Does Michigan’s economy really need six law schools pumping more than a thousand recent graduates into the service sector each year? Unlike many job seekers, most new lawyers are heavily in debt; some with more than $100,000 in student loans. This can quickly lead to despair.
The economy is still suffering in several key sectors here in Michigan. Both the auto and real estate sectors appear to be recovering, but the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high. Most experts say we’re in for another half-decade of “recovery.”
In down times, higher education, as an industry, performs remarkably well. People take a hard look at their job prospects, and many decide to upgrade their skills by earning additional credentials.
Law school is something nearly half the population considers at one point or another. Yet in this tough economy, have law schools turned this recurring American Dream into a debt nightmare?
An entire generation of newly trained lawyers, facing student loans the size of a modest first home, find themselves in the same predicament as those who overbought real estate during the boom years. For these new attorneys alone, there is no foreclosure process to make the debt go away.
And the prospects are, well, terrifying. Established small and medium-sized businesses will lease office space, but will not pay salaries. The largest firms are reducing their lawyer lists. A Northwestern Law study estimates that the large business sector has lost more than 15,000 lawyer and staff positions since 2008.
Corporate legal departments are cutting legal expenses; all that can be outsourced goes to India, where there are a plethora of cheap lawyers, eager to review documents for around $20 an hour.
Despite this bleak outlook, law schools report that as many as 93% of their graduates “are known to be employed nine months after graduation.” This statistic is powered by the annual law school rankings published by US News & World Report.
However, employment as a barista at Starbucks is different than working in the legal profession. To improve their statistics, some law schools have been known to temporarily hire a battalion of their recent graduates for $20 an hour to work in the employment office. The US News statistic does not account for these distortions.
This grim subject was the focus of recent “hype” marketing techniques employed by Lansing’s Cooley Law School. The correlation between a shortage of jobs and a glut of lawyers is well documented in the blogosphere.
Although not everything is bad. Highly motivated and qualified students can persist with good jobs in their chosen field, even after taking off their rose-tinted glasses.
In our free society, with its commerce, temptations, and disposable marriages, there will always be a strong demand for legal services.