Law School Applicants Surge 13%, Biggest Increase Since Dot-Com Bubble (reuters.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The number of people applying for admission to law school this fall surged nearly 13%, making it the largest year-over-year percentage increase since 2002, according to the latest data from the Law School Admission Council. And they were an impressive bunch. The number of people applying with LSAT scores in the highest band of 175 to 180 more than doubled from 732 last year to 1,487 this year. In total, 71,048 people applied to American Bar Association-accredited law schools this cycle, up from 62,964 at this point in 2020. That's still significantly lower than the historic high of 100,601 applicants in 2004, but it's by far the largest national applicant pool of the past decade.
Experts attribute the crush of applications to a number of factors, particularly the slowdown in the entry-level job market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Law school and other graduate programs historically become more popular when jobs are tougher to come by in slow economies. Law school applicants shot up nearly 18% in 2002, amid the bursting of the so-called dot-com bubble. The number of people applying also climbed nearly 4% in 2009, amid the Great Recession. But current events separate from the economy also prompted more people to consider a law degree this cycle [...]. The death of George Floyd, the national reckoning over systemic racism and inequality, and the death of iconic U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg all focused attention on the rule of law and the role lawyers play in pushing for a more equitable society. Election years also tend to yield more law school applicants.
Experts attribute the crush of applications to a number of factors, particularly the slowdown in the entry-level job market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Law school and other graduate programs historically become more popular when jobs are tougher to come by in slow economies. Law school applicants shot up nearly 18% in 2002, amid the bursting of the so-called dot-com bubble. The number of people applying also climbed nearly 4% in 2009, amid the Great Recession. But current events separate from the economy also prompted more people to consider a law degree this cycle [...]. The death of George Floyd, the national reckoning over systemic racism and inequality, and the death of iconic U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg all focused attention on the rule of law and the role lawyers play in pushing for a more equitable society. Election years also tend to yield more law school applicants.
News for nerds (Score:5, Interesting)
The young 'uns probably see the high profile lawyers and assume they'll be halfway to their first billion the day after they graduate.
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A glut of lawyers is always bad news.
The young 'uns probably see the high profile lawyers and assume they'll be halfway to their first billion the day after they graduate.
Don't crush on these kids dreams now. After all, they're just following in the footsteps of porn-star-turned-busin-ass-mogul Kim Kardashian, who is currently trying to validate that any professional attention whore can get a law degree.
Hell, she deserves a cut of that 13% surge. Best sales tactic ever.
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Don't crush on these kids dreams now.
More likely it's the parents dream or push as they think their snowflake will be top of the class and get a job at a top law firm.
To paraphrase "these are not the lawyers you are looking for"
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Well there are parents who think there kid will also be some sort of Sports Superstar, pushing kids to kill themselves to be good at sports.
For the most part, Law School, Med School, and College Sports teams, do a good job at weeding uninterested or unmotivated kids out.
Back in the 1990's Computer Science was suppose to be the big money maker, so parents pushed their kids into College CS programs.
After the first semester about 50% changed Major, Then an other 10% every semester forward seemed to had dropped
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Pointers. In college our 200 level class was taught in C++ and had to introduce pointers. We went from 300+ students to 30 within 2 weeks.
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It's made for the purpose of failure- anyone attending an accredited law school is exempt, but if you're gonna half-ass (or giant-ass as the case may be) your way to a law license in California, they want to make sure you're superb. I don't
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No, these kids are actually trying to attend law school rather than "read for the bar" like Kim. She has failed the first-year portion of the bar exam twice now and has one more chance before her alleged supervised-study-time clock resets. She will not pass this exam. It's made for the purpose of failure- anyone attending an accredited law school is exempt, but if you're gonna half-ass (or giant-ass as the case may be) your way to a law license in California, they want to make sure you're superb. I don't think I would have passed this exam while I was passing the regular bar as an honors grad of a top-20 law school, and I sure as fuck wouldn't have passed just putting some books on my poolside table and asking my assistant to take a bikini pic of me to post.
OK, the "giant-ass" comment made me laugh hard, but after watching many colleges take bribes in that state for special little celebrities to go have fun on campus, I'm left questioning their integrity, even in law. You sure there won't be a rather large donation right before her next exam? I'd expect to see it, along with an "I PASSED!" social media post.
Look on the bright side. If she fails to be an attorney, she could always sell a new legal pantsuit clothing line designed to accommodate diaper-butt, i
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He is putting a very charismatic face to the industry; is informative; and is getting people interested in various current legal issues.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Lega... [youtube.com]
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I attribute it, without evidence, to this guy: Legal Eagle He is putting a very charismatic face to the industry; is informative; and is getting people interested in various current legal issues. https://www.youtube.com/c/Lega... [youtube.com]
Yikes. Aside from what are the more legitimate actions, like wills and probate and prosecution and defense, the function of lawyers is to extract money from party one, and give it to themselves and party two. If people think we were litigious before, wait until the kiddies get their licenses. Of course, it will be a glut of lawyers, many of whom won't be able to make a living at it.
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Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure
Like locusts and flash floods and flu
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to
If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease
If it isn't disease, then it's war
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please
How the world's gonna take any more?
(CHORUS:)
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
One million lawyers, one million lawyers
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers
How much can a poor nati
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Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure Like locusts and flash floods and flu There's never a moment when we've been secure From the ills that the flesh is heir to If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease If it isn't disease, then it's war But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please How the world's gonna take any more?
(CHORUS:) In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers One million lawyers, one million lawyers In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers How much can a poor nation stand?
Tom Paxton https://genius.com/Tom-paxton-... [genius.com]
HAH! I've never heard this before, but you made my day! 8^)
Re:News for nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
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It is important because in a few years they are all going to crying that they canâ(TM)t pay back their student loans working at Starbucks, and wanting a handout. From living near a low rated private law school, it seems that the top draw is having room and board paid by loans. Law s bill enrollment was down 20% and now to compensate they are just accepting anyone. UT law school is way over enrolled. And the US taxpayers are going to foot the bill for everyone that canâ(TM)t earn a lucrative living and pay back the $150k in loans
This will engender a complete rewrite of the US educational system. It's not that the Universities didn't abuse the concept of "An idiot with an opinion degree is a superior being to say, a Master machinist. But if your education is free, it's going to be what a free degree is worth, and that student loan to live on is going to disappear. Good luck kids! Enjoy the unexpected results.
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Well, somebody still has to bring the coffee and stack legal briefs so they'll be ok
What else are they supposed to do? (Score:2)
They could "Learn to Code", but Code Monkey jobs are few and far between and not a lot of people have to chops to go work on Wall Street doing High Freq Trading algorithms.
And about 70% of job losses [businessinsider.com] have been due to process improvement & automation. T
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Can you be more specific? (Score:2)
Cooks pay $12-$18/hr and the work is brutal. Lots of folks can't hack the pace. Especially for the stuff that pays that much. Even fast food was getting crazy when I left it in the late 90s. Most folks can't keep that pace up indefinitely, but we pretend they can. I worked with a lady back in the day who's spine was shot. I never did find out what happened to her but I'm sure it wasn
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what jobs? What do they pay? Are they something you can keep doing into your 40s when your body starts to slow down/break?
Cooks pay $12-$18/hr and the work is brutal. Lots of folks can't hack the pace. Especially for the stuff that pays that much. Even fast food was getting crazy when I left it in the late 90s. Most folks can't keep that pace up indefinitely, but we pretend they can. I worked with a lady back in the day who's spine was shot. I never did find out what happened to her but I'm sure it wasn't good.
My wife's best friend is a nurse who had to retire for the same thing, so injury and debilitation happen to everyone.
My Brother in law worked construction until his mid 60's He was into 6 figures so he worked longer than he should have because of the pay. Talk about a shot body though!
Life can be rough, sometimes.
But no - people really shouldn't plan on making a career out of jobs like food service. It's too rough. The standard concept that it should be something for young people to do is actually tr
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HR filters will automatically throw out your resume if you don't have a college degree. Not everybody can do HVAC or be a welder (and those jobs don't really pay all that well if you take out some outliers who do very difficult and demanding work).
Well - I certainly don't support the idea that in the future, we all get sued by lawyers who have to try to make a living. - at some point it turns into socially endorsed robbery. But even at that, unless you are an outlier, the big bucks aren't happening for lawyers either.
They could "Learn to Code", but Code Monkey jobs are few and far between and not a lot of people have to chops to go work on Wall Street doing High Freq Trading algorithms.
As well, the "learn to code" movement is a semi desperate attempt to get young women interested in IT.
And about 70% of job losses [businessinsider.com] have been due to process improvement & automation. Those jobs are just gone. Even China doesn't get them.
The state of jobs is a bit off my main gist. Yeah - a lot of jobs have gone away. But that doesn't mean there are no jobs.
And let
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So you got pulled into the guidance consular's office, I was kicked out. They told me I had to have an appointment. OK, I want an appointment. To bad, the appointment book is full.
Now this is no lie, for some reason they had it in for my family. I told my brother to make an appointment the next year when he was a senior. He went to his appointment and was told his appointment was canceled. He went and saw the principal who told him if the consular did want to see that was that. He also told him if I see yo
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It is often the case with Law Students they will find a particular specialty that they learn they are very interested in compared to what is the most profitable.
These high profile cases, in which people have been watching the law play out in prime time, may not necessarily means a job for them doing that, but the fact it made the law far more interesting.
Much of the .COM Tech Workers were inspired by the Moon Landing, Star Trek and the Space Race. What most of us does have very little to do with that. Ho
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It is often the case with Law Students they will find a particular specialty that they learn they are very interested in compared to what is the most profitable. These high profile cases, in which people have been watching the law play out in prime time, may not necessarily means a job for them doing that, but the fact it made the law far more interesting.
Much of the .COM Tech Workers were inspired by the Moon Landing, Star Trek and the Space Race. What most of us does have very little to do with that. However it inspired an interest in technology and engineering.
A glut of Lawyers working against you is bad news, however if the glut is working for you than it is good news.
My suspicion is that overall, there are going to be a lot more lawsuits, and a lot of them will be either trivial, or even designed to wedge political correctness in greater amounts than already. Lawyers gonna lawyer..
Let's hope (Score:2)
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That there is a correspondingly large surge in the number of law students failing their bar exams.
The No Child Left Behind generation is going to be severely disappointed if that happens.
Better order up those participation trophies to avoid the wrath of insecure parents* everywhere. They might sue if they don't get one.
(* Yes, I think we should use more generic terms. I genuinely feel bad for the good Karens of the world.)
true but (Score:1)
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And that surprises you? We all know that every law Congress passes does the opposite of what the title says it does.
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I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about the future. At some point, I look for the US population to be comprised almost completely of lawyers and advertisers, with a few accountants left to shuffle the papers in the background. Hello, service economy. You're finally on your way.
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Don't give up yet.
https://www.macrotrends.net/co... [macrotrends.net]
Law school debt bubble (Score:2)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/l... [wsj.com]
A fool and his money and all that.
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Flood the laywer market (Score:3, Informative)
Good. Let's flood the lawyer market to drive down costs and make widen access to legal services.
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Good. Let's flood the lawyer market to drive down costs and make widen access to legal services.
Back-filling the Legal Industrial Complex, in preparation for a planet attempting to sue a planet, for a pandemic?
Yeah, not sure I'd call that flood, a good thing. Let's hope there's still bandwidth left to address any other legal issue for the next 20 years.
Re:Flood the laywer market (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual number of new law school graduates won't necessarily change just because applications are up. There are still only so many seats at the schools. More applicants may just mean that more applicants come up short.
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Let's flood the lawyer market to drive down costs and make widen access to legal services.
I am pretty sure there is a law against that. If there isn't, some lawyers have been neglecting their duties.
Applications Up, Job Openings Down (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Applications Up, Job Openings Down (Score:4, Insightful)
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1 in 6 as a lawyer is no problem if there are other jobs where a law degree is handy. Like say regulatory compliance, the legal department of any major company, advisors to charities etc. There are people who specialize in certain aspects of the law such a patents or copyright but are not actually lawyers. Oh, property, that's a big one, lots of legal stuff to do there that doesn't need a lawyer but does need someone who knows the law.
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Who is "they"? Even at the very worst law schools, the current number is more like 1 in 4 are able to get a job at a lawyer. At top 20 schools, the number is more like 9 in 10. I don't see any reason why the demand for lawyers would change that drastically over the next 5 years.
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Yeah, generic law is a fairly easy automated task, and very few lawyers really provide any significant value beyond that automation. I feel like a law degree today is much like an MBA of yesteryear something to work for after gaining some real world experience. There is plenty of value in the education, but legal consultation is a huge market beyond being a litigator for people with broad experience.
The one lawyer I actually liked working with had extensive experience on boards of directors in various sec
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Can You Imagine A World Without Lawyers? (The Simpsons) [youtube.com]
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I'm playing catch-up on decades-old shows I missed and stumbled on this gem last week (wait for the punchline): https://youtu.be/Pb38MSGqadE?t... [youtu.be]
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Too late. .
https://images.law.com/contrib... [law.com]
Twenty US-trained lawyers, with decades of legal experience ranging from law firms to corporations, were asked to issue-spot legal issues in five standard NDAs. They competed against a LawGeex AI system that has been developed for three years and trained on tens of thousands of contracts. .
Following extensive testing, the LawGeex Artificial Intelligence achieved an average 94% accuracy rate, ahead of the lawyers who achieved a
Not sure I believe it (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, just yesterday, I read this story [wsj.com] about how the insane cost of law school is driving people AWAY from that career path.
Well, they were going to apply to medical school (Score:2, Funny)
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Likely a very big part of it.
Over-lawyered? (Score:1)
How many lawyers does the USA need?
How many of the lawmakers(senate, congress, etc) are lawyers?
Isn't it time that there are more people in STEM fields, especially as lawmakers, since they will have a better understanding of alot of issues which lawyers don't really get(internet is made of tubes anyone?)?
Does this mean another few years, when they all graduated, you going to see a rush of stupid lawsuits all over the place? Not like there arnt any right now.
Loan forgiveness = FREE room and board for years (Score:2, Troll)
WSJ article yesterday on law school debt (Score:5, Informative)
From the WSJ (free link) https://www.wsj.com/articles/l... [wsj.com]
"Law school was once considered a surefire ticket to a comfortable life. Years of tuition increases have made it a fast way to get buried in debt.
Recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law who used federal loans borrowed a median of $163,000. Two years later, half were earning $59,000 or less. That’s the biggest gap between debt and earnings among the top 100 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found.
Graduates from a host of other well-regarded law schools routinely leave with six-figure student loans, then fail to find high-paying jobs as lawyers, according to the Journal’s analysis of the latest federal data on earnings, for students who graduated in 2015 and 2016.
When Miami students asked for financial assistance, some graduates told the Journal, school officials often offered this solution: Take more loans.
“I had no work experience, life experience, anything like that before I signed on to this quarter-million-dollar loan,” said Dylan Boigris, a 2016 Miami Law graduate, who began his career making about $45,000 as a public defender. “I thought I would come out making much more than I did.”
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Whew! Good thing he didn't go to one of those How to Code schools. Talk about a lifetime full of disappointment.
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“I had no work experience, life experience, anything like that before I signed on
And there is one of the major problems with higher education today, people going to college as though it were just another 4-8 years of high school. The situation is even worse with MBAs than law students, they come out with their shiny new degree and six figures of debt, never having done an honest day's work in their life, and go on to manage businesses that they don't understand into the ground. In all of the corporate offices of Target, for example, there isn't a single person who ever worked the sale
T minus three years (Score:2)
Question (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes. Well, not so much cheating, but the testing environment isn't the same. Instead of a four hour test in an unfamiliar location at 8 AM you can take a two hour test in the comfort of your own home in the afternoon if that works better for you.
https://blog.blueprintprep.com... [blueprintprep.com]
Had to Laugh (Score:4, Funny)
I had to laugh at the summary...
"...particularly the slowdown in the entry-level job market caused by the COVID-19 pandemic."
So, people who can't get entry level jobs want to be lawyers now?
"...all focused attention on the rule of law and the role lawyers play in pushing for a more equitable society."
Yeah sure there are some ethical lawyers, but we make jokes about lawyers for a reason...they're often true. What does a lawyer get when you give him Viagra?
Taller.
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Yeah, getting a $20/hour job now isn’t that difficult. $15/hour is pretty easy. Might not be a great career path, but it is something. If you are willing to work construction you can do quite well
Re:Had to Laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
"...all focused attention on the rule of law and the role lawyers play in pushing for a more equitable society."
Yeah sure there are some ethical lawyers, but we make jokes about lawyers for a reason...they're often true.
Oh, you've misunderstood. It's not an increase in "ethical lawyers" pushing for a more equitable society. It's an increase in the number of people suing over civil rights violations, whether real or perceived, who need lawyers that will do anything to get their 40% cuts of the awards.
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Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
Lawyer here:
The fact that students attending middling (or worse) law schools incur heavy debt for minimal job prospects is nothing new. This began receiving mainstream media attention in the aftermath of the great recession (circa 2010), as it became clear that many lower-ranked law schools were publishing highly misleading employment statistics. Insiders were aware of this as early as the mid-00s, as "scamblogging" started to become a thing for graduates of lower tier schools.
For example, several lower-tier New York area law schools were reporting median salaries for new graduates well into the six figures. It turns out that those "medians" actually only represented the medians of known-employed private sector lawyers that the school had bothered to contact post-graduation. Of course, the schools made sure to contact all of the alums working at large law firms and wasn't so diligent following up with the unemployed ones. Often, those "medians" represented the median of fewer than 10% or less of the graduates. There has been some pressure by the ABA and sites like lawschooltransparency.com to publish better employment stats, but many are still mislead by the bi-modal salary distribution of new law school graduates. About 10-20% of new law school graduates make $150k+ (the "market" for large law firms is now $205k for 1st year associates). The second mode is closer to $50k at small firms, temporary job, non-legal jobs, and in the public sector. Many prospective law students don't realize that getting into that first mode means being one of the very top graduates of the median law school school, attending a top 20(ish) law school and being in the top 1/3, or attending a top 5(ish) law school and having a pulse. The university of Miami (profiled in the WSJ article) sends fewer than 10% of its grads to large law firms that pay at the first mode.
$50k a year wouldn't be a terrible outcome for a young lawyer, except it is generally combined with massive debt (well into the six figures). This has been enabled by Congress uncapping student loans for grad students, which has allowed law schools to charge arbitrarily high amounts of tuition.
Long story short, if you are a good candidate for Harvard (GPA 3.8+ and LSAT of 173+ to be in the ballpark), law school is as close as a guarantee as one can get to a job making $205k+ bonus at age 25. If you are a more average applicant (GPA of 3.3 and LSAT of 155), you should think long and hard about taking any debt whatsoever to attend law school, because your earnings are likely to be low.
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Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Interesting)
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Being a successful solo practitioner is one way to have a rewarding legal career, but it's not the only one. I don't have any interest in working for individual or small-business clients, and especially not in my practice area (tax).
I'm personally happy and well-paid as an in-house corporate lawyer. It's pretty much a 9-5 job, and I would get 6 weeks of paternity leave if my wife had a baby. But I wouldn't have gotten this job without a stint in biglaw. It was hard work in my case, but certainly nothing abu
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Expensive lawyers need cheap lawyers to do all the hard work, so an excess of lawyers looks like a very convenient arrangement, if you are an expensive lawyer. And if there is any suggestion that your legal qualification from a mediocre establishment is not worth what you paid for it, then tough luck arguing your case against expensive lawyers that had a proper education.
Schools sell opportunities, not outcomes. (Score:2)
Idealism rarely pays bills and if you prefer not to starve find a profitable niche in an obscure (to the public) field may be a much better choice.
Test scores don't measure worldliness and the unformed minds of (even very intelligent) youth are vulnerable to seeking the shiny.
You don't need talent nor anything really (Score:2)
In the day, a good memory was required, but nowadays AIs do all the research.
Even Rudy Giuliani was accepted, that should get you thinking.
Large number going to go bankrupt (Score:2)
Starting lawyer salary for your average, non-top-tier lawyer is below $70k. And the debt for law school can top $250,000. Interest alone can be too much for a new lawyer to pay off.
Different story if you went to Yale, but the huge increase is going to "Never Heard of It" Law School.
From a licensed attorney to these tadpoles...... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't do it. Find another career path. The financial rewards are not what you are told and the actual day to day work is not what you're visualizing.
This is a stressful career with long hours. Your life and waking hours are spent diving into one conflict after another because, let's face it, if there is no conflict then there is no need for you as a lawyer (unless you write wills for a living).
There are a lot of assholes and big egos in this business, and they don't play well with others as the training and general environment fundamentally alters the way you view and interact with your fellow humans.
Don't do it. Get an advanced degree in something that will help move mankind forward.