
Waning ranks at law schools - percept
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/05/law-school-enrollment-fails-rebound-after-recession-local-colleges-make-cuts/fR7dYqwBsrOeXPbS9ibqtN/story.html
======
rayiner
Business school applications are down too:
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000087239639044443350...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444433504577651962999932518).
It's almost as if yearly tuition hikes in the face of stagnant salaries in
professional services are having an impact on enrollment.

------
FlyingLawnmower
The legal field is currently suffering from a huge excess of lawyers, and
attending a law school outside of the top 10 (arguably top 20 with
scholarships) is generally considered a poor investment. It's good for the
legal field as a whole to see many of these T-3/T-4 Law Schools slim down and
stop churning out so many law students that end up, unfortunately, unemployed
(or in a job that doesn't use their JD in a meaningful way).

~~~
dccoolgai
To compound the problem, every South Middle Tennessee State -type school
opened a law school during the glut because it was a huge cash cow for the
parent university... so other than a complete collapse of admissions, there is
no impetus for these T-3/4 schools to close. It's not uncommon for students to
come out of these schools with 200+K in student loan debt and no job prospects
to speak of.

It's unfortunate, but the Legal Academy was all to happy to get drenched from
the firehose of unemployable vague humanities majors that US Higher ed
produces - now, at least, some of the students are starting to get a more
realistic picture of what that undischargeable debt means for their future -
but the damage is done.

~~~
atwebb
It's odd that we would both comment (at the same time) regarding TN, would you
mind giving me your opinion of my post below? I'm referencing people who did
moderately well at a non-top teir but established institution with a cost of
40-60k total and vacant positions (albeit contract type) at $40/hr minimum.

------
balbaugh
Two recent Slate articles on why now is actually a great time to apply to law
school.

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/appl...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/apply_to_law_school_now_yes_we_re_serious.html)

[2][http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/why_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/why_now_is_a_great_time_to_go_to_law_school_part_2.html)

------
graeme
Two things happened with the recession.

    
    
      1. Legal jobs went away.
      2. There was a temporary, substantial INCREASE in law school attendance.
    

You can see the large increase in enrolment just after the recession on this
graph:

[http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1920w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/07/06...](http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1920w/Boston/2011-2020/2014/07/06/BostonGlobe.com/Metro/Images/lawschool_NEW.jpg)

When the economy went south, law school seemed like a "safe bet". This turned
out to be a catastrophic mistake, as it came at the peak of the bubble in law
school enrolment. There had never been such a gap between the number of
students and the number of legal jobs.

Articles starting appearing circa 2010 that described a nightmare of $160,000
debt and no legal job. As students began to realize the world had changed, the
decline began.

Parents are a big part of the problem. The boomers largely haven't caught on
that a BA and a JD are no longer the good choices they were back in the 1960s
and 1970s.

I'm in LSAT prep and I talk to a lot of pre-law applicants. They're now
generally far more aware of what's at stake. But I only talk to the ones who
are good at planning – I expect there's a decent amount of students who go
into law school without realizing it can ruin their life.

Here on HN, we're in a bubble. Recruiters are a constant complaint. "Ugh, I
hate all these people trying to offer me well-paying jobs".

Consider what's it's like to be 26 years old, with a BA and now a JD. You have
about $160,000 that cannot be removed through bankruptcy. You have no assets
and no marketable skills. You can't get a legal job, for structural reasons.
And non-legal employers now give you a wide berth because you're
overqualified.

Worse, you did everything you were "supposed" to do. Turns out it was cargo
cult advice.

That's the situations thousands of young people find themselves in. Even going
for one year and quitting can be crippling. You get $40,000 of non-
dischargeable debt for your troubles.

If you happen to be giving career advice, here are the circumstances under
which you should go to law school:

    
    
      1. You have a burning passion to be a lawyer. 
      2. Said passion is based on actual knowledge of what lawyers do.
      3. You can get into a T14 school, OR
      4. You can get into a T100 school with a full scholarship, OR
      5. You can get into a school very well regarded in the local area where you want to practice, OR
      6. You have a legal job more or less in the bag upon graduation, through family, OR
      7. You are rich and want to be a lawyer for what prestige it still carries
    

That's about it. It's a terrible, terrible choice for anyone else.

We need lawyers, and at some point the legal education market will sort itself
out I'm sure. Schools will close, people will realize they need to do the
math. I expect tuition will drop eventually.

But while the bubble is bursting, potential law students need to exercise
extreme caution.

~~~
bradleyjg
Good advice but I'd quibble with a few points.

#2 should be based on actual knowledge of what lawyers, _that work in jobs
similar to the one you are likely to end up in_ , do. Your colleague that's
sold his last start-up for eight figures has a lawyer spouse that works at a
small not-profit for 35 hours a week working on issues of internet freedom.
That's not a relevant data point for you unless you too have such a spouse.
More explicitly, if you fall into category #3 (outside the HT) you should know
what BigLaw is like and want to do that. Because that's where you are going to
go if you want to pay off that debt.

Speaking of category #3 T14, which always manages to be 16-17 schools, it is a
too broad in my opinion. Yale is in a class by itself and opens doors that are
difficult or impossible to open otherwise. Harvard Law has the most generous
loan forgiveness program I've ever seen. To be honest I don't know much about
Stanford Law, but that's usually included in the Holy Trinity. Beyond that, if
you get no money, you really should consider the schools on an individual
basis based on where you want to practice and what you want to do. Many should
really be put into the #4 (scholarship) or #5 (regional powerhouse) rule.

Regarding #4, a full ride only covers around 2/3rds of the financial cost and
none of the opportunity costs. I'd restrict this category quite dramatically
(though keeping in mind #5) to maybe 30 or 40 schools including the t-14, and
exclude schools that have several higher ranked competitors in the same city
(sorry Fordham).

Finally, I'd add one more category -- people with a fair amount of experience
in a particular industry that know exactly how a law degree will help them
advance in that industry and can easily slot back in. Some people I went to
law school with that would qualify along those lines were real estate
developers and talent agents.

~~~
graeme
I can't edit the original, but those are good points. That's actually what I
meant on #2. I left it out for concision, but I should have specified.

The rest are good points. I normally shy away from admissions advice as my
expertise really is the LSAT + I'm Canadian. Things are much less stark up
here, though Ontario has a bit of a bubble.

In truth, I really wouldn't recommend anything beyond T3 or T14 full
scholarship. I'm very debt averse.

Anyone considering this needs to seek out even more specific advice than mine
(like the above) and also recognize that you're probably prone to the common
"I'm an exception. I'll work hard and beat the odds!" bias.

Problem is that everyone is thinking it. Mathematically, only a small
percentage of applicants are correct. And they mostly got into the T14.

------
Retric
There are currently 1,225,452 licensed attorneys in the United States which is
a ridiculous considering only 116 million people have a full time job.

~~~
etrain
Why is that number ridiculous? At ~1% of the workforce, this means that the
average American laborer needs 2.5 days/year of lawyer time to keep them fully
occupied, which honestly doesn't feel like such a stretch to me, given that
they need to be involved in hiring/firing, expansion, policy changes, deals
closing, etc.

Also - note that not all licensed attorneys are practicing, so it may even be
more like 1 lawyer-day/year per worker.

~~~
Retric
The problem is it's not being automated. Does every apartment complex in NY
city really need a significantly different lease? I can buy I car without a
lawyer why not a house? Do I really need a lawyer before highering a
housekeeper?

Something like LegalZoom seems like a reasonable option for 80+% of all deals
that currently use a Lawyer.

Edit: As to policy changes, a trade association could reasonably cover all
most / all cab companies or even Hospitals.

~~~
gamblor956
The whole point of hiring a lawyer is to get customized legal advice or
documents that pertain to your situation. If you're happy with using general
advice/documents that may not actually fit your needs, you're free not to hire
a lawyer.

It's basically the same as the choice between using stock Wordpress or hiring
a developer to customize it for you (or to make you a custom CMS), except that
the consequences are usually more dire.

Also, some of your examples are a bit odd. I don't know anyone who's hired a
lawyer to buy a house or hire a housekeeper/nanny/gardener--is that some sort
of weird Silicon Valley practice?

~~~
amalcon
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, ask a lawyer
acquaintance of yours instead of trusting me if this is any more than idle
curiosity.

A lawyer's job when buying a house is mostly dealing with the mortgage. They
can explain the mortgage paperwork to you, and find traps like balloon
payments or weird escrow structures that a layman might miss. If you pay out
of pocket, there's generally a lot less for a lawyer to do.

There are of course exceptions where a lawyer is very important, like
reviewing the bylaws of a condominium or homeowners' association, or
explaining unusual clauses in the sale contract. Unfortunately it's hard to
tell when you've run into one of these without having past experience or
hiring a lawyer.

------
InclinedPlane
That's not really a problem. There has long been an oversupply of law school
graduates relative to jobs in any sort of legal field.

------
malchow
I have a friend who sometimes asks, to stoke conversation: "What's one thing
you believe that no one else does?"

One answer? The law school boom isn't over.

I have a J.D. from Stanford (though I spend my time investing and working on
my own projects), and though the legal education industry is in many respects
quite hidebound and deserving of a downward correction, there is one swift
wind filling the sails.

It's what Milovan Djilas[1] called "the new class." Djilas was a Yugoslav
Soviet dissident. For a brief instant he was a true believer. But Djilas saw
by 1954 that a large government tasked with redistribution was giving rise to
a new elite: the redistributors. He wrote articles about "the new class" and
was kicked out of the Party.

A friend of mine, a law professor in Knoxville, wrote about this in USA Today
yesterday:

"Here in the United States, a lot of programs officially aimed at the poor
look suspiciously like subsidies to the New Class, too. Among "means-tested"
programs, Food Stamps, now officially called SNAP, cover about 46 million
people up to 125% of the poverty line (set at about $16,000 for a single
mother and child). Other programs, such as the Earned Income Tax credit, cover
people at slightly higher incomes, up to 200% of the poverty line. When
federal spending on the dozens of programs are added up and state and local
contributions included, the budget for assistance is about $1 trillion.

"If we simply handed those people, perhaps 60 million of them, their share of
the cash, that would be more than $16,500 each. A single mom and her baby
would get over $33,000, twice as much as a poverty wage. A family of four
would land more than $66,000, $15,000 more than the average family income.

"So where's the money going? To people who aren't poor, such as doctors paid
through Medicaid or landlords paid through Section 8. And to tens of thousands
of members of the New Class, people like social workers, administrators and
lawyers who run more than 120 different means tested federal programs."[2]

And law school is the gate to a federal job. That's a powerful _expansionary_
force supporting legal education.

Also, a Maserati dealer has just opened in Arlington, Virginia.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milovan_%C4%90ilas#Dissident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milovan_%C4%90ilas#Dissident)

[2]
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/07/regulations...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/07/regulations-
class-wealth-income-inequality-opportunity-reynolds-column/12266651/)

[3] [http://www.arlnow.com/2014/07/07/maserati-of-arlington-
now-o...](http://www.arlnow.com/2014/07/07/maserati-of-arlington-now-open/)

~~~
superuser2
>Also, a Maserati dealer has just opened in Arlington, Virginia.

I have a hard time imagining the mind of someone who sees this as related to
civil servants rather than lobbyists.

~~~
monknomo
Don't forget contractors. I would think lobbyists prefer to be across the
river

------
logicallee
Could this be a hog cycle thing? Just a short while ago, we were reading about
all these law school grads who couldn't get jobs, because there were just too
many of them. So in the next cycle nobody enrolls.

------
Spooky23
Not very surprising. Our recently hired office manager graduated from Law
School in 2011. The previous person in that job was a former secretary.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
"Lowest since 1977" isn't as exciting as it might otherwise be considering how
flat enrollment was until about 2003.

------
fenomas
I am compelled to point out the potential for Spoonerism in the first two
words of this headline.

