Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market

Maybe they'd be cheap, but they'd presumably be a recently-graduated student desperate for work, with no experience. People don't tend to prefer hiring a lawyer with no experience.

I've been wondering about that to. I think the lawyers from top schools can lateral into other fields easily. The lawyers I know all do something else besides law. One teaches. One rents out bedrooms in his home. One barely scrapes by waiting for the phone to ring, and hoping the person will accept $400/hr.? One got a real estate brokers license.(you don't need any prior experience if you passed the bar.)

I think it will just take time for the profession to realize they will probally not make what other generations made.

I do think there's a huge need for reasonably priced lawyers. Something between Nolo Press and $400 hr.? Some areas of law are pretty straight foreword. If a person without many assets(expensive home--mainly), and just has unsecured debt; a straight chapter 7 is something a lawyer could guarantee.(As long as the client is completely honest?) I'm surprised more don't advertise in that light--instead of hiding their work in mystery.

To any lawyer who tries to scare a client into paying whatever--the climate has changed. We know a little more than we did before the Internet, and Nolo. At least in civil matters.

Many people believe that you get what pay for with Lawyers, Accountants, and other professional services. I don't think we will likely see such low costs for good lawyers anytime soon.

If people in the bottom half of the law school class are using LSATs, it's a waste and they should stop.

The top half of the class is still doing okay.

Of course, everyone thinks they are in the top half.

I'm in this industry. Two comments.

First, if you are going to law school, the ROI of a better LSAT score is astounding. Likely $200000 in scholarships and then who knows how much in future earnings. That is what justifies the high fees.

But second, the market for LSAT tutors has actually shrunk dramatically. It's been cannibalized by an explosion in free/affordable online resources that are as good or better than a tutor.

I know johnathan, the tutor in the article. He has his own platform that generates clients. It's very, very hard to be an LSAT tutor now if you don't have that. Only the visible minority can consistently charge $100+ an hour ar enough volume to do it full time.

For anyone curious about these online resources, the main company in the field is 7sage. They've done the most to destroy demand for tutoring (this is a good thing!). They have free explanations for the logic games section. This used to be what everyone asked tutors about. Now almost no one wants logic games help.

While I do tutoring, I mostly focus on products and on creating free/inexpensive resources. This is my own contribution to eliminating the need for people like me: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/

(They're free explanations for a bunch of LSAT practice tests.)

It pays amazing for a part time gig, but it's really hard to scrape together anywhere near 40 hours a week doing it.

Selling shovels.

MBA's probably supply quite a few of these.

But, in the US you can't "default" on student loans, they just keep accruing until the government starts to take it out of your social security payments.

My step father is close to being in this situation, he went to medical school in his late 30's, didn't pay his loans for a couple years, and now nearing his 60's faces the probability that he won't actually manage to pay them off before he retires.

The one loan you never want to take out is student loans, its total debt slavery.

> What is needed is law school graduate employment numbers broken down by undergrad degree.

It's too easy to game these numbers if law schools give their grads little temporary (not necessarily temp) jobs right out of school and then lay them off soon after, once the statistics stop following those people.

Why would you think that those with a STEM undergraduate degree would do better than those with an arts background?

I think you can extract potential benefits from any degree which could serve you well in practising the law. Take History for example, where you're taking different interpretations of the past, and concocting arguments in support of a particular interpretation, which is similar to what you will be doing as a general litigator.

STEM fields are not immune to globalization, crowded market places, etc either. According to The Atlantic:

"Far from offering expanding attractive career opportunities, it seems that many, but not all, science and engineering careers are headed in the opposite direction: unstable careers, slow-growing wages, and high risk of jobs moving offshore or being filled by temporary workers from abroad."

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myt...

It appears relatively few are establishing their own practices because the income from a private practice is very uncertain.

It also looks like demand for lawyer related services has also decreased. The larger firms have responded to this by laying people off - it seems they would prefer to have few, highly compensated positions rather than many lowly paid positions.

The supply of "hirable lawyers," those with real experience, is gated by the amount of legal activity in the broader economy.

I think it has, in some respects. We have things like LegalZoom.com, which provide quick access to a law professional for things like wills and incorporation documents.

People usually want to hire experienced lawyers. So there is a large pool of recent graduates and a small pool of those experienced.

I've wondered about this too. I agree that a newly minted JD really isn't typically ready to be a lawyer (they don't do residencies like physicians). But then I read about how much legal help an untrained (legally) but highly literate person in prison can provide to fellow inmates, and it does seem that a new grad would be better than what a lot of people get. Especially since a court appointed lawyer is only available to those who can't afford it under narrow circumstances. There are plenty of things that can lead to prison in a roundabout way that don't qualify for a count-appointed lawyer - and even if prison isn't in the cards, the stakes can be unbelievably high.

Part of the problem, I think, is just how little money many people who need legal help actually have. My guess is that there's a cliff between $150/hr and the next tier that people can afford. In other words, they can pay for the "expensive" lawyer ($150/hr isn't particularly high for a legal bill), or they can't pay at all.

I do think that completely restructuring the system for joining the bar might accomplish this. In other words, allow law to be an undergraduate major, or perhaps allow people to test in through self-study. Find a way for people to join the field without going very heavily into debt. That might make it possible for practitioners to get their fees down, while still offering a service that is immeasurably better than no lawyer at all.

Still, pretty hard when you're multiplying by zero, which may be the case here.

The market for legal services is an extreme power law. I used to run an online arbitration service where I paid arbitrators a fixed $150 for handling a case and was amazed at the caliber of people that applied.

Former law firm partners, Harvard Law grads who worked on Capitol Hill before, legal scholars with published books, all of it.

Turns out a tiny number of arbitrators can charge hundreds of dollars per hour for high value arbitration cases, while the rest just begs for scraps.

A huge chunk of recent grads just aren't cut out to be lawyers. They can't write, they can't thoughtfully analyze issues, and they can't effectively advocate for their client.

But the big supply choke-point is the entry level job. Law school and the bar exam don't make you a passable lawyer. You need supervision for a while.

Nobody wants to pay for baby lawyers because they are slow and don't know what they are doing. So the big firms hire a bunch of people and work them to death. They can force their clients to pay for the baby lawyers because they are supervised "by the best." Also, these types of cases involve a lot of paperpushing that a smart baby lawyer can handle. The big firms need juniors to do that bitch work, but also because they'll need midlevel and senior associates to do a lot of real work. If you don't get them out of school, it's hard to get them as a midlevel associate (4-6 years out of school).

Midsize firms don't hire many junior associates. They can't afford to charge for the training. So they take people who leave the big firms.

Corporation's "in-house" legal groups also tend to avoid hiring baby lawyers because they only want seasoned vets. Although, this is changing a bit. Some companies with large legal departments discovered that new lawyers are so cheap, it might be better to just train them in house.

Small firms hire enough people to run their cases, which isn't a lot.

If you don't get hired out of the gate, it's very hard to get a legal job. You are seen as tainted. You never develop experience. And you fall out of the market.

I think roughly 50% of legal grads either never practice or only practice a few years and then quit.

Also, legal work isn't fungible. People specialize pretty quickly. If you start out doing DUI cases, you no longer compete with the guy who started doing patent work for F500 companies. It is as different as webdesign is from programming a self driving car.

Consider reading this:

http://www.amazon.com/Worthless-Young-Persons-Indispensable-...

Or at least watch some of his videos about degrees, e.g.:

"Before You Get Your MBA or Law Degree"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQqXyfsye0

FX traders, economists, ratings agencies

Bitcoiners and other libertarians?

It was flourishing in 2007 when he started. 2010 graduation minus 3 years.