Law School - Failure of a Model

More proof of the failure of the law school educational model.

"A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market."

If you go to the career services website of the school where I work, mean, median, mode and range of salaries earned by graduates is public data. Granted, there may be some survey problems. Some law schools offer the same, but only the highest earners respond.

The failure of the law school model is clear in this article. Universities open a law school as a cash cow, because you can offer large classes and save money on professors, resources, etc, unlike with most other graduate programs. Case in point: "Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196." Unlike say, a college of education, where most full-time grad students work on campus to defray the cost of tuition, law students generally pay full price.

Law schools are failing their students. I think this is the bottom line here. They're advertising a product (a career) on which they can't follow through. It's a shame, and having experienced it first hand with friends and loved ones, it makes me angry.

I think there's a separate issue here, too, of why people go to law school (it came up in some facebook conversations with friends) but I'll save that for another post.