The law student point of view

Fri, Oct 15, 2010

Archive

By Leah Weaver

It’s no secret that the job market for new lawyers is lousy. The Internet is rife with un- and underemployed lawyers, blogging about their woes and calling law school a scam. And yet, people continue to flock to law school: William Mitchell reported that its entering class this year is the largest in its history. When I saw that, I said to myself, “What are those people thinking?” So I asked them.

I recently talked to three law students about their decision to go to law school: Ayah Helmy, a 1L at William Mitchell; Dennis Jansen, a 3L at the University of Minnesota; and E. Seth Combs, a 1L at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. All were well aware of the job market, but still chose to attend law school.

While some people attend law school as a fallback option, because they didn’t know what else to do, these three aren’t among them. Both Combs and Helmy had always planned on being lawyers, and weren’t deterred by the recession and its effect on attorney hiring. As Helmy pointed out, it’s not as if the law were the only job market suffering: “the market for everything is bad now.” Combs acknowledged that the situation is bad, but says that nobody really knows what it will be in three years, and is hopeful that jobs will be easier to come by. Jansen, on the other hand, originally planned on pursuing a Ph.D. and a career in academia, but chose law school as a more practical option with better job potential. He doesn’t view law school as a sentence, limiting his ability to do something else, although “it is a lot of debt….”

The way Helmy and Jansen chose their law schools reflects same that thoughtfulness, although they reached different conclusions. Jansen chose to attend the U over lower-ranked schools where he was offered a full scholarship because of its rank and prestige. Helmy, on the other hand, chose to attend William Mitchell because she was offered a full scholarship, and doesn’t want her choices to by constrained by debt.

As for job prospects, both Helmy and Jansen reported a realistic view of the future amongst their classmates. Nobody is expecting a six-figure job offer to magically appear; instead, people are entering school with realistic expectations of needing to work hard and gain experience. Jansen has been working since his 1L year, has taken tax clinics, and did an externship with the Anoka County Public Defender’s Office. He noted that the Career Services office is not a placement service – they can help you tune up your resume, but “you’re responsible for your own career path.” Helmy plans to take clinics to gain practical experience, and is confident that her hard work in school will translate into success. Combs is intrigued by criminal defense work, and hopes eventually to be his own boss in a solo or small firm practice.

Will these three succeed in their chosen career? Or will they follow the scambloggers into unemployment, doing contract work and deferring their student loans? Only time will tell. But whatever the results, these three seem happy (well, for Combs and Helmy, as happy as 1Ls in September can be) and confident in the decision to attend law school. I wish them all the luck in the world, and hope they prove the naysayers wrong.

jobs, law school, students

This post was written by:

Leah Weaver - who has written 24 posts on JDs Rising.

Leah K. Weaver joined the firm of Reiter & Schiller, P.A. as an associate attorney in 2007. Leah is a graduate of William Mitchell College of Law and Carleton College, and lives in Minneapolis with her husband and their two young daughters.

Contact the author

3 Comments For This Post

Leah Weaver Says:
October 15th, 2010 at 2:14 pm

One small correction: Dennis Jansen volunteered with Anoka County, instead of an externship. Mea culpa.

Britt Ackerman Says:
October 15th, 2010 at 3:55 pm

Great article Leah! I like how you talked with different law students who have different backgrounds, experiences, and goals.

Law school can still be a great opportunity and a great experience, it’s just important that you really really want to go to law school, and aren’t just doing it for lack of a better idea. Sounds like Helmy, Jansen and Combs did their homework and made the right choice!

Frank the Underemployed Professional Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 6:22 pm

It’s good to know that today’s law students don’t expect to graduate into six figure jobs. However, neither did a great many of the people who are complaining about having gone to law school. What they do expect is the opportunity to be able to enter the legal profession. People expect to be able to find entry-level jobs at small firms and to be able to work their way up or to be able to make it as an inexperienced solo. However, even that is unavailable for a great many if not the majority of JDs. That’s what prospective law students don’t realize.

I have taken ABA and Bureau of Labor Statistics stats and, using the reasonable assumption that a lawyer would want to practice for 40 years (graduate at age 25, retire at age 65) determined that only 54% of all JDs work in the legal profession (at jobs of unknown compensation and quality).

Furthermore, it is very plausible that fewer than 30% of all new JDs produced over the past 10 years were able to find work in the legal profession. If you assume that a higher percentage of lawyers were able to find work in the legal profession decades ago before the field became heavily glutted and that they are still working as lawyers today, it implies that a smaller percentage of more recent grads were able to enter the profession. See:

http://flustercucked.blogspot.com/2010/07/statistics-suggest-that-only-538-of-all.html

http://flustercucked.blogspot.com/2010/07/statistics-may-suggest-less-than-30-of.html

Even if the scambuster bloggers’ message and/or the fact that the legal profession is miserable and heavily glutted reaches most prospective law students, the law schools will still fill their seats. If qualified students stop applying to law school, less qualified, more naive students will learn that openings are available and will happily apply. Here is one of my recent blog posts addressing this issue:

http://flustercucked.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-prospective-law-students-will-never.html

——————————————

Recently on JD Underground, someone posed the question as to when or whether prospective law students would ever learn the truth about the legal job market and stop applying to law school in mass.

My answer is, No. I don’t think word will trickle down to enough people. There will probably always be a perception among some people that becoming a lawyer will guarantee you an at least solid middle class quality of life and offer an excellent chance of attaining an upper middle class income, at least amongst enough people to fill the law schools.

Perhaps students from middle class and upper middle class families will get the message from their sisters, brothers, and cousins, but legions of students from poor and minority families who think that just gaining admission to a for-profit college is a huge achievement will continue to believe that going to law school is a golden ticket (just as they think that higher education in general and especially graduate degrees will guarantee a ride on the gravy train). If the students from middle class and upper middle class families stop coming, the law schools will simply lower their admissions standards rather than deprive themselves of tasty tuition dollars, and students from lower class backgrounds will eagerly break down the doors, starry-eyed and giddy at the thought that they could become the first lawyer or professional in their families.

Our society has been indoctrinating people about the value of higher education for decades and people from poor and minority backgrounds are especially susceptible to that message because they often don’t have any family members who can tell them otherwise. As evidence, I cite the hordes of people who have no business going to college who are flooding into the community colleges and for-profit schools. This notion that higher education is a guarantor of at least a solid middle class lifestyle is deeply, deeply entrenched in the American psyche and exactly zero voices are saying otherwise on a public scale. (Little guys like you and me who gripe on blogs and specialized forums don’t count. I want to see Oprah or the President or Brian Williams spread the message.)

Read this article about “Professor X” who teaches at a “College of Last Resort” to get a better sense of what I’m talking about. Hordes of people, including people who have no business going to college, feel desperate to go, believing that higher education will give them a golden ticket on the gravy train. Also watch the Frontline program College, Inc. and read the New York Times article about how well-intentioned people are being suckered into for-profit college debt.

Thus, even if a great many undergraduates learn the truth, a great many will still continue to succumb to the propaganda put out by the ABA, NALP, the LSAC, the law schools, Hollywood, politicians, pundits, and society in general.

JDs Rising