The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here! Maybe not. But that’s still one of my favorite movie scene 40 years later. But the passage rates from the July 2018 Mississippi Bar exam are in: 58.8% passed. A bit over 4 out of every 10 failed. Some would call them the… Continue Reading
The ABA reports that the legal industry lost jobs for two months in a row. The combined jobs lost for July and August was 4,200 jobs. 200 fewer people work in the industry than this time last year. Among the fields categorized as ‘professional and business services’, the legal industry is the only one losing… Continue Reading
Too much credit in the markets fuels bubbles. The most notorious example in recent memory is the subprime mortgage crisis that caused the Great Recession in 2008. Some people say we are currently in a sovereign debt bubble that is causing a bubble in all asset classes. The jury is still out on that one.… Continue Reading
Written in 2016, this Steven Waechter article calling law school financial suicide is still on point today. The article contains important facts and great analysis: Of those, about 354,000 were self-employed sole practitioners, and they were earning an average of $49,000 in 2012 according to the IRS, a 30 percent decrease for that cohort since… Continue Reading
There was a front page article yesterday in the Clarion-Ledger about the 53% passage rate in Mississippi for the July Bar Exam. It opens: Entering the legal profession in Mississippi is once again proving difficult for those seeking to become a licensed attorney. The July Mississippi bar exam results released last week showed about 53 percent of… Continue Reading
On Monday I wrote about an Above the Law article that portrayed Mississippians as dumb. I wasn’t a fan. But my biggest complaint was the article’s suggestion that there is a shortage of attorneys in Mississippi: Mississippi is a state that desperately needs attorneys. According to the Mississippi Access To Justice Commission, almost 700,000 people… Continue Reading
We’re just a bunch of morons here in Mississippi. That’s the theme of this recent Above the Law article by Joe Patrice discussing the 36% pass rate for the February Bar Examination. From the article: Few things are certain in this life, but one of them is that Mississippi will find a way to be… Continue Reading
The following is a guest post by Jackson attorney Ken Walley. It was drafted on the heels of the recent Clarion-Ledger article extolling the virtues of a law degree that this blog covered here. Dean Rosenbatt retired at the right time. The collapse in demand for law degrees is hitting Mississippi College hard. 2011 saw… Continue Reading
The Clarion-Ledger ran this Jimmy Gates commercial article about law school on Monday. The article quotes Ole Miss Law dean Deborah Bell and MC Law dean Wendy Scott. Here are some of their comments: Deborah Bell, interim dean of the University of Mississippi Law School, says the legal job market is certainly not what it… Continue Reading
The bad news keeps pouring in for lawyers with these latest headlines: Equitized: A look at BigLaw’s Second-class Citizens (Law360) Law Firms discourage lateral departures with bonus clawbacks and other financial penalties (ABA Journal) An Expensive Law Degree, and No Place to Use it (NY Times). From the Times article: Mr. Acosta is just one… Continue Reading
Saturday the New York Times ran this editorial on “The Law School Debt Crisis.” The editorial focuses on for profit Florida Coastal School of Law, which the Times labels a ‘scam.’ As for the cause of the crisis, the Times points to the 2006 extension of the federal Direct PLUS Loan Program, which allows law… Continue Reading
In this NY Times Op-ed last week Steven Harper bashed the ABA for not doing enough about “the crisis in legal education.” The problem: too many law students with too much debt and not enough jobs. The author singled out three law schools with sub 40% employment rates for 2014 graduates and average law school… Continue Reading
A lot of articles I read about practicing law or law school aren’t that great because the author doesn’t seem to understand the subject matter very well. I can’t say that about this article by Amanda Taub titled 7 reasons you shouldn’t go to law school. Ms. Taub went to law school and practiced law.… Continue Reading
Here’s an article from the New York Times last week with the headline “Lawyers with Lowest Pay Report More Happiness.” The article is unsurprising, even if the headline is a bit misleading. From the article: Researchers who surveyed 6,200 lawyers about their jobs and health found that the factors most frequently associated with success in… Continue Reading
I was not an early adopter of AMC’s Breaking Bad. I started watching midway through the last season. At the time, I thought it was the best TV show I had ever seen. But then when I got Netflix and went back and started watching from the beginning, I couldn’t finish the series. Every episode… Continue Reading
The Washington Post ran this article last week on the decline of law school enrollment. From the article: Nearly 46,000 people have applied so far to go to an accredited U.S. law school in the most recent admissions cycle, a figure that puts applications on track to hit just short of 53,000 total. By comparison,… Continue Reading
Law school administrators and teachers are notorious for overselling the benefits of law degrees. I don’t like it because: (1) they have a vested interest in maintaining law school admission levels; and (2) they often have distorted misconceptions about life in the real Better Call Saul world of the legal profession. So not surprisingly, I… Continue Reading
It’s generally assumed that law schools cook the books when reporting employment data for recent graduates. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that new measures are aimed at keeping law schools honest: U.S. law schools face renewed scrutiny over claims about their ability to find work for their graduates, a crucial selling point amid… Continue Reading
The New York Times reported last week that law school enrollment continues to plummet. Enrollment levels are their lowest in forty-one years, when there were 53 fewer law schools. There are 30% fewer students than just four years ago. Poor job prospects lead the list of reasons for the decline: That would seem a worthy… Continue Reading
The New York Times reported this week that law schools are desperate for students. From the article: Summer was waning and students were already packing for the fall semester, but Prof. Daniel B. Rodriguez, dean of the Northwestern University School of Law, was still fielding phone calls from incoming students seeking to bargain down the… Continue Reading
Slate says it’s time to apply to law school. Wow. Talk about completely misguided. Above the Law takes issue with the Slate article in a humorous, yet accurate, way. Let me be clear. It’s as bad an idea to go to law school now has it has ever been. The best time to go to… Continue Reading
On this Linkedin post, Kristin Flierl (career services director at Ole Miss Law School), says the Mississippi job market statistics that I wrote about this week are inaccurate. Flierl writes: Recently, information regarding the legal job market in Mississippi was published by American Lawyer magazine. Though we appreciate their effort to report candidly our state’s… Continue Reading
Blogs are blowing up today with the Atlantic article about the horrible legal job market. The Atlantic relies on the Law School Tuition Blog. According to that blog, Mississippi laps the field in terms of bad job market for law school grads. The blog states that Mississippi has 10.53 law school graduates for every available… Continue Reading
The New York Times reported yesterday on the ABA’s “Task Force on the Future of Legal Education.” I’m not sure why we need a “task force” to tell us that there are too many lawyers and many law schools are too expensive. Why not a “strike team” or an “action group”? Other professions call stuff… Continue Reading
