<p>Check out yesterday's article</p>
<p>One</a> third of last year’s law school grads aren’t practicing law - Yahoo! News</p>
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<p>So counting unemployed new graduates, the actual percentage of those in jobs that require bar passage is even lower, at 60 percent.
In 2009, almost 30 percent of law students said they expected to graduate with more than $120,000 in debt. Another 15 percent said they would owe more than $100,000.</p>
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<p>Pretty grim...</p>
<p>Of course, “practicing law” isn’t the only thing you can do with a JD degree, or the only thing whose value is enhanced by a JD degree.</p>
<p>The Yahoo article has it wrong, by the way – it double counts unemployed law graduates. The actual percentage of new lawyers practicing law is 68%, with another 11% in jobs that require a JD but not bar membership (e.g., judicial clerking, certain legislative staff jobs), and 6% in “other professional jobs” (like accounting or medical malpractice consulting, where a JD degree can be perfectly valuable). Furthermore, 3% of law graduates were still in school full time pursuing other degrees (MBAs, PhDs, MDs), and another 3% were not on the job market at all. So the actual percentage of law graduates looking for a job or employed in a non-professional job is 8%. That is sobering and historically terrible, but it isn’t evidence of some massive, tragic destruction of hope.</p>
<p>My wife hasn’t had a job that required a JD, much less bar membership, in over 22 years. But her law degree was absolutely relevant to her being considered qualified to hold the jobs she has had. And the training it reflected was absolutely relevant to her high level of performance in those jobs, some of which have paid as well or better than equivalent legal jobs and have involved bossing squadrons of lawyers around. She never actually wanted to practice law anyway. She relinquished her bar membership a long time ago, but she would have no interest in returning her degree.</p>
<p>On the other hand, no one should think about taking on $120,000 of debt to attend any but a tippy-top law school, because finding work that will pay that off comfortably is not a given other than at the very top of the prestige food-chain. (It’s not really a given there, either, but close enough.) I suspect that lots of the stuff that counts as employment in the charts doesn’t pay enough to repay that level of loan over 5-10 years and eat and pay rent at the same time.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty scary time for brand new lawyers. And, as the unemployment figures posted today show, they aren’t alone.</p>
<p>I also have held jobs that do NOT require a law degree or bar membership for all but nine years since passing the bar in 1982. Nonetheless, having a law degree was very helpful to me in being able to be effective in the positions I have held. I am also glad that I was able to graduate from college & law school with minimal debt. That seems like the most prudent course and gave me the most options.</p>
<p>I worry about folks who graduate with crushing debt, in all fields, including law. I know attorneys who have held multiple jobs at the same time to pay down their debt & meet living expenses. It is challenging.</p>
<p>I agree that borrowing money for any degree is something that needs to be carefully considered. I think the problem with law school is that the myth is still out there that the bucks will come rolling in once a person gets a law degree. As long as a student and family are realistic about what the possibilities are, an informed choice can be made.</p>
<p>ABSOLUTELY. The higher education bubble is begining to burst. For too long universities have been opening up schools of law pumping out tons of new grads and promising lucrative careers all while charging $150k or more for tuition because it is a highly profitable BUSINESS. The markets are completely oversaturated and more and more students are finding themselves underwater in unsustainable debt from higher education. Next year the depart ofedication is going to revise how it calculates the number of students that default on their loans by calculating it out to 4 years instead of two. If projections are correct, the number of loans going into default is expected to sky rocket from 8% up to 14%. And that’s just out to 4 years, what happens at 5, 8, or 10?</p>
<p>The higher education bubble is a massive atom bomb waiting to explode. For too long americans have lived by the ill advised axiomatic dogma that more schooling is always good no matter the cost. That mantra is starting to prove to be a myth of epic proportions. I 'd be VERY leery about taking out a lot of debt for any education from undergraduate on up to a JD or PHD. There’s a high chance you’ll find yourself mired in nondischargable debt for then next 30 years while trying to eek by with a job that only pays you 30k-60k.</p>
<p>The reason why law is being singled out, is that a lot of people seem to be graduating with a law degree with a serious amount of debt. Medical students also have this problem. The difference is, they don’t have the same problem in finding a job and paying back their student loans as LS people seem to have.</p>
<p>^^^ Mr doom and gloom^^^ try getting a decent job without a college degree,good luck…i will agree about taking out large loans to attend college,you should go to a school you can afford…whether you like iit or not,having just a HS diploma gets you nowhere…that said many tertiary state schools are guilty of misleading students about the value of their educations,many of these students don’t graduate and probably shouldn’t have even attended college…and don’t get me started with for profit ‘colleges’</p>
<p>Your statement is confusing. An LS degree is a professional level degree. A college degree is by most metrics just your standard bachelors level degree.</p>
<p>2011-2012 Standard Student Budget (9-months)</p>
<p>Tuition $ 47,600
Room/Board/Personal $ 19,050
UHS Health Fee (mandatory) $ 1,186
Blue Cross/Blue Shield Insurance Fee (waivable) $ 1,834
Optional Student Dental Insurance (estimated) $ 253
Books and Supplies. $ 1,175
Travel Allowance $ 1,400
Stafford Loan Fees $ 102 </p>
<p>TOTAL BUDGET $72,600.</p>
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<p>Not exactly true. Med school is 4 years, isn’t law school 3? And then there is internship/residency. Salaries during this extended training period are not great, and paying back loans during this extended training period is not easy. If you take 4 years of med school, and then defer payments for some or all of residency, that balance balloons. And residency is minimum 3 years, surgical residencies 5-7 years. Many are 30-32 years old before they have a REAL paying job. Student docs, residents, and newly practicing physicians with loans are and will also be in trouble. Managed care and reimbursement cutbacks will continue to impact salaries. And Medicare will go broke if the payment system is not fixed. </p>
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Add MD to the list.</p>
<p>I agree MD school tuitions are excessive. However MDs have one thing going for them that pretty much no other professional schools do–the AMA limits the number of grads that can graduate each year and the number of accredited schools. That way you don’t have complete oversaturation of the labor market for MDs. Sure you may here of a few unemployed MDs and some residencies are uber competitive, but for the most part MDs can at least find economically viable jobs because there is strict control on number of grads and number of degree granting institutions.</p>
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<p>And what do you do when there are less and less decent jobs available? The problem in the US is much more severe than just a recession, the US has very deep rooted structural problems with the economy. We hardly spend any money on R and D and other investment projects relative to our GDP. What R and D jobs are left are constantly being axed or off shored to Chindia. Everyone knows just how much manufacturing has taken a hit. The economy will eventually rebound, but kind of jobs will it create? The US economy is now a majority service economy. Everyone will be scrambling towards service oriented jobs since. Any decent jobs out there these days will likely have a ton of competition, what happens to the many who don’t win out? What we are going to have is the most educated and un- or under employed generation in the history of this country. </p>
<p>The fact that colleges continue to drive up their tuitions at excessive rates for almost no reason at all except for profit while the economy continues to shed more and more high paying jobs overseas vastly devalues a college or graduate degree because of how much it costs. The middle class is toast.</p>
<p>LOL@“Chindia”</p>
<p>The other item to consider is the bimodal distribution of JD starting salaries. Sure, those in ‘Big Law’ start $160k, but then just as many, if not more, start at $50-60k, with few starting salaries in between; not much more than starting salaries with a BA/BS. For those on the lower end of that income distribution, it is extremely difficult to make a dent in $200k in school loans, much less buy a car/house.</p>
<p>Gravenewworld,i don’t disagree at all with your description of structural problems with our economy…but to forgo a college education would place you further behind…</p>
<p>[THIRD</a> TIER REALITY: Law School Shills Featured in The New York Times](<a href=“http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2011/01/law-school-shills-featured-in-new-york.html]THIRD”>http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/2011/01/law-school-shills-featured-in-new-york.html)</p>
<p>^ I love that blog. It’s absolutely hilarious, but for wrong reasons.</p>