Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900-1,000 new lawyers will be admitted into the practice of law in Minnesota this year in the midst of the worst legal job market in decades.
The vast majority of those new lawyers are graduates of one of Minnesota’s four law schools. Two of those law schools (the University of Minnesota Law School and William Mitchell College of Law) have been around for a century or more. Hamline University School of Law joined the fold in the 1970s. In 2001, the University of St. Thomas School of Law opened its doors, completing the picture.
You don’t have to go far in the legal community to find those who will question the need for four law schools and assert that there are too many lawyers in the state already. As we continue with our video series on legal education in Minnesota, we today present the thoughts of the deans of those four law schools on these concerns.
Up tomorrow: The deans discuss their views of the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
![[Print]](http://minnlawyer.com/minnlawyerblog/wp-content/plugins/tdc-sociable-toolbar/print.png)
![[Email]](http://minnlawyer.com/minnlawyerblog/wp-content/plugins/tdc-sociable-toolbar/email_2.png)
![[Facebook]](http://minnlawyer.com/minnlawyerblog/wp-content/plugins/tdc-sociable-toolbar/facebook.png)
![[Twitter]](http://minnlawyer.com/minnlawyerblog/wp-content/plugins/tdc-sociable-toolbar/twitter.png)
Curious how Dean Mengler highlighted St. Thomas’ Ethics Center as something that sets the school apart from others in the field. Don’t all law schools teach legal ethics? Might a special program dedicated to it be redundant?
Of course from their perspective there is not a glut of schools. These snippets were shameful tap dances around the issue of having too many graduates for the market, not too much demand for law schools. It would be different if they made these statements up front in a caveat emptor manner.
Shameful, shameful.
I appreciate the Deans taking the time to address this serious concern for new (and future) graduates.
I believe these extreme times are simply highlighting the inherent inequities in the legal profession. So I’d ask the Deans who point to the market: do we really have functioning market forces here? Or is there so much regulation that the risk is pushed in one direction — onto the law student and new associate.
So I salute the dean of WM for pointing out the market disfunction. I’d ask the ST dean why his coffee shop vs. legal services analogy ignores these obvious differences:
First there’s a lack of market forces on the law schools. We have the limitation that you need to have a JD from an ABA approved law school to practice in MN. As a result, law schools aren’t having to face even more law schools popping up to soak up the extra applicants. While the ABA requirement prevents even more attorneys from being minted (good?), it also artificially inflates tuition and salaries for professors and administrators (bad?). Are we hearing about salary cuts for professors so that law school can become more affordable given reduced salaries? The problems here are as much about the lack of downward pressures on the costs of legal education as much as they are downward pressures on the opportunities available for new graduates.
Next, there’s a lack of market forces on existing firms. We have a limitation that a license to practice law is jurisdictional. As a result, firms aren’t having to face the market pressures that would come from relaxed rules on multi-jurisdictional practice. Why do we still protect legal markets in this country as fiefdoms for entrenched interests? Is it really that absurd to have a national bar admission?
Additionally, firms don’t have to face the market pressures that would come from changes in the rules on business forms for legal services. For example, permitting partnerships with non-lawyers. Or business forms that transcend the (pyramid system of) today’s inner-circle/outer-circle shareholder/associate structure. We need firms to feel market forces that result in a lowering of fees to clients. When they choose to lay off lawyers to keep billing rates high, rather than lowering rates to get more work, something is seriously wrong.
Finally, consider the market barriers to going solo. For starters, how can we have market forces working when there is a duopoly dictating the cost of efficient legal research?
Of course there are legitimate policy reasons that support the status quo. But I think it is absurd to treat our profession as able to rely on market forces when it is structured to funnel those market forces to the disadvantage of new entrants.
The guy at the end of the video comparing lawyers to coffee shops made a ridiculous analogy. You don’t spend three years and $150k to learn how to operate a coffee shop. He is in the business of recruiting kids to drop $150k on a law school degree and refuses to even discuss the fact that there is no market for his students. Disgusting.
St. Thomas dean was pretty bad at the end. While its true not every graduating attorney is entitled to a job, but the law schools should disclose that fact during the recruiting and application process. Instead they hide behind biased employment statistics and fail to tell the 23 year old kids that only 10% of you at best will be making 100K out of law school and and most of you will instead graduting with 80-100K of debt and making 50K a year.
The St. Thomas dean makes me sad.
One difference between failing coffee shops and unemployed lawyers: the owners of the coffee shops that failed can have their debts discharged in bankruptcy. If a law career doesn’t pan out for you, your debt will not be discharged in bankruptcy. Of course the UST dean fails to mention this.
What the hell? Coffee shops? Did the St. Thomas dean know he was being recorded? If I were a student there I’d walk out TODAY and say “No thanks, I’ll keep myself out of crushing debt that will haunt me for thirty years since even the Administration admits that I could be one of those many that ‘shouldn’t be a lawyer.’” Do they put that garbage in their recruiting pamphlets?
To be fair, I think Dean Mengler is using his coffee shop analogy for established lawyers losing business to the competition rather than for young lawyers who can’t find jobs. I think his point is that if your clients are defecting to competitors or not coming to you in the first place, there may be a reason for that. In other words, make sure the fault is not in yourself (i.e. business practices that can be improved) before you blame the stars (too much competition for you to compete effectively).
Some of you have been circling around an interesting point regarding a school’s responsibility to inform prospoctive students of their realistic future job prospects (i.e. assuming you don’t want to hangout a shingle and want a job practicing law with your JD, what are the chances of finding employment and what will you likely actually make). I would like to see potenial students better informed, but am not sure what we can realistically expect to be done about this at the law school level. Law schools are, after all, selling a “product.” That said, I do think the U.S. News and World Report placement numbers are misleading.
I also agree there is a market disconnect between prospective law students (law schools are being flooded with applications right now) and the market for attorneys. On the other hand, that sort of disconnect is not unique to law. I am also told journalism schools are being flooded with applications right now, despite all you have read and heard about the struggles of that industry. What makes the law student situation uniquely difficult is the amount of debt most incur to get a degree.
Dovetailing from Mark’s point, I believe law schools could do a much better job of informing prospective students about what life as a lawyer is like.
Many prospective students were people with successful undergraduate careers in the “soft” sciences; a law degree and a career in law may appeal to them because–as a learned profession–it’s typically associated with prestige and respect within the community. Looking backward in history, this is almost unquestionably true. For centuries, being a lawyer was accompanied by a significant elevation in social status. So at the most elemental level of subconscious thought, people today often still believe that:
Elevated social status = influence = wealth
Looking at the realities of today prove that the above equation is not the case at all. Out of the millions of lawyers in the United States, it’s reasonable to assume that many of them are neither influential nor wealthy. Anecdotally, one could also argue that there’s also no longer a noticeable change in “social status.”
Now, is all this due to the fact that law school has become much more accessible? Possibly. Does that cheapen the profession? I don’t know; it depends upon your definition of cheap. What I do know is that a large number of prospective law students still cling to the idea that becoming a lawyer will magically imbue them with the qualities I mentioned above and that just ain’t true. The reality of the legal profession is that it’s a grinding trade where the majority of its practitioners are going to have to work extremely hard just to be comfortable.
Law school admissions staff and law school deans should be very frank about that, especially those at institutions without a magical name.
Nicely put.
Well, that was interesting. Lawyers are taught to be able to rationalize anything, after all … I was in the first class at St. Thomas. I did think Tom Mengler’s coffee shop analogy was disingenuous at best. We regard lawyers as different from coffee shops because, in the vast majority of cases, people go to law school and pay big bucks to do so because they intend to be admitted to the profession (that’s why we call them professional schools, right?) I have to think that Neil Hamilton would have been nauseous listening to his dean advocating the death of law as a profession. Of course, that does seem to be the way we are headed.
With regard to the emphasis on ethics, one of the documents that informed the founding of the law school was a paper that Patrick Schiltz wrote entitled “On being a happy, healthy, and ethical member of an unhappy, unhealthy and unethical profession.” (The paper is well worth a read and can be found at http://www.averyindex.com/happy_healthy_ethical.php.) I haven’t attended any other law school and so I can’t speak to what other law schools do, but I have discovered since graduation that professional responsibility and ethics have almost nothing to do with each other. Professional responsibility is about how not to get disciplined. My first professional career was as a Lutheran clergyman, and I don’t know of any setting other than law in which ethics has to do with what you can and can’t get away with. Ethics is about doing the right thing, not avoiding punishment. As Schiltz writes, “Many of the sleaziest lawyers you will encounter will be absolutely scrupulous in their compliance with the formal rules. In fact, they will be only too happy to tell you just that.” St. Thomas started out with a very high set of expectations with regard to ethics, faith, and social justice, and those expectations remained in place for the first several years of its existence. My impression from afar (I’m in Duluth and don’t get back there much) is that becoming an institution has had the same sort of effect on the law school that the transition from being a movement to being an institution had on Christianity. In the third year and subsequently, there were also some hires of right-wing Catholic senior faculty that do not seem to have had a salutary effect on the overall direction of the institution from my perspective. (Robert Delahunty has largely escaped the controversy over torture memos, but he is still co-authoring articles with John Yoo.) Several faculty members have left as a result.
“I have to think that Neil Hamilton would have been nauseous listening to his dean advocating the death of law as a profession.”
Care to elaborate on how you got from point A to point B on that one?
I’d be happy to … but not with an anonymous poster.
Mr. Harnois makes a good point. If indeed St. Thomas places such a large emphasis on the ethical aspect of the law, the school should hold itself to a higher standard in all areas (including its faculty), lest the charge of hypocrisy be levelled against them.
“most of you will instead graduting with 80-100K of debt and making 50K a year.”
Even that might be optimistic. I am happy to be employed in the profession, but have been amazed in the last nine months to see licensed lawyers making coffee, waiting tables, or working as paralegals and law clerks for signficantly less than 50k a year.
One Hennepin County Judge recently informed me that he had over 300 applicants this year, and his final hire was in the top 10 of her class. Good for her, but this has not been the traditional job prospect as recently as five years ago.
Maybe the market will improve, but at this moment, I cannot imagine being an average law student looking for a job. It is bordering on tragic that the four schools continue to crank out so many lawyers for so few jobs.
The hypocrisy of rightousness is so prevalent at the “Christian” school.
I think the ST Dean’s point was similar to that of the Hamline Dean’s: not everyone seeks a legal education to become an attorney. The ST Dean took it to the next level by saying that not every law student is cut out to be a lawyer. It’s an incredibly demanding profession. And while the glut of lawyers creates great difficulties for many attorney job-seekers, it is improving the quality of attorneys.
Professionals carry a weight; they aren’t relieved of it. The idea that being admitted to practice somehow elevates an individual to a different plane is absurd. Some, including Mr. Harnois I’d guess, aren’t fit to carry the weight. Or perhaps he simply has a political agenda as referenced in his last couple of sentences.
There absolutely should be more education regarding the economics of law school. A six figure education does not easily fit with a $50,000/yr income.
This market cannot support the grads we have, much less the new 1000 or so added each year. Yet, the 4 local law schools are busting at the seams with new 1Ls. The glut of incoming law school students coupled with a paucity of decent legal jobs at the other end is like pouring buckets of water into a partially clogged drain. Only so much is going to get through.
Ironically, as the slow economy discourages more and more undergraduates, we will see an increasing number of them signing up for law school and other graduate programs. While it will be a boon for the law schools, it will only intensify the local glut of attorneys.
The field available to grads is pyramidal: the top 5 or 10 percent of the graduates (the tip of the pyramid) will generally be shoo-ins to the major law firms. Those just below that level will do OK, but will have to work harder at making the job connections. Those farther down, the base of the pyramid, will settle for something else. Document review temping jobs, Thomson-West gigs, even going back to undergrad careers. The fact that many of the “base” grads could be just as successful as their brethren at the top is meaningless; law firms want to populate their staffs with people who look good on paper. Window-dressing, pure and simple.
(Does anyone remember the phony associate at Dorsey a few years ago? Forged credentials and all. She looked good on paper too, and she fooled all of them for almost a year.)
This system has been in place for years, and that’s how it will continue to be. It’s the ultimate in Darwinism. That’s just the way it is, people.
I am a 30+ year lawyer and thus not directly affected by the issues which are being discussed in the Deans’ interviews and in these postings. But all lawyers are indirectly affected by the saturation of our profession (see LPRB complaints).
I had to listen a second time to St. Thomas Dean Mengler’s statements in order to be sure he actually said what I thought I heard. For him to suggest that his law graduates are (appropriately) subject to the same economic Darwinian principles as the franchisees of neighborhood coffee shops is simply astounding !!
I wonder if he told them before he relieved them of about $95,000 in tuition and fees that they should not assume that they will spend a lifetime practicing law. When Dean Mengler says that not every graduate should be practicing law, is he not contradicting the representations his staff has made, concerning his graduates, to the Board of Bar Examiners, not to mention those who read his students’ diplomas?
Of course, as he gives this interview in his plush office drawing a huge sinecure from his heavily-endowed law school, he might not know that a great many of his graduates are leaving school with as much as $100,000 in student loans and that there are almost no jobs for law graduates which will enable them to repay this kind of debt (even public service jobs, when they are available, don’t pay a starting wage sufficient for these loans). A 2009 UST grad told me less than one month ago that only four of some 167 classmates had jobs lined up, and similar statements were made by UST students interviewed by Minnesota Lawyer several weeks ago.
It strikes me that the dean, if he really believes what he said, is committing consumer fraud against his students. If his views represent those of UST, the latter is no better than those proprietary “criminal justice” trade schools whose late-night cable-TV ads only disclose at the very end and in very small type that their credits almost certainly will not transfer to a legitimate college.
This area did not need a fourth law school to begin with, but now that we have four schools, all should greatly reduce their admissions, or at the very least be truthful with their applicants (at the front end, not at the back end).
Wigmore
Utterly disgusting comments from all the Deans, but especially the St Thomas Dean.
As a Social Democrat, Americans for ideological reasons are much more reluctant to engage in command and control regulation than I am. The market for education, as in health care is very inefficient. Higher tuition, lower salary, and lower unemployment have no effect on the demand for law schools. This is in part, I suspect, the result of this generation of youngsters having little opportunities for economic advancement in comparison to the prior post war generations. Having a large number of people graduate with little chance of finding legal work and 100k in debt has significant and harmful consequences for society beyond the individual level.
This situation requires government regulation. Congress should simply allow the ABA some leeway in limiting the number of law schools. The ABA should be required to conduct a long term study on how much need there is for lawyers, and than reduce the number of law schools. This will never happen of course because so many Americans are deluded in believing that market’s are always efficient and command and control regulations are always harmful.
“Congress should simply allow the ABA some leeway in limiting the number of law schools.”
Huh? The ABA is the culprit that allows every Tom, Dick and Harry to open up one TTT school after another!
I wonder how much Bob Stein being executive director of the ABA for quite a bit of time was responsible for there now being four law schools in the Twin Cities metro area…
The ABA was forced to after the DOJ sued them in 1995 for not accrediting more law schools.
Wow, that’s quite a stretch. Take a gander at the consent decree; your position is an absolute mischaracterization of what the suit in 1995 was all about.
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f1000/1034.htm