"A Law School Carol" movie posted to YouTube has dean of my law school on defensive!

[stateofbeasley]

Last month, a spoof of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol made its way to YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-_wDwmOQ1U The short animated series details the danger of law school and the heavy debt burden on its graduates. Law.com picked up on the film and wrote an article, and put two law deans on the defensive:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArtic...1998&Going_to_law_school_Proceed_with_caution

Make no mistake: A Law School Carol is no heartwarming holiday tale of redemption.

The computer-animated video, which has been circulating on YouTube for several weeks, focuses on a law student named Steve who is visited by the ghost of Ralph Marley's disappointing legal career (Ralph Marley being the law student who used to rent Steve's apartment and now does document review somewhere in New Jersey). The ghosts of Steve's prelaw, law school and postlaw school lives visit him to offer a sobering accounting of the sacrifices he made to attend law school, the staggering debt he assumed in the process and the limited prospects his degree from a third-tier school will afford.

"Wake up and smell the student loan payments!" the ghost of law school present warns.

The video may be a joke, but the argument isn't. On the Internet and in academic circles, debate is flaring over the value of a juris doctor, and whether the degree is a wise investment for many of the thousands who flock to law schools each year.

The dean of the law school I graduated from (Temple) seems to have no idea that the job market was bad, even in years like 2006, when the overall economy was good. Undoubtedly also faced with harsh student criticism and pressure, she's got her back to the wall:

JoAnne Epps, dean of the Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, said not all of the online criticism is warranted. "I understand that people are frustrated," she said. "But I don't think it's fair at this stage of our history to blame law schools for the fact that a graduate's job prospects in 2009 are different than they may have been when that graduate was contemplating law school four or five years ago."

Epps is hardly a good target for angry students though. Temple's relatively low tuition for PA residents and generous scholarships make it a reasonable choice even for those who don't want or can't make biglaw.

Now this is crazy:

Northeastern University School of Law Dean Emily Spieler said prospective students should be aware of the potential downsides of law school, but should not take the Internet-based law school bashing at face value.

"The Internet is an egalitarian and a flat form of communication," she said. "That has its values and its negatives. It concerns me because I think it gives a lot of voice to deeply unhappy people."

Deeply unhappy? When your estimated first year costs are $59,640.00, what do you expect? $180k of debt is insane, for a bottom tier-2 law school that maybe gives you a 10% chance of making a salary that can allow you to service that debt. These people in their Ivory Towers seem to have no regard for the economic damage their institutions are facilitating, to students and the public.

The article also discusses the recently published analysis of professor Herwig Schlunk of Van­der­bilt University Law School, who came to the conclusion that law school was generally a poor investment. I discussed this article in a prior thread.

While applications to law schools are up 5% this year, the article notes that this is not nearly as big a jump as during the last recession, when applications went up an astounding 17%.

Maybe the message is getting through.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Law school is not the only school that is a poor investment. I graduated in '93 with a four year food and beverage management degree and 16 years later I am still in the vast minority of Chefs who have both culinary degrees and business degrees. I enjoyed the time in school and am glad I learned about the business end but, I would have been better off financially if I'd never gone to college.

Whenever I see the Cordon Bleu adds on tv, I just laugh and shake my head at the poor schmucks who are spending their hard earned money for nada.

 

[SirStev0]

we get it... you hate law school. Move on.

 

[SunSamurai]

P&n ------------------------------->

 

[rgwalt]

Supply and demand. If kids did their homework on such things, they might realize that spending $100K to $200K for a 3 year law education at a tier 2 or 3 school isn't worth it. So, if they can't get into or hack it a a tier 1 or upper tier 2 school, then they aren't meant to be lawyers. If fewer people attend law school, then schools will need to compete for applicants and prices should drop. Even if prices don't drop, the supply of law school grads will dwindle, which will boost the salary a graduate can command.

However, people rarely act in the best interests of the group... Law schools do have some control over this problem though. If we are churning out more law school grads than the market needs, then law school isn't hard enough. Make the classes tougher, wash more people out. In the end you'll have fewer and more skilled grads. Unfortunately this will eat into the income for the school and might start scaring people away, which is not good for business.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

I can't say I was really impressed with the Law School Carol which was very boring, but I am glad that it is out there. Perhaps funny Youtube videos are what we need to make our voices heard about our desire to reduce the number of law school seats by 60-70%.

I liked his other YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FemkxxZmzcI

He also has a blog: http://esqnever.blogspot.com/

 

[Fenixgoon]

Supply and demand. If kids did their homework on such things, they might realize that spending $100K to $200K for a 3 year law education at a tier 2 or 3 school isn't worth it. So, if they can't get into or hack it a a tier 1 or upper tier 2 school, then they aren't meant to be lawyers. If fewer people attend law school, then schools will need to compete for applicants and prices should drop. Even if prices don't drop, the supply of law school grads will dwindle, which will boost the salary a graduate can command.

However, people rarely act in the best interests of the group... Law schools do have some control over this problem though. If we are churning out more law school grads than the market needs, then law school isn't hard enough. Make the classes tougher, wash more people out. In the end you'll have fewer and more skilled grads. Unfortunately this will eat into the income for the school and might start scaring people away, which is not good for business.

you also have to think about how elastic it is. just because demand drops doesn't mean the price will drop accordingly. a good reputation means people are going to want into your school regardless, and i'd guess you'd be closer to price-inelastic than not.

 

[QueHuong]

Bitterness aside, how much of this doom do you think is applicable to patent lawyers?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Deeply unhappy? When your estimated first year costs are $59,640.00, what do you expect? $180k of debt is insane, for a bottom tier-2 law school that maybe gives you a 10% chance of making a salary that can allow you to service that debt. These people in their Ivory Towers seem to have no regard for the economic damage their institutions are facilitating, to students and the public.

The NLJ article was extremely misleading and I suspect purposely disingenuous. It suggests that graduates are earning, say, $40,000-60,000/year out of law school. The NLJ frames the issue as being one of unhappy employed lawyers griping about their pay. In reality, a huge number of lawyers would love to be employed in the law and earn that kind of money--a great many lawyers and especially new graduates are not employed at all! Since the law schools are producing two or three times as many new attorneys each year as what the nation needs and since a huge glut of unemployed and underemployed attorneys has already build up over the years, most lawyers' gripe is that they are just unemployed or underemployed outside of the law.

I do give the NLJ some credit though, they did a good job of spinning the issue.

 

[ElFenix]

Law school is not the only school that is a poor investment. I graduated in '93 with a four year food and beverage management degree and 16 years later I am still in the vast minority of Chefs who have both culinary degrees and business degrees. I enjoyed the time in school and am glad I learned about the business end but, I would have been better off financially if I'd never gone to college.

Whenever I see the Cordon Bleu adds on tv, I just laugh and shake my head at the poor schmucks who are spending their hard earned money for nada.

my sister went to undergrad for that (well, hotel and restaurant management), then to cooking school at one of the various "Art Institute" place, and now is getting a masters in it. she says she wants to teach but i doubt there are that many positions.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Bitterness aside, how much of this doom do you think is applicable to patent lawyers?

A lot. As someone once posted on the Greedy IP forum years ago, "the gravy train has left the station." Word got out years ago that six figure jobs were readily available to people in this field and they flooded into the law schools.

It's certainly better for EEs than it is people with other degrees, but perhaps even the EEs are having problems now. Science is another glutted field and a great many angry unemployed and underemployed Ph.D. scientists and postdocs fled science for law school and now there is a large oversupply of scientist patent lawyers. In the late '90's a lowly B.S. in chemistry and graduation from lower tier law school with decent grades was sufficient to land a six figure patent lawyer job, but now those very same resumes probably wouldn't even receive as much as a rejection letter.

I haven't read the GreedyIP forum for a while, what are the "patently chickens" posting in those regards? I've heard that patent prosecution sucks ass and that it isn't very profitable and that the economics of it don't work out very well at Biglaw. The problem is that the work required to produce a billable hour for patent prosecution is harder than what it is to produce a billable hour for IP litigation but the large firms still want 2500 hours/year and all the prosecutors want to become IP litigators.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Supply and demand. If kids did their homework on such things, they might realize that spending $100K to $200K for a 3 year law education at a tier 2 or 3 school isn't worth it. So, if they can't get into or hack it a a tier 1 or upper tier 2 school, then they aren't meant to be lawyers. If fewer people attend law school, then schools will need to compete for applicants and prices should drop. Even if prices don't drop, the supply of law school grads will dwindle, which will boost the salary a graduate can command.

That's true. However, one issue is information asymmetry. The law schools publish bogus employment statistics and students have been indoctrinated since elementary school that higher education has economic value. We are still being bombarded with that message as adults--just listen to the radio or the television for a while and a politician or a (corrupt) economist or media pundit will lie about how the nation needs more college graduates and about how more and better education is the magical solution to our nation's economic problems.

Imagine what a 20 year old college junior who is contemplating his career options must be thinking. Unless he is an engineering, accounting, or nursing major the lure of three more years of college education in exchange for a guarantee of an upper middle class income and social status and women must be very alluring. What the hell else is he going to do after he graduates with his poly sci or economically worthless biology degree?

So, you see, it's easy to say that undergrads should be smarter and should do their homework, but when you contemplate the knowledge about the world that a 20 year old would have you might see that it is more difficult to do. Furthermore, even if someone does their homework it is difficult to discern the truth. The law schools are lying about the situation. The ABA is lying about it. Even the NLJ downplayed it in that article. In the meantime there is a huge amount of happy talk from law schools and other self-interested legal industry entities. Perhaps the 20 year old could contact local attorneys, but he would still only be talking to attorneys who are employed as attorneys and not the unemployed attorneys who sleep on the couch in their parents' living rooms or the underemployed attorneys who have been forced to work at Walmart nor the ones who committed suicide or fled the country.

However, people rarely act in the best interests of the group... Law schools do have some control over this problem though. If we are churning out more law school grads than the market needs, then law school isn't hard enough. Make the classes tougher, wash more people out.

How will that serve the best interests of society and these students? How does this amount of economic waste--time and money spent for no economic value--help our society? Even if a student drops out after a year of law school he will still have student loans to pay and a gap on his resume.

In the end you'll have fewer and more skilled grads. Unfortunately this will eat into the income for the school and might start scaring people away, which is not good for business.

The best thing would be for the law schools to reduce the number of seats in law school by 50 or 60%. This is a job for the government (so it's not going to happen). The ABA has no interest in the economic welfare of JDs and the law schools and their professors and administrative staff have a huge conflict of interest in these regards.

Why should we limit the number of lawyers produced (as other nations do)?

(1.) Humanitarian reasons. Tens of thousands of bright young people's lives are being ruined or at least heavily damaged by the waste of three years opportunity cost plus a lifetime of student loan debt.

(2.) Ethical concerns. Competition amongst lawyers encourages them to do everything they can to win or to skirt ethical rules in order to obtain clients, etc. Also, it might encourage frivolous lawsuits.

 

[Hacp]

That's true. However, one issue is information asymmetry. The law schools publish bogus employment statistics and students have been indoctrinated since elementary school that higher education has economic value. We are still being bombarded with that message as adults--just listen to the radio or the television for a while and a politician or a (corrupt) economist or media pundit will lie about how the nation needs more college graduates and about how more and better education is the magical solution to our nation's economic problems.

Imagine what a 20 year old college junior who is contemplating his career options must be thinking. Unless he is an engineering, accounting, or nursing major the lure of three more years of college education in exchange for a guarantee of an upper middle class income and social status and women must be very alluring. What the hell else is he going to do after he graduates with his poly sci or economically worthless biology degree?

Nothing wrong with a polymer science degree.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Nothing wrong with a polymer science degree.

Heh heh. I never would have thought of that alternative meaning to poly sci if you hadn't posted. Are a high percentage of them able to find jobs in their field after graduating (or will many of them, too, be running off to law school to become patent lawyers)?

 

[nonameo]

Nothing wrong with a polymer science degree.

lol good one.