"Since 2010, first-year enrollment has dropped from 52,500 to 37,900, a level last scene in 1973- much smaller and the rule of law will begin to fray. Our country needs lawyers, prosecutors, defenders, and judges, not only lawyers in big cities and big law firms. Capping graduate federal loans. . . would fall hardest on students from modest circumstances who will not be able to attend law school." – letter to the editor of the New York Times, signed by Law Deans Blake Morant, Kellye Testy, and Association of American Law Schools Executive Director Judith Areen.
"Talented students are drawn to the legal profession because lawyers play a vital role serving individuals and institutions in our society. . .[C]utting federal loans will only narrow the pool of people who can pursue a legal career and decrease the availability of lawyers to serve this need." – letter to the editor of the New York Times by Law Dean Matthew Diller.
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I fear a collapse into anarchy– the bad W.B. Yeats kind, not the good Noam Chomsky kind. Social collapse begins when the rule of law starts to fray, like a once-beautiful tapestry that has been damaged, or like the nerves of a put-upon law professor forced to explain for the umpteenth time how his or her scholarshit is a bargain at any price, even if that price is paid by debt-ridden law grads. And when even a normally beigist establishment newspaper like the New York Times boldly endorses the viewpoint of law-hating scamblog insurrectionists, you know that society is in peril.
The logic is cruel and irrefutable. If you tamper with the availability and amount of federal student loans then fewer people will be able or willing to attend law school. If fewer people attend law school, then there will obviously be fewer lawyers. Ours is a society of laws, so if the lawyer supply is disrupted, we will eventually lose the rule of law.
What follows are a few facts about the letter writers quoted above, and about the institutions they lead or led, which may be marginally relevant to assessing their interest, bias, and character. Might there be some reason, other than the obvious imperative to preserve society and the rule of law, why they want an unobstructed flow of money from taxpaying public into law school coffers via the ever-reliable conduit of gullible young persons’ ruined lives?
Kellye Testy, Dean of the University of Washington School of Law, was paid $375,012 in 2014. This was the 45th highest salary for a State of Washington employee. (Eight football coaches and three basketball coaches were paid more, proving that law school is far from the only scam out there). In an interview conducted in 2012, Testy rejected as "paternalistic" the suggestion that class size be reduced, though the school ultimately did decrease its class size very slightly (From 176 1Ls in 2012 to 163 in 2014). Testy is a strong proponent of Washington State’s limited license legal technician program, under which nonlawyers can engage in the "limited practice of law"– as long as they take 45 credit hours of paralegal instruction, plus additional coursework related to the particular area of law for which licensure is sought, from an ABA-accredited law school. Speaking of limited practice, Testy graduated from law school in 1991 and became a Professor of Law in 1992, with only a one-year long Seventh Circuit clerkship sandwiched between her law school graduation and her law school professorship.
Blake Morant was recently appointed Dean of George Washington Law School. In Fiscal 2012, Morant’s predecessor, Paul Schiff Berman, collected $519,280 in "reportable compensation" from GW and an additional $54,876 in "other compensation from the organization and related organizations." Thus, Morant's GW salary is probably higher than his $443,856 annual take as Dean of Wake Forest Law. Morant serves as President of the Association of American Law Schools. In his 2015 Presidential address, he declared that "[T]he need for quality legal education has never been more acute. The competitive global market requires professionals who can think critically and provide innovative solutions to complex problems." George Washington has the 7th highest percentage of ten-month-out "school-funded" jobs among the law schools (13.4%), suggesting that there are at least a few GW law grads having difficulty peddling their critical thinking wares in the global marketplace. The average law school debt of a GW Class of 2014 law grad was $141,246.
Matthew Diller was recently appointed Dean of Fordham Law (2015), having spent the preceding six years as Dean of Cardozo Law (2009-2015). The average law school debt of the members of the class of 2014 at Fordham and Cardozo was $140,577 and $121,644 respectively. Between 2010 and 2014, Cardozo’s LSAT for incoming students fell by five points at the 25th percentile and four points at the median, so at least Diller is sincere in his opposition to policies that would "narrow the pool of people who can pursue a legal career." Diller boasted to the New York Times that "Schools, including Fordham Law. . . have expanded scholarship aid," but there still may be room for improvement. Fordham ranked in the bottom half of law schools in terms of median tuition discount ($12,500) and percentage of students receiving discounts (49.1%). Diller’s predecessor as Fordham Law Dean, Michael M. Martin, was paid $543,108 in Fiscal 2013.
Judith Areen was a law school faculty member at Georgetown for 43 years, including 16 years as Dean or as interim dean (1989-2004, 2010). Georgetown Law has the worst non-funded law job placement record among the elite T14, which may be related somehow to its enrolling the largest entering class of any law school in the country. In 2015, Areen became executive director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), which "represents the deans and professors of 179 law schools" and which emphasizes the importance of legal scholarship within law schools. According to its most recent available 990, the AALS sits upon about 11 million dollars in net assets. It seems to derive most of its five million dollar annual revenue from law school faculty recruitment services. The AALS is known for hosting a huge annual five-day-long two million dollar "conference" that draws over 3,000 party-loving lawprofs from all over the country.Areen's predecessor as AALS executive director, Susan Westerberg Prager (who has since become Dean of bottom-tier Southwestern Law School), was paid $459,221 by AALS in Fiscal 2013.
In 2012, Areen stated that, "It’s law graduates who don’t practice law who are often most complimentary about their legal education and the analytic skills they received." At least she did not say that the rule of law depends on having an ample supply of nonpracticing lawyers.
"Talented students are drawn to the legal profession because lawyers play a vital role serving individuals and institutions in our society. . .[C]utting federal loans will only narrow the pool of people who can pursue a legal career and decrease the availability of lawyers to serve this need." – letter to the editor of the New York Times by Law Dean Matthew Diller.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I fear a collapse into anarchy– the bad W.B. Yeats kind, not the good Noam Chomsky kind. Social collapse begins when the rule of law starts to fray, like a once-beautiful tapestry that has been damaged, or like the nerves of a put-upon law professor forced to explain for the umpteenth time how his or her scholarshit is a bargain at any price, even if that price is paid by debt-ridden law grads. And when even a normally beigist establishment newspaper like the New York Times boldly endorses the viewpoint of law-hating scamblog insurrectionists, you know that society is in peril.
The logic is cruel and irrefutable. If you tamper with the availability and amount of federal student loans then fewer people will be able or willing to attend law school. If fewer people attend law school, then there will obviously be fewer lawyers. Ours is a society of laws, so if the lawyer supply is disrupted, we will eventually lose the rule of law.
What follows are a few facts about the letter writers quoted above, and about the institutions they lead or led, which may be marginally relevant to assessing their interest, bias, and character. Might there be some reason, other than the obvious imperative to preserve society and the rule of law, why they want an unobstructed flow of money from taxpaying public into law school coffers via the ever-reliable conduit of gullible young persons’ ruined lives?
Kellye Testy, Dean of the University of Washington School of Law, was paid $375,012 in 2014. This was the 45th highest salary for a State of Washington employee. (Eight football coaches and three basketball coaches were paid more, proving that law school is far from the only scam out there). In an interview conducted in 2012, Testy rejected as "paternalistic" the suggestion that class size be reduced, though the school ultimately did decrease its class size very slightly (From 176 1Ls in 2012 to 163 in 2014). Testy is a strong proponent of Washington State’s limited license legal technician program, under which nonlawyers can engage in the "limited practice of law"– as long as they take 45 credit hours of paralegal instruction, plus additional coursework related to the particular area of law for which licensure is sought, from an ABA-accredited law school. Speaking of limited practice, Testy graduated from law school in 1991 and became a Professor of Law in 1992, with only a one-year long Seventh Circuit clerkship sandwiched between her law school graduation and her law school professorship.
Blake Morant was recently appointed Dean of George Washington Law School. In Fiscal 2012, Morant’s predecessor, Paul Schiff Berman, collected $519,280 in "reportable compensation" from GW and an additional $54,876 in "other compensation from the organization and related organizations." Thus, Morant's GW salary is probably higher than his $443,856 annual take as Dean of Wake Forest Law. Morant serves as President of the Association of American Law Schools. In his 2015 Presidential address, he declared that "[T]he need for quality legal education has never been more acute. The competitive global market requires professionals who can think critically and provide innovative solutions to complex problems." George Washington has the 7th highest percentage of ten-month-out "school-funded" jobs among the law schools (13.4%), suggesting that there are at least a few GW law grads having difficulty peddling their critical thinking wares in the global marketplace. The average law school debt of a GW Class of 2014 law grad was $141,246.
Matthew Diller was recently appointed Dean of Fordham Law (2015), having spent the preceding six years as Dean of Cardozo Law (2009-2015). The average law school debt of the members of the class of 2014 at Fordham and Cardozo was $140,577 and $121,644 respectively. Between 2010 and 2014, Cardozo’s LSAT for incoming students fell by five points at the 25th percentile and four points at the median, so at least Diller is sincere in his opposition to policies that would "narrow the pool of people who can pursue a legal career." Diller boasted to the New York Times that "Schools, including Fordham Law. . . have expanded scholarship aid," but there still may be room for improvement. Fordham ranked in the bottom half of law schools in terms of median tuition discount ($12,500) and percentage of students receiving discounts (49.1%). Diller’s predecessor as Fordham Law Dean, Michael M. Martin, was paid $543,108 in Fiscal 2013.
Judith Areen was a law school faculty member at Georgetown for 43 years, including 16 years as Dean or as interim dean (1989-2004, 2010). Georgetown Law has the worst non-funded law job placement record among the elite T14, which may be related somehow to its enrolling the largest entering class of any law school in the country. In 2015, Areen became executive director of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), which "represents the deans and professors of 179 law schools" and which emphasizes the importance of legal scholarship within law schools. According to its most recent available 990, the AALS sits upon about 11 million dollars in net assets. It seems to derive most of its five million dollar annual revenue from law school faculty recruitment services. The AALS is known for hosting a huge annual five-day-long two million dollar "conference" that draws over 3,000 party-loving lawprofs from all over the country.Areen's predecessor as AALS executive director, Susan Westerberg Prager (who has since become Dean of bottom-tier Southwestern Law School), was paid $459,221 by AALS in Fiscal 2013.
In 2012, Areen stated that, "It’s law graduates who don’t practice law who are often most complimentary about their legal education and the analytic skills they received." At least she did not say that the rule of law depends on having an ample supply of nonpracticing lawyers.
The rule of law doesn't exist anymore in America if you are wealthy or politically connected. These criminals belong in prison.
ReplyDeleteIf the rule of law doesn't exist for some, it doesn't exist at all. That follows from the definition of the rule of law.
DeleteThe decades long overproduction of lawyers has frayed the fabric of the rule of law.
DeleteThere is an endless supply of Lemmings and those sweet loan dollars are not going to be turned off without legislative action. That will not happen.
ReplyDeleteThe scam will continue and thousands of young, stupid people will be hit with terrible job propects and nondischargeable debt.
Your efforts are not changing much. LSAT administrations have recovered. The establishment is not worried- all we stand to lose is a bit of extra fat.
You have accomplished very little.
Is this true? Have LSAT admins recovered?
DeleteIn the Summer of 1990 Jundy Areen family hosted a national conference of law school deans. A student working in admin leaked the detail that she had spent some $14k on flowers to dress up the then pretty dreary soviet style law school building - about a year's tuition as it happens in those halcyon days.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers speak for themselves. As an attorney, I bring the law, and I am the face of the law to my community. But I can not earn a living at it, and my family receives public assistance. Why? The numbers speak volumes. Because in Illinois, there are 92,000 registered attorneys and 95,954 people employed by automobile dealerships. Nearly every adult in Illinois owns a car or two and will own multiple cars over their life times. All will need repairs and maintenance from time to time. How many adults will need a lawyer and how often during their life times? There are just too many lawyers all chasing the same five hundred dollar DUI client.
ReplyDeleteThis level of desperation is usually seen right before an enterprise collapses. The wild threats and warnings, the total departure from the truth, half intentional, half unintentional, all panicked.
ReplyDelete^^^^ This. The classes being admitted now are going to fail the bar much harder than the classes of 2010, 2011 and the worst ever, 2012. No question about it. Hopefully, Congress gets involved and the mess gets covered by the media for a while. I can't wait. Maybe the bankruptcy laws will change so at least we can get rid of our loans.
DeleteYou're forgetting the time-honored step where the holders of the enterprise quietly squeeze every morsel and build themselves an escape route that will collapse behind them.
DeleteAnd pillage the coffers on their way out the door.
DeleteHow can they sleep?
ReplyDeleteNo shame whatsoever. They will literally say anything, believing the American public is so stupid as to actually believe it. And most times they are right, the public is indeed stupid enough to believe it. That's why things are the way they are.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is one thing the public can't "believe" around, and that is math. The math just does not work out for the modern economy. The greedy elites aren't going to cut back, and so they'll destroy the whole thing while squeezing out the last bit they can.
As they say, the golden goose is about to be cooked.
I am not sure if your ordinary garden variety law professor is an "elite," The Deans and the big boys at the ABA who are well insulated from the absolute soul crushing defeat it is to be a solo or small firm attorney, are the elites. They have absolutely no clue that clients are price shopping a Retail Theft case and some twenty five year old kid who couldn't find a job, has no malpractice insurance and a perfect 10 from Avvo from an unraked school and pleas it out for fifty bucks. Or desperately takes a soft tissue PI case, doesn't pay medical providers, and pockets $1500 to put gas in the car so he can get to his next fifty dollar court appearance. Don't tell me that this helps the 'UNDER SERVED" population. It does them a disservice, actually. To top it off, it will get to the point when, President Bush takes office in 2017, when gas will be $4.50 once more, where it will not be worthwhile to even serve them at such low fees.
DeleteNo one's goose is cooked except for all the past, present and future Lemmings. There is no reason for anyone in power to change the way things are. At worst, an Indiana Tech or two will close.
DeleteThe rest of us will just tighten our belts a little, but our schools won't go under. Entry level hiring has been in the dumps but it is recovering.
Scam bloggers, the occasional NYT article and the occasional errant professor are no match for the establishment.
Sorry to say, he's right. So long as there are willing dupes and endless loan dollars, the scam will continue. It's sorta like the end of 1984; there will be no revolution, as the oppressors are willing to destroy any and all to keep the status quo. It really is Orwellian, as the only thing the legal establishment cares about is keeping the $$$ flowing into the pockets of the deans and the professors and the ABA. They do not care one whit about individual attorneys, and care even less about law students-but do love the loan dollars. And the state Bar Examiners aren't going to be a firewall; yeah, they'll fuss a bit, but will eventually cave. Will disaster strike, in the form of legions of incompetent lawyers? Sure, but it won't be evident for 15-20 years-and by then the fat cats running the show will be safely retired. They'll have their $$$ and cozy retirement, and it will be someone else's mess.
DeleteNo, sorry to say, while the scam has had a few scares, the fact that the # of LSAT takers has gone up proves that there are none so blind as he who will not see. The facts are out there; it's just more convenient to believe establishment lies than the outsider's truth.
For years, if not decades, the law school pigs published misleading employment "placement" statistics on their brochures, recruitment packets, junk mail, DVDs and websites. This information was almost always on the Potential Students page, so that those considering a "legal education" would see these figures prominently displayed. NOWHERE did these thieving cockroaches include a disclaimer to the effect of "Not all of these jobs were in the legal field, and they also include part-time and temporary employment." Then the scamblogs, LST, former attorneys, a few professors with balls and some integrity, and some hard-hitting mainstream press articles forced the swine to include a breakdown of the "placement" numbers.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of these efforts and great documentation - including from the folks and writers at OTLSS - fewer people started taking the plunge into financial hell. This was especially pertinent to those with high LSAT scores.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/
In response, the law school pigs WILLINGLY and KNOWINGLY lowered their admi$$ion$ “standards” further – as a response to fewer applicants. Of course, the vile, filthy, morally bankrupt "educators"/cockroaches did not want to leave federal student money laying on the table, so they accepted a higher percentage of dumbasses.
http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/12/endgame.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-wrong-people-have-stopped-applying-to-law-school/255685/
As I have noted on my blog several times, the law school pigs DO NOT GIVE ONE GODDAMN about their students or recent graduates. Those young men and women are a means to an end, i.e. federal student loan dollars. After all, the sick academic bitches and hags SIMPLY MUST make $180K per year, for their 4-6 hours of "work" each week! You can also see how "professors" look at their TTT students with contempt. You can only imagine how little they think of the taxpayers or potential legal clients of their graduates.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had a panel on the "Crisis in Legal Education" that featured Kellye Testy:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I77m744N_90
We must not allow a lawyer gap!
ReplyDeleteMein Fuhrer! I can walk!
DeleteImpressive evidence to support this claim will soon appear on Leiter Law School Reports.
Delete"I fear a collapse into anarchy– the bad W.B. Yeats kind,"
ReplyDeleteThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"Since 2010, first-year enrollment has dropped from 52,500 to 37,900, a level last scene in 1973- much smaller and the rule of law will begin to fray."
ReplyDeleteThis Chicken Little fear-mongering proves their desperation. They don't discuss, or care to know (although they do know), why first-year enrollment has declined so far (still by no means far enough). They don't say a word about the legions of unemployed, and even unemployable, graduates.
"Our country needs lawyers, prosecutors, defenders, and judges, not only lawyers in big cities and big law firms."
Equivocation on the word needs. Of course the country "needs" lawyers and such in the sense that it cannot easily get by with none at all. But it does not "need" lawyers in the sense of having a current shortage.
"Capping graduate federal loans. . . would fall hardest on students from modest circumstances who will not be able to attend law school."
No, it would fall hardest on scamsters whose sinecures would go down the drain when their Cooleyite toilet was flushed.
This is one of their cognitive dissonance tricks they use. They charge Big Law prices from the Big City everywhere in the country for everyone. They want you to believe they HAVE to do so, and tuition is just high because that's the market rate, so the federal government needs to just pay in.
DeleteThere's a few other tricks, like pretending there are even lower paid decent jobs out there for these non-Big Law grads. Of course you need to be a top student at T5 to really get Big Law, and we know that most legal jobs are laterals afterwards, but these scamsters don't want to admit that.
We also realistically know there is zero reason why the 121st ranked school in bumfuck Iowa should cost the same as the #1-#3 ranked schools in MA, CA or CT.
If these scamsters think it's that important, they can just charge less money, and also tie a slot for these jobs on graduation like a residency matching program.
They won't do that because they want the money, and because they know there are no jobs. It doesn't matter to them that the sucker students are stuck with the bill afterwards, the pigs just do not care one whit on what happens or how immoral it is. As long as they get their yachts.
I do not think anything will change. Law grad overproduction is so bad that employers came up with the fiction of "overqualified" because they just don't want such low status employees as law grads. Meanwhile all around the rest of the economy plenty of "overqualified" people are working for a quarter of their salary in entry-level positions---because there is really no such thing after all.
The law grad is a peculiar type of low status prospective employee. It is truly a scarlet letter, a crimson mark, whatever you want to call it. Many law grads find more success leaving off their law degree, as long as they can make up something to put in for that time (something most law grads will have to learn to do anyway, with their un and underemployment after graduating as well).
The notion that the needs of the underprivileged will be advanced by minting thousands of lawyers has long past its expiration date. Yet a few law school defenders continue to invoke this dated hokum; as seen, one inveighs that first-year enrollment has dropped from 52,500 to 37,900, and fears further reduction may unravel the rule of law. Really? Of course, our country needs lawyers, prosecutors, defenders and judges. But it has already long since has its fill .... and its backlog ... and its reserve backlog of these, thanks to decades of excessive lawyer production. Today’s backlog won’t be cleared for over a decade and it is precisely the hyper-abundance of lawyers that has frayed –no, torn– the fabric of the rule of law. In a super-saturated field, desperate practitioners are forced into unethical solicitations and forced to prosecute cases of scant liability on razor-thin facts in pursuit of jack-pot recoveries. This leads a disgusted public to conclude the profession is little more than unprincipled hucksters. And yet the existing super surfeit of desperate lawyers has not stanched the supposed legal needs of the underprivileged. A glance at the Yellow Pages from a town of 42,500 people reveals 38 pages of advertisements of solos/microfirms offering free consultations and contingency-fee arrangements or monthly payment plans for personal injuries, dog bites, immigration, divorce, child custody, DWI, felonies, traffic tickets, drug possession, tax, wills, contracts, and so on.
DeleteIf the legal needs of the underprivileged are not being met with the current overabundance, creating yet more lawyers cannot be the answer. No prosecutor’s office in the land is begging for prosecutors. Hell, where I live, these salaried, benefits-bearings positions are seen as plums and are held onto with a death-grip by their lucky incumbents. Ditto for judges.
Creating more and more lawyers so they can help the poor (however noble the thought may be) will simply no longer hold water. We plainly have all the lawyers we can absorb... and then some. If the poor are underserved, this is not for lack of lawyers.
Like passengers on the Titanic fleeing to the upper decks to escape steadily rising water, many Law School promoters are turning away from the traditional rubric that “We need more lawyers to serve the unmet needs of the underprivileged,” and pushing a newer orthodoxy: “We need lawyers who themselves arose from the midst of the underprivileged.”
But if there is no sustainable legal work for the newly minted attorney to perform, is he or she really any better off with an empty title?
The rule of law would be far better served by outright law school closings.
The notion that the needs of the underprivileged will be advanced by minting thousands of lawyers has long past its expiration date. Yet a few law school defenders continue to invoke this dated hokum; as seen, one inveighs that first-year enrollment has dropped from 52,500 to 37,900, and fears that further reduction may unravel the rule of law. Really? Of course, our country needs lawyers, prosecutors, defenders and judges. But it has already long since has its fill .... and its backlog ... and its reserve backlog of these, thanks to decades of excessive lawyer production. Today’s backlog won’t be cleared for over a decade and it is precisely the hyper-abundance of lawyers that has frayed –no, torn– the fabric of the rule of law. In a super-saturated field, desperate practitioners are forced into unethical solicitations and forced to prosecute cases of scant liability on razor-thin facts in pursuit of jack-pot recoveries. This leads a disgusted public to conclude the profession is little more than unprincipled hucksters. And the existing super surfeit of desperate lawyers has not stanched the supposed legal needs of the underprivileged.
DeleteThere is only one way for the Academy to demonstrate that it cares about the rule of law and the administration of justice: close.
When the scammers are getting this brazen and hyperbolic in their lies, you know they're getting desperate. Lemmings with 140 LSAT scores are not going to do anything to uphold the "rule of law" while they fail the bar and end up working in Starbucks.
ReplyDeleteIt is precisely the hyper-abundance of lawyers that has frayed –no, torn– the fabric of the rule of law. In this super-saturated field, desperate practitioners are forced into unethical solicitations, often forced to prosecute cases of scant liability on razor-thin facts in pursuit of jack-pot recoveries. Desperate advertisements degrade the image of the profession as a whole, and the courts, too. This leads a disgusted public to conclude the profession is little more than unprincipled hucksters and urge reform, curtailing remedies to those genuinely injured. All the while, the existing super-surfeit of desperate lawyers hasn’t stanched the supposed legal needs of the underprivileged... at least not according to the Academy. A glance at the Yellow Pages from a town of 42,000 people reveals 30+ pages of advertisements of solos/microfirms offering free consultations and contingency-fee arrangements or monthly payment plans for personal injuries, dog bites, immigration, divorce, child custody, DWI, felonies, traffic tickets, drug possession, tax, wills, contracts, and so on. If the underprivilegeds’ legal needs are perchance not being met, creating yet more lawyers isn’t the answer.
DeleteIf the Academy cared about the rule of law, the answer was to stop excess emissions of students. The problem was left untreated for decades. The answer now is to close.
Ah, but if we lower the standards for the bar exam, then...I guess they'll still end up working at Starbucks.
DeleteIf the Academy ever cared about the rule of law, the answer was to stop excess emissions of students. The problem was left untreated for decades. The answer now is to close.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we could get an unemployed "environmental human rights" attorney to force the EPA to classify unqualified law students as a pollutant. Imagine a cap-and-trade system in which some law schools had to pay other schools for the privilege of collecting federal loan money from cognitively challenged young people.
DeleteThat right there should reduce hazardous emissions from the law schools.
Kellye Testy is an obese pig. The US Treasury needs to put her on a low-income, low-calorie diet.
ReplyDeleteThey should read this article in Bloomberg Business: Key quote: "Since 1988, income for stand-alone attorneys, of which there are 354,000 nationally, declined by 31 percent. In 2012, their average income was $49,000, according to tax returns."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-04/can-an-on-demand-lawyer-startup-transform-the-legal-business-
As a T4 law grad with a T2 undergrad degree, I can say that my experience is similar to what the comments are saying here. The oversupply of lawyers has made the profession a poor choice for most people.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard for a lawyer with strong academics to get and very hard for that lawyer to keep any six figure job with health insurance, especially if one is an older woman or minority. Being a woman or minority lawyer with top academic credentials after age 50 means layoffs, unemployment, insecure jobs in the brief intervals one can work and temporary employment during the intervals a lawyer does find work.
The economics of a T8 law degree for women and minorities over age 50 have got to be much less favorable than the economics of being a public school teacher who started working in the same city at the same time the lawyer went to law school.
The older men in the area where I practice are losing jobs as well due to not enough work. Not that the law firms do not want to hire. They do want to and do sometimes hire, but don't have the work to sustain a huge number of the lawyers they hire in my area,
People who are buying law degrees today are buying a life full of extreme job troubles and a miserable life. It is going to cost these people their lives. No health insurance for long periods, regular unemployment, regular firings due to lack of work or to "provide opportunities for younger lawyers" take their toll, and result in a extremely unhappy and stressful, shortened lives for the lawyers involved.
The fact that the federal government is ignoring the severe surplus of licensed lawyers over lawyer jobs, let alone the relatively limited number of full-time permanent lawyer jobs (a number which they don't publish) is a travesty to our young people and our taxpayers. The demise of solo practice as a viable economic option makes the decision to attend law school a very poor one for most people.
Very few people would get a law degree if the true facts were known. The job market supports under 20,000 lawyers being minted each year. The current first year law school class of 37,900 represents a huge surplus of new lawyers who will not find long-term work.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThis gutter field is dead, for all but the connected.
DeleteShelf life for Big Law appears to be 5 years max for the unconnected. A few stay longer, but no real rhyme or reason for it.
Everyone else is booted and it seems like the days of lateraling into something are long gone. Once you're out it appears you're out, a lifetime of unemployable doc review awaits.
I did doc review for awhile. I'd heard horrible stories about it, about how stupid the people doing these jobs were...but, seemingly at every gig I was sitting next to people who by every objective measure were extremely intelligent, diligent, hard working people that at one point were very successful, but who since 2007 seemingly no longer were.
There is no career in law for most. And I think you listing that 20k number is overly generous. Maybe 5-7k career jobs out there, and that includes garbage wages that don't justify 3 years out of the work force, student loan debt etc. But even if law schools only graduated 5k grads every year, I don't think the backlog of attorneys would be worked through in a decade.
You could not pay me to go to law school now. I only wish I had known what we know now 10 years ago. Would have saved me a lot of shame, heartache and misery.
4:18 here.I never did doc review.
DeleteAlways got jobs in my practice area. There are jobs. They are not secure jobs. There were long periods between jobs at times. I turned a few things down and ended up worse off. Refused to spend hours commuting in a car to get to a job, which limited the options. All in all, the T4 law degree had no return for me once I could not stay in big law.
The law firms which were in the past the most desirable places to practice are now very unstable. It is very hard to get enough business to keep fully busy, The in house jobs in the private sector are in a fairly large percentage revolving doors. Too many jobs are temporary, with the risk of not working for long periods after the jobs ends. Some of the jobs pay less than the $160,000 going rate in my hyper expensive geographic area. The employment outcomes are worse than what I would have gotten if Ihad gone into medicine or teaching in my geographic area.
If it were just me, it would be a reflection of my failures. It is all over, with so many lawyers affected. People who went to Harvard and spent many years in big law end up as solos. Very few women and minorities from Harvard Law in my class have any type of job that would make it worthwhile to go to Harvard Law. The jobs, or at least the good jobs, full-time, permanent, with at least a $160,000 salary, are not there for older grads.
Well if you're able to get $160k jobs you're doing pretty well. That is well in the top 3% of income earners. https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014
DeleteThat chart could be looked at to indicate things are bad for most though I suppose.
My problem is I've been able to get nowhere near that, especially most years. The job security is also something I've had problems with.
I hope you never get stuck on doc review.
Again, I would not go to law school again if I could go back and do it all over again.
No, A $160,000 job with long periods of unemployment may equal $100,000 a year or less on average, with no employee benefits. If your undergraduate degree is from Harvard or Princeton with honors, being able to work only sporadically in an unstable job environment is a lousy deal. You blew it on your career choice if the industry is suffering. It may be very hard to escape this situation once you are middle aged or older.
DeleteProblem is you never know for how long a job, even a full time permanent job .will last. There is a falling away job problem for lawyers in law firms and to a great extent in house. When you lose that job or it ends, you may have to wait a year or more to work again as a lawyer. Today, there seem to be projects that will hire lawyers with 10 or more years of experience, but not nearly enough real career jobs because the demand for lawyer work is just not there.
A 20 plus year public school teacher in an expensive urban area has total compensation of over $200,000 as does a doctor, counting employee benefits.
If you go to top schools (Ivy League, little Ivy, top 8 ranked law school on top of that) and have top record and end up as a functionally unemployed lawyer for long periods, you have made a poor career choice. Who wants a lifetime of applying for jobs, and having every job end because the legal profession is troubled? Who wants no pension benefits and for long periods of time with no employer health insurance at all? Large employers pay 80% of the cost of health insurance typically, and it comes out to a lot of money. Who wants to lose the tax benefits of getting employer provided health insurance and pay double for it because it is not pretax if you need to buy it on an exchange and make $50,000 or more. The health insurance will cost you a quarter, maybe even half your income that way. No money left for you because you chose to be a lawyer.
There has been no growth at all in the legal services sector in the U.S. for the last 10 years. The legal services sector has shrunk. These are links to last Friday's Jobs Report from BLS and the same report from January 2005. Look at Table B-1 and search for "legal" in the current jobs report. Search for "legal "in the 2005 jobs report. Only about a third of those legal jobs are lawyer jobs, the rest being support jobs.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/history/empsit_02042005.txt
You can't squeeze blood from a stone. A million and a quarter licensed lawyers cannot make a living working as lawyer when there are in the range of 700,000 lawyer jobs, including several hundred thousand solo practitioners.
The Affordable Care Act does not make it economical for a lawyer who is struggling to get health insurance. A struggling lawyer will have a lifetime morass of troubles paying for health insurance.
ReplyDeleteIf the lawyer is a solo making $49,000 a year, he or she will not have the subsidies where the government pays for health insurance. A family health insurance plan costs $25,000 a year or more. If you gross $50,000, you net $25,000 - not an amount that makes it economical to be a lawyer for anyone who is the primary breadwinner in their family. At least you get insurance pre-tax if you are self-employed and make enough to pay for health insurance.
Take the lawyer who is temping. He or she may not get health insurance at all. The health insurance will end when the temporary job ends if the lawyer is lucky enough to get health insurance. Health insurance when your employer does not provide it or under COBRA after the job ends is after tax. That makes health insurance many times more expensive for someone who is making $40,000 a year as a temporary lawyer.
Unions at least get their members health insurance paid for by the employer. Lawyers get no such protections. You go to law school and you will have a lifetime of great difficulty keeping health insurance for yourself and and your family at any affordable rate.
And the fact that health insurance is a monthly premium. It's expected you're getting a weekly salary that stays pretty much the same throughout the year.
DeleteAs a solo or a temp, that's obviously not going to be true. The government generally will refuse to lower premiums or provide subsidies when you have low or no income, but is quick to raise them when you are getting money, and of course takes tax off the highest amount they can the entire time.
Obamacare and the tax structure in this country in general are both designed for people with stable jobs and weekly, consistent paychecks. The entire economy is designed for that, from a mortgage to credit cards to everything else. It's all under the assumption that you have consistent income. Saving is a waste because money gets devalued as well, so you're expected to stick any excess into Wall St., who take the money and run.
When you look at things critically, sometimes the entire US way of life really looks like some sort of sham built on smoke and mirrors. It's like a giant trap for anyone that isn't wealthy or connected. You're either completely broke or just over broke.
The right kind of unions don't just get you health insurance. The right unions get you paid. This is what lemmings should be concentrating on. Many won't get such jobs, but the ones that do will be infinitely better than the idiots who go to non elite law schools.
DeleteThe issue is not only capping the dollar amount of loans to each law student. It is also capping law school enrollment to a level where the number law students over 40 years is not many times more than the number of lawyer jobs. The enrollment caps should go along with any federal loan money to a law school.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we just do away with fed loans altogether. Why should taxpayers subsidize any of this. Leave it to private lenders and watch the number of people willing to take out law school loans and apply dwindle down to 20,000/yr. Watch tuition go south too.
DeleteDybbuk, you did some amazing research to put the latest law school propaganda atrocity into laser-sharp focus. It makes me wish you were a prosecutor rather than a defense attorney.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, come to think of it, these sociopathic deans do remind me a lot of bad cops. They beat up suspects (cheat their students), lie about what they did, and then hide behind "The Law" to try to discredit any investigation of their thuggery.
This is absurd. Law school deans have NEVER worked as lawyers. Its ridiculous that they now purport to be authorities on whether the social good requires more lawyers.
ReplyDelete