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How Many Lawyers?
March 20th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt
A few years ago, I used employment projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to project the number of job openings for licensed lawyers during the current decade. At the time, BLS was the best available source for that type of projection; it remains a useful resource today. The BLS makes these predictions precisely to help workers, employers, and policymakers understand the likely demand for workers in particular occupations.
Why should law schools care about these predictions? As Michael Simkovic and Frank McIntyre show in two recent papers, a JD historically has conferred financial advantage (compared to entering the workforce with just a BA) even if graduates did not work as practicing lawyers. If law graduates reap financial returns from their degrees, regardless of the jobs they take, does it matter how many jobs they find as practicing lawyers?
Some scholars (including me) wonder whether financial returns to a law degree will remain as high as they have been. But let’s leave that debate aside for now. Let’s consider, instead, why law schools should care about the number of grads who will find jobs as licensed lawyers–and what that number might be.
Who Cares?
Law graduates, students, and prospective students seem to care. Several sources indicates that, although some graduates enjoy work that does not require bar admission, graduates overall prefer to practice law. Every year, for example, NALP publishes a table showing how many graduates are employed but still seeking work. These tables consistently show that grads in jobs that require bar admission are far less likely than other grads to be seeking new jobs. In 2010, for example, just 15.1% of the graduates in “bar required” work were seeking other employment, while 48.1% of those in “JD preferred” jobs and 49.0% of grads in “other professional positions” were doing so. [Sorry, source not available online]
Similar preferences emerge later in the career. The After the JD longitudinal study found that law grads working in non-lawyering jobs were less satisfied than those in lawyering positions. The distinction held both seven and twelve years after law school graduation. [No online link for that one either, I’m afraid, but check p. 70 of the AJD II and AJD III reports.]
If graduates care, I suspect that students and prospective students care as well. And if only out of self interest, law schools should care too. We can tell students that a law degree offers many options, and that historically those options have paid off financially compared to a BA alone, but the current crop of students isn’t buying that pitch. If they want to practice law, they’re still coming to law school. But if they’re looking for intellectual stimulation, a degree with diverse options, or other benefits, they seem to be going elsewhere.
This is partly why I think law schools should examine the way we package the education we offer. We’re good at teaching close reading, careful writing, and critical thinking–and we could teach those skills to undergraduates. Talented undergrads want those skills, and employers will pay a premium for them. At the same time, we’re good (and could be better) at teaching advanced legal doctrine and other intellectual skills essential for law practice. We can keep providing that education to a more focused group of JD students who primarily will become lawyers.
So How Many Lawyers?
This brings me back to the question I started with: If prospective law students care about whether they will get jobs as licensed attorneys, and if law schools should care about that question (if only to attract students), about how many law graduates are able to get jobs that require bar admission?
My recent study of law graduates in the State of Ohio gave me some numbers to work with. I tracked job outcomes for all 1,214 new lawyers who passed the Ohio bar exam in 2010. In December 2014, about 75% of them held jobs that required a law license. Most of the rest were employed, but in other types of work.
My population included only licensed lawyers, not law graduates who didn’t take or pass a bar exam. One thing we know about the latter group is that they can’t be practicing law. So, after performing some calculations to account for that group, I estimated that about two-thirds of 2010 graduates were practicing law four and a half years after graduation.
Will the same percentage hold for graduates from other years and in other states? I don’t know; we often have to deal with limited data and isolated points of reference in making real-world plans. I explain in the paper why I think Ohio offers a useful perspective, and why I think the annual number of new bar-required jobs will remain stable in coming years. I’ll write more about both of those issues here soon.
The Good News
The good news for both law schools and prospective students is that my estimate is higher than the BLS’s historic projections. I estimate that, four and a half years after graduation, about 29,250 members of the Class of 2010 are practicing law. Some of the jobs are dubious solo practices; some undoubtedly are part-time, temporary, and/or low paid. Some of them are jobs that a graduate secured only after failing and re-taking the bar exam. Prospective students need to take those factors into account, not simply consider whether they’ll be able to find a job practicing law.
When all is said and done, though, graduates are finding more “lawyering” jobs than BLS once predicted–although not as many as BLS predicts through a proposed revision to its forecasting method. I’ll comment on the latter in another post.
The other piece of good news is that, if my calculations are correct, and if law school attrition rates remain constant, then about 84.5% of the current 1L class will find lawyering jobs within a few years after graduation. That level of job placement may be sufficiently attractive to maintain enrollment at current rates.
The Bad News
I couched that last sentence carefully: “to maintain enrollment at current rates.” Better placement in lawyering jobs will reassure prospective law students, but I doubt it will draw them back to law school in droves. Law schools, meanwhile, will need to worry about bar passage rates as they enroll students with lower credentials. Declining bar passage rates will discourage potential applicants both directly and indirectly, as they depress the percentage of graduates working in jobs that require bar passage.
Schools will also vary in the percentage of graduates they place in jobs requiring bar admission. Some will place more than 85% in those positions; others will place much less. If I’m right that potential students care about getting jobs that require a law license, enrollment declines will continue at the latter schools.
Summing Up
In making predictions, both here and in my paper, I offer some very specific numbers. I do that to offer a point of reference for debate; I can’t say exactly how many members of the Class of 2017 will find lawyering jobs, or how many students will apply to law school in 2018. I do think, though, that JD students care about their odds of securing a job that requires a law license and that law schools need to account for that preference. To do that, it helps to know as much as we can about operation of the legal market.
Best Practices for the LSAC
February 11th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Back in 2012, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued LSAC, claiming that the organization imposed unreasonable requirements on test-takers seeking disability accommodations. The Department of Justice intervened, siding with the plaintiffs. In May 2014, the parties agreed to a consent decree. LSAC agreed to (a) end the practice of flagging scores from individuals who received extended time as an accommodation; (b) pay $7.73 million in civil penalties and compensation to affected individuals; (c) streamline its evaluation of accommodation requests; and (d) implement additional best practices recommended by a panel of experts. For a quick summary of the decree, see this press release.
The expert panel issued their report last month. Four of the panel members have also provided an easy-to-digest (but unofficial) executive summary of the report. The recommendations offer measured, thoughtful approaches that will allow all potential law students to request accommodations in a fair manner. Too often as a society, we purport to accommodate people with differences, but then subject them to cumbersome, demeaning processes to prove their worth. The best practices endorsed by the consent-decree panel will put an end to that for LSAT takers.
The parties to the original lawsuit have until February 26 to notify the other parties if they plan to challenge any portion of the expert report. So far, no one has issued such a notice. Let’s hope that continues and that LSAC swiftly implements these best practices. This is both an effective way to end a lawsuit and a fair way to treat potential colleagues in the legal profession.
If you would like to offer comments to LSAC, including encouragement for them to accept the recommendations and put this lawsuit behind them, feel free to email LSAC’s Excecutive Director Daniel Bernstine at dbernstine@lsac.org.
I’m proud to say that my colleague, Ruth Colker, was a member of this expert panel. She was chosen by the other four panelists (two apiece from each side of the litigation) from a list of three top-notch experts drawn up by the Department of Justice. In her day job, Ruth serves as a Distinguished University Professor of The Ohio State University and Heck Faust Memorial Chair in Constitutional Law at our College of Law.
Clever Cleveland-Marshall
March 14th, 2014 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Back in the fall of 2012, I suggested that law schools could help students–and attract new applicants–by offering students a master’s degree at the end of the first year. That degree would allow students to try law school, and to gain the significant skills learned during the first year, without committing to a full three years of legal education. Students who decided at the end of the first year that they disliked law, that the benefits of practice were unlikely to outweigh the further costs of law school, or that they could pursue an attractive job with just one year of legal education, would be able to leave law school with appropriate recognition for their work.
I wasn’t the only person to propose this option. A faculty member at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law had a similar idea. And this week, Cleveland-Marshall announced its “risk-free” JD program. The initiative will allow JD students to convert their first-year credits to a Master of Legal Studies degree if they opt to leave school at the end of the first year. Here’s why the program makes sense.
Reducing Risk
Law school is a risky degree program compared to other graduate degrees: It requires three years of full-time study at high tuition. Potential law students worry that they won’t like legal study, that they won’t do well in law school, and that they won’t find a satisfying job after graduation. The combination of risks has driven students away from law school.
There’s no way to eliminate all of those risks; offering a master’s degree after the first year, however, significantly reduces them. Students who dislike legal study, or who don’t do as well as they hoped, can leave school with a one-year degree instead of a failed investment. That option makes the three-year JD more attractive to students who aren’t certain about their commitment to law.
Exploring Options
No one knows whether students who have completed just a year of law school, and who sport a new Master of Legal Studies degree, will be attractive to employers. But no one knows how attractive other MLS programs, offered independently of JD enrollment, will be to employers either. In creating both types of degree tracks, law schools are betting that graduates will be able to apply one year of legal training to JD-advantage work like human resources or compliance. Alternatively, they hope that the critical thinking taught during the 1L year will enhance a college graduate’s workplace appeal.
Even though we lack data on these job prospects, the predictions of employability are plausible. Faculty, students, and alumni have long touted the transformative training of the 1L year. Students make significant progress in learning how to “think like a lawyer” during that first year. If those analytic skills are valuable, then they should enhance employability.
Equally important, degrees like the Cleveland-Marshall one will help us assess the workplace pay-off for one year of legal study. The MLS option does little, if any, harm to students. It may persuade some students to pay for a year of law school, when they might otherwise have pursued other options. The investment, however, is limited–and includes both a year of professional education and a useful option to continue toward the JD. My bet is that employers will value the MLS; as they respond, we will learn more about the value of different types of law-related degrees.
How Many Lawyers?
January 7th, 2014 / By Deborah J. Merritt
How many lawyers will our economy support during the next decade? As legal educators, we are often bullish about our industry. We know our graduates’ talents, and we see vast unmet needs for legal services. We also know that legal rules are more complex than ever. From those perspectives, it seems logical that demand for lawyers will increase sharply–especially as the effects of the Great Recession fade.
But our perceptions can mislead us. Most of us lack economic training; we also know little about the macroeconomic data that inform labor market forecasts. As academics, we don’t even know much about the economics of law practice. Our very position in the industry, finally, tempts us to take a rosy view of the job market.
The best source of labor market predictions, in our industry and others, remains the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Every two years, the Bureau prepares a ten-year forecast of job openings in more than 800 occupations. The Bureau uses extensive data and complex macroeconomic models to prepare those predictions. Its economists analyze the economy as a whole, accounting for demographic shifts, technological change, complex interactions among industries, and consumer purchasing power. The final projections are much more reliable than anything that armchair experts might offer.
The Bureau recently released its projections for occupational job openings over the next decade. How will the legal profession fare? The news remains depressing.
Declining Projections
In 2008, at the height of our profession’s prosperity, the BLS projected that 240,400 job openings for “lawyers” would occur in the ten years between 2008 and 2018. That estimate encompassed all jobs practicing law, including work done by solo practitioners. It also counted both jobs generated by expansion and those required for replacement. The projection did not include jobs for judges and judicial law clerks, small categories that the BLS counts separately. I return to those categories below.
Note that even this 2008 projection fell far short of the number of students graduating from U.S. law schools at the time. ABA-accredited law schools conferred 43,588 JD’s in 2008. Even if just 80% of those graduates (34,870) sought jobs as lawyers, that number far exceeded the 24,040 new lawyer jobs per year that the BLS projected at that time.
The forecasts, however, got worse. In 2010, in the wake of the recession and rapid shifts in the legal profession, the Bureau adjusted its projection downward. It estimated that in the ten years between 2010 and 2020, the economy would support only 212,000 new lawyers. That number represented an 11.8% drop in the number of openings for new lawyers.
“Well, of course,” you might think, “the economy was in a serious recession. Of course the number of job openings would decline.” Remember, though, that this projection covered an entire decade. The Bureau assumed that, even if the economy returned to full strength by 2020 (an assumption built into its models), the number of job openings for lawyers would be substantially lower over the decade than previously predicted.
Now the news has gotten even worse. In its latest projections, the Bureau has again lowered the predicted number of openings for lawyers. It now estimates that the economy will support only 196,500 new lawyers between 2012 and 2022. That’s another loss of 7.3%. Put another way: Four years ago, BLS expected the economy to support about 24,040 new lawyers per year. Now it expects only about 19,650 new lawyers per year to find jobs. That’s a loss of 18.3%.
The Bureau expects the absolute number of lawyer jobs to increase between 2012 and 2022, but the increases will be considerably smaller than previously predicted. The available openings, furthermore, won’t come close to accommodating the number of law school graduates–even if those numbers decline as anticipated.
Graduates and Openings
I previously calculated that about 36,260 students will obtain JDs from ABA-accredited law schools in 2016. Those are the students who just finished their first semester of law school and are on track to graduate. Once again, let’s assume that only 80% of them will seek jobs as lawyers–a generous allowance for JD Advantage jobs. Even if one-fifth of our graduates take jobs outside the “lawyer” category, we will still graduate 29,008 eager new lawyers in 2016.
The BLS, however, predicts that the economy will support only about 19,650 new lawyers per year. If that prediction proves correct, then lawyer jobs will exist for only two-thirds (67.7%) of the graduates seeking them–or only 54.2% of the full graduating class. Those ratios are slightly worse than the ratios for the Class of 2008, when the job market was much stronger. Even with reduced class sizes, we are losing the placement race. Graduating classes will have to shrink substantially more to approach the number of lawyering jobs that the economy is predicted to support.
Other Job Categories
As mentioned above, the BLS counts some “lawyering” jobs in categories of their own. Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates, for example, constitute a separate category from lawyers. So do judicial law clerks. Neither of these categories, however, offers much comfort for law graduates: BLS has dramatically reduced projected openings in these categories. In 2010, the Bureau estimated that the economy would support 9,600 new judges/magistrates and 6,800 judicial law clerks between 2010 and 2020. The more recent predictions have cut those numbers to just 5,200 new judges/magistrates and 2,500 new judicial law clerks over the next decade. The latter reduction is particularly notable; it may represent cuts in government budgets as well as an increase in permanent law clerks.
Adding these small categories to the estimates offered above doesn’t alter the picture much. If we include job openings for judges, magistrates, and judicial law clerks, then the BLS predicts about 20,420 new openings per year for lawyers. That number will accommodate only 56.3% of the students projected to graduate from ABA-accredited schools in 2016. (To be clear, I think it’s appropriate to include judges, magistrates, and law clerks in these projections. I omitted them in my initial calculations because the numbers are small and the BLS has redrawn these small categories over the years. For clarity, it’s easier to focus first on the primary “lawyer” category.)
According to the BLS, only three categories of law-related professionals enjoy better prospects today than they did two years ago: paralegals, title examiners, and other legal support workers. The Bureau raised projected openings in each of those fields in its latest estimates, producing a combined total of 119,600 expected openings during the next decade.
Why Won’t the Economy Support More Lawyers?
The reasons for this decline are complex. They include lasting effects of the recession, technology, new efficiencies in the provision of legal services, and changing demographics. The last factor is particularly intriguing; it is one that we in the legal academy often overlook. My next post will explore these economic change-agents in more depth.
Will the Competition Close?
December 29th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
As law school enrollment continues to fall, industry experts have started to speculate about how many schools will–or should–close. Law schools themselves have a great interest in this. Some are worrying if it will happen to them. Others wonder whether the closure of competitors will ease their own distress.
The latter line of reasoning concerns me. Over the last few years, I’ve heard both academics and practitioners suggest that, once the market closes the weakest law schools, all will be well for the remaining 50, 100, or 150 schools. This analysis, I’m afraid, is too simplistic for the market we face.
As I explain below, at least five forces will keep most law schools in business. Many of these schools will be smaller than they were in 2010, with fewer students and smaller faculty/staff rosters. They will, however, survive–and will compete aggressively for students, employer connections, and new resources. That outcome offers mixed comfort for law schools. Some will do relatively well in this new competitive environment; others will limp along in a much leaner state.
For students, employers, and clients, this outcome is promising–more positive, actually, than the prospect of wholesale law school closures. The competition among law schools will make them much more responsive to students and the workplace. Over the last two years, many schools have already lowered effective tuition, changed curricula, and cultivated stronger relationships with employers. These changes, I predict, will not be short-term solutions that we discard “after the market shakes out.” Instead, they are the beginning of a fundamental shift in legal education that will be fueled by ongoing competition among schools.
The market works, but it will follow a peculiar path in legal education. Rather than closing a large number of law schools, the market will incite aggressive competition among schools that have been told by their universities: “We’re not going to close your doors, but you have to sustain yourself financially.”
Why Won’t Law Schools Close?
Law schools undoubtedly have been graduating more JD’s than the US economy needs. Students have gotten wise to that fact, and law school applications have plummeted. Why, then, won’t the weakest fifty–or one hundred–law schools simply close? That’s what would happen in many industries. Higher education, however, has several features that will keep most law schools alive.
1. It’s very hard to close a public law school. Most observers agree that each state will want to preserve at least one public law school. Those schools offer access to legal education for state residents, a supply of locally trained legal talent, and a certain measure of prestige. Very large states might rationally maintain a few public law schools to fill those needs.
What about all of the other public law schools–the second, third, or fourth schools in a state? A rational legislature might close some of those schools in response to dwindling demand for JD’s. Most of these schools, however, reflect strong regional interests within the state. Some reflect differing racial or ethnic populations. Do you think Ohio will close its law schools in Cleveland, Toledo, and Akron, telling those students to apply to the higher ranked public schools in Columbus or Cincinnati? That command would elicit the same reaction as Marie Antoinette’s famous exhortation to let the peasants eat cake.
If a public law school exists, it has strong political forces behind it. Public law schools, I predict, will close only if the political dynamics of a state have changed so much that its constituency no longer enjoys political clout. They will not close simply because the demand for JD’s has declined.
2. Law schools have powerful alumni. Recent graduates may be suffering in the marketplace, but most schools have at least a handful of wealthy and/or politically connected alumni. At both public and private schools, these graduates will pressure the board of trustees, president, provost, development office, and others to maintain the law school. At public schools, these alumni will also weigh in with the legislature and higher education system.
It won’t take many alumni to keep a law school open–especially since these alumni often matter to the full university. Some of them contribute money to other departments; others have careers that reflect well on the university as a whole. Still others are connected to community leaders, government officials, and business moguls who matter to the university. Universities will not want to alienate these alumni.
3. Law schools are part of a product line. Businesses sometimes maintain an unprofitable product as part of an overall marketing strategy. A product may build brand loyalty, or complete a product line, even though it does not generate profits of its own. Drugstores, for example, sell a full range of medications–not just the most profitable ones.
No university teaches every subject, and there are many superb universities without law schools. The universities that already have law schools, however, think of them as part of the product line. Top research universities (those ranked very high or high in the Carnegie classification) pride themselves on their comprehensive research programs. Those universities are likely to maintain existing law schools as part of their commitment to comprehensive research.
Law schools located at other universities, ironically, may be even less likely to close. At those universities, which grant fewer doctorates and attract less research funding, the law school may represent a larger percentage of the university’s research activity and academic reputation.
4. Law schools are cheap academic units to operate. The first three forces would have limited impact if law schools were expensive to maintain. No university will hemorrhage dollars to sustain a law school. Law schools, however, are remarkably cheap academic units.
We don’t require laboratories or expensive equipment. Our students use simple classrooms, and our faculty conduct their research with desks, modestly powered computers, and an internet connection. Our faculty earn high salaries, but they are no longer soar as high over the rest of the university; check out medical, business, and engineering salaries–as well as the ones paid to star professors in the arts and sciences.
We offer sizable scholarships to attract top students, but we rarely offer full tuition waivers plus living stipends–the gold standard demanded by top graduate departments. We employ some writing instructors and clinical faculty, but those numbers are tiny compared to the armies of composition instructors, math instructors, lab supervisors, and other teaching assistants required in other parts of the university.
Even our clinical education is cheap. Colleagues from Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine visited me recently and were puzzled when I told them that my office was located in the law school’s clinic. “This can’t be a clinic,” they exclaimed, as they looked at a few offices, computers, tables, and a conference room. I reminded them that lawyers don’t need x-ray machines, MRI’s, or sanitizing equipment–much less stables, food, and handlers to care for our clients.
We think of law schools as expensive because we have set our tuition so high. And, of course, we are more expensive than other units in some ways: we usually don’t charge for our clinical services, and we don’t attract the multi-million-dollar grants and contracts that grace other departments. On balance, however, we are very cheap departments for a university to maintain.
5. Law schools can reduce their costs. As icing on the cake, there is still plenty of room for law schools to reduce their costs. Other parts of the university–particularly the arts and sciences–have been cutting budgets for a long time. Most of their doors remain open, and law schools have a long way to go when it comes to trimming budgets in the face of market pressure.
Tenured faculty are expensive, but they retire or take other positions. Some public law schools are benefiting from state-wide pension changes that are luring faculty into retirement. Schools don’t have to replace all of these departing faculty–especially if enrollments fall–and they won’t. For the faculty who remain, salary increases will be lower and teaching loads may increase.
Law schools will also discover that they can make do with fewer staff, fewer conferences, less travel money, and smaller libraries. Expenses that once seemed essential to satisfy faculty, secure prestige, and fight for US News rank will seem less essential when schools have to meet reduced budgets. Extras don’t matter as much when the first priority is to stay in business.
Budget cutbacks won’t affect a few highly ranked schools, which may be able to continue business as usual. But cutbacks will occur at schools throughout most of the law school hierarchy. My point here is that there is plenty of room to cut law school budgets, and that our competitors will choose that course rather than quietly go out of business.
The Bottom Line
A few law schools, especially stand-alone ones, may close their doors in the coming years. Most law schools, however, will remain open. Their universities will tell them: “Stay in business, but cover your costs.” This will be tough to do at a time when applications are declining and students are increasingly price sensitive. To balance budgets, schools will cut costs, modify curricula in ways that appeal to students and employers, build stronger relationships with employers, and seek new sources of revenue. All of this will happen, not in a stop-gap manner while we wait for the old days to return, but as part an ongoing, highly competitive environment. Most schools will survive, but the happiest and most prosperous ones will be the ones that appeal most to students and employers. In its own way, the market will speak.
Law School Applicants
December 11th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
LSAC has released its first report on the current crop of law school applicants. Paul Campos offers a trenchant analysis that I expand upon below. After reviewing the numbers, I explore the question that nags at so many of us: Where are all of those applicants going if not to law school?
Recent History
Paul first charts the number of applicants to ABA-accredited law schools during the last four years. Those numbers, drawn from LSAC sources, are:
Applicants for fall 2010: 87,900
Applicants for fall 2011: 78,500
Applicants for fall 2012: 67,900
Applicants for fall 2013: 59,426 (preliminary)
Many people assume that fall 2010 represents the high water mark for law school applicants, but that’s not true. As Paul noted in a similar post last year, the number of law school applicants peaked in 2004 when 100,600 individuals applied to ABA-accredited schools. Applicants fell significantly for several years after 2004, rose modestly in 2009-2010, and have plummeted for the last three years.
As noted above, we have only preliminary figures for the number of students who applied to join this year’s 1L class. In recent years, however, the final figure has not varied by more than 0.5% from the preliminary number. If the final figure for 2013 varies that much, the true number of applicants might have been as high as 59,724.
That’s a decline of 32.1% in the number of applicants between fall 2010 and fall 2013. From the 2004 peak, the decline has been a very substantial 40.6%.
Current Applicants
That brings us to this year’s applicants. LSAC reports that 14,171 individuals had submitted applications by December 6, 2013. That’s a 13.6% decrease compared to this point last year.
The admissions cycle, however, is still young. Last year, a noticeable number of students applied to law school in the late winter and early spring, perhaps responding to news reports that applicants were down and hopefuls might obtain more favorable spots or scholarships. If the same happens this year, late applicants might narrow the gap between this year and last. If so, 13.6% could overestimate the applicant drop for the current year.
Unfortunately, a more conservative method leads to an even higher projected drop in applicants. Let’s look, as Paul does, at the percentage of applicants who had submitted their applications by this point last year. According to LSAC, that figure was 28%: By December 7, 2012, 28% of the year’s eventual applicants had submitted at least one law school application.
If applicants follow the same pattern this year, then we can expect a total of 50,611 applicants by the time the admissions cycle ends in August. That’s 14.8% fewer applicants than the preliminary figure for this year (2013), and it’s 15.3% less than the final 2013 figure I projected above.
First-Year Enrollment
This is, of course, grim news for law schools. Some applicants are not qualified for admission, and others decide not to attend law school. 50,611 applicants will yield a much smaller class. I agree with Paul Campos that we may welcome no more than 35,000 first-year students to accredited law schools in Fall 2014. That’s one-third less than the number of students who enrolled in Fall 2010.
Where Are They Going?
What has happened to those law school applicants? What are they doing instead of attending law school? I can’t answer for all of them, but I can offer some suggestions. In doing that, it’s particularly important to note that interest in law school began declining in 2005–not 2011.
The last decade has witnessed the emergence of many new professional jobs, especially in computer science, health care, and engineering. Take a look at this list of new occupations that the Bureau of Labor Statistics added to its surveys in 2012.
Those brand-new occupations include several that would interest bright high school students: information security analyst, computer network architect, web developer, computer network support specialist, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife, nurse practitioner, and genetic counselor. Those new occupations already employ more than 629,000 people–more than the number of judges, magistrates, lawyers, and judicial clerks (620,340 total) reported in the same occupational survey.
This survey includes only salaried workers, so it omits solo practitioners, law firm partners, and other self-employed lawyers. Even if we double the number of employed lawyers, however, the comparative number of jobs in these competing occupations is eye-opening.
Remember, too, that these eight categories are brand-new fields: graduates won’t face the entrenched interests, established workers, and long career ladders that new lawyers face. These jobs, moreover, only scratch the surface of alternative careers. The BLS recently added web developers to its occupation list, but it already (and separately) counts computer programmers, software developers (applications), and software developers (systems). Almost 1.3 million people hold salaried positions in one of those three categories.
Salaries for these new occupations range from comfortable to excellent. Nurse anesthetists, the highest paid category, average $154,390, well above the $130,880 average for lawyers or the $102,470 mean for judges and magistrates. The educational requirements for nurse anesthetists, notably, are similar to those for lawyers: They complete a BS in nursing as well as a 2-3 master’s program in anesthesia.
Employees in some other categories average lower salaries than lawyers, but need only a BA to enter their field. Most software developers possess only a BA. Yet the applications developers average $93,280 per year while the systems developers average $102,550. There were, by the way, more than 978,000 salaried employees in those two categories in 2012.
The lowest paying job among the ones I’ve cited is for genetic counselors. Those workers require a master’s degree and currently average only $55,820 per year. But genetics research and applications are exploding; this is one of the most intriguing, socially important, and potentially lucrative fields in the new economy. Today’s genetics counselor may advance with the field.
But That Requires Math!
We are conditioned to think of law students and STEM graduates as two different breeds. Law students notoriously dislike math, and some of them had unfortunate encounters with organic chemistry or other college science courses. This history feeds the notion that STEM careers can’t compete with law school. If students can’t do the math, they won’t qualify for these new occupations–leaving law school as their best option. Right?
The truth is, most of us did just fine in high school math and science. If we’d wanted to be software developers or nurse anesthetists–if those jobs had even existed when many of us graduated from high school–we could have pursued those paths in college and beyond. Today’s bright high school students are equally capable of pursuing those paths, and the paths have been beckoning.
Computers, genetics, and other technologies have made science cool for today’s smartest students–in the same way that Perry Mason was cool for us. If you’re a bright 17-year-old today, do you dream of drafting a killer discovery motion or designing a killer app? Would you rather be helping a client through a divorce or through life-saving surgery? Do you want to counsel clients on avoiding foreclosure or on avoiding genetically determined risks?
Don’t get me wrong: I love the law, and I know recent graduates with good legal careers. But I also know many unhappy law school graduates and many happy scientists. if we want to address the marked decline in law school applicants, we need to understand the full scope of the current workplace.
Three Adaptations to Attract Applicants
December 3rd, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I wrote earlier this week about three forces that will continue to dampen law school applications, even if overall employment rates improve. Those forces are (1) the greater transparency of job outcomes, (2) the changed composition of those jobs, and (3) the narrowing of entry-level career choices. These trends may have little impact on the fortunes of a few top-ranked schools, but I think other law schools would be wise to consider them. Here are three suggestions for responding to these forces.
Stress Career Paths Rather than Options
Law schools have traditionally stressed the flexibility of a JD, noting the many career paths that follow from legal education. It is true that lawyers pursue many careers, but the immediate choices for individual graduates are relatively constrained in today’s market. Law students, moreover, have to specialize early in law school to compete for some of those positions.
Rather than fight these facts, we should capitalize on them. After working with millennial law students for several years, I’ve observed that they often ask for designated paths. They are less likely than last century’s students to seek open-ended options. Instead, they want to know how to get from “A” (the first day of law school) to “Z” (an entry-level job as a prosecutor).
Today’s applicants, I think, would respond well to specialized programs–as long as the programs offer demonstrated pay-offs in the job market. The next era of transparency may measure outcomes for particular programs. If a law school designs a program for future prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers, and if 90% of students completing the program secure one of those jobs, that will impress applicants. The same principle would hold for other areas of law practice or particular settings, like small firms.
Schools could easily create these paths with existing courses, clinics, externships, and extracurricular activities. The building blocks are there; we just need to switch our mindset from one that favors options to one that focuses on paths. We also have to be willing to articulate these paths and measure success rates. If we create successful paths with demonstrated results, and share that information honestly with prospective students, I think that applicants will respond.
If you’re tempted to resist specialization, consider this: Document review requires no specialized education–any law school graduate can do it. Don’t you want something better for your graduates?
Blend Education and Employment
Government agencies, mid-sized law firms, small firms, and businesses hire most of our graduates. These employers care about people skills, personal qualities, and hands-on experience. They want new employees who already possess those skills and experience; better yet, they like to hire graduates who have already worked for them as summer clerks, part-time employees, or externs.
It’s a buyer’s market, so there’s no point arguing with employers about these preferences. The preferences make sense from the employer’s perspective, and they carry pedagogic weight as well. Some of the best learning occurs when students can combine classroom and workplace experiences.
Law schools already encourage students to work during the summer, permit upper-level students to work part-time during the school year, and field an impressive number of externship programs. We can build on that base to create more dynamic programs that blend education and employment in more central ways.
In part, this requires a simple attitude shift. Rather than treating externships and part-time jobs as necessary evils that compete for classroom time, we should embrace these experiences as positive additions to our students’ learning. We should take those workplace demands into account when scheduling classes. We should also consider charging by the credit hour, rather than the semester, so that students can integrate classroom and workplace experiences year-round without paying extra for summer classes or a seventh semester.
Most important, our faculties should engage with the organizations that employ our students. What do our students do for those agencies, firms, or businesses? How does that work fit with their classroom experiences? Are there doctrinal principles or skills that the employers would really like to see taught on campus? Are there experiences they would be willing to offer that would complement classroom work?
Too often, we draw a line between campus and the workplace, announcing that we will teach up to the line while employers provide everything else. Why not negotiate the line? Or work together during the students’ three years to create the best overall learning experience?
Blended learning fits well with my first recommendation, the creation of professional paths. A student who wants to become a commercial real estate lawyer should not have to figure out the right assortment of classes, internships, and jobs; she should be able to rely on the cooperative discussion of professors and lawyers in the field.
Create an Undergraduate Major in Law
I’ve written before about the benefits of creating an undergraduate law major. In addition to those benefits, an undergraduate law major would allow legal education to retain the “option maximizer” aura that JD programs used to enjoy. BA’s with a law major could pursue the jobs open to other liberal arts graduates, as well as some of the “JD Advantage” jobs. These graduates could also, of course, choose to attend law school. A law major encompassing half of our current JD training wouldn’t allow graduates to “do anything,” but it would open numerous doors in the entry-level, post-college job market.
Under this framework, JD programs would offer two years of more advanced training. Those programs would lend themselves well to the specializations and blended classroom/workplace learning described above. Taken together, a BA+JD program would strike the right balance between options and specialization.
Applicants and Aspirations
December 2nd, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
What will draw more students back to law school? Several writers have suggested that declining class sizes will attract more JD applicants. Smaller classes mean fewer graduates: If graduates decline, while jobs hold steady, then employment rates will improve. College graduates will take note and turn their attention back to law school.
Jacob Gershman, writing in the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, notes that if entering class sizes decline for just one more year, then the Class of 2017 may enjoy better employment rates than the Class of 2007 did. That sounds pretty promising, especially since Gershman limits his calculation to full-time jobs requiring bar passage. Will that degree of improvement attract more law school applicants?
It almost certainly will: An employment rate of 79.4% for the Class of 2017, using Gershman’s figures, is much more attractive than the 58.6% achieved by the Class of 2012. Several factors, however, counsel that applications will not rebound as far as employment rates. Here are three reasons why, all caveats that law schools should consider when planning strategically for the future.
Greater Transparency
Law schools published employment information in 2007, but not with the same transparency that the ABA and applicants require today. Many people are shocked to learn that, nine months after graduation, no more than 72% of the class of 2007 had obtained full-time jobs requiring bar admission. More than 10% of the class was unemployed, unaccounted for, or working in nonprofessional jobs like retail. Most of the remainder had secured “JD preferred” or “other professional” positions, but a substantial minority of that group was unhappy with their employment. 37.7% of the former group, and 39.6% of the latter, were seeking other jobs.
Those figures were available to applicants and professors who pressed for details in 2007, but we didn’t talk about the job market as frankly then as we do today. When projecting the behavior of future applicants, we have to remember that they operate in a world of more transparent employment figures. We have to ask: If applicants know that ten percent of them will be un- or under-employed with their JD, while another 18% will take jobs that do not require bar admission, how many will choose to attend law school?
Rising employment rates, in other words, will shed light on how much transparency matters. Did students flock to law school last decade because they were impressed with the actual employment rates of the period? Or did they misconstrue their odds in the employment market? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone can know, but I think that improved transparency will depress applications at least somewhat. 2017 will not be 2007.
Different Jobs
Today’s transparency includes, not just employment figures, but detailed information about the kind of positions that law graduates obtain. Those positions have changed significantly since 2007, and potential applicants know about the shifts. Indeed, applicants may know more than the average law professor; we need to catch up with that knowledge if we’re going to plan effectively for the future.
In 2007, the largest law firms (those employing more than 500 lawyers) hired more than 4,745 new JD’s within nine months after graduation. For the Class of 2008, the number reached more than 5,193. I say “more than” for both of those years because several law schools, including BigLaw feeder Columbia, did not participate in NALP surveys at that time.
For the Class of 2012, these largest firms hired only 3,636 JD’s within nine months after graduation. That smaller number seems likely to persist. Corporate clients are handling more legal work in-house, while BigLaw firms are hiring outsourcers and contract attorneys for substantial portions of their routine work. Even some of those 3,636 BigLaw positions are no longer associate jobs; some are staff attorney positions. Market forces strongly suggest that these trends will continue.
Those trends, of course, create other job opportunities. In-house positions, document review work, and staff attorney jobs often require bar admission, so these are new “bar admission required” jobs. The jobs, however, are different from the ones available to the Class of 2007–and applicants will know that. Some applicants may find some of these jobs desirable, although the salaries are much lower. Others will not be interested in a “79% employment” rate that includes a significant number of part-time, short-term, or staff attorney positions. Once again, it’s hard to quantify the impact of these changes, but they almost certainly will reduce applications to some extent.
Constrained Choices
For at least a generation, the most attractive aspect of a JD may have been our promise of many employment options. Graduates could work for large firms or small ones; they could choose government or public interest work; they could apply their JD to politics, business, or other endeavors. Law school applicants tended to be high achievers with uncertain career goals; they were people who liked to maximize their options–and law school seemed like the greatest option maximizer of all.
For many graduates, these options proved elusive. Students at the top schools, or at the top of their class elsewhere, might have been able to choose from a full menu of careers. But most students at most schools faced more limited options. A student in the bottom half of the class never had the option of working as an associate at a BigLaw firm–unless the student attended one of the top law schools, had a strong personal connection, or possessed non-law experience that was both highly desirable and rare.
Regional firms were also picky; most students couldn’t simply “choose” to work at them. Government and public interest jobs were more available, but students often had to begin working in those positions early in law school; they couldn’t wait until graduation to discover an interest in prosecution or environmental policy work. I’ve taught at two top-50 law schools during the last 30 years; even during boom years, I knew students who struggled to find a single job–any job. They did not choose among a variety of positions.
The changing job market has narrowed choices further. At more than half of accredited law schools, associate positions in BigLaw are virtually unattainable. In 2012, 45 schools placed 0 graduates in the largest firms–not even in staff attorney positions. Another 67 schools placed 1-5 graduates in those firms, with an unknown number of those graduates taking staff-attorney or paralegal positions. (These figures derive from the ABA’s 2012 employment spreadsheet, which is available here. I do not include any of the Puerto Rico schools in my counts.).
Competition for jobs in all other categories is stiff. To secure those jobs, students often have to chart a careful course starting at the end of their first year. Working part-time for a future employer while gathering related experience in courses, externships, and clinics, often provides the best shot at a full-time job. Many students are happy with these jobs, but they do not choose from a wide menu of options.
Today’s law school applicants understand both these narrowed choices and how those choices are distributed among students at different law schools. This may be the greatest impact of transparency: Most law schools have lost their reputation as “choice maximizers.” A handful of top law schools can credibly offer their students a wide range of employment options. At most schools, however, the options are more constrained and students need to specialize early in their law school careers.
Swallowing the Pill
This truth, about narrowed options, may be the hardest pill for legal educators to swallow. Choice is deeply ingrained in our culture, and has been one of the most attractive selling points for law school. For many applicants, I suspect, the promise of choice mattered even more than high salaries. We all like the power to steer our own destiny.
As professors, our experience tends to perpetuate the notion that law school graduates choose among many career options. Most of us personally enjoyed a very wide range of entry-level job choices and career paths. We also see the overall employment patterns for our graduates, which suggest a large menu of jobs. The employment reports show so many different outcomes! It’s easy for us to believe that each of those graduates chose his or her job over all of the competing options.
Contacts with graduates who enjoy their work buttresses these beliefs. Former students rarely call to say, “I really wanted to do commercial litigation for a mid-sized firm, but the only work I could get was with a solo doing personal injury work”–although those calls and blog posts are becoming somewhat more common. Students are more likely to call when they are satisfied, or to describe their work as a chosen path. Unless we listen closely, we risk missing a key fact about today’s job market.
These trends–transparency, new jobs, and reduced options–mean that law schools cannot simply wait for applications to rise. We need to grapple with the forces that are reducing interest in legal education. What, specifically, should we do? I have a few ideas, which I’ll describe in my next post.
Support for Layered Legal Education
November 29th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Since writing about multi-tiered legal education, including an undergraduate component, I have discovered several other scholars and practice experts with similar ideas. Here is a round up of proposals related to “layered” legal education with an undergraduate component. Please add to the collection by sending links to similar proposals.
Jordan Furlong’s BA plus MLP
Jordan Furlong, an internationally recognized expert on innovations in the legal market, proposed a BA/MA structure for legal education in 2010. As Jordan recognized, current JD programs do not effectively teach either professional skills or theoretical inquiry at the graduate level. Today’s law school offers a second bachelor’s degree masquerading as a professional or graduate degree.
Jordan, like me, proposes that we move much of the current JD program into the college curriculum: “Four years of undergraduate work would be enough to provide a healthy grounding in legal theory, legal history, aspects of justice, all the things that law schools now teach, in a mixture with Torts and Contracts and Business Associations and so forth.” Jordan also notes the positive impact of these courses for a wide range of students: “[A] a four-year Law undergrad would be a terrific grounding for any number of disciplines — don’t we always tell law students that a law degree opens up vast new career horizons to them? Better yet, students in other fields could minor in Law, or even take a handful of law electives. Think of the boost that would give to legal literacy among university graduates of all kinds, and to public legal education as a result.”
To prepare practicing lawyers, Jordan would establish “an MLP degree, a Masters of Legal Practice to mirror the Masters of Business Administration.” The master’s would build on the undergraduate degree, which would already have grounded students in “the theory and the basics.” The MLP would then “add business skills, professional responsibility training, client focus, project management, and the other hallmarks of a competent practitioner.” Sounds like a plan. (Jordan also notes the possibility of local bar associations creating training programs, perhaps jointly with private firms. That’s another excellent idea worth pursuing.)
Benjamin Barros’s Competency Exams
Benjamin Barros, Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development at Widener Law School’s Harrisburg campus, has proposed a different mechanism for moving part of the JD curriculum to the undergraduate level. Rather than create a specific undergraduate major, Benjamin would allow prospective students to take competency exams in law school subjects. If a student achieved a sufficiently high score, the student would receive credit for the corresponding law school course.
As Benjamin notes, these exams would function much like Advanced Placement exams do at the college level. As with AP exams, Benjamin would allow students to develop their competency in any way they chose. Colleges, certainly, could offer courses preparing students for law competency exams; law schools might also enter that market. Students could also study on their own or use online courses. Test performance would offer feedback on the efficacy of these methods, while allowing students to choose methods suiting them best.
Benjamin, like Jordan and me, stresses multiple advantages of this system. Students could obtain a JD with less investment of time and money; a common path might include four years of college (including law-related courses) followed by two years of law school. Those law school years, meanwhile, could cover more sophisticated material. The nature of that more advanced material “might vary – it could be more practice oriented, more theory oriented, or remain doctrinal, but on a deeper level.” Whatever the content, JD students would obtain better preparation for their legal careers. College students would also benefit from law-related “AP” courses, even if they chose not to attend law school.
Benjamin first proposed a version of this idea in 2009. The original post, the more recent one, and the comments on both are well worth reading.
McGinnis and Mangas: BA Plus Apprenticeship
John O. McGinnis, a professor at Northwestern Law School, and Russell Mangas, a recent Northwestern grad practicing at Kirkland & Ellis, propose creating an undergraduate law degree that would include about 60 hours of legal study and 60 hours of general liberal arts courses. Like the other proposals discussed here, their approach would move traditional law school courses (including the first year) to the college curriculum.
McGinnis and Mangas would then require practicing lawyers to complete a year-long paid apprenticeship and pass the bar exam before qualifying for bar admission. Lawyers, therefore, could qualify for law practice after paying for just four years of education. They would devote a fifth year to qualifying, but receive income (rather than paying tuition) for that work.
McGinnis and Mangas, notably, would not eliminate current JD programs; they would maintain those programs alongside the new BA/apprenticeship track. Market choices by employers, clients, and students would determine the popularity of the two tracks.
McGinnis and Mangas, like others proposing layered legal education, note the financial advantages of their proposal. Students could qualify as lawyers with just five years of opportunity cost, four years of college tuition, and a paid apprenticeship. Even if apprenticeships paid low wages, new lawyers would carry much less debt than they do today–and might possess more professional skills.
Writing an article, rather than a blog post, McGinnis and Mangas develop the economic argument more fully. In particular, they contend that alternative educational paths would benefit consumers as well as new lawyers. A less expensive educational path should reduce the price of legal services; it might also enable services for markets that are currently underserved. The full McGinnis/Mangas article deserves a read.
The Kahn Plan
Douglas Kahn, of the University of Michigan Law School, advocates the boldest move toward the undergraduate curriculum. Kahn advocates moving the full three years of legal study to the undergraduate curriculum. Under his plan, students would begin law school after a freshman year of college. The law school curriculum would remain largely as it is today, but students would begin that study three years earlier.
Anticipating cries that his plan would sharply curtail liberal arts education, Kahn notes that law schools offer a good deal of that education within their three-year curricula. Most JD programs also allow students to take some courses from other disciplines, so students could assemble a well rounded education within the confines of a college degree that includes a JD.
Kahn does not advocate the addition of graduate education or apprenticeshps; he would allow students to qualify for the bar exam and law practice after just four years of higher education. His proposal thus moves more aggressively than any of the others discussed here, including my “four plus two” plan. Even if Kahn’s idea proves too radical for a consensus, he firmly supports the feasibility of beginning legal study during the college years.
A Plausible Path?
Each of these plans differs somewhat from the others, but all share a belief that we should begin legal education in college. Although constructing that path would require changes in state bar admission and ABA accreditation rules, these are changes well worth considering. I will continue to post on the practicalities, benefits, and costs of undergraduate “law school” courses and layered legal education.
Meanwhile, please forward links to other authors discussing these issues.
Declining Enrollments
November 24th, 2013 / By Deborah J. Merritt
On Friday I posted a projection of when the number of JD graduates might decline sufficiently to match available jobs. The calculations were very rough, based on assumptions tendered by others. However one varies the assumptions and calculations, though, one message is clear: Declining law school enrollments offer some hope to prospective lawyers, but bad news for law schools.
Successive Declines
First-year enrollment declined 7.2% between fall 2010 (52,488) and fall 2011 (48,697). The following year, in fall 2012, it declined another 8.7% to 44,481 students.
We don’t yet have statistics on the number of first-year students who matriculated this fall. We do know, however, that the number of applicants for the current 1L class declined to 59,426, a 12.3% decline from the previous year. Projecting an 8% decline in matriculants for this year, therefore, seems appropriately conservative. Using that estimate, about 40,923 1L’s are currently preparing for law school finals.
Three years of successive decline add up. In fall 2010, law schools were dreaming of revenues based on 52,488 entering students per year. Now we are looking at 40,923. That’s a decline of 22.0%–more than one-fifth in three years. Those empty seats, of course, generate no JD tuition.
To match graduates to available jobs, moreover, we still have a long way to go. The Class of 2012 found only 30,453 full-time, long-term jobs that required bar admission or benefited from a JD. Assuming a 10% attrition rate, as I did in Friday’s post, we could enroll an entering class of 33,837 JD students each year to generate an ongoing supply of 30,453 graduates per year.
That number of first-year seats represents a whopping 35.5% decline from our peak first-year enrollment in 2010. If the market is pushing law schools toward an equilibrium in which the number of graduates approximates the number of openings for full-time, long-term, law-related work, legal education faces a dramatic decline in JD enrollment.
Will It Really Be That Bad?
These calculations may be unduly pessimistic for at least two reasons. First, they assume that job openings stabilize at 2012 levels. Opportunities could increase; indeed, many legal educators hope that they will. I would be cautious, however, about assuming significant growth. The above calculations already include “JD advantage” jobs, which serve as fallback positions for at least some graduates. Even if the number of jobs for licensed lawyers increases, those jobs may simply substitute for JD advantage positions. That will be good news for the graduates taking those jobs, but it won’t change the overall number of law-related openings for graduates.
Second, law schools may continue to benefit from optimism bias among prospective students. Employment rates may not need to reach 100% for full-time, long-term, law-related jobs; applicants might return to law schools as those rates reach 70%, 80%, or 90%. Employment needs to rise only to the point at which individual applicants think that they will succeed.
Changes in the quality of law positions, however, may counterbalance any optimism bias. Staff attorneys, contract attorneys, and document reviewers have replaced many conventional associates. Law firms and clients have little reason to reverse that trend; these lower-paid, less secure workers perform their tasks quite adequately. The 2012 count of law-related jobs includes many of these positions, and numerous signs suggest that these jobs will continue to displace more secure ones. Even if the entry-level hiring market expands, applicants may not respond to a 70% chance of becoming a document reviewer.
No one can predict exactly when the number of law school graduates will match the number of entry-level jobs making use of those grads’ JD coursework. On balance, however, it seems that first-year enrollments will have to decline considerably more–perhaps to as few as 34,000 students–to reach that equilibrium. Law schools haven’t enrolled that few 1L’s since 1970, when there were 146 accredited law schools.
Could It Be Worse?
Could the numbers be even worse than the ones calculated above? Could the market push first-year enrollments even lower before the numbers stabilize? Sure. There are at least two ways in which my projections may be overly optimistic.
First, I include JD advantage positions in my count of jobs that will satisfy prospective law students. Although some students seek those jobs after law school, others take them only as placeholders. According to NALP’s 2011 Jobs & JDs report, 46.8% of graduates in JD advantage positions were seeking other work. [These reports are available only in hard copy, and I don’t have the 2012 report at hand, but the figure is likely similar.] As prospective students become more savvy about the legal job market, they may discount the availability of JD advantage jobs. Most of these jobs are open to BA’s. If a college senior wants to do compliance, paralegal, or human resource work, why not go directly into the job market?
Second, the entry-level job market may get worse. The last two years have produced some signs of minor improvement, but those years have also been marked by law schools funding their graduates, career services staff exerting heroic efforts, and alumni pitching in to hire graduates during the critical counting period. How much of the improvement in employment rates stems from those efforts? How long are those efforts sustainable?
Stiff competition, meanwhile, continues to characterize the market for legal services. Law schools have graduated a lot of un- and underemployed lawyers during the last five years. Those graduates continue to swell supply, allowing employers to pay lower wages and offer more contingent work. Competition from foreign lawyers, compliance managers, and other educated non-lawyers persists. Technology will continue to reduce the number of lawyers needed to complete many tasks.
Yes, we will always need to lawyers to perform both sophisticated work and in-person counseling. But there are already a lot of lawyers out there in the market. Being realistic about the current oversupply, together with ongoing trends, it’s possible that there will be fewer full-time, long-term positions for entry-level lawyers going forward.
Uncertainty cuts in both directions, and the current market for lawyers is very uncertain. It is possible that attractive entry-level employment for JDs will fall even below 2012 levels.
Implications
As prospective law students obtain more information about legal employment, the market is working for them: Some are seeking opportunities in other fields, leaving more jobs for their peers who are fully committed to law. This is good news for both the students who choose law school and those who pursue other paths. But for law schools, the prospects are sobering. Enrollments are unlikely to return to 2010 levels; indeed, they are most likely to continue falling. How should schools respond?
Some schools are expanding their LLM programs and targeting foreign students. Others are polishing their JD programs in ways that they hope will give them an edge over competing law schools. If some schools close or shrink enrollments, there will be more students for surviving institutions.
But this is also a good time to rethink the framework of legal education. As I have argued before, a three-year JD offers too much education (at too high a price) for many jobs. At the same time, it provides too little training for other positions. We need to unbundle legal education, much as lawyers have disaggregated legal services, to provide education that better matches workforce opportunities.
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