http://nationaljurist.com/national-jurist-magazine/return-investment-core-challenge-legal-education-and-legal-profession
A Wise Investment?: On August 21, 2017, the National Jurist published a guest post from Martin Pritikin, under the header “Return on Investment: The Core Challenge for Legal Education and the Legal Profession.” Take a look at this opening:
“The legal community is facing a myriad of serious challenges ― historically low law school enrollments and bar passage rates, exploding tuition costs and associated student debt and a stagnant job market ― that, if not addressed, will put it in peril.
One seemingly attractive solution would be for a quarter of law schools to just close their doors. This would reduce competition for existing law jobs and reduce pressure on remaining schools to enroll less-qualified students to keep the lights on.
But this would only exacerbate the national crisis in access to justice. Tens of millions of Americans need lawyers but cannot afford the prevailing rates that lawyers charge, or live in areas where there are too few lawyers to adequately serve them. It is not enough to say the country needs fewer lawyers. It needs more of them ― if they can offer modest-means clients reasonable rates and still service their educational debt.
This is not just bleeding-heart talk. If recent law graduates’ only option is to compete with more seasoned attorneys for the clients that can afford to pay $200+ per hour, they’re going to continue to struggle. By offering reduced rates and tapping into a market of people who would otherwise likely forego legal services altogether, recent graduates will not simply be fighting for a bigger slice of the pie; they’ll be expanding the pie.
The big problem is return on educational investment, as those who would most logically serve the middle market can ill afford to do so. Annual tuition is about $50,000 at top-tier private law schools, where many graduates land $180,000 starting salaries. But the tuition is roughly the same at so-called “fourth-tier” law schools, where those lucky enough to secure employment typically make between $60,000 and $80,000. There’s a name for this economic model: it’s called broken.
Consider this: of the 205 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association, 199 are exempt from Department of Education requirements to report graduates’ debt-to-earnings ratios. Why? Because they operate as not-for-profits. As reported by the ABA Journal on January 11, 2017, of the six for-profit schools that recently reported their data for the first time, two failed outright and three others were found to be in the “zone,” that is, at risk of failing. Yet, based on available data, if the not-for-profits were subject to the same debt-to-earnings test, it appears at least half of them ― 100 schools ― would have failed as well.” [Emphasis mine]
But these grossly overpaid and under-worked “legal scholars” are performing a “public service” for the students, right? Still want to sign on the dotted line, Lemming? By the way, Pritikin’s estimate of $60K-$80K in annual salary from fourth tier commodes is greatly exaggerated. Those grads who end up in small law are lucky to make $48K per year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/18/goldman-sachs-ceo-the-most-you-get-out-of-law-school-is-debt.html
Prior Coverage: Back on August 18, 2016, CNBC featured a Kathleen Elkins piece that was entitled “Goldman Sachs CEO: ‘The most you get out of law school is the debt.’” Read the following portion:
“A traditional law degree can cost over $100,000 and three years of your life.
Is it worth it?
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who attended Harvard Law and practiced law for five years before getting into finance, seems to think not.
“Of course, you get a lot out of law school — you learn a lot — but the most you get out of law school is debt,” Blankfein recently told a group of Goldman interns.
There are numbers to back his claim. “Law school student debt has ballooned, rising from about $95,000 among borrowers at the average school in 2010 to about $112,000 in 2014,” Noam Schieber of the New York Times reported. Part of this trend is due to the increasing cost of tuition, which is now over $40,000 a year on average for private institutions.
Additionally, there are fewer jobs available for lawyers, meaning more grads may not even be able to put their expensive degree to use.
“While demand for other white-collar jobs has grown substantially since the start of the recession, law firms and corporations are finding they can make do with far fewer in-house lawyers than before, squeezing those just starting their careers,” Schieber explained.
Part of the reason law firms are facing smaller headcounts is because of “growing efficiencies created by technology and business systems and increased competition from nontraditional legal services providers,” James G. Leipold, the executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, told the Times.” [Emphasis mine]
In other words, now is a bad time to pursue a “legal education.” Ask yourself how many frshly-minted JDs from Pace, Loyola Los Angeles, and UC Irvine are making $80K per year. The answer is few to none. Then look up the average law school debt for students at those institutions.
Conclusion: Simply put, incurring an additional $145K+ in non-dischargeable debt, for a chance to enter a glutted “profession” is beyond stupid. If you do not attend a truly elite law school, then you are taking on a terrible financial risk. Try repaying back ridiculous sums of student loans on a paltry $43K annual salary. You do not need to ruin your life, in order to help “law professors” maintain their vacation homes and expensive car payments. Also, take into account opportunity costs associated with attending law school, i.e. you will be giving up three years of income. Even if you work at a dead-end job making $30K a year, that is a serious loss of money. For $ome rea$on, the "professors" forget to mention that part.