5 December 2011 – It was a lovely press release:

      “The [ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission] is fully committed to clarity and accuracy of law   school placement data.  As a result of these changes, future law students will be better informed about their prospects than ever before.”

They even approved a new annual questionnaire intended to gather more detailed information about where recent law grads find work.  But the new questionnaire does not include all the changes that transparency advocates have been pushing for.  Law School Transparency — a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve consumer data for law students — has called upon the ABA to publish school-specific salary data that would allow prospective law students to see how much graduates of each school earn.  As with the old questionnaire, job and salary data will not be reported together and school-specific salary data will not be released publicly. Instead, each school will report the three states in which the largest number of its graduates finds jobs.

For a review of the ABA action from the National Law Journal click here.

For more about Law School Transparency click here. 

And for one of our previous posts which addressed many of these issues click here.

This is an element of the argument that law school is a bad decision which rests on two givens: the enormous debt incurred by most lawyers, and the lack of opportunity.   People rack up an average $92,000 in debt because of the implied promise of a high-paying job at the end.  For most pundits, a massive portion of law school applicants are extremely ill-informed about the career prospects resulting from a law degree.  

We covered all of these points in a post last year which you can access by clicking here.

And for a recent article on the law school debt bubble from AmLaw Daily click here.

30 November 2010 –  As we previously reported (but which we reluctantly have not continually followed) over the summer an ABA committee recommended that the ABA consider the accreditation of law schools outside U.S. borders.  Must be an issue because there are just not enough lawyers and too many legal jobs unfilled, right?

The ABA had solicited comments (the comment period closed October 15th) and the designated committee takes its vote on December 4, 2010.  But … comments may still be accepted and if you want to have your say email legaled@staff.abanet.org and title them “Foreign Law Schools.”

The pros/cons were outlined by the ABA (for a link click here)  but let’s focus on the cons:

(1) This development could result in enlarging practice opportunities for foreign lawyers in the United States because graduates of foreign ABA approved schools then would be eligible to sit for a bar exam without any reciprocity or parallel opportunities provided by other countries for U.S. lawyers.

(2) If the foreign school is government-sponsored, political difficulties could arise if the Council failed to approve an application for accreditation and, depending on the issues presented, this could create problems or pressures both within the larger ABA and potentially with the Department of State.

(3) Foreign students who never spend any time studying in the United States will not have the benefit of the acculturation process that naturally occurs when study is accomplished here and that provides context for understanding the development of U.S. law and professional ethics.

Fo our other coverage of this issue click here.

Vault Career Services has launched its ”2011 Vault Law School Ranking Survey”.  The purpose of this survey is simple:  to determine which law schools produce the most employable lawyers.  It is aimed at law firm recruiters and asks them to rank law schools under a multitude of criteria. 

You can access the survey by clicking here.  If you have any questions, you can contact Veda at vdrepaul@vault.com.

For our other posts on the law profession crisis click here.

For our posts on student debt issues click here.

29 October 2010 — There is an excellent piece in Slate on the issue that demand for lawyers has fallen off a cliff, both due to the short-term crisis of the recession and long-term changes to the industry, and is only starting to rebound. The lawyers that do have jobs are making less than they used to. At the same time, universities seeking revenue have tacked on law schools, minting more lawyers every year — and they aren’t needed.

It is a very thorough, even-handed article.  To read the entire article click here.

And a hat tip to the blog Shilling Me Softly which first noted the article.    The blog links to the Slate article but has scores of other links as well.  You can access the blog by clicking here.

And for our previous coverage of student debt and related issues click here.

19 October 2010 — According to a story in today’s National Law Journal, the American Bar Association is considering requiring law schools to disclose cost and employment statistics to all accepted law school applicants.  The effort, dubbed “Truth in Law School Education,” is still in the planning phase.

Meanwhile several ABA Sections and subcommittees are working on salary and employment questions for law school questionnaires, and Standard 509  which covers the consumer information law schools must collect and disclose.

ABA President Steve Zack is quoted as saying that law schools have an incentive to present data in the best possible light, since law schools are “huge profit centers” on college campuses.

“I think some of the numbers are cooked. To play the U.S. News & World Report game, law schools are creating jobs for graduates so they can say they are employed when they really aren’t,” Zach said.

For the complete article click here.

14 November 2009

This past Thursday the New York Times profiled a new research paper entitled Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be…Lawyers that said “Law school is a bad investment”.

The paper tries to measure the return on investment in a law school education, using three prototypical students (the “Also Ran,” the “Solid Performer” and the “Hot Prospect”) and the results are somewhat disheartening, especially considering the surging interest in law school during this tough job market.

As the New York Times article points out, attempts to calculate the return on investment of a given degree are difficult.  And there is also the matter of nonmonetary returns from higher education.  Neither the new research paper on law school R.O.I. nor most of the other related studies try to quantify the psychic rewards of additional social prestige, expanding one’s mind, being better equipped to make the world a better place, and so on, that come from earning a J.D.  And as we have reported, many Posse List members have used their law education/their law training to move on to other pursuits, other fields.  But we thought the information would be interesting and of use to our readers.

For the New York Times article click here.

For the full research paper click here.

And for an analysis of the research paper from the TaxProf blog with some more links click here.

Last Thursday, Mark Levy, a Kilpatrick Stockton attorney who had been laid off, tragically committed suicide at the firm’s office. Sadly, we have more disturbing news to report today.  Above the Law has reported tonight that a Simpson Thacher associate died two weekends ago in an apparent suicide. We understand that the female associate was recently let go from the firm.

The full story from Above the Law can be accessed here.    Yesterday’s National Law Journal had a lead article “Depression stalks the legal profession” (click here).

Last week we mentioned an ABA CLE program being offered tomorrow (May 6th) titled “What Lawyers Need to Know About Suicide During a Recession: Prevention, Identity and Law Firm Responsibility” (click here).

The increased stresses brought on by layoffs, resizing and other factors, and the devastating life experience effect on all of us makes this issue terribly important.

But if the ABA is concerned about the legal community and its membership we implore it to waive all fees and make this program free for all, and to make it available for free thereafter.   We have written to our ABA contacts. We ask any Posse List member who has a connection or influence with the ABA to impress this message upon the ABA.

The job market for lawyers, hit hard by the recession, seems to reach new lows every day. But that has not done much to discourage the thousands who are lining up to become the next generation of attorneys.

In seeming defiance of logic, many law schools are surging in popularity. At Washington and Lee University in Virginia, for example, law-school applications are up 29% this year over 2008, while Yale Law School and the University of Texas School of Law both enjoyed an 8% increase in applications. Nationwide, the total number of applicants is up by 2% over last year, with the deadline to submit applications having passed at most schools.

For full article click here.