Is law school a good investment? Critics charge that it is not. A key claim is that the employment market for graduates is weak and that odds are low that graduates will secure a job or career that makes the investment of time and money worthwhile.
This claim about employment goes to value, a central question in higher education today. I believe there is a key respect in which law schools needlessly understate the value of a legal education and needlessly encourage the critics.
Take, for example, a report recently released by the National Association for Law Placement. The report contains results of the annual survey of law graduate employment, and one highlight is that "only 65.4 percent obtained a job for which bar passage is required." Another highlight is that "[n]ot quite half (49.5 percent) of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice." Both of these figures reflect declines from prior years.
Standing alone these numbers are data, not norms. The 65.4 percent figure and the 49.5 percent figure are not intrinsically good or bad, high or low. Yet, the unmistakable message of NALP -- a message repeated by many in legal education -- is that the numbers are not good. They are thought not good because of an implicit norm that graduates (at least at graduation) should be in private practice or other jobs for which bar passage is required.
We see this norm in many contexts. For example, it is common in the legal education community to describe jobs for which bar passage is not required as alternative careers. The implication is that these are alternative to real jobs, and somehow second class. The culture of law schools does not provide much encouragement or support for students in the pursuit of these careers.
That attitude is a mistake. The job category of bar passage not required, and the concept of alternative career, lump together Starbucks baristas and McKinsey consultants, and devalue the latter. It is not clear why working as a McKinsey consultant should be thought inferior to working as a public defender or a plaintiff's lawyer. Yet that is the upshot of the prevailing mode of talking and thinking.
It is useful to consider what -- beyond baristas -- is encompassed in the vague category of alternative career. As a start, here is a partial list of jobs and careers held by Valparaiso Law alumni whom I know:
• Vice president for public affairs of a major corporation.
• Human resources directors.
• Executive directors of non-profit organizations.
• Wealth managers.
• FBI agents.
• Global Vice President for Claims of a major insurance company.
• Policy official in a federal agency.
• Real estate developers.
• Consultants (in many fields).
• Lobbyists.
• Business entrepreneurs.
• Project manager.
• Art gallery owner.
• Professors and teachers.
• Fundraisers.
• Foreign Service officer.
• Business managers.
The irony of this list is that law schools have long said that they prepare people for this range of business, government, and other professional careers. Law schools emphasize their expertise in developing highly versatile skills and competences -- in particular, critical reading, analytical reasoning, persuasive writing, and problem solving -- that are valuable in an enormous range of jobs, fields, and business settings. One commonly hears it said -- emphasizing this versatility -- that a J.D. is at least as useful as an M.B.A., if not more.
Yet the message about the strength and versatility of legal education seems forgotten once the conversation turns to actual jobs and careers. This has unfortunate consequences.
One is to underserve students. The market for law practice positions is down today. But as the list shows, law practice positions do not exhaust the good jobs and careers for which law graduates are qualified by their education. Law schools today take seriously their responsibility to provide career-related services. As part of this responsibility, they owe it to students to educate them about the full scope of opportunities available and effectively support students' pursuit of those opportunities.
A second consequence is to understate the value of legal education. The message about the versatility of legal education is half of a strong value proposition. But the value proposition remains incomplete unless schools make clear that they deliver on the promise. If they can deliver, they have a powerful message with potential to attract and serve a wider range of students.
Finally, by underserving students and understating value, schools needlessly support criticism that legal education is not a good path to a rewarding career. Schools are artificially narrowing what counts as a successful outcome of legal education. There is no justification for this restriction and it is inconsistent with deeper statements about what law school is good for. If law schools keep in mind the full scope of valuable career outcomes, and act on that understanding, law schools can better respond to critics while better serving their students.
"a J.D. is at least as useful as an M.B.A., if not more. . . . The market for law practice positions is down today. But as the list shows, law practice positions do not exhaust the good jobs and careers for which law graduates are qualified by their education."
A ridiculous assertion. Law students spend large amounts both in money and in lost opportunity to spend three years studying law (rather than two doing an MBA) to become lawyers. Anecdotal evidence that, out of the thousands of people who have graduated from Valparaiso over the years, a few dozen have good non-law jobs (possibly after having practised as a lawyer) that they might have gotten anyway without the JD, is not proof that this investment paid off. It is not even proof that the JD is as valued as the MBA (however much value an MBA has now). The bottom line is that if a JD from Valparaiso cannot do the one thing it is supposed to do (i.e., get you a job as lawyer) then whatever other incidental benefits it may bring are likely to even more dubious.
Additional comments--
Potential law students: here is ValPo law's Class of 2011 employment data. It's an ugly picture any way you look at it. Too bad none of those 56 unemployed grads were able to use their "versatile" degrees to find these nifty non-legal gigs of which the Dean writes.
http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/clearinghouse/?school=valparaiso&class=2011&show=ABA
Potential law school students also need to know that law schools are now absolutely scrambling to fill their seats, in the face of wider public awareness of the diminishing value of a law degree and skyrocketing tuition. Articles like this are part of an attempt by the law school industry to shore up a quickly sinking ship.
Current ValPo law students/graduates: How many non-legal employers came to your OCI? How many legitimate leads has your OCS given you for non-legal jobs? How much traction are you actually getting in your search for non-legal jobs? Either the Dean's assertions in this article are utterly craven--or he is just unbelievably clueless about how the job market works now. You should let your dean know exactly how "versatile" non-legal employers are finding your law degree; maybe he will then think twice about writing this kind of misleading article in the future.
Of 181 reporting Valparaiso 2011 graduates, only 76 had full-time law jobs nine months after graduation. Five of those just hung out a shingle as solo practitioners, and are probably starving. 56 are unemployed.
http://www.lawschooltransparency.com/clearinghouse/?school=valparaiso&class=2011&show=ABA
Tuition alone at Valparaiso is over $38,000 per year (which is comparatively cheap by current law school standards.
http://www.valpo.edu/law/about-us/valparaiso-profile/facts-figures
Anyone who enrolls there now there -- no matter how hard he plans to work -- is courting economic disaster.
So the dean shows up here with a grotesquely illogical article to the effect that present legal education is great because some people who graduated in another era managed (whether by necessity or choice) to escape from the legal profession and have a successful career.
The fact is, most jobs for RECENT grads that do not require a JD or bar passage are unlikely to pay enough to make the monthly payments on these graduates' AVERAGE debt in the six figures. The debt is even higher if one counts undergraduate debt. The oversupply problem is partly a function of mediocre schools like Valparaiso publishing misleading salary figures that got impressionable students to falsely calculate the return on investment.
Shame on you.
Please read "Failing Law Schools" by Brian Tamanaha and "The Destruction of Young Lawyers" by Douglas Litowitz. The reality of the 21st century for this labor market is radically different from the status quo that baby boomer attorneys lived under, and people such as Mr. Conison are contributing to the problem.
A big problem is that the ABA [seemingly] allows everyone and their mother to open a law school. The market is too saturated. Their needs to be more regulation, akin to what the AMA does with medical schools.
The problem is that recent JDs are not getting the entry-level jobs that allow them to eventually become VP of Claims of a major insurance company. Valparaiso is not going to get them those jobs- they are going to be working at Starbucks not McKinsey. A better article would point to viable non-law careers that RECENT GRADS have been getting.