Supply and demand is a simple enough concept that even lawyers and law professors—sometimes not well-versed in economics—can figure it out. If people want less of something, then the amount that should be supplied and the price should go down.
But it seems that hasn’t happened with law school. Rick Bales, a professor at Northern Kentucky writes:
As law firms this year have shed lawyers like a dog sheds hair in summer, law schools continue to admit the same – or more – students into their programs.
It’s a real conundrum with law school.1 Law schools will attract more students at precisely the time that law schools are least suited to help those students as graduating undergrads and laid-off workers seek shelter in professional and graduate programs.
I think that Bales misses the point though when he points out that law firm hiring is cyclical and that the Class of 2012 will “almost certainly” have better luck in the job market than the Classes of 2009 and 2010. That ignores the rather radically changes to the legal industry, particularly in Biglaw. It’s entirely possible that whole sectors of the legal industry will be closed to new graduates by 2012.
As long as Bales’ attitude about the legal services industry is the dominant one, then there will be a certain fear similar to the one stated by the WSJ Law Blog:
On the one hand, we hear what Bales is saying. It’s been a complaint of managing partners nearly since the dawn of time: young law grads come out of law school totally ill-equipped to practice. At the same time, we’re not sure that market-driven changes to the curriculum are the way to go. (How would a school know, for instance, when the time is right to scotch the bankruptcy clinic in favor of a real-estate transactions clinic?)
Certainly I think we can all agree that we don’t want an education that follows the market that closely. The point of a clinic is not to have hands on experience with real estate transactions, the point is to have hands on experience with something resembling legal work.
The same goes for the number of students. Temporary restrictions on supply aren’t helpful. What is needed is a permanent restriction on supply. That means fewer law schools.
A university or government should not be creating a law school as a cash cow, particularly right now when paying law school tuition sounds a lot like a mob extortion scheme. For just $35,000 per year, you can have the piece of mind of knowing you have something to do for three years.
Hopefully the ABA is out ahead of this with the proposed accreditation ideas. Shutter law schools that line the pockets of universities but can’t place their students in meaningful employment would go a long way toward regaining the balance of scarcity and plenty.
- You can expand this to virtually any post-bacculareate education. ↩
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
At the risk of irony smacking me in the face if I’m unemployed 3 years from now, I totally disagree with the “overabundance of law students” theory — which is itself just a variety of the “overabundance of students” argument certain education reform groups make to justify forcing students into community colleges instead of baccalaureate institutions.
We live in a multi-faceted and rapidly changing economy (that, admittedly, isn’t doing too great at the moment). Entirely new sectors of that economy get added pretty frequently (how many people were in IP law a decade ago? two decades?), existing sectors will start growing again, and in both groups there’s going to be a significant demand for people with a law degree. Not just as a function of that growth, but also as a prerequisite for it — a stable legal framework being a necessity for an entrepreneur or innovator to make $$.
Not sure how many econ majors are around here, but I think William Easterly’s commentary on knowledge-based economies are instructive. Knowledge is cumulative, building on itself, and is a necessary prerequisite to expanding the overall economic potential of an economy when certain other factors are present (rule of law, competitive markets, noninflationary monetary policy, etc). Legal education meets twin goals toward that objective: maintaining “good institutions” that serve as the other factors, but also raising that base level of knowledge across an economy.
We all don’t need T10 legal educations, and I’m not sold on the idea of shortchanging long-term economic growth for the temporary gain of the T10ers who aren’t quality enough to score a job.
So I’ll agree with Bales that students are ill-prepared, and with the WSJ that a market-driven curriculum makes no sense. But restricting the supply of students serves no real purpose either IMO (beyond artificially inflating the wages of the current law grads).
(And of course I could be totally wrong
)
I agree with everything you said about need a supply of lawyers for an economy that is every changing and as much as people are loathe to admit it, constantly getting more complex. That’s why I don’t believe this artificial limit on the number of students is the answer.
But I think something needs to be done to prevent the constant opening of law schools just because they make a quick buck. And something needs to be done to dissuade students from attending law school just because it’s something to do for a while.
That’s why while I’m up in arms about the proposed Belmont or North Texas law schools, I’m not that perturbed by UC-Irvine, state budget aside. UC-I is already highly selective school with a distinguished faculty and a specific focus.
And I think the potential new ABA standards will be helpful in finding a good equilibrium. If a school can’t place its students, it shouldn’t be accredited. If a school can place its students, it should be allowed to expand as far as it wants.