Legal Commentary

It's good to be back, and thanks to the Prawfs crew for having me. With the Bilski case now done, I'll have to find something else to grouse about. Today, it's predictions of gloom and doom for law schools.

A colleague sent this article around the other day, and it got me thinking, especially when there's other discussion about the best ways to get a job in the blogosphere.  I appreciated receiving the article and reading others like it. They are good reminders of why we as law professors are in business. While I love the scholarship aspect of my work, teaching is why I have a job and it is critical that my students get jobs after graduation. My wife, who is a law school graduate, is sure to remind me of that whenever appropriate.

At the same time, articles like this one strike me as a bit premature and not terribly enlightening. We just don't know enough to condemn legal education just yet, even if things are changing. I have a few thoughts about this based on my move between two very different legal marketplaces.

I applied to law school during a recession - the conventional wisdom then was that law school was a good place to spend a recession because you would have a degree when the recession was over. And now, law school enrollment seems to be growing in part due to the recession. Even so, people complain that no one is getting hired. The problem with these complaints is that the recession isn't over yet. This year's graduates started in 2007, before the meltdown - they just had bad luck. It won't be until the classes of 2011 or even 2012 before we know whether the conventional wisdom will hold up for those people who decided to go to law school during a recession.

That said, it is hard to dispute that the market is changing. It's no longer easy to get a job by graduation, especially just through on-campus interviews. Most schools now have large gaps between placement rates at graduation and nine months after graduation in large part due to firms wanting to hire only those that pass the bar.

This last point is of particular interest to me given the Boston College student who hasn't found a job yet. The student's complaints are premature at best and whiny at worst. Even in these hard times, BC has higher placement rates than many schools, and the student who cannot find a job (yet) may have expectations that are out of line with current legal hiring. 

Those quick to blame law schools for the false expectations miss an important point - just because law schools could easily place their graduates by graduation in the past does not mean that they have always been able to do so, nor should always be able to do so. After all, graduates of other schools have to work -- hard -- to find a job. Indeed, I recall going to Job Training Partnership Act workshops as early as eighth grade (forward thinking parenting, I guess) where these very skills were taught to workers of all ages. It is amazing to me how many college graduates I've met lack them -- which I suppose is the reason JTPA had workshops in the first place.

Having been through job searches with family and friends, there was a lot of pavement to pound to find employment. It's unclear why law school should be any different. That said - I do agree with others who complain that schools with sufficient funds to hire their graduates en masse to increase employment numbers are doing so a bit deceptively. Neither of the schools I've been affiliated with engages in such practices. Of course, if a law schools look for creative ways to get their graduates hired (even if temporarily) and  hires its own graduates on a permanent basis and can do so in the long run, more power to them. I would submit that the problem lies not in the attempts by the law schools to get their graduates paid, but in how the data gets reported. Concerned applicants may now know to ask the tough questions.

This leads me to an insight from my former school, West Virginia, which has extremely high (well above 90%) placement rates despite not being "elite" and despite being in a small state. In fact, it is the thin legal market that has helped keep WVU placing lawyers in hard times. While WVU has plenty of on-campus interviews, there are few big firms in the state, and WVU law grads have always had to work to find a job, just like nonlawyers. There are many who desire to go into solo practice right out of law school - something unthinkable in most schools. The placement office knows how to help its students pound the pavement, set up small offices, and otherwise do what it takes to get employed. (To be fair, it doesn't hurt that tuition is low enough to allow slightly lower starting salaries).

Placement offices in many other states are only now learning to teach students how to find jobs in a thin market. This leads me to a final couple points in this rant post. While the studies that say grades are better than credentials for long term success make a lot of intuitive sense, there are caveats - especially in hard times.

First, if one is worried about getting a job now rather than long term success (and tuition being equal), then one should go to the most elite school possible. In thin markets, law firms are more likely to hire from these schools, especially before graduation. It's an unfair fact of life, but a fact nonetheless.

That said, not everybody can get into an elite school, but this doesn't mean that law school should be rejected. Schools outside of the top 10 or 15 still have really high placement rates, and even into the US News lower tiers one can get good jobs. 

Finally I am skeptical of the whole "go to a lesser school to get better grades and do better in your career" theory. My best students would have done well at any school. It's possible that middle of the pack students at elite schools would be higher than middle of the pack at other schools, but not at the top. And it's also possible that non-elite schools grade harder (some elite schools have no grades, after all!), such that doing well at a non-elite school really means something. In other words, this is one area where correlation may not mean causation.  I suspect, as many do, that whatever drives someone to get good grades -at whatever school they attend - will drive them to career success. 

Despite my own whining about other peoples' whining, I hope that the overall tone of this post is taken as optimistic - if you study hard, work hard, and job search hard, jobs can be found even in tough times.