhD to advance in a field in which you are already establishing a career. The high scorers who are foregoing law school are likely people from very good UG schools (since the LSAT median at a school like Harvard or Princeton is in the mid-to-low 160s range), but who, either because of an LSAT in that 165-169 range or a low UGPA, will end up paying close to sticker at a T13 school. And even out of a T13 school a sizeable minority of students end up not getting a biglaw job or a comparable gov/PI job- that is a very scary prospect even if it is only 10% of the class. If you dip down to T30 schools, you may be able to swing a lot of scholarship money but your biglaw prospects go down considerably, as do starting salaries.
For a liberal arts student from an elite college, their traditional alternative to law school if they want an upper middle class corporate career is banking/finance/consulting (or now tech) – careers that start at a lower salary, but by Year 3.5 (when your classmates who went to law school are starting at their firms) will have lead to a comparable salary to a junior biglaw associate without the additional debt. They may have to do an MBA program to see additional jumps in comp/responsibility, but this program is shorter, cheaper or free if the employer pays, and much less stressful. Their ultimate earning potential will be equal to or greater than the average biglaw associate over the course of their careers.
Or the thought process might not be this complex- it just might be that very few of these students see themselves spending their mid-to-late 20s working long hours but giving $3K or $4K per month back to the government in loan payments when they could be working long hours for less money but get to keep more of it.
For public interest minded students, the political headwinds are very unfavorable for the PSLF program at the moment and a lot of elite law schools have linked LRAP and PSLF. This may be influencing students who otherwise would have taken on the 300K debt in reliance on PSLF to pursue non-profit work in a different, non-legal, capacity. Elite schools are going to have to recommit themselves fully to PI students instead of just passing the buck to the government.
JM: "Students from terrific undergrads have the most to lose by going to a less prestigious grad school. However, the debt from a prestigious law school at full price will likely exceed $200k unless they are drawing on major financial resources. So the first 5 years of private practice will be spent getting back to square one, which is about the time where most associates are forced to leave or cannot take it anymore. Going the public interest route and relying on PSLF is a huge gamble that this type of individual will be averse to."
There will be a couple of conflicting factors (which would be fascinating if I were a sociologist):
1) These people will have the best information networks. They won't be the people from third-tier undergraduate programs who are thrilled to be admitted at all to third-tier law schools.
2) Going from an Ivy (for example) to a no-name law school would be a big prestige blow.
3) These students will also have the best access to good jobs= without law school.
Steven Freedman:
"So it looks like the students who would probably gain the most from the current admissions environment (large scholarships at good schools with good employment prospects) are the ones turning away the most. My guess? These students are finding employment opportunities right out of college making them less likely to seek a graduate degree. My other guess – in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits."
Thanks for posting those figures.
Now, for the criticisms:
1) You are actually stating a hypothesis which I first saw proposed by Paul Campos, that law schools had be profiting from a bad job market, which pushed more students into law schools, no matter the cost. He figured that an improvement in job availability would hurt law schools, since there'd be fewer desperate college graduates.
2) "(large scholarships at good schools with good employment prospects)" are rarer than hen's teeth, because the schools willing to pay those scholarships have horrible employment prospects.
3) "My other guess – in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits." Nice try, but not going to law schools doesn't mean not getting a graduate degree.
Barry, those factors support, not conflict with what I said. We are saying the same thing, students from top undergrads have the most to lose from going to law school. Even more than similarly intelligent students from lower ranked undergrads.
Derek:
Hesitant though I am to get into the burger wars – yes I may agree that Five Guys is marginally better than the horror of other fast food places, but then it and in particular Shake Shack are not competing with McDonalds. The relevance to law school admissions – well frankly, the sort of student that would get admitted to Harvard, Yale or Stanford might, marginally, consider going to a T-14 law school, but will not go to a school outside the top tier.
As for me, as a junior lawyer I found the burgers at the Sign of the Whale outstanding, but "she who must be obeyed" banned them on the basis of my expanding waistline. She did allow the occasional at the Guards, but then the owners young wife went to law school in Florida it changed hands. Recently I did go to P.J. Clarke's in Midtown for the first time in 40 years, when my father brought me to what was then a very disreputable institution, and was then allowed a burger and I have to say it was really very very good.
@ bored JD
Could you point me towards the employment figures for MBA/PhD/MPP students? Specifically I'd like to know what percentage of such students are employed within ten months of graduation, what size company they work for, and how many are funded by their own schools. Find me that info, show me that it's better than for law schools, and then I'll buy your point that an MBA/PhD/MPP is a better choice than the JD.
This comment thread seems to have drifted from the topic of the original post. That said, I'll note the following:
Cooley closed one of its campuses. Hamline and William Mitchell merged, as are Rutgers Newark and Rutgers Camden.
But as a counterpoint, Penn State and Widener are both splitting into separate law schools. And for all the hoopla about Thomas Jefferson, the school restructured its bond debt instead of closing.
All in all, law schools seem to have encountered financial difficulty but there are as many data points suggesting that they are muddling through as there are data points suggesting we should expect further consolidation in the industry.
Some additional thoughts were recently posted by myself at Credit Slips (http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2015/01/why-troubled-law-schools-may-remain-open.html) and by Cassandra Burke Robertson over at Prawfs (http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2015/03/bankruptcy-and-higher-education.html).
Steven,
The statement that you made was that an elite student (someone who gets a 170 or 165 on the LSAT), "in time they'll find that career building without a graduate degree has its limits." Sure, that statement might be true as a general matter, but that's not a reason for them to immediately commit to 300K and a JD when they could try out that management consulting gig for two years and then have cheaper, easier, better options for graduate study to advance in their career. If an alternative career doesn't work out or they don't like it, they can then take their scores to a T13 law school and reset into a legal career.
For our hypothetical 168 LSAT 3.5 Harvard political science major, if she goes to a lower T13 law school and gets a SA position and a firm job, she is looking at probably 250K in loan debt and about 3.5 years after graduation before she starts working. If she spends 2 years in finance/consulting and then goes to a 2 year MBA program at a top school, she winds up with the following salary options which are slightly less remunerative than entry-level associate jobs:
https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/recruiters/employmentreport
http://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/data/Pages/detailed-charts.aspx.
This is assuming the person gets no tuition reimbursement from their employer and does not work during business school. As for debt, it looks like debt loads at top business schools are about 2/3 what they are at elite law schools (and of course you stay in law school one year longer, a significant loss of salary).
I'm not going to do industry-specific research for you, but it's better for an intelligent person in their early 20s to keep their career options open rather than narrow them by immediately running to law school.
Steve:
Fairs fair, can you point to statistics that show that junior and midlevel managers careers stall out for (a) lack of a graduate degree and (b) in particular lack of a JD.
Hell just some data that shows how the JD turbocharged their careers would be good.
@ mack
For the most part, this provides the answers you are looking for.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/majors-that-pay-you-back/graduate-degrees
Admissions Dean Freedman only demands data when someone else is talking his/her book.
All the statistics he needs are his clean conscious and S&M's million dollar premium.*
* some limitations apply.
Sorry to be so late to the party and I confess I did not read all the comments but the first one seemed to hit the nail on the head as far as some of the logic. So, let's just say I am the University president who is asked for more funding since we are not in free fall any more. I'd have two questions. First are you not in free fall because you have beefed up your advertising and lowered tuition directly or indirectly through more scholarships. If so is that really hitting bottom ? Second, since you are asking for increased subsidization, could you explain what the return is to this public investments. I understand you are saying the private rate of return to a legal education may have leveled off but why should you be subsidized any further unless you can articulate how the involuntary payers of tuition are better off?
Steven, I responded to you but it unfortunately got caught in the filter (links). Business schools look like they have data readily available on their websites, and in even more granular format than law schools.
Steve,
Perhaps you missed this question among all the others. You said, "I've hired several people with the requirement that they have a graduate degree."
Can you explain why you required a graduate degree? What sorts of graduate degrees did you require, and what specifically about the graduate school experience made these people qualified?
It seems to me that this discussion has drifted into truly irrelevant topics. It isn't worth debating whether someone should go to law school as a financial decision, and folks like Freedman, who constantly spin the discussion into a decision about buying a commodity, do a huge disservice to legal academia.
In other words, this demeaning posture reveals everything that is wrong with legal academia. A law school permits its salesperson to pitch on internet websites, like a stock broker. Is it any wonder then that law schools, in general, behave in the ethically challenged ways that are par for the course on Wall Street? When one is just selling and selling a product as a financial product, the claims just get creepier and creepier.
Why do legal academicians permit themselves to be humiliated in this way? They rely on crass and bogus "economic" proofs of value that wouldn't pass a first year associate's review if presented as a prospectus (which is the tenor of most of this drek). They argue about the "value" of a legal education almost strictly in terms of dollars, and, in order to further these claims, wind up making wild and ridiculous forward looking statements about future employment prospects (again, statements that might in liability in any other context).
This post was about declining enrollment. Most of the comment thread demonstrates the reason therefor: the law academy has lost any sense of the reasons to become an attorney. These persons are so hopelessly lost that it is hard to understand how the majority of them, so divorced from the practice of law, reality and common sense, can ever return to a semblance of understanding of the only reasons their privileged cocoons can be rationalized.
Until the legal academy, top to bottom, begins understand the true reasons to attend law school, it will not be able to recover. Period.
Please ask the author of the 1:51 am post to join the FL. That comment perfectly summarizes the issue. It is undeniable that the law academy long ago lost any understanding of the reasons to be an attorney.
@1:51 and @9:33,
I think what's happened is that the profession, economy, and the students themselves have changed it ways that make the old reasons less relevant.
If you were looking at the tail end of Gen X (or the very start of Gen Y) considering law school around 2005-2007, you'd argue money, prestige, job security, and lack of alternatives. That argument, when directed at humanities students, worked very well, and the job security seemed to give law an edge over getting an MBA and going into finance.
For current students in the current market, the argument doesn't hold water. More money? You know, maybe that's true, I don't want to relitigate the S&M numbers. But, it's not a huge premium. $1 million over a 40 year career is $25k a year. Yeah, that's a pretty nice pay raise, but you have to lose 3 years (plus lost earnings), $150,000 or so in tuition, plus maybe another $100,000 in interest, and you're going to be working longer hours to earn that extra money. If you do some back of the envelop math, you realize that after 14 years you'll break even, then you consider the time deficit, and the financial payoff doesn't look very good.
For students who do want to chase the money, $1 million over a career isn't enough. They're looking at people like Zuckerberg and Cuban, and want careers with larger upsides than law. No law firm ever has an IPO or gets sold to Google for a billion dollars.
Then there's the prestige argument. Gain the respect of your peers! Be a leader of your community! I don't think that flies with Gen Y at all. If they want the respect of their peers and to be a community leader, they'll find a fashionable nonprofit to work for. A legal career is bound to have the opposite effect. Be seen as a sellout! Be what's wrong with America!
Job security? Yeah, not after a ton of law firms gave their junior lawyers the ax. I think people have caught on that the argument about law always being in demand doesn't really work. Some areas may be recession resistant, and others are countercyclical, but you can't change practice areas on a dime — what changes is who's making money. And the only way to be truly recession proof is to have clients who are recession proof. If they don't have money, they're not paying you. If you want job security, you go to the government or something with a very strong union.
And finally, there's the argument "What else are you going to do?" I suspect today's students are more savvy about their career options, especially with the stronger emphasis on getting multiple internships while in college. There's also a lot of new options in the health care industry (meaning things like health care management and policy, not doctoring) which are going to pay as well or better than legal work. The economy has also changed in lowering the financial barrier to starting your own business. You can now easily strike out on your own to have a tech blog, or a web comic, or a food truck, build an app, or crowd fund your indie movie through kickstarter.
I'd really hate to be in a law school marketing department, because I really don't know what sales pitch is going to have broad appeal with today's undergraduate students.
For more on law school marketing. http://classbias.blogspot.com/2015/06/wasteland-in-law-school-industry.html
People are tossing around "affirmative action hires on the Supreme Court" as if the description is unproblematic and that we should all know who these two folks are. Well, I do not. Who are these people, and why are they linked to a question of quality in judging?
Derek
It is endlessly necessary to keep stating that S&M did NOT find a million dollar lifetime earning premium associated with a law degree. Repeat: DID NOT! Please read the paper.
And, although I don't necessarily disagree with your points, your comment really misses the point entirely. There isn't an "argument" to go to law school based on money and prestige. This is the doom of the legal academy (and has contributed to the debacle that is Wall Street: an amoral enterprise running on avarice and doling out unmerited and unconscionable financial rewards).
If legal academia (and, from what I've read you are not a part of it) only understood this, we could get back on track. If the legal academia, in the face of revelations of its misleading pitches, believes its response should be to just tinker with the pitch, mask the misleading information in slightly different packages, etc. (i.e., emulate Wall Street shenanigans and hucksters in a more acceptable manner), then nothing has changed and nothing will change.
In a thread about declining enrollments, all folks seem to care about is money and prestige and selfish rewards. Of course, this is so obviously what law academicians have come to (these values, and add the values of vanity, emotional insecurity and the concomitant mindless pursuit of attention).
There you go.
I'm worried we've really lost the track here from Al Brophy's original post, so I'm going to just make two brief comments.
First, @ Bored JD. Your scenario of a student going into the work world before attaining a graduate degree is completely reasonable. About half our students have work experience, which we think is great. If you read my original comment, you'll see that I didn't say taking employment after graduation was a bad idea, I just said they might find that having a grad degree can be useful in career building. Of course, they might find success without one, which is great too.
Second, @ Derek. I can think of a number of good reasons for employers to require or show preference for someone with a grad degree. The simplest one for our office is that we advise people on attending grad school. It made sense to us to require or prefer someone who has attended grad school (preferably law school) if they are going to advise on that matter.
Per MK's comment June 10, 11:45 –
"Take the typical STEM graduate. There an advanced degree, an MSc or PhD is often required to rise to management of a lab – but not a JD…yesterday were were having an interesting discussion at an office lunch about the fact that music schools have business-of-music course, acting schools business-of-theater and art schools business-of-art but the typical law school has no business-of-law course whatsoever. Don't kid yourself, businesses are not queuing up to see aspiring managers march off to law school."
As a data point of one in a sea of many, I can confirm that MK's STEM analysis is correct. I'm a former "E" with a BS and Masters in "E" from the 90s, whose 2005 JD has not exactly blown the doors off my so-called "JD-Advantage" career. I can say that there are certainly other avenues worth exploring that don't make question marks pop over people's heads, along with avoiding all the life-altering debt. Which I will be paying for until I retire (ha).
Steven,
I doubt many people will find that to be a convincing argument.
Consider the following comparison: Freven Steedman claims students really ought to consider buying clothes from Banana Republic, and that without a Banana Republic wardrobe they'll have a hard time advancing in their careers because many employers really value Banana Republic clothes.
When asked to give an example, Freven Steedman points to himself and says he routinely requires new hires to own and wear Banana Republic clothes. When pressed as to why this is, Steedman tells us that he is a Banana Republic store manager, and his employees are Banana Republic sales clerks. Of course it makes perfect sense to require people working at a clothing store to wear the clothes of that store. Can't really argue with that logic, but at the same time, it's not going to convince very many customers that they ought to buy from Banana Republic, at least not customers who are hoping to interview at jobs that aren't at Banana Republic.
But that doesn't really matter so much. You said you can think of a number of good reasons, and presumably you have actually thought of them, so please share those other reasons which aren't quite so esoteric to the business of selling graduate degrees.
Derek Tokaz: "I'd really hate to be in a law school marketing department, because I really don't know what sales pitch is going to have broad appeal with today's undergraduate students."
That's because you have ethics. Frankly, it's not *that* hard:
1) Lots of glossy brochures in undergrad career offices, and a really slick website.
2) Lots of lofty rhetoric, promising everything – that you'll be a wealthy, respected/feared/loved legal powerhouse in international sports environmental space law.
3) BS with statistics, which isn't hard – you're aiming precisely at those who can't or won't question them.
4) Suck up every external source of stats or rhetoric, and echo it back on them.
5) Borrow money before the Crash, and build a really cool new building.
6) Keep track of those who do very well. Get donations, name things after them. Have them make speeches and write articles.
7) Sign up your customers for federal loans – once those checks clear the bank, it doesn't matter how horribly the ex-customers do.
Derek Tokaz: "But that doesn't really matter so much. You said you can think of a number of good reasons, and presumably you have actually thought of them, so please share those other reasons which aren't quite so esoteric to the business of selling graduate degrees."
I give great latitude towards bar stool BS (since I do a lot of it). However, when trained debaters give very bad deliberate arguments, I take that as a sign that they don't have good arguments.
Steve Freedman: "I don't think it's controversial to say that in many fields a graduate degree is either required or highly preferred in many hiring decisions, particularly once workers seek to move beyond entry level positions. "
Which has very, very little to do with getting a JD.
Do you actually have any good arguments?
"Your scenario of a student going into the work world before attaining a graduate degree is completely reasonable. About half our students have work experience, which we think is great. If you read my original comment, you'll see that I didn't say taking employment after graduation was a bad idea, I just said they might find that having a grad degree can be useful in career building. Of course, they might find success without one, which is great too."
Seems like a relatively simple point. It also makes sense that some of the 160+ scorers in your original post who are foregoing law school at this time (probably a few thousand applicants) will eventually seek a JD, either (1) because they don't like their career or want a career change, (2) started their career in a job where the JD is an efficient and effective means of career advancement, (3) even if the JD is not the most effective/efficient graduate degree for advancement in their particular career, they want to get the degree for personal/intellectual reasons.
And it also seems obvious that many of the few thousand students either won't seek additional degrees or will seek industry-specific degrees, and the law schools have now lost them as sources of potential tuition revenue or future donations.
@ Barry & Derek
Derek asked me why we required a graduate degree when we hired some folks. I answered that question directly. Derek says my answer is weak because that only answers the question he asked, not the question(s) he didn't ask (presumably, why any employer would require or prefer a graduate degree, or maybe name all the reasons you required a graduate degree). In a similar vein of moving goalposts debate style, Barry says that answer is weak because I didn't say anything about the JD. Well, I also didn't say anything about Middle East policy, taxes in Kansas or climate change on Mars. So by his logic I offered pretty weak arguments on those topics too.
I made one innocuous comment stating that the decline in enrollment among graduates with the potential for high LSAT scores may be due to graduates taking jobs at graduation. I followed that by stating a completely obvious, should not be contentious at all statement that they may find a graduate degree helpful when building a career.
If you do not agree with the statement that graduate degrees can be helpful in building a career, then we will just have to agree to disagree.