<p>I thought I would share this here: The</a> Case Against Law School - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>This has varying view points on the effectiveness of the current system of legal education.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think that the a NY Times article misses the boat. We don’t need an overhauled legal education so that we can graduate more lawyers in less time. We need less unemployed lawyers!</p>
<p>Right now the legal system is graduating about 47,500 lawyers each year. However, the economy can only absorb about 25,000 of them from what I have read. Thus, about 50% of all the lawyers who graduate law school may not get jobs. </p>
<p>Moreover, even switching to a two year program, the cost is the same. Thus these kids have the same amount of debt! Frankly, I would either stop accrediting about 30 law schools or stop providing financing for law students. This is a huge problem that no one is dealing with.</p>
<p>There’s a strong tendency among the young to overrate their chances of success in their future endeavors. That’s why Harvard admits only 7% of its applicants; that’s why so many people attend law school; that’s why so many people enter college as pre-meds. It’s why the number of people receiving Ph.D. degrees in the humanities so vastly outstrips the number of openings for professors. </p>
<p>Several males in my sixth grade class were pretty confident that were going to be professional athletes some day. I remember scaling back my own ambitions from the days when I fully expected to be elected President of the United States, to a more modest expectation of becoming U.S. Senator, or Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>The issue isn’t that people who graduate from law school won’t get jobs. It’s that they won’t have the type of career they imagined themselves having.</p>
<p>This isn’t a problem that can be solved by a deus ex machina coming down and closing half the law schools. What I do see happening in California (by the State Bar) and nationally (at the ABA) is a move to force law schools to report the employment statistics of their grads more accurately. </p>
<p>I’m not sure that it will matter all that much. But we shouldn’t be fueling the natural optimism of the young with misleading data.</p>
<p>I’m glad that I had unrealistic ambitions in my youth, by the way. They got me where I am today.</p>
<p>Here’s an article from the California State Bar Journal about efforts (at the ABA and elsewhere) to require more transparency from law schools about employment statistics:</p>
<p>[Law</a> schools may be forced to disclose grads? job prospects](<a href=“http://www.calbarjournal.com/July2011/TopHeadlines/TH7.aspx]Law”>Law schools may be forced to disclose grads’ job prospects)</p>
<p>I was thinking of this article when I mentioned efforts along these lines by the California State Bar, but the article is actually silent on that point.</p>
<p>Greybeard, that might work,but I doubt it. Too many kids are incurring huge debts at T4 schools FULLY KNOWING that their chances of employment are fairly slim right now. Publishing the true job stats and requiring greater transparancy might affect some but only a few.</p>
<p>I met a girl at Florida Coastal… She frankly said that her projections were that she was going to graduate with almost 200K of indebtedness. When I told her about the reduced chances of getting a job from a T4 school like Florida Coastal, her reaction was, "I intend to do well enough to transfer to a much more well known school. This gal was in denial. She thought she would be that special snowflake that would be in the top 10%,which by the way has guaranteed odds of 9-1 against her. The reduced chances of getting a job from a T4 school like Florida Coastal didn’t really bother her the way it would bother me.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, she wasn’t the only one who felt this way. I met several other students who also felt as she did. This didn’t seem to be an isolated phenominon.</p>
<p>I equate this to the smokers of thirty years ago. I remember my mom saying a long time ago that she knew fully well that smoking was very bad for her. I think that all smokers knew that. The same can be said for most kids attending bottom tier law schools. Regardless of the published stats, these are very smart, capable kids. They know the score regarding jobs and placement</p>
<p>Bottom line: Mandating better job transparancy will help,but I sadly don’t think it will make that much of a difference. These kids are aware of the limitations of attending T2-T4 schools, and they still apply in droves and are willing to pay full sticker price!</p>
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