Remember when public-interest groups had to attract lawyers?

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Minnesota Lawyer ran a story early last February on the troubles law students were having finding employment in the bad economy. (“Law students still searching for jobs in a bleak market.”) Not a lot has changed since then, except a third of those law students have graduated (any number of whom are still jobless) and a whole new crop of 1Ls has now joined the law school ranks.

When we originally ran the story, the following comment was submitted online:

The MN Bar Association is partly to blame. MN did not need a fourth law school — we were already over capacity. The Bar was not looking out for the economic livelihood of the profession. The AMA does a much better job preventing the opening of medical schools and protecting the medical profession. Maybe it’s time to actually make the bar exam difficult. — Concerned Attorney

We recently received a response to that comment, which I reprint below:

Hey ConcernedAtty, That 4th law school gave me a full tuition. I am going to law school so I can understand the law and be able to help non-lawyers understand it. If the AMA was as concerned with curing peoples illness as it is with keeping salaries high and education expensive and difficult – maybe we would have a better health care system. If there were less lawyers like you around we might have a justice system that more Americans could believe in. Go for a ride in your Benz and find out how the rest of us live you pompous dolt.

The question of whether or not the American Bar Association — or any other entity (such as state bar groups) — should place stricter limits on the  number of law schools has come up frequently on this blog. The law profession is in an odd situation in that the barriers to entry are at once too low  (almost anyone can get into a law school somewhere, and bar exam pass rates in most states hover between 80 and 90 percent) and too high (the incredible cost of a legal education, and the staggering debt loads of many law students.)  On the other hand, there is an incredible unmet legal for legal assistance in this country among those who cannot afford to pay standard rates for a lawyer.

There is not an easy answer as to what should be done, but there is no doubt that doing something about student debt needs to be a part of the equation. The indebted law grad who can’t find a legal sector job has a series of unpalatable choices — defer loan payments and keep looking with the hope things will eventually get better; hang out a shingle and try to make enough to cover living expenses and a hefty student loan payment; give up, take a nonlegal job and grimace every time you make a loan payment for the next decade or more.

Ironically, we have loan forgiveness for law grads lucky enough to score public-interest jobs, but no such programs for those who can’t find a job at all. Most of the people in the latter category would be all too happy to work in the public interest, but there hasn’t exactly been a boom in hiring among public-interest groups, many of which have experienced funding cuts and decreased donations.