Recently I offered a post that tried to clarify some important misunderstandings of my earlier June 20 post. The June 20 post had remarked on how the graduate academy in the liberal arts had fallen prey to the same motivated perception to which some in the legal academy have also succumbed—namely, that the tens of thousands of recent law grads unable to get a genuinely law-related job were just not making proper use of their law degrees (or alternatively really were making proper use of their degrees but didn’t know it). The moral of the story, I suppose, is self-interest’s insidious power to quietly overwhelm any bulwark we try to erect against it, not least reason, good intentions, education, and most if not all of the Ten Commandments.
I explained in my last post that there are essentially three ways to think about the relationship between a course of graduate or professional study and any employment the prospective student may obtain after graduation. One way is to posit that, for you, there is no relationship, and you are pursuing the course of study for its own sake without expectation of any practical benefit when you’re done beyond whatever enlightenment the education may confer. This is perfectly valid, but highly personal and idiosyncratic, and not typical of the ordinary person. The second way of thinking about the relationship between professional study and postgraduate employment is that there must be a relationship between the two such that the education is justified by the worldly benefits that it creates. I suggested (based on analysis in my forthcoming empirical study of the job market for new lawyers) that this Practical Justification Test is met if either the postgraduate position requires the degree as a condition of employment, or the course of study provides dramatic and substantial advantages in obtaining or performing the job not more easily obtainable or substitutable (whether in nature or extent) another way. If the job doesn’t meet this test, then there is a quicker or easier way to achieve the same or equivalent benefits, and the course of study wasn’t worth it.
The third way of thinking about the relationship between graduate or professional study and postgraduate employment is, as I put it yesterday, that the course of study transforms you into such a Smokin’ Bucketful of Awesome that the degree alone routinely opens doors to countless jobs unrelated to the course of study that would otherwise be closed to you, or that you will be so much better at whatever you do that the degree is a Rocket to Success at almost anything. That is a palpably unrealistic description of a law degree (or pretty much any other graduate or professional degree) that nevertheless can be heard among some law deans and admissions officers today.
In response to the post, I received a comment from an admissions officer at a good Midwestern law school that deserves serious consideration and a detailed response. The admissions officer suggests, in addition to the three ways I advanced, “a fourth way to think about the relationship between seeking an advanced degree and the employment a student may obtain afterward”:
I think many students see the versatility of the law degree as a form of risk insurance. Their intent in attending law school may be to practice law and they'd be disappointed not to. But if they don't find “traditional” legal employment, they still might be able to make use of their law degree. It's common to run into law graduates who have ended up outside of traditional legal practice, but in a field for which the JD has some benefit. Is it wrong to point to such outcomes? I think this could be valid in the PhD realm too. I think for most people it would be foolish to pursue a history PhD if their primary goal was to become a high school history teacher. But is it helpful for the candidate to know that if they can't find a tenure track position at a university, that PhD may still be useful for a high school teacher to land a position at a higher paying school district, or become department head ahead of other faculty? So while it may be overselling to say that a PhD is perfect for someone seeking to become a high school teacher, or a JD is perfect for someone looking to do compliance, I think it's fair to point out to prospective students that these degrees might be beneficial in ways that are not obvious. [Paragraph breaks omitted.]
Because this comment cogently describes a view not uncommon in the legal academy today, it deserves careful assessment. Is this “fourth way” a constructive perspective on whether to pursue a law degree? With all respect to everyone involved, as proposed above and typically presented it is an unacceptably incomplete and often misleading portrayal.
Let me explain why. In broadest (dare I say philosophical) perspective, the path you walk from where you stand right now can go any number of different ways. Having gone a ways down whatever path you choose, you will gain a perspective that you didn’t have at the time you chose the path that got you there. Sometimes that perspective will be one you anticipated when you chose the path; sometimes it won’t. This is really just another way of saying that most of us get wiser as we get older simply because we have the benefit of more experience over time.
To be sure, some of us make better use of our experience than others, but pretty much no matter what path you choose, you will reach a vantage point for which you will discover uses that you might not have enjoyed if you had chosen a different path. And this is true even if you make bad choices. Our prisons contain fair numbers of people who, having made very bad choices, will tell you quite genuinely that they have learned a lot as a result (and I don’t mean this in any ironic or cynical sense; sometimes the lessons we are forced to learn the hard way are the ones that teach us the most). This is not, of course, a reason for anyone to start committing felonies; it’s simply an illustration of the fact that it is quintessentially human to learn and grow. Thus, for anyone open to the benefits of experience—and that describes most of us much of the time—even the worst life choices we make usually teach us lessons with real value. Or as some of my older Yiddish-speaking relatives were prone to remark in times of failure or disappointment, “It shouldn’t be a total loss.”
Let’s apply this insight (assuming you can dignify it with that title) to the decision whether to buy a particular car, a decision many of us have faced at one time or another. The used-car salesman is touting the value and utility of the car, assuring you it has everything you need to take you where you want to go. You are understandably worried that the car may not live up to your needs. One thing that the used-car salesman does not say is, “No worries, pal. You should buy this car because, even if the engine implodes the minute you drive off the lot, the smoking pile of scrap that’s left will have measurable salvage value.” We generally don’t buy cars for their salvage value, especially when any car you buy will have salvage value if it can’t serve the purpose you actually bought it for.
I’m hoping an analogy to the decision whether to attend law school is emerging. If you have your wits about you, you consider whether to go to law school taking into account the likelihood that the degree will take you where you want to go—at the very least, a job that justifies that course of study under the Practical Justification Test set out above (and that includes both Bar Passage Required and, properly defined, JD Advantaged jobs as far as I’m concerned). But what if the car (degree) blows up the minute you drive it off the lot (graduate)? And what if the car costs $150,000, and there’s a 50-50 chance (or worse) that’s it’s going to blow up as soon as you hit the open road? What’s the value of what’s left? Should you buy a law degree for its salvage value? (And to anticipate an objection to the car-buying analogy, yes, we sometimes do consider resale rather than salvage value when we buy cars. But when we do, we are assuming that the car under consideration, like the other cars we might buy instead, will serve its intended purpose and take us where we want to go for as long as we want to keep it, thus assuring that it actually has resale value. When a law degree fails to get us a job that really meets the Practical Justification Test, that’s a car-wreck, and salvage value is all that’s available. Put slightly differently, you can’t resell your law degree, though some have tried; if it fails of its essential purpose, all you can do is salvage your career.)
The more subtle student of the dismal science would point out that whether you buy a law degree for its salvage value should ultimately depend on (a) the likelihood the car will actually blow up when you leave the lot; and (b) what that salvage value is relative to the return you could get from investments of your time and money other than buying the car. Fair enough. There are some serious uncertainty and measurement problems in addressing these questions, but we do know something.
Considering first the odds of an immediate car-wreck: Based on the empirical analysis in my forthcoming article, the average student starting law school last fall has perhaps a 60% chance of getting any job upon graduation that meets the Practical Justification Test described above. Of course, that chance varies quite substantially depending on the student: A highly qualified student attending a highly prestigious institution has more than a 90% chance of getting a job that justifies the course of study. A marginally qualified student at an unranked law school in a saturated market might have a 30% chance or less. So a realistic assessment of your prospects—based on hard, objective evidence like the placement statistics at the school you’re considering, your LSAT, and your undergraduate GPA—is essential. Law school is a much better bet for some than it is for others.
What about salvage value? Here is where the wish is all too often father to the thought. Law-school apologists assume very high salvage value for a law degree. They express this assumption by positing both a broad range of non-law-related jobs for which the degree provides access not available without it, and a broad range of invaluable practical and performance-related benefits that the critical reasoning skills we teach in law school provide in almost any job. Unfortunately, there is simply no empirical evidence that either of these assumed benefits exists for the typical person in any measure substantially greater than could be achieved by paths other than law school that require much less time and money. If you’re going to be unemployed (as a double-digit percentage of recent law graduates are), you’re probably better off unemployed without three wasted years and $150,000 in debt. If you get a job you could pretty much as likely have gotten without the law degree (high-school civics teacher; paralegal), you need to think about the difference between what you would learn in three years on that job without any education expense compared to where you are just starting that same job after a very expensive three years.
So does a law degree have any salvage value? Undoubtedly. Is that salvage value materially greater than what you could get (and the costs you could avoid) doing something else for three years instead of law school? There’s no evidence that it is for many if not most people. And to make things worse, it stands to reason that precisely those law graduates who are most likely to find their law degree failing its essential purpose (which is getting them genuinely law-related jobs) are least likely to achieve good salvage values.
But the key point here is that it’s not enough to say that a law degree has some salvage value. You need to compare that salvage value with how well off you might be if you did something else, or nothing. And that’s where the serious problem with our Midwestern admission officer’s justification emerges in high relief. Slip a generic law-school admissions officer into our hypothetical in place of the used-car salesman. One thing you won’t hear the admissions officer say is:
No worries, pal. It’s true that, considering our school and your credentials, you have less than a 50% chance of obtaining a job for which your law degree will be a necessary or a very important and directly applicable qualification. But you will learn things, and from time to time you’ll find some of those things relevant or even useful in some job unrelated to your education. Of course, I can’t promise you that what you might learn doing something other than law school—something for which an employer might pay you instead of you paying us tuition—wouldn’t prove to be roughly as relevant or useful. So are you in?
In other words, touting the salvage value of a law degree as “a form of risk insurance” without offering a clear-eyed assessment of how likely it is that the risk insurance will be needed, what its coverage limits are, and how cheaply you could get the same benefit another way is inexcusably incomplete. It’s a failure to accept the difference between a Smokin’ Bucketful of Awesome and smoking pile of scrap.
Bernie
Drop the mic and walk off stage, Prof. Burke.
Awesome.
Apply ointment to the burned area, Dean "apply now" Freedman.
Posted by: terry malloy | June 30, 2014 at 05:16 PM
Imagine a medical school establishment that counts and touts, as positive employment outcomes for graduates of medical schools, the following:
nurse practitioners, claims administrators, human resource personnel, accountants, attorneys, Congressional staffers, learning disabilities specialists, daycare workers, paramedics, ...
Imagine an admission director boasting: "We are expanding our medical school curriculum to provide more training in these areas, as 50% of our graduates do not find employment that requires holding a medical license and the actual practice of medicine. In fact, surveys show that a significant number of those attending medical school these dasy would actually prefer non traditional ways of using their medical training."
Which should lead to a fairly obvious point. Report the number of FT, LT, JD required positions obtained, and the number of students unemployed, at some reasonable interval after graduation from law school. Period. Incoming classes of law students will be able to figure out that those who do not find employment as attorneys will attempt and often succeed in finding something else.
Posted by: anon | June 30, 2014 at 06:28 PM
These posts are great, albeit a little wordy.
The legal academy has greatly benefited from the conventional wisdom that a J.D. was a "good degree." Despite what the professors may wish, graduates from the last five years classes aren't simply going to disappear.
My point is-- the more JDs who end up becoming "Bob in Accounting," the more times their co-workers, spouses and acquaintances are going to hear "going to law school was the biggest mistake I ever made." That's the reality of the "JD Advantage."
Gentlemen, there's a whole generation out there being demolished by student loans. Reduce tuition, shed light on the inequitable practices of administrations (not professors, administrators) gaming the USNWR system, and advocate for bankruptcy protection. Or else Bob from Accounting will become your main challenge for the next twenty-five years. If you have twenty-five years.
Posted by: Municipal D1 | June 30, 2014 at 07:24 PM
@ bernie,
If I suggested a fifth category, would that result in another thousand words?
That's a lot of effort for a rather innocuous suggestion, one I think most people would agree with. Yes, the JD is not some magical document that grants people their every employment wish, or as you put it, "a smokin' bucketful of awesome". I'm not sure who you think is making that argument, but I think his name is straw man.
On the other hand, when students decide whether and where to attend law school, they evaluate the costs, benefits and risks related to the decision. By suggesting that graduates can capitalize on the non-law benefits of a JD, I'm merely saying that that's a part of the equation. I'm not saying law school is a risk-free endeavor or that "versatility" guarantees a successful outcome. In other words, there's no "smokin bowl of awesome" in my advice to prospective students.
Don't believe me? Check out our website or any publication we produce. "Versatility" is not a substantial, or even minor, part of our marketing. If other law schools have oversold versatility, they do so at their own peril as it's likely not very effective.
You say there is no empirical evidence to support the idea that a JD can be valuable outside of the legal field. The Simovic study is a pretty clear presentation of empirical evidence in support of that proposition. As for anecdotal evidence, on Tuesday I spoke with a May graduate who will be working at the Federal Reserve in a position that doesn't really require a JD. The person who hired him told him the JD was a big reason he was hired, because he thought that would bring some academic diversity into the Fed Reserve. He's thrilled and excited, it's a great career opportunity. Should I cry for him about his misfortune? Does he make your 60% on your PFT? Are there perhaps more like him?
As for your colorful description of the value of a law degree, stay classy North Carolina.
Posted by: Steven Freedman | June 30, 2014 at 09:48 PM
Steve,
The "Simovic" does not analyze frequency with which graduates of law school obtain good jobs that do not require a JD. It has also been criticized for its reliance on historical data over a time period when the profession has been changing; it has also not yet been published to the best of my knowledge.
Anecdotes about graduates who got a good, non-JD, required job are not convincing since they say nothing about whether the vast majority of graduates had to take poor non-JD required jobs, that were classified as JD advantage by their law school, like paralegal and legal secretary.
Dean Rodriquez of Northwestern has suggested a way to solve the criticism with JD Advantage, every school should post the JD Advantage jobs their grads actually get. If the vast majority are professional jobs in areas like compliance I think everyone will agree you are justified in making a category for JD advantage. But I am suspicious that the we would actually find many of the paralegal type. I think Michigan already does this.
Moreover, it is not clear that three years of work experience would confer fewer benefits than 3 years of law school. For example, the SEC hires college graduates to inspect broker dealers. After a few years these grads can go into compliance jobs in the private sector. It would seem their experience is at least as valuable for a compliance function as 3 years of law schoo.
Posted by: anon | June 30, 2014 at 10:19 PM
Steve,
You are not saving face here. You're violating the first law of holes-when you find yourself standing in a hole, stop digging.
I don't think people should question your car choice or publish your salary. At the same time, you are dangerously close to being the law school Baghdad Bob. Let it go guy, you're not helping your cause; and I say this as someone who intensely dislikes your cause.
Posted by: Jojo | June 30, 2014 at 11:10 PM
I have no doubt that some students who are unable to find what they consider to be suitable jobs practicing law--or perhaps any job practicing law--obtain legitimate JD Advantage jobs that they find satisfying, as with the Jayhawk's Federal Reserve position. But any prospective law student who sees a law degree as some form of risk insurance needs to have his or her vision adjusted. There is a greater chance of a law degree causing someone to be deemed over-qualified for a non-law position than opening doors to that job. As for the non-lawjobs that many people seem to think are natural positions for lawyers, such as compliance officers and HR roles, look around and you will see that corporate compliance offices contain far more forensic accountants than lawyers, and that HR departments are dominated by non-lawyers who have pursued professional designations (such as SPHR). The legitimate JD Advantage job certainly is no myth, but there are far, far fewer of them than any of us would like, and law students need to be aware of that. So do those people who tout such opportunities as one benefit of a legal education.
Posted by: Doug Richmond | June 30, 2014 at 11:25 PM
"Or as some of my older Yiddish-speaking relatives were prone to remark in times of failure or disappointment, “It shouldn’t be a total loss.”
Bernie, I don't want to bust on your Bubbe, but that actually sounds like English to me.
More seriously, thanks for this series as I've enjoyed it and think it's important to keep putting out level-headed, thoughtful commentary on the issues facing legal education.
I also very much enjoyed your series on "what matters most" from a year or so ago.
Posted by: I Smoked 2 Bucketsful Of Awesome (a.k.a., more often, Concerned_Citizen) | July 01, 2014 at 12:20 AM
Doug Richmond - I have a slightly different take than yours but end up in the same place. I see many lawyers in regulatory compliance and trade compliance positions of large corporations.
But not one of them landed such a job without 8-10 years as a practicing attorney. So in that regard, none of the folks I know in compliance could count as JD-Advantage jobs.
I don't know any lawyers or JDs in HR. I do know quite a few lawyers who ended up as corporate procurement directors. But they have the same story as the compliance officers - they practiced law for several years first, then ended up in-house, either directly into procurement or via a lateral after having joined the company law dept originally.
Posted by: I Smoked 2 Bucketsful Of Awesome (a.k.a., more often, Concerned_Citizen) | July 01, 2014 at 12:28 AM
"If I suggested a fifth category, would that result in another thousand words? [and, re] "a smokin' bucketful of awesome". I'm not sure who you think is making that argument, but I think his name is straw man."
No need to get snotty, really.
"The Simovic study is a pretty clear presentation of empirical evidence in support of that proposition. "
The paper you mention is Michael Simkovic with Frank McIntyre. If one reads it carefully (which I did a year or so ago but haven't since, so apologies in advance for any mistakes below), it is anything but a "clear presentation" of evidence.
The authors themselves have a lengthy list of limitations but nonetheless conclude with their opinion that "a JD is often a good investment" (paraphrased/memory). Yet the paper's also peppered with questionable numeric assumptions which, if presented differently, and particularly due to money's time value, could have a significant impact on the final average guesstimates of law degree value selected by Simkovic/Frank. For example, their assumption is that the average law student will make (IIRC) in excess of $70K while attending law school. Is this an average LS student? Or that s/he will have something less than $100K in final debt. How realistic are these numbers?
Posted by: I Smoked 2 Bucketsful Of Awesome (a.k.a., more often, Concerned_Citizen) | July 01, 2014 at 12:52 AM
"Simovic"
"compar[ed] the earnings of individuals with law
degrees to the earnings of similar individuals with bachelor’s degrees."
Whatever "similar" means in this context ... more below.
Given this starting point, "Simovic" then renders this earth shattering observation:
"THE PRESENT VALUE OF A LAW DEGREE IS SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE THAN THE COST FOR MOST GRADUATES."
Note: CAPS IN THE ORIGINAL, Steve. (p. 21. The paper was updated in March of this year.
Wow. That's impressive stuff!
It is somewhat obvious that any such study is completely unreliable as part of the sales pitch. Readers of this "study" who have litigated securities cases will know how these statements would be evaluated in that context, e.g., "studies" of the present value of an investment. How would "Simovic" fare, if used, for example, by a managing agent of an institution to sell an investment of 150K or so? (especially note the absence of safe harbor type language, for example, in the blogging here in the FL).
More troubling, when one digs into the assumptions and adjustments that the authors use to come up with their conclusion, the following appears:
- "We assume that law degree holders attend law school from age 23 to age 25."
- "We estimate lifetime earnings streams from the age of 23 to 65 for all law degree holders and similar bachelor’s, i.e., not just the population of full-time workers."
- "We ... control for the differences in observable characteristics by reweighting our control sample of bachelor’s to be comparable to our law degree holders. ... For example, a bachelor’s degree holder with a 15% chance of attending law school, based on their covariates, would receive three times the weight as someone with only a 5% chance of attending law school."
- "In order to reduce noisy estimates, we aggregate earnings over the three or four years a person is in the sample. This does create some blurring in the slope of the age profile, but also helps us better capture lifetime averages rather than idiosyncratic events that can distort the values at a particular age."
Starting to get the picture here? Whether any of these assumptions and adjustments is valid, in isolation, or not, this "study" strains credulity and causes one to question the weight that some defenders of the law school status quo put on it.
Defenders of the law school status quo will pull out "Simovic" at a moment's notice and shake it around like shamans to rebut any argument: including one about including loosely defined "JD Advantaged" jobs in employment stats - a subject to which it has little or no relevance.
Resorting to a "Simovic" should be synonymous with capitulation in an argument, e.g., "He kept arguing until the fact that JD Advantaged category is flawed was so obvious that anyone would concede the point: but instead of then conceding, he pulled a Simovic."
PS "Simovic" is risible in that it pretends to have "discovered" a law degree has historically conferred an earnings advantage over an undergraduate degree.
What sort of scholars rely on that sort of tripe to pitch to prospective students?
Posted by: anon | July 01, 2014 at 01:43 AM
Dean Freedman, this is what happens when you say stupid things in front of people who know better.
"May I suggest a fourth category that justifies my heinous opportunism and predatory behavior?"
In Re your Federal Reserve outlier,I also heard of a man who, when he was seventeen, walked into jungle and when he was twenty-one walked out; and by God he was rich!
Posted by: terry malloy | July 01, 2014 at 08:17 AM
"But the key point here is that it’s not enough to say that a law degree has some salvage value. You need to compare that salvage value with how well off you might be if you did something else, or nothing. "
The trick is that *people* have salvage value. There was a comment on the defunct and incredibly good blog 'Invisible Adjunct' on the 'versatility' of a Ph.d. The author pointed out that if you have what it takes to get a Ph.d., you have what it takes to succeed in a wide variety of jobs.
Posted by: Barry | July 01, 2014 at 04:01 PM
"We ... control for the differences in observable characteristics by reweighting our control sample of bachelor’s to be comparable to our law degree holders. ... For example, a bachelor’s degree holder with a 15% chance of attending law school, based on their covariates, would receive three times the weight as someone with only a 5% chance of attending law school."
Speaking professionally here, this is a very, very strange thing. It'd be - I won't say 'good', but rather 'least bad' comparison, in a world where there were no other professional degrees.
Given that there is, did they compare to (say) MBA holders from peer schools? That's an obvious comparison, especially since they and so many other advocates of getting a JD talk up the 'versatility'.
Posted by: Barry | July 01, 2014 at 04:04 PM
Doug Richmond: "I have no doubt that some students who are unable to find what they consider to be suitable jobs practicing law--or perhaps any job practicing law--obtain legitimate JD Advantage jobs that they find satisfying, as with the Jayhawk's Federal Reserve position."
Please note that 'I have no doubt that...' is only a legitimate argument in the eyes of law professors defending the benefits of a JD :)
Also, the statistics clearly don't bear you out. One of the striking things about 'JD Advantage' jobs is that nobody offers a defense which can stand up to a slight breeze. They *claim* that certain jobs are obtained as a result of having a JD; they *never* back that.
Posted by: Barry | July 01, 2014 at 04:27 PM
Are you serious???? This "blog" post contains 17 paragraphs (including two block quotations) and over FOUR THOUSAND WORDS. Can you give us the Tweet version?
Posted by: Enrique | July 01, 2014 at 05:14 PM