In this post, I will argue that within a few years there will be a shortage of entry-level lawyers. Law school enrollments have dropped so much that the demand for new lawyers will far exceed the supply of law school graduates. In a relatively short time, we will have gone from an environment where employers received hundreds of resumes for every open position to one where employers might not receive any resumes at all.
Already, some readers strongly disagree. Before I get to my case, I want to get a couple of preliminary things out of the way. First, there is a comments policy at the end of this post. Please read it before you comment. Second, I want this post, and the comments, to focus on the job market, and not whether now is a good time to go to law school. The two issues often have been conflated recently, but they are distinct. Third, as I mentioned in my last post, I think that it is important in conversations on controversial issues to presume that a person with whom you disagree is acting in good faith. I hope that readers will presume that I am acting in good faith, and I will presume that comments are made in good faith. As the comments policy reflects, this is a rebuttable presumption. Fourth, I would welcome thoughtful analysis in the comments that explains why I am wrong. When I made a similar argument in a post last April, not a single comment (in a thread with more than 100 comments) undercut the analysis. Not one. If there is a good case to be made that I am wrong, or that I am missing a relevant piece of information, I want to know about it.
The post will have two components. First, I will explain why the demand for new lawyers will almost certainly exceed the supply of new law graduates within a few years. Second, I will address (a) the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ projections of legal employment and (b) the argument that the legal job market is being affected by structural change, and will explain why each fails to undercut my analysis.
Why There Will Be A Shortage of Entry-Level Lawyers
The supply of entry-level lawyers is relatively easy to predict for currently-enrolled classes. Roughly 88% of students who enroll in law school end up graduating. This part of the analysis draws heavily on a prior post that I made last April. In that prior post, I borrowed an estimate by Steven Freedman that, based on an 88% graduation rate, predicted that 33,791 people will graduate from law school in the class of 2017. This is similar to an estimate made by Deborah Jones Merritt, and this number is not controversial. The number of graduates is unlikely to be exactly 33,791, but this number is a reasonable one to go with for our analysis.
On the demand side, ABA data from this past year shows that 26,653 graduates of the class of 2013 reported receiving full-time Bar Pass Required jobs within nine months of graduation. Let’s assume for a moment that there is no job growth at all between now and 2017, and that the class of 2017 will also report 26,653 full-time Bar Pass Required jobs. That would mean that 78.9% of the class of 2017 would report having full-time Bar Pass Required jobs within nine months of graduation.
The 78.9% number alone does not look very impressive in isolation, but it is. As Jack Crittenden showed in the National Jurist, even in the boom years of the early 2000s, the nine-month full-time Bar Pass Required number ranged from 68.4% to 72.3%. In other words, in the robust job market of the early 2000s, when associate salaries at big firms were rocketing upwards, the nine-month full-time Bar Pass Required number never got close to 78.9%.
Stopping right here, we can say with virtual certainly that the class of 2017 will graduate into the best entry-level job market in recent memory. Remember that the 26,653 number for entry-level jobs assumes no job growth at all. I expect that there will be job growth as the economy continues to improve, making the job prospects for the class of 2017 even stronger. As I note below, the Bureau of Labor statistics predicts growth in jobs for lawyers. In any event, we don’t need any growth for the class of 2017 to be in very good shape. Indeed, the class of 2017 would have the best nine-month percentage in recent memory even if there is a modest decline in the number of jobs.
How do we get from 78.9% to a shortage? The key thing to understand is that the nine-month job data does not provide the whole picture on legal employment. As the name implies, nine-month job data measures employment outcomes nine months after graduation. Many people get jobs more than nine months after graduation. I explained this phenomenon in detail in a prior post. It should be a common sense proposition that jobs for entry-level lawyers come open between January and May of each year. The timing of the bar exam also is a significant factor here. Bar results come typically come out five to seven months after graduation. A substantial number of people fail the bar on the first attempt. Remember, to this point in the post, we are talking about full-time, BAR REQUIRED jobs. To be sure, some people who fail the bar the first time end up in jobs that are categorized as bar required, but many legal employers (especially small firms) are hesitant to hire entry-level lawyers who have not yet passed the bar. If 15% of people fail on the first attempt, and half of these pass on the second attempt, then 7.5% of graduates will pass the bar on the second attempt, getting their results more than nine months after graduation.
In a prior post, I reported on a study that I performed of the longer-term employment outcomes from my school’s classes of 2010 and 2011. That study showed that the nine-month numbers undercounted the ultimate number of full-time, bar pass required jobs by around 50%. Adding 50% to the nine-month bar pass required jobs reported by the class of 2013 would lead to 39,979. Our projected number of 2017 graduates is 33,791. 39,979 is a lot larger than 33,791. Being more conservative and adding 25% to the 2013 nine-month numbers gives you 33,316 – roughly the same as the number of projected graduates. Remember again that not all graduates will pass the bar on the first time, and that we are talking about bar required jobs here. Remember also that in the very strong legal job market of the boom years, the nine month number never got above 72.3%.
An objection could be raised that the bar-required numbers include solo practitioners. Solos have been 2.3% of the last two graduating classes. This is too small a number to change the analysis. Further, the analysis so far has ignored JD advantage and other professional jobs. Some of these jobs are good. Some of them are not so good. Even if we discount the numbers in these categories by 50% or more, we end up with thousands of good jobs, and these categories would more than outweigh the number of solos reflected in the bar pass required numbers.
To me, these numbers are stark. In just a few years, there will not be enough entry level lawyers to meet basic demand. This might be a good thing for a short period of time. Currently underemployed lawyers will benefit, though my alumni data study suggests that there are far fewer underemployed lawyers out there than many people might think. The number of law school graduates, however, is likely to stay low for several years after 2017. I expect the number of entering students this year to decline a bit further from last year. I also expect the number of jobs to increase as the economy continues to improve. At some point in the future I hope to write another post about potential impacts of the lawyer shortage. For now, though, I will simply say that the numbers suggest that supply and demand will get far out of balance, and that this imbalance will be as severe in the other direction as the imbalance between historically large classes and a poor job market that followed the 2008 financial crisis.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Projections
People asserting a more pessimistic view of future legal employment often point to the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections as evidence that the legal job market will continue to be weak. In a post from last year, I explained what the BLS data do and do not show based on my conversations with the people who actually create them. Many people that cite the BLS data appear to have no idea how the projections are developed or what they are intended to show.
In this context, people often use the BLS projections like I used the ABA data above to make a comparison between number of graduates and number of expected jobs. Joe Patrice at Above the Law, for example, did just that in a recent post, writing that “given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to estimate that there will only be 19,650 new law jobs every year this just means fewer people will graduate unemployed.”
This is a serious misuse of the BLS data for several reasons. First, the BLS itself explains (p. 6) that "The BLS employment projections should be understood to be a projection and not a forecast. The distinction involves an emphasis on purpose and results. Projections focus on longer term underlying trends based on a set of assumptions, whereas forecasts focus more on predicting actual outcomes in the near term." Patrice (like many others) is using the BLS data as a forecast, not a projection.
As is appropriate for their purpose, the BLS doesn’t actually give the number of new lawyer jobs that it is projecting for any given year. Rather, it projects the number of new jobs over a ten year period. The 19,650 number that Patrice cites is derived from dividing the 196,500 new lawyer jobs that the BLS projects over the next ten years by 10. (Look at this table. Go to line 23-1010. The 196.5 in the far right column is the source of the 196,500 number. Note, by the way, that using this particular line excludes judicial law clerks (23-1012) and judges (23-0120), so it excludes some legal jobs). To be fair, Patrice accurately describes the projection. But he treats it like a forecast, not a projection.
Second, because they are projections, the BLS numbers are inherently unreliable as forecasts. The BLS projections of legal jobs have been way off in the recent past. As I explained in my first post on this topic, the BLS projections made in 2002, based on an assumed growth rate of 17%, projected far more lawyer jobs for 2012 than there in fact were in 2012. There is nothing at all wrong with this – long term projections are often off by a wide margin. This is why we shouldn’t use projections as forecasts.
Third, there is a serious mismatch between the number of new jobs projected by the BLS and the nine-month numbers reported to the ABA. Recall from the discussion above that the most recent ABA nine month report had 26,653 full time, bar pass required jobs. There is a big difference between 19,650 and 26,653. Think about how these two numbers are generated. The 19,650 is derived from dividing the BLS’s ten year projected growth by ten. There is no relationship, by the way, between the BLS lawyer numbers and having a J.D. or passing the bar. Rather, the BLS numbers are generated by surveys filled out by people in human resources departments, and depend on these people’s discretion in identifying someone as a lawyer. The ABA nine month data, in contrast, is based on surveys of actual graduates. Although, as I explained above, I think that the nine-month data undercounts the total number of law jobs, it presents an accurate picture of employment outcomes nine months after graduation.
In sum, the BLS projections do not in any way undercut my analysis that there will be a shortage of entry level lawyers in just a few years. Indeed, the BLS projections strengthen my case. Why? The BLS is projecting 9.8% growth in legal jobs over the next ten years, or about 1% per year. The BLS, by the way, does not forecast the business cycle (p. 6), and instead focuses on long-term growth trends. So this projected growth is not tied to a forecast that the economy will improve over the next few years.
The Structural Change Argument
The second argument often made by legal job market pessimists is that the legal industry is undergoing structural change driven by improvements in technology and process engineering. There are two forms of the structural change argument. The first form argues that long-term structural change is happening. I agree with this form of the argument. The second form argues that structural change is a cause of the poor job market of the past five years, and that structural change will reduce the future number and type of legal jobs. I am skeptical of this second form of the argument.
I’ve explained before why I am skeptical that structural change had a major impact on the job market in the last few years. Among other things, I saw many of the changes that people point to – e.g., predictive coding and outsourcing – when I entered practice in the late 1990s. Having seen these changes then leads me to be sympathetic to the argument that these changes are happening, but skeptical that they suddenly created massive job losses beginning in 2008. Instead, those job losses were likely caused by the recession that followed the financial crisis. Legal employment is not immune from the business cycle. Nor is perception of the legal economy immune from the business cycle. To me, the argument that structural change is causing, or will cause, massive job losses is exactly the type of argument that gains currency at both ends of the business cycle. In the last boom, many smart people were predicting that technological innovation would lead to increases in productivity that would lead to endless growth. Technology did continue to develop, but a recession came anyway. The idea that structural change caused massive job losses in the past five years strikes me as the same kind of thinking, albeit in the opposite direction.
I’ll admit here that I can’t know for sure that structural change won’t undercut future legal job growth. I saw very little evidence of structural change in my alumni data study, but things can change. I don’t find the arguments for massive job losses due to structural change persuasive, and I haven’t seen any persuasive evidence in support of this form of the argument. I don't think there is any concrete evidence, however, that will prove the impact of structural change over the next decade one way or the other.
Although we can’t prove the future impact of structural change in either direction, I think that there is one major reason why the structural change argument does not undercut my analysis. As I explained in the first part of the post, my analysis is based on an assumption of no job growth. It is not dependent, for example, on returning to the levels of legal hiring that we saw in the last boom. Further, under my analysis, we end up with a shortage even if legal employment rates decline modestly. I am not aware of any serious commentator who predicts that legal employment will go down in the next three years. To be sure, some people suggest that structural change will impede job growth, but that is a different argument. Most observers tend to predict modest growth over the next few years. Again, however, my analysis is based on no growth, and holds even if there is a modest decline.
Ben Barros
Comments policy: As I noted at the outset, I welcome criticism. I hope that people making comments will presume good faith on my part, and I will presume good faith in return. I may delete comments that are off-topic or that clearly rebut the presumption of good faith.
Hi Ben. Thanks for the post. A couple of questions:
1. What happens when you add in un/underemployed lawyers to the mix? It is not self-evident that if there are x number of new legal jobs, all will be filled by new graduates.
2. While I agree that the market for legal services will probably grow a little, it's not as clear that the number of bar-required jobs will grow. My impression, which could be faulty, is that many growth areas in the market for legal services are in the JD preferred or JD optional sector.
3. Any thoughts on the quality/salary of law jobs? One possible effect of technological change is downward pressure on wages.
In sum, I am optimistic that the market for legal services will grow, at least a little, but I'm not sure that it will cause a spike in demand for JDs.
Vic
Posted by: Victor Fleischer | August 20, 2014 at 04:53 PM
"In a relatively short time, we will have gone from an environment where employers received hundreds of resumes for every open position to one where employers might not receive any resumes at all."
Ben, the math is the math, so no argument there. But, I might disagree with the statement above.
The notion of "full employment" (no resumes at all!) strikes me as a bit fanciful because this would be the first time in recent memory (the past 50 years), good times or bad, that this has happened?
Is that accurate? (I ask honestly, not rhetorically).
Please identify any time in the past 50 years that ads for attorneys went unanswered, or, please tell us why the situation today is unprecedented (i.e., has there ever been in the past 50 years, equilibrium between available positions and new graduates, and during those times of equilibrium, was there a "shortage" of attorneys?).
PS Forgive me if this information is set forth above; I read quickly!
Posted by: anon | August 20, 2014 at 05:18 PM
A lack of entry-level lawyers will mean that under-employed, laid-off, stay-at-home mom/lawyers, hate-being-retired lawyers will have opportunities. I know many who would gladly take an entry level position to get back in the profession.
The issue is not whether there will be enough entry-level lawyers (newly graduated). It is whether there are enough lawyers, period.
Posted by: Just saying... | August 20, 2014 at 05:29 PM
Vic (and Just saying . . . ), I agree that underemployed lawyers are relevant. As I mentioned, I don't think there are as many underemployed lawyers out there as many people think, but there certainly are quite a few. I don't expect law school enrollment to turn around any time soon. At some point the excess supply will be soaked up. I think that will be sooner rather than later because law school enrollment has dropped so far. I anticipate that there at least be modest growth in the number of bar required jobs as the economy grows. There might be more growth in JD Advantaged, etc, but I think that this growth will be tempered by lack of supply. I'm agnostic on whether technology will put downward pressure on salaries, but I'm sure (Econ 101) that a reduction in the supply of lawyers will put upward pressure on salaries. It will be interesting to see how things play out. Finally, I'd note that my analysis doesn't require a spike in demand for JDs. I assumed flat demand.
Anon, fair questions. That was a bit of a rhetorical flourish on my part. I do expect that there will be some jobs that go unfilled, though these will be on the low end of the desirability scale. For example, I expect that temp firms will have a hard time filling demand for temporary document review positions. That very well may be a good thing. What is unprecedented is the very rapid nationwide drop in law school enrollment. There hasn't been anything like this, ever. Let me know if that doesn't fully respond to the question. By the way, there are some localized shortages of attorneys right now in rural areas. That's a different issue, though . . .
Posted by: Ben Barros | August 20, 2014 at 06:20 PM
1. I am not certain if I missed this, but another important fact is that the classes coming up will be entering the job market for the first time when there will be large numbers of lawyers retiring. Look at when the graduating classes started to dramatically increase, and those people are now getting close to retirement age. Now, do I think a partner at Skadden Arps will be replaced by a new grad? Of course not. But when an Executive DA retires, typically people beneath him or her are promoted, and a new slot opens. A sole practitioner may decide he wants to work 3 days a week. All of this bodes very well for the upcoming classes.
2. As to the comment that there are many unemployed or underemployed recent grads, while that situation is unfortunate, I find it unlikely that once someone has been out of school for over 2 years that person will be attractive in the market place. Yes, some of those people may be working in JD advantaged jobs which might be parlayed into law firm jobs, but then the JD advantaged jobs open up. The person who has been traveling or waiting tables is not likely to get the call.
Posted by: anon123 | August 20, 2014 at 08:26 PM
To add to my previous post, possibly someone could clarify, but I think the BLS numbers purport to estimate the INCREASE in legal jobs, whereas the ABA data tracks people hired into positions. One difference, of course, would be people retiring. That number will increase dramatically in the coming years, and as it does, there will be more jobs for new graduates.
Posted by: anon123 | August 20, 2014 at 08:34 PM
anon123, re: your first point, I've seen this point made before, and it makes sense to me. I haven't studied the numbers in-depth, so I don't have a tremendously informed opinion on it. I'd note in this context that the BLS projections of job openings account for demographics and presumed retirements. Re: your second point, this also makes sense, and highlights the importance of people doing everything they can to increase their marketable skills. In prior discussions of related topics, I've made the argument that it makes sense for new graduates to take jobs that have low initial pay but that provide great experience. ADA and PD jobs are a classic example, but there are other types as well. I think, by the way, that the number of people who are just waiting tables is very small. Re: the issue raised in your second comment, my understanding is that the BLS projections estimate the number of new openings, including openings caused by things like retirements. But you are correct - the ABA numbers report actual jobs, while the BLS projections estimate new openings over a ten year period.
Posted by: Ben Barros | August 20, 2014 at 11:03 PM
A few points:
1. With all due respect, Ben, you are not a disinterested party when it comes to these sorts of forecasts; you personally benefit from optimism among potential law students. I am not attacking your integrity, but confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance comes into play here. That's not to say you should be ignored solely on that basis, but it certainly warrants close scrutiny of your arguments, particularly the qualitative ones about your sense, impression, etc.
2. As someone who has actually practiced law in a contemporary time frame, there are certainly significant structural changes that I've seen, particularly when it comes to a lot of the time-intensive, profit-making document review that large firms used to bill for. Indeed, the people who dismiss the structural-change argument tend to be those with no recent experience of the practice of law.
3. A not insignificant percentage of "currently practicing" lawyers are not, in fact, making money. There are plenty of smaller firms that are living on past years' profits or lines of credit. When these attorneys retire that does not open up a job for a new graduate because the work is not there and wasn't there for the retiring lawyer at the end.
4. The BLS' projections are done by very experienced statisticians and economists; if just looking at historical employment figures (and assuming, as is not the case, that these figures prior to the law school transparency movement, were accurate) yielded accurate results then the BLS would do that.
5. The BLS properly uses projections rather than forecasts because they are, as you, law students, and law schools should be, focused on long-term employment, not whether you'll be able to briefly have a job 3 years from now.
Posted by: TG | August 20, 2014 at 11:52 PM
The problem is, the relevant issue is not what fraction of new law school graduates will get full-time Bar Pass Required jobs after graduation.
The question is whether new law school graduates will get any sort of job that will allow them to service $150,000 or so in debt after graduation. A full-time Bar Pass Required job that pays $40,000 a year doesn't allow you to service that level of debt.
Of course, there are a couple of offsetting factors - the increasing prevalence of discounting sticker law school tuition may mean that average debt loads may start falling, at least for the portion of law school graduates receiving significant tuition discounts.
And, as you note, if there is really a shortage of lawyers, that will tend to push up salaries for Bar Pass Required jobs.
However, given the debt loads currently taken on by the average law student, you would need both a significant reduction in debt loads, and a significant increase in average salaries to make law school a financially viable proposition for more than a small fraction of graduates.
Posted by: Observer | August 21, 2014 at 01:10 AM
Please reconcile:
Ben Barros (OP): "The key thing to understand is that the nine-month job data does not provide the whole picture on legal employment. As the name implies, nine-month job data measures employment outcomes nine months after graduation. Many people get jobs more than nine months after graduation. I explained this phenomenon in detail in a prior post."
Anon123: "As to the comment that there are many unemployed or underemployed recent grads, while that situation is unfortunate, I find it unlikely that once someone has been out of school for over 2 years that person will be attractive in the market place."
Ben Barros re Anon123 above: "Re: your second point, this also makes sense, and highlights the importance of people doing everything they can to increase their marketable skills."
Ben, I second the point about confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. The reality is that someone not employed (or holding a solid job offer) at 9 months after graduation is now competing with the next years graduates and suffers from essentially the same problem as a 2-year graduate. The suggestion about taking PD and ADA jobs runs into the problem that there are now hundreds of applicants for every PD and ADA job that opens up, many from T-10 and T20 schools.
That you did not spot this inconsistency in your arguments in the same thread exemplifies the confirmation bias, optimism bias, etc.
Posted by: MacK | August 21, 2014 at 06:06 AM
Ben,
You keep using that word, "shortage." I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Posted by: Inigo Montoya | August 21, 2014 at 06:42 AM
Law schools won't have a problem with fewer applicants, since they can always add LLM students from overseas.
So, accordingly, since law schools can always add LLM students, which doesn't affect rankings, there will not be a lawyer shortage.
End thread.
Posted by: Roger Roger Roger | August 21, 2014 at 07:01 AM
Ben, I find this analysis pretty convincing, though like some of the commenters above, I also believe that the cost issue must still be addressed. For example, the bimodal salary distribution was a problem even during the "good" times. But that said, I think you're correct about the coming merger of supply and demand.
As to the prospect of a shortage, you rely in part on the study that you did of your own school's graduates' employment outcomes more than nine months out. This study was a great idea, your findings are very interesting, and at this point, it's the best data we have available as to the accuracy of the nine-month reports. But I am wondering whether we should view it as generalizable to the national legal economy for the purposes of a prediction like this. It seems to me that, depending on the school, the nine-month number could be an over-count or an under-count. For example, take a school that provides school-funded positions for a substantial portion of its graduating class that extend for one year. Such schools exist, and they will be counted as having a larger portion of their classes employed on the nine-month deadline than are likely to be employed three months later. I think it is admirable that you cut the effect you found in half just to show how robust your prediction is, but there is a possibility that the effect could be very different--maybe even negative--in different regions and at different places in the law school distribution.
All I think this means is that someone needs to take your study's methodology and do a more national version of it, with a stratified random sample of law schools at different places in the distribution and in different geographic regions. The study may find an even larger effect than you found, strengthening your prediction.
Posted by: Scott Bauries | August 21, 2014 at 08:14 AM
I believe there are two major problems facing legal ed: cost and lack of jobs. Solving one is only half of the battle.
Students going to low-ranked private law schools regularly take out more than $150,000 in student loans. A larger percent of them, say, 50-60%, rather than the dismal 30-40% is a step in the right direction, but the $1000+ monthly loan payments will still be crippling.
IBR/PAYE is a bandaid, and as Unemployed_Northeastern repeatedly posts, it is in the crosshairs of both Democrats and Republicans.
Posted by: antiro | August 21, 2014 at 08:54 AM
TG, (1) Fine. I'm not a huge fan of this kind of argument, but I welcome close scrutiny. (2) As I noted in the post, document review was being outsourced when I entered practice in 1997. I'm sincerely interested in your answer to this question: how can a phenomenon that existed when I practiced nearly 20 years ago explain the post 2008 job market? (3) I think this is less true than you suggest, but it is undoubtedly true that there are some lawyers who are not making a lot of money, or who are otherwise unemployed. Hence my comments about underemployed lawyers. (4) Re: the BLS, yes, they know what they are doing, which is why they say not to use their numbers in this way. Can you respond to any of my specific points about the BLS numbers? I really don't want this thread to get sidetracked, but I will note for the record that I don't agree that the ABA numbers were fundamentally flawed prior to the law school transparency movement. More importantly for this thread, I don't think that anyone would argue that the current numbers used in this thread are inaccurate. (5) No, if you are suggesting that people should rely on the specific numbers in the BLS projections, for the reasons that I give in the post. Yes, if you are suggesting that people think about the long-term growth trends identified by the BLS. As I noted in the post, the BLS expects modest growth in the number of jobs for lawyers.
Observer, I don't really want to get into the issue of debt loads on this thread. As I've noted in prior posts, I agree with the concern about debt, though I disagree with the focus on entry-level salaries in this context. But I want to focus this particular thread on the relationship between jobs and graduates in 3-4 years.
MacK, I don't see the inconsistency. My post on my alumni data study, which you read, explains why you are incorrect about people without jobs nine months out. The ADA and PD point was a simple illustration of the importance of building your human capital. I am fully aware that these jobs have been hard to get for the past few years. They will become a lot easier to get in the coming years. Let me make a request. I would like you to explain why the arguments in my actual post are wrong. Don't just say "confirmation bias". I made arguments in the post. Please explain why they are wrong. I'd be especially interested in your take on my points about the BLS data.
Inigo, I appreciate the cultural reference, but an economic shortage is when demand exceeds supply. Hence my post was about the demand for new lawyers exceeding the supply of new lawyers.
Scott, thanks. I suspect that the basic effect that I found in my study is generalizable, but I completely agree that it would be better to have more data. I'd be very surprised if the number went down, even for schools that have school funded jobs (a) because the improvement that I saw at my own school was so great, and (b) because of the basic dynamics of the legal job market (timing of bar results, jobs coming open between January and May) that I describe in the post. Again, though, more data would be fantastic.
Posted by: Ben Barros | August 21, 2014 at 09:21 AM
Ben,
I applaud your careful work here. I am unsurprised that some commenters are pivoting back to debt levels, rather than your actual analysis. Debt levels are a crucial topic, too long ignored by law schools, but they are merely one part of a broader discussion.
I have a comment about nine-month figures and some of the assumptions surrounding them. I agree with you that the nine-month figure significantly undercounts legal employment fairly attributable to a law degree (this is the rare statistical measure that has been both game-able by law schools and "unfair" to law schools at the same time). I also agree with the Scott Bauries' point that it would be nice to know how generalizable the delta you found between 9-month and ultimate outcomes is. I'd surprised if the After the J.D. studies don't cover this, perhaps indirectly.
MacK suggests that students unemployed at nine months are in the same boat as those unemployed for two years, and that both groups are unlikely to find jobs. That has not been my observation throughout my career in teaching, even stretching back to classmates in law school. For those not fortunate or interested enough to get on the summer associate/clerking-fall start job track, there has always been a substantial lag in securing a job. Many public interest entities and smaller firms hire sporadically during the year. My anecdotal observation has been that most people unemployed 9 months later find something by the following fall.
But this is a long-term impression, less true since the Great Recession. And I sense that the pushback on this stems from the felt experiences of those commenters seeking jobs, or observing classmates seeking jobs, over the tumultuous past few years. So, while I think MacK is wrong to equate 9-month and long-term unemployment, it would be nice to have more data.
Posted by: Adam | August 21, 2014 at 09:59 AM
Ben, there is one key assumption that is fatal to your analysis. You assume that any full time long term license required job is a desirable employment outcome.
Check out the headline in the article below:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/
It reads: "Go to Law School. Rack Up Debt. Make $62,000."
You think the article is describing a fairy tale? Uh, no. It is describing a nightmare. Reading this article will deter people from going to law school.
So, out of your 100% employed graduating cohort, how many fall in the "Go to Law School. Rack Up Debt. Make $62,000" category? Probably 20,000/26,500.
Life it tough. Even 100% of grads become attorneys, law schools will still face fire. Maybe its time to reduce those costs.
Posted by: JM | August 21, 2014 at 10:10 AM
Adam,
How can debt not be part of the "actual analysis"? If a 0L could convince the SBA to give you $180,000, just as easily as a 0L could convince Aunt Sallie to give him $180,000 in Grad PLUS loans, you'd have near total "entry level" employment. The 0L could open a small restaurant or coffee kiosk or bakery or oil change shop. Said 0L could get some revenue and hobble along for a few years until the money ran out and the small business folded.
Ben raises the ultimate straw man argument here. In economic terms, Ben simply argues that legal services are a "good", something that people want. Like haircuts, or oil changes, or landscaping. Of course there is a demand for legal services, just as there is a demand for food, clothing, gasoline, and widgets. There aren't a whole lot of people paying for them, however. Talking in terms of the market for "entry level jobs" without mentioning the cost to obtain such jobs and opportunity costs is misleading.
I also challenge the fundamental premise asserted here as pure rose colored conjecture. Where's the data revealing a shortage? There will be fewer graduates in 3 years than in 2013, but so what? Where's the evidence of SHORTAGE? Labor shortages are actually studied by actual labor economists, not law professors talking their book. Hint: if there were a labor shortage in the labor market for attorneys, you would see signs in the data, such as rising wage pressure. We do not see rising wage pressure. We see falling wages. There is no evidence of shortage in the data.
Please stop selling.
Posted by: Jojo | August 21, 2014 at 11:18 AM
"Debt levels are a crucial topic, too long ignored by law schools, but they are merely one part of a broader discussion."
When people refer to law school faculty/administration as arrogant, this is exactly what they are talking about.
Adam, do you really think that you and your colleagues will get to dictate to prospective students to prospective students what additional factors are relevant?
We all know that now law schools want prospectives to value "practice ready" programs. The problem is they don't. Nor will they ever.
There are only three relevant factors: debt, location and employment outcomes. You and your colleagues will just have to learn to live with this.
Posted by: JM | August 21, 2014 at 11:23 AM
Using your estimate for the number of 2,017 JDs and this year's FT/BR-at-9-months, the "best entry-level job market" in years would still leave 7,138 JDs not employed in FT/BR positions as of February 2018. Assuming the numbers hold constant and we see an 8% year-over-year drop in class size, it'll be 2021 before the number of new JDs match the number of positions available in any given year, before one considers the reserve army of unemployed and underemployed JDs of various experience. Therefore I don't accept that there will be much "upward pressure" on lawyers' salaries except perhaps among experienced associates. Meanwhile the distance between starting median salary and debt burden continues to widen. If your definition of "best" ends at "percentage obtaining FT/BR jobs within 9 months of graduation," I suppose it will be the best.
As part of your survey, did you ask your long-term-underemployed Widener graduates what it was like during the period greater than nine months when they wondered if they would ever get a job in the law? Or how they felt about their investment of time and money in Widener, relative to those who got jobs within 9 months?
Posted by: John Thompson | August 21, 2014 at 11:26 AM