Wait till next year...
Maybe some people out there were still suffering under the delusion that there were not enough lawyers. If so, please pull your head out of the sand and look around. If the rising tide of lawyer layoffs and associate deferrals wasn’t enough to convince you, this should. Above the Law is reporting that the University of Miami Law School is offering deferment to 1Ls.
An unprecedented percentage of applicants admitted to the University of Miami Law School have accepted our offer. This will give us a larger than optimal first-year class. Accordingly we are offering an incentive to defer admission until Fall 2010. If you wish to take advantage of this offer you must notify us by e-mail [Redacted] or facsimile [Redacted] by July 10, 2009.
The bigger takeaway is further down in email, where Dean Patricia White muses about the possible reasons for the extremely high yields:
While I would like to believe that this year’s elevated acceptance rate reflects the great sense of excitement about the Law School and its future that led me to become its new Dean, I fear that some of it may be related to the shortage of jobs in the current economy. Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor in which you can wait out the current economic storm. If this describes your motivation for going to law school I urge you to think hard about your plans and to consider deferring enrollment. Law school requires an enormous investment of work, energy, time, and money. It is very demanding intellectually and emotionally. Beyond this, in these uncertain and challenging times the nature of the legal profession is in great flux. It is very difficult to predict what the employment landscape for young lawyers will be in May 2012 and thereafter.
Translation: Don’t come to law school thinking it’s a free ride to big bucks and job security. It’s unlikely that there’s any sort of “safe harbor” anymore, and if there is, it isn’t in a law firm.
If the things taught in law school interest you, go. If the work that lawyers do interests you, go. If you feel like you need the skills and knowledge that law school teaches you and you believe you can pay back that investment, go.
But if you’re just looking for a place to hide from the economy for a few years, buy a shack in Montana and start hording Spam. Because you’ll inevitably find yourself in a world of hurt either in law school when you hate what you’re doing, or after law school when it doesn’t turn out the way you expected.
As far as the plan itself, expect to see more of this in the short term. Those of us in law school or who watch the legal industry know how nuts it would be to pay six figures for what amounts to a lottery ticket. But if you’ve just been laid off or feel like the vultures are circling, a 10% pay cut from a starting salary of $160K might sound fantastic. Law schools can’t absorb all these people, but now there’s a lot more qualified applicants, so you can’t simply deny admission.
If this trend continues long term, expect to see law schools start to ask for more proof that you want to be there. If you’re getting plenty of solid LSATs and GPAs, you can start looking at more essays and maybe even start doing interviews if you’re an elite school. Again, expect the model to move a little closer to medical school, and hopefully away from “How many tuition checks can we get?”
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