Where Will Bottom be for Law School Graduate Hiring Rates?
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal contained this article about law schools changing course offerings in an effort to help students get jobs after graduating.
The article states:
Law schools are responding by infusing a practical focus into their curricula that, in many cases, have not changed in decades. So far, the transformations are most visible among so-called lower-tier law schools, but a few elite players are also starting to make adjustments.
Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia, overhauled its third year curriculum in 2009 by swapping out traditional lectures for case-based courses.
New York Law School hired 15 new faculty members over the last two years to teach skills in negotiation, counseling, interviewing and fact investigation.
Professors at Indiana’s Maurer School of Law started teaching project management as well as so-called emotional intelligence.
And last year, Harvard launched a new problem-solving class for first years, while Stanford is considering making a full-time clinical course a graduation requirement.
What I found most interesting was this chart that accompanied the article:
That's a scary trend if you are in law school or thinking about going to law school. If that trend continues, law schools will need to start offering courses on how to live under a bridge.
One other thing. I know that many law students think that good old Uncle Bubba or whoever can pull some strings and get them a job at Butler Snow or somewhere similar. He can't—unless you finish in the top 3 in your class and would have gotten the job anyway.
Maybe things worked like that 50 years ago. But it didn't work like that 19 years ago when I graduated from law school. It didn't work like that 9 years ago when I left Baker Donelson. And it doesn't work like that now. You will sink or swim on your own record. So study hard.
JD soon to be, if not already, as worthless as an MBA.
I graduated from college in '05 and originally was going to take a year off and work at a law firm before going to law school. I've stayed at the same firm ever since, and now you couldn't use a gun to force me to go law school and take on $90k of debt, even though I'd have a guaranteed job with the firm I'm with now. I have multiple friends who've graduated from law school in the past couple of years who are struggling terribly, some even having to move back in with their parents.
Been there and done that with the moving back in with parents after law school and couldn't find a job a year out.
Worse, even though I couldn't find legal employment, the law degree "overqualified" me for just about every other type of employment.
Don't go to law school, kids. Unless being a lawyer is your lifelong dream, don't do it. I'm certainly steering my own kids away from it.
I totally stumbled into my job -- interned for one judge during law school, which got me clerking for another judge when I didn't get a job offer, and apparently having two good rec letters from two good judges was enough to get me hired.
Not sure that's "advice," but for those in law school, don't turn up your nose at internships or clerking, even if you're not clerking for the 5th Circuit.
And, as if we (i.e., lawyers who have graduated in the past 5 years) didn't already know things have been/continue to be/will continue to be bad, in comes this fine nugget of information from the NYT... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/business/law-school-economics-job-market-weakens-tuition-rises.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1