The head of the American Bar Association, which accredits and to a small extent regulates law schools, doesn’t accept responsibility for new law graduates who have lots of debts and can’t find jobs.
“It’s inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago,” he said.
If I were him, I wouldn’t accept responsibility for ruining so many lives, either. And he’s right — in that he didn’t personally make anyone take out loans and go to law school. Probably.
In the past four years or so, I’ve watched a number of really bright young people pull up stakes and head to law school (leaving pretty good jobs to do so!). It breaks my heart, at least in part because these new law students of my acquintance were really the best elements of society: intelligent, determined, energetic, organized, superachievers. (Full disclosure: A couple of them were hot.) For whatever reason — certainly not because the head of the ABA told them so — they saw law school as a path to a better life. Not just a path, but an escalator, a safe and automatic improvement to their standard of living forever.
To change metaphors, my young friends thought they were buying a better class of life. Instead, they were buying very expensive lottery tickets.
I’ve written before about how law school is not a very good deal for most people. It isn’t. (It’s worked out pretty well for me, but that’s another story.) And yet new college grads fall all over themselves to go to law school, any law school, just to take advantage of this shit deal. And the ones that I’ve spoken to are aware of the costs, in an abstract way, but are so excited to have something to do. (I’m going to be a lawyer! Isn’t that cool?)
It’s almost as though these consumers aren’t in a good position to judge whether law school is in their ultimate best interests. Who could do something to correct this situation? Certainly not the head of the ABA. Certainly not.
Since you’ve been in both worlds, do you think it’s significantly better than academia? I’m constantly trying to talk students out of wanting to get a Ph.D.
That’s a really good question. I don’t think either is a particularly good deal, generally. Law school is shorter but you often have to pay more of your own freight — do most grad students still TA their way through? I feel like if you go for a Ph.D and actually GET the thing and it turns out to be a mistake, you may have wasted many, many years that you could have been working and earning money. (Not that money is everything, but it’s not nothing.)
When people can’t find teaching jobs, what do they do? With either degree, it seems like you would end up overqualified for the jobs you are likely to look for if you can’t get the job that you want in your field. Maybe this is a grass-is-greener perspective on my part, but I’d say it’s better to be younger and underqualified than older and overqualified.
What do you think?
One thing about the JD is that you can hang a shingle and work for yourself. Difficult to do with the PhD—although interesting to consider!
But I agree with you about the time/money issue. I *flew* through my PhD and was just over 30 when I finished. That meant there was a massive employment/social security payment gap in my history. And if I couldn’t find work? Adjuncting. Although I did briefly consider starting some kind of literary consulting firm for movie folks.
Not having done it, I shudder to imagine what starting a practice straight out of law school would be like. It was a year of work before I knew *anything*. I have spoken at least one old classmates who has a solo practice, years after graduation, and when we spoke he freely admitted that he did temp and contract (legal) work to supplement his practice. And anything is harder to do when you have 100K in student loans. (He didn’t tell me about his loan situation.)
Both the law school industry and the grad school industry are minting way too many diplomas. If they met the actual demand, both industries might crash. So . . . what’s to be done? By me, nothing.
Any big policy prescriptions, Scott?
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