Pop! Goes the Law School Bubble

Originally posted by outandopen
reply to post by Qumulys

 

unfortunate that so many people thing ill of attorneys. not all attorneys are corporate run scum. many attorneys help people. generalizing sucks.

But I'm betting the percentage of good ole, help the people lawyers, is EXTREMELY low. Spike those scum Vlad style. Hawwwwk Phtooey...!!!

It usually takes a pretty scummy person to become a lawyer. Look at some of our recent presidents.

I think that computers is taking a toll on lawyers just as it has on most jobs.

Wills and other basic documents are available online for free. That had to be a significant source of income for firms in years past. Not that an actual lawyer did the work but at least the money came into the firms account.

On the negative side if the number of lawyers drop too much the cost of using one will rise. Once again the lower economic citizens will not have access to one.

hate to revive an old thread but i can actually shed some light on this, i am currently in law school, and i have very realistic expectations about my career, and i do not expect to earn six figures coming out of school. that being said... here's the problem with the legal industry, summed up:

law is an extremely elitist/prestige driven profession, and prestige is governed by the rankings published annually by the US news magazine, the rankings themselves are absolute garbage, and one could even argue that they're rigged in many ways, unfortunately, the entire legal profession is obsessed with the rankings. the top fourteen schools, or the "t14" as we call it, get the best job prospects, the ranking of the t14 do not change much from year to year and overall they stay the same 14 schools: harvard, yale, stanford, northwestern, u of chicago, u of michigan, u of virginia, georgetown, duke, cornell, berkeley, u penn, columbia, NYU.

in good years, they can send about 80 percent of their graduating class into jobs at big firms where they can and do earn six figure incomes. Once you get out of the top 20 to 30 schools, job prospects diminish rapidly. between the ranks of 30 and 50, you can expect big firm placement numbers to be around 30 to 40 percent depending on location, and from 50 to 100, big firm placement numbers dwindle to 10 to 20 percent. outside of the top 100, a school is considered third or fourth tier, and in good years, would be lucky to send just five percent of their graduates to big firm jobs.

in the context of economics, law schools are sellers of degrees, but the value of the degree has large discrepancies, some sellers will sell a superior good, others will sell an inferior good. but in terms of free-market economics, those selling inferior goods will have to charge less for them because of lower demand, right right right? wrong.

here's where the problem is:
-big firm jobs all pay six figures, but everything else pays between 2000 to 40000 per year. this creates an extremely bimodal salary scheme where you either make tons, or nothing, with very few placed in between.
-the cost of law school are all expensive regardless of job prospects, between 40000 to 70000 per year, adjusting for cost of living. that's right, it costs as much to attend harvard as it does to attend some podunk local law school.
-40000 law students graduate every year from more than 150 accredited law schools nationwide, into 25000 jobs, so it's guaranteed that a little under half of all grads will NOT be getting law jobs.
-lower ranked schools will game their employment statistics to make them seem more appealing, they do this by statistical sleight of hand. the statistics are collected by a self-reported survey, but sometimes, unemployed students are not given access to the survey. and "employed" in terms of these statistics, mean employment in any capacity. someone who is serving coffee at starbucks will also count as employed. the school would go as far as hiring its own graduates so they can be counted as employed.

so why do students still go to law school, given the state of things?
-false advertising, false promises created by phony numbers
-strings-attached scholarship offers, many students lose their scholarships after the first year.

in summary, the american bar association is a cartel with a monopoly in legal education, and they play an extremely dirty game that is frankly, ruining the legal industry.

here's how we can fix it: revoke accreditation for all schools outside the top 100 schools, and impose mandatory dismissals of the bottom quarter of the class every year. feel free to PM me if you guys want to know more

All the country needs is an overabundance of Lawyers. They complicate everything. They make good citizens fear doing good because they may be sued for their actions. If we didn't have people doing wrong we wouldn't need lawyers. If the laws were made to protect the honest, we wouldn't need lawyers.

Let the unemployed Lawyers pay for their own misguided dreams.

There was a law passsed to correct the job placement reporting a few years back. Implementation was delayed due to the 08/09 crash. The thinking was school loans keep jobs. Plus the repayment of those loans won't be on the backs of the tax payer. It's a smart economic desicion for the country. Even if it's at the expense of the poor schmucks who sign up for worthless degrees.

It's not just law schools, it's every college out there. They come up with cupcake degree programs.
Two I remember are VCR repair and Criminal justice. I'm sure others can come up with better ones.

P.S. As a side note. If you are wanting a job at a major law firm you might want to get comfortable using caps when you type.

Originally posted by silent thunder

We need fewer lawyers; the overabundance of starving, desperate lawyers with no work results in frivolous law suits and other difficulties as these poor sad sacks scramble to drum up work.

That explains why there are so many law firms fishing for cases advertising relentlessly during the Jerry springer show.
Fishing for business, gotta sue somebody because we gotta make money.


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