Law students file scathing lawsuit against their alma maters

Parents Forum
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<p>I don’t know about most countries, but this isn’t entirely true about Canada. Canadian law grads are required to article for 10 months prior to being called to the bar. It isn’t “years” and it isn’t always “low paid”. The large and OCI-type firms pay their articling students in the range of $90,000-100,000 for those ten months; clerkships (which can substitute in some provinces for the articling requirement) are in the $50,000-60,000 range; and smaller firms/clinics/NGOs would generally be a little lower than that.</p>

<p>The articling requirement is always under debate here because some students every year have some difficulty finding a placement. It’s a small percentage but it does happen and the provincial law societies have the requirement under review. The situation in Canada, as I’ve mentioned before, is very different than that in the U.S. It’s much more difficult here to get into law school and the filtering is done at the beginning rather than at the end as it is in the U.S. The costs are also drastically different.</p>

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<p>The ABA should require schools to report employment in a more transparent and thorough manner. But is that actually going to deter these students from enrolling? I doubt it. In my experience, students make up their minds to go to law school, then look for data to justify that assumption. Most entering 1Ls at run-of-the-mill law schools already imagine themselves to be among the lucky few who will get big-firm jobs, even when they have enough information to calculate that 90% of the class won’t be in the top 10%. If the reporting requirements change, kids will keep lining up to get into law school just like they do now. The only thing that will change that is if it becomes harder to get loans for lower-ranked schools.</p>

<p>“If I was seeking legal advice, I’d think twice about going to someone stupid enough to choose a law school based on a glossy marketing campaign - or to believe any school’s representations about future earnings potential.”</p>

<p>Then you’d be thinking twice about most graduates of Harvard and Yale.</p>