tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post1096983181411059537..comments2024-03-28T10:56:31.720-06:00Comments on Outside the Law School Scam: Law Deans warn that capping student loans threatens the "rule of law" and the "individuals and institutions in our society."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-9159442413657631542015-11-07T07:09:42.382-07:002015-11-07T07:09:42.382-07:00No, A $160,000 job with long periods of unemployme...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.<br /><br />Problem 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm<br /><br />http://www.bls.gov/news.release/history/empsit_02042005.txt<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-54708403409699265132015-11-07T02:40:52.892-07:002015-11-07T02:40:52.892-07:00Maybe we could get an unemployed "environment...Maybe 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.<br /><br />That right there should reduce hazardous emissions from the law schools. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-57092458778852899692015-11-07T01:41:28.742-07:002015-11-07T01:41:28.742-07:00Impressive evidence to support this claim will soo...Impressive evidence to support this claim will soon appear on Leiter Law School Reports.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-80155075056526581472015-11-06T20:26:26.837-07:002015-11-06T20:26:26.837-07:00This is absurd. Law school deans have NEVER worke...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. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-64459069958531544002015-11-06T13:47:13.614-07:002015-11-06T13:47:13.614-07:00Well if you're able to get $160k jobs you'...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<br /><br />That chart could be looked at to indicate things are bad for most though I suppose. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />I hope you never get stuck on doc review. <br /><br />Again, I would not go to law school again if I could go back and do it all over again. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-59109251223968804042015-11-06T10:54:46.153-07:002015-11-06T10:54:46.153-07:004:18 here.I never did doc review.
Always got jo...4:18 here.I never did doc review. <br /><br />Always 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-12637813773550410452015-11-06T06:45:45.941-07:002015-11-06T06:45:45.941-07:00Dybbuk, you did some amazing research to put the l...Dybbuk, 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.<br /><br />Although, 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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-69332571717313989782015-11-06T01:01:00.684-07:002015-11-06T01:01:00.684-07:00This gutter field is dead, for all but the connect...This gutter field is dead, for all but the connected. <br /><br />Shelf 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-45643653817280699742015-11-05T22:29:15.710-07:002015-11-05T22:29:15.710-07:00Maybe we just do away with fed loans altogether. W...Maybe 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. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-22733283672978591982015-11-05T17:57:06.801-07:002015-11-05T17:57:06.801-07:00The right kind of unions don't just get you he...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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-73298271428192179232015-11-05T11:40:10.567-07:002015-11-05T11:40:10.567-07:00The issue is not only capping the dollar amount of...The 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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-62293356966049781122015-11-05T11:22:27.833-07:002015-11-05T11:22:27.833-07:00And the fact that health insurance is a monthly pr...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.<br /><br />As 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-15753839114287772132015-11-05T11:18:38.395-07:002015-11-05T11:18:38.395-07:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-88699650868773850432015-11-05T06:24:15.340-07:002015-11-05T06:24:15.340-07:00Ah, but if we lower the standards for the bar exam...Ah, but if we lower the standards for the bar exam, then...I guess they'll still end up working at Starbucks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-80082234319325032572015-11-05T05:35:21.292-07:002015-11-05T05:35:21.292-07:00The Affordable Care Act does not make it economica...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.<br /><br />If 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-83039006063120121322015-11-05T05:18:37.665-07:002015-11-05T05:18:37.665-07:00As a T4 law grad with a T2 undergrad degree, I can...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. <br /><br />It 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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,<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-68510567889205162632015-11-04T15:19:48.514-07:002015-11-04T15:19:48.514-07:00Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-21486557841206325822015-11-04T12:22:05.165-07:002015-11-04T12:22:05.165-07:00They should read this article in Bloomberg Busines...They 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." <br /><br />http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-04/can-an-on-demand-lawyer-startup-transform-the-legal-business-BoConoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-46879764585200978982015-11-04T10:04:01.563-07:002015-11-04T10:04:01.563-07:00Kellye Testy is an obese pig. The US Treasury need...Kellye Testy is an obese pig. The US Treasury needs to put her on a low-income, low-calorie diet.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-65380651015491515002015-11-04T08:24:58.425-07:002015-11-04T08:24:58.425-07:00The decades long overproduction of lawyers has fra...The decades long overproduction of lawyers has frayed the fabric of the rule of law.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-5283829901732171072015-11-04T07:41:01.128-07:002015-11-04T07:41:01.128-07:00If the Academy ever cared about the rule of law, t...If 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. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-2020987675001352912015-11-04T07:23:53.482-07:002015-11-04T07:23:53.482-07:00It is precisely the hyper-abundance of lawyers tha...It 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.<br /><br />If 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. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-89764966599451204582015-11-03T23:46:19.130-07:002015-11-03T23:46:19.130-07:00The notion that the needs of the underprivileged w...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. <br /><br />There is only one way for the Academy to demonstrate that it cares about the rule of law and the administration of justice: close. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-25059130335169088432015-11-03T23:39:26.061-07:002015-11-03T23:39:26.061-07:00The notion that the needs of the underprivileged w...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. <br /><br />If 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.”<br /><br />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?<br /><br />The rule of law would be far better served by outright law school closings. <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3660083024919144793.post-69052381873195696962015-11-03T23:04:21.025-07:002015-11-03T23:04:21.025-07:00This is one of their cognitive dissonance tricks t...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.<br /><br />There'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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com