The other side of outsourcing: India protects its own

The New York Times once again shows up tardy to the party and reports on firms outsourcing loads of entry-level legal work to India. Despite this having been a topic of discussion on scamblogs, ATL, and amongst those "in the know" for some time, the publication of a Times article triggers a flurry of new commentary. Which is, I suppose, just fine. The more we can drill prospective students on the rapid decline of this profession and the income prospects it offers, the better. What's really sad is to see my Facebook news feed alight with current students who have "just discovered" this ugly truth and are "worried" about the lack of jobs out there for them. Talk about having one's head in the sand.

Anyway, one major point that the Times overlooks, and much of the blogosphere discussion passed over, is how one-sided this outsourcing and undercutting of American lawyers is. Firms in the Anglosphere have no problem selling out tens of thousands of young lawyers and law students to save a few bucks up front, despite rampant doubts about the competence and quality of Indian doc review chop shops.

Much ire has (rightly) been directed at the ABA for cheerily signing off on legal outsourcing in its 2008 Ethics Opinion 08-451, thereby consigning thousands of future lawyers to underemployment and breadlines. This is a professional organization which is supposed to protect the interests of its members and preserve the integrity, quality, and yes, the economic viability, of the legal industry. Having shirked their duty in the worst way possible, it's only right that they be called out.

What gets less press is that, unlike the American Bar Association, which is happy to bend to the desires of a few big-money players at the top of the legal pyramid and approve outsourcing, India is one of the few countries that does not allow ANY foreign lawyers to practice law there. Faced with a proliferation of foreign lawyers setting up shop, India's attorneys banded together and put the kibosh on the whole affair. Indian lawyers can (for the moment) breathe easy and not have to worry about foreign workers stealing their client base, undercutting their fees, or otherwise leaving tens of thousands of previously-employable lawyers on the street to starve.

From The Economist:

[T]here is one determined outlier among fast-growing Asian economies: India, the only big country that is closed to foreign lawyers in any capacity. A powerful lobby—ranging from hundreds of thousands of small (often husband-and-wife) practices to a handful of leading partnerships—resists change. Foreigners who tried venturing into the Indian market are still reeling from a decision in December by the Bombay High Court which deemed illegal the “liaison offices” that some outsiders had opened. The Indian government said (rather half-heartedly) that it would appeal against this ruling. But the climate in which law-related work could be undertaken by outsiders has gone from difficult to prohibitive. Reena Sengupta, a London-based consultant, says she used to see foreign-owned legal-research operations in India where beds, not desks, greeted the visitor; such was the keenness to dispel the impression that law was being practised. Now those offices have simply closed.

Indians who need world-class legal advice lose out, says Stuart Popham, a senior partner in Clifford Chance, a London firm, who this week accompanied David Cameron, the British prime minister, on a tour of India. The effect is “to restrict supply and competition and raise prices…you have to fly clients out to meet lawyers elsewhere.” A lot of Indian-related work is done in the more liberal climate of Singapore. Mr Popham says he is frustrated by some Indians’ contention that firms like his own will inevitably take away local jobs. “Liberalisation does not take away anyone’s job…the evidence is that no country has ended up with a smaller domestic legal community after opening up.”

For the Law Society of England and Wales, getting the Indians to free up their market is high on the wish-list. “We want to invest in India’s potential to become a global legal player…this means new work coming to India,” insists Alison Hook, the society’s head of international activities.

But much of her target audience is, as yet, unpersuaded. “The Indian profession will rise up in arms if [foreigners] want to open offices here,” says Lalit Bhasin, head of the Society of Indian Law Firms.

Between the ban on foreigners doing Indian legal work, and the proliferation of Indians doing foreign legal work, it must be a pretty good time to be a lawyer over there. If only our American Bar Association and cohorts had a sense of duty to American lawyers and the legal industry itself, we might see more legal jobs for the legions of unemployable, desperate law graduates. Granted, they will be entry-level, low-paid, and not particularly intellectually challenging. However, when faced with long-term unemployability, or hourly doc review wages, any starving American lawyer will take the doc review gig. Even before 2008, hourly doc review was the bread and butter for many graduates of non-elite schools, and allowed for a somewhat sustainable, if miserable and precarious, existence. Now, even this low-rung safety net has been shipped off to India.

It's a sure bet that nothing will be done to stop the hemorrhaging of legal jobs overseas, just as nothing will be done to turn of the spigot of newly-admitted law students who rush into law schools in ever-increasing numbers, paying tuition that increases by leaps and bounds every year, without fail.

The farce that launched a thousand lemmings

If you're like me, your morning romp through internet front-pages is peppered with bullshit articles about "Ten Hot Jobs," or "Careers that make $50k with no college degree!" It's always a good idea to ignore these fluff pieces that are written by journalism majors who have no experience or firsthand knowledge of the "hot industries" they write about, but I couldn't help but notice this entry on a list of "10 Jobs that pay $50 per hour."

02. Attorney / Lawyer
Hourly pay: $51.33 - $102.00

Love 'em or hate 'em, they'll always have a job. From building a new office building to sorting out a will, lawyers are essential to all kinds of negotiations and business processes. As a lawyer, you can specialize in the area that most suits your strengths and interests, like justice for children or patent law for new technologies. To get working as a lawyer, you need to complete an undergraduate degree, three years of law school and pass a state bar exam.

It's grossly uninformed horseshit like this, spewed out constantly by "news" organizations, that contributes to the (painfully incorrect) public perception of lawyers. A lot of parents of directionless college seniors probably read this claptrap, because it's of that special variety of feelgood human-interest puff that so appeals to boomers. There are plenty of hopeless 20somethings out there with no skills and a history of average academic performance who will see a piece like this and decide that law school is their ticket out of the doldrums. Hey, there is a local TTT with a glossy brochure that might be right up their alley!

In a horrible economy, there is an ever-increasing number of desperate 20somethings grasping at straws. Coincidentally, there is an ever-increasing number of law school applicants, despite the declining number of job openings. I never get tired of mentioning that every single college-graduate friend or acquaintance I regularly keep in contact with is either in grad or law school, or in the process of applying. Having graduated college with an exciting array of lawn mowing and house painting opportunities awaiting them, I can't blame the Lost Generation for aspiring to something better (like gainful, full-time, professional employment) and going to law school. Unfortunately, this decision is so often colored by misinformation peddled by media blowhards, starry-eyed, stuck-in-the-80s parents, and (especially) the law school charlatans themselves.

So here's to all of the lies, nonsense, and hogwash that will delude and mislead the next crop of 45,000 law students who will be matriculating this fall. We can even make our own list of "10 Jobs that will cost you $50k a year."

02. Attorney / Lawyer
Yearly cost: $30,000 - 60,000 (include three years)
Hourly pay: $0.00 - $15.00 (no benefits)

Even though everyone hates them (and no one hates them more than they themselves), the vast majority of them will never have a job. From rummaging through dumpsters in a Walgreen's parking lot after dark, to filing frivolous family court motions in an attempt to get their non-paying client possession of a set of bunk beds, lawyers are essential to all kinds of subhuman subsistence-level tactics and low-paid, unskilled hourly labor. As a lawyer, you can see your dreams of specializing in the area that most suits your strengths and interests be crushed as you are relegated to standing in a breadline, or poring over documents for $15/hour with no benefits. Ideal practice areas like justice for children or patent law for new technologies are red herrings that will mislead tens of thousands of clueless, wayward young 0Ls like you every year. To even be considered to work as a lawyer, you need to complete and pay for an undergraduate degree, three years of overpriced law school during which you will learn no practical skill, and pay for and pass a state bar exam. Then, you will actually need to find one of the (nonexistent) jobs.

Unemployed TTT grads take the bar, then what?

Minnesota Lawyer gave us this dandy video featuring a bunch of recent TTT grads reflecting on the bar exam they were all about to take this week.



This video is part the of general coverage of the bar exam that happens every year. While asking banal questions like "how hard did you study, when did you go to sleep?" isn't unusual, it is sad that none of the TTT or TTTT grads featured in this clip mention employment, and those that do are most definitely UNEMPLOYED with no prospects on the horizon. It's just a LITTLE ridiculous, when these kids are swimming in debt and are totally unemployable, to focus on vapid questions like what kind of cereal they ate for breakfast before the exam. At least this year's TTT interviewees are just a bit less depressing than last year's.

Given that the four law schools in this small market spew out 1,000 new grads every year, things must be especially tough for TTT grads trying to find work. Despite its relatively small population, Minnesota boasts the 12th highest lawyer per capita ratio in the Union, with 11.2 lawyers for every 10,000 people. When even your local T-25, the University of Minnesota, graduates more than half of its Class of 2010 without jobs, one can only imagine how much more awful thing must be down in the TTTs, or especially at the local TTTT, Hambone University School of Law.

How long are these people going to allow themselves to be scammed? After suffering through three years and tens of thousands of dollars' worth of hell, just to end up unemployed, it must feel great to be plunking down for bar review and the exam without having the slightest idea about where you will eventually find work. These folks from the lower tiers are, sadly, especially likely to never find work as lawyers. Nando has already given us a trio of excellent exposés about the dismal employment prospects offered by these law school puppy mills. I must grudgingly admire the irrational optimism that these grads display in continuing on the road toward lawyerdom, but as a scamblogger, I know what awaits them. We've had a smattering of commenters from these schools show up on the scamblogs in the past few months, and none of them paints a rosy picture of their class' employment. In fact, they all agree that most of their former classmates are unemployed, indebted, and desperate. Yet the charlatans and book-cookers who run these institutions are still busy tallying the seat deposits and packing the next 1L class in time for the fall semester.

Ah, to be a recent and unemployed grad. No longer will the school shelter you from debt collectors, no longer will you be able to tell people you're "in school." No longer will you have access to any kind of job you might have been able to snag as a student (because it was cheaper to hire you part-time for $15/hour). Now, no one wants you. Thus begins the long, depressing decline into a broken state of misery. How long will it be before these poor souls attempt to slink back to their former employers, broken and distraught, but $90,000 in the red? With 1,000 new, unemployable lawyers to feed in Minnesota, my guess is that there will be a boom in well-educated Starbucks assistant managers, volunteer librarians, and applicants to yet more forms of graduate education in the coming months. A job well done for all concerned. Thank you, MinnesoTTTa law schools.

Carrot on a stick for 3Ls

With yet another horrendous academic year approaching, there are many jobless 3Ls wandering the world in a shellshocked state. The few who landed gainful, paid employment for this summer are scrambling and praying they are one of the elect who will snag an offer. Many more are volunteering at places that are glad to take their free work, but that will never consider offering them a real, paying job, even if they had the funding. It’s a grand feeling, paying for “work clothes,” gas, parking, and lunches just to work in a back room at some shitty government office that doesn’t care about you and is just glad to cut down their workload. It’s doubly fun when your school offers to charge students tuition for these unpaid internships. Apart from these privileged pay-to-work students, maybe some lucked out and are doing 10 hours of research for a professor every week. In any case, 3Ls must be looking forward to the coming semester with dread. 3L OCI doesn’t exist, and those who didn’t snag one of the few remaining “real” jobs this past summer are out of luck. After this summer, those who don’t do the prudent thing and drop out will have to double-down and pay for the bar before they have a shot at applying for jobs after graduation.

The memories of the unemployed class of 2010 are still fresh, and all signs point to things being at least as bad for the class of 2011. Given this dark, ominous, looming storm cloud of doom that hangs over 3Ls, it’s perfectly natural for them to despair. Yet if one were to trek over to a typical career “services” office at your local law school, they would be forgiven for thinking that everything is bright and sunny in the hiring market. With more than half of their classes full of unemployed and increasingly angry students, administrators are scrambling to whip up a fresh batch of lies and tall tales from their best shit-tainted recipes. At the risk of losing out on 30-50k per student if they see the light and drop out, the schools are pulling out all the stops in order to delude as many 3Ls into thinking they can still find work in the legal world. Let's take a look at some of the most tried and and (un)true stories that career services charlatans use to bait desperate 3Ls.

Clerkships! They’ll say.
Even in the best of times, most federal judges want top 10-20% and law review, and they recruit from top schools. Don’t believe me? Do an OSCAR search with a filter that will show judges who “prefer” YOUR credentials, and see what comes up. There will be a few who “prefer” top 20%, but where does that leave the other 80% of the class? Never mind the fact that federal clerkships have always been the last resort for T14 grads who missed out on biglaw, and the application process is going to be flooded by thousands of extra first tier students who were deferred, no-offered, or just came up short at OCI. If you're one of the many T1 students with law review credentials and a presumably plum position in your class rank, you might as well go for it. I certainly know a lot of 3Ls who are on law review that didn't get any job for this summer, so they'll probably be in the clerk pipeline. Along with thousands and thousands of others. Not in the top 20% of your class, on law review, at a T1 school? Yeah, me neither. Like most legal job searches, those who apply for clerkships are taking a bucketful of darts and chucking it at the wall. For a lucky, select (and T-14-credentialed) few, one of those darts just might stick. Unfortunately, just not for the majority of hopeless 3Ls.

State court clerkships! Great, if you can get them. Most of the most populous states are under severe budget constraints and a hiring freeze. Elsewhere, they are deciding to rearrange folks and make do with less, permanently. “Target your job search to unconventional locales and places you might not have thought of. The experience may prove rewarding.” Gee, thanks, I’m sure no one else has thought of that. In smaller/less populous states, clerkships are often at-will and law clerks are often “lifers” who have made a career out of their work, and stay on year after year at the behest of a judge. If you luck out and find a state that is still hiring enough clerks right out of school, don’t worry about the competition from thousands of other desperate law grads, many of them from T-14 schools that are tantalizing these backwater judges with their credentials for the first time. Depending on how low you sink, if you pull a gig like traffic court clerk, you will enjoy lateraling to Wal-Mart after your time is up. Assuming everything goes your way, congratulations. After completing your one or two year stint as a clerk, you’ll be back on the street. Hope you saved your $40,000 salary for that time.

Join the JAG! Serve your country! This is also misguided advice for the great majority of people, and is becoming a favorite of career services shills in this bad economy. They even have a cheesy TV show and maybe a Kurt Russell movie to refer people who have never heard of JAG to. The general consensus of JAGs that I've spoken to is that this program was surprisingly selective even before the recession (like single digits). Since the recession decimated the legal industry, applications to JAG have soared and pushed the selection rate as low as 1% for some branches and boards, with most people having to sit for two or three rounds of selection boards before getting seriously considered. (For aspiring JAGs, that will push your job search out 12-18 months.) A JAG in one branch of the service told me applications were up 600% for last year.

This seems a particularly silly option to be throwing out to law students, who as a whole are known to be bookish, pasty, and often not in prime physical condition. I’m extremely supportive of anyone who can hack the military and do their very-necessary job, but having spent years around law students, I can say that the majority of them probably aren’t cut out for it. Especially at a “top” law school, most students came with lofty dreams of legal employment and “the good life,” not waking up every morning at 4:30 for a PT run. There are some good stories floating around the internet of hapless, recession-motivated law students botching JAG interviews. Long story short, if you don’t look and act the part for military service, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. Perhaps I’m wrong, and thousands more hopeless law students will heed career services and turn up for JAG boards. If so, I’m sure it will be even more of a clusterfuck and end up crushing their dreams even more.

3L OCI! This is a golden unicorn that shits rainbows if there ever was one. No one is going to hire you from 3L OCI, because it quite frankly is an urban legend. Does your school even HAVE 3L OCI? Better check on that, and make sure it’s not just a resume collect or a few token firms coming through to interview only candidates eligible for the patent bar (i.e. not you). NALP has noted that, before the crash, big firms picked up a paltry, single-digit percentage number of 3Ls anyway. Now, your chances of getting a decent firm job through 3L OCI are, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

What does that leave us with? Flooding shitlaw firms with resumes in those panic-filled few months before graduation? Heaven forbid you’re among the 70% of your classmates who will graduate without a job. Then, your employment prospects REALLY dry up, and if you want to continue playing the game, you’ve got to come up with a few thousand bucks for bar review. “But I can’t get an attorney job and keep applying after I’ve graduated if I’m not barred!” Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Just as soon as you graduated after paying at least $30,000 a year for school, you need to keep paying thousands of dollars just to stay in the game, which you have an extremely low probability of winning anyway, at this point.

Soon, it's May 2011 and here we are graduating another class from a first tier toilet, 2/3 of whom have NO JOB in ANY field. That sure was exhausting. I’m glad the deans gave themselves a raise this year (not too dramatic, though, it’s a recession). Maybe one of those unemployed recent grads…the ones who aren’t working in the career services office or the library, part-time for $10/hour, can wax the dean’s boat this summer? That definitely counts as EMPLOYED for the school’s reporting to US News.

Esq Never’s advice to 3Ls rings true: drop out. For a majority, the job search will be long, hard, and tens of thousands will eventually have to find employment outside of the law that never required a J.D. Save a year’s worth of tuition, your bar expenses, and avoid the J.D. stain on your resume. If you can’t bear to sacrifice the already-sunken costs of time and money you’ve put into your degree, impress upon some rich uncle the need to put up your tuition. Your family might panic if they think your J.D. dreams are in danger of vanishing, and that sense of desperation just might work in your favor. Other than that, I dunno? Sell a kidney, start gambling hard? There’s got to be some way to come up with the cash if you’re that desperate to stay in law school. If you ask me, seeing your student loan balance a good $30k lower and not wasting another year of your life, only to emerge in an indefinite unemployment purgatory, is reward enough.

Fo0Ls Rush In. (Why, God, Why?!?)

From The National Law Journal, we have another piece about naïve, hubristic 0Ls.
Scambloggers have noted with dismay that law school applications are on the rise even as the legal profession continues to contract. With prospects for recent and future grads so horrible, and the word finally getting out through some mainstream media sources, one would hope that it had some deterrent effect. No need to worry, though, because "the applicant pool also appeared a bit savvier than its predecessors, as far as reading the fine print, admissions deans reported. Admissions offices fielded more questions than ever about job placement rates, career services and finances." Thank God, these kids are well-prepared and full of information fed to them by admissions deans. I was really worried there for a moment. If only the schools didn’t send out their best shills and respond to all of these queries by blowing smoke and lying their asses off about these very statistics, these kids might stand a fighting chance.

Yet even an industry cheerleader publication like the NLJ can't hide its disbelief about the naivete of prospective students. I especially like the lead photo montage of 0Ls with the caption "WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?" The article then goes on to talk about how law school applications are booming, deans are hungry for students, and 0Ls are ignoring the blood-curdling screams and foul stench of death emanating from the schools they are touring during admitted students day.

The piece also cited what is probably my favorite statistic from all of this law school meltdown mayhem: "In a recent survey of 330 prelaw student by Kaplan Test Prep, 52% felt "very confident" that they would land a legal job after graduation, although only 16% felt confident that most of their fellow graduates would be as successful." Not to minimize the hubris of 52% of these 0Ls, but how about the 48% who presumably do NOT feel "very confident" about landing a legal job? If about half of these prospective 0Ls aren't confident they will get a legal job, what possesses them to plunk down six figures for the degree?

What really boggles the mind about these articles is that they always manage to find some nontraditional student who already has a decent job, or someone who actually worked in a law firm, to interview.

Arline Laurer is among those banking on a turnaround during the next three years. The 21-year-old from a small town outside Rochester, N.Y., plans to begin studies at the University of Toledo College of Law next month. An internship at the Kings County district attorney's office in Brooklyn, N.Y., while an undergraduate at St. John's University solidified her ambitions.

"I've been watching [the legal job market] pretty closely — especially in the past year, as I get closer to going to law school," she said. "I'm obviously about to take on a lot of debt. I'm hoping by the time I get out of law school the job climate will be better."

One would think that, having worked in local government, where hiring freezes and working for free are the norm, this 0L would be skeptical of her chances of emerging as a salaried lawyer. The office she worked in was being staffed by UNDERGRAD interns, and certainly a host of unemployed volunteer law grads. When she looked around at all of the unpaid co-workers, did that not have any effect? Then there are the people who are pushing 30 and are ready to throw in the towel on their current career.

Law school has always in the back of Minnesota native Emily Johns' mind, but she gave it a more serious look during the past two years as her employer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, declared bankruptcy and offered buyouts.

"First and foremost, I'm doing this because I want to be a lawyer, not because I'm running away from these scary times in the journalism industry," said Johns, 28, an education reporter who will soon be a 1L at the University of Minnesota Law School. "But it did make me think seriously about my Plan B. I think I'm doing to right thing. There's no way you can know for sure."

After suffering through the journalism bloodbath, and being lucky enough to have a job as a reporter in that dying industry, I would be a little more skeptical before vaulting into another risky, dying profession. Especially if it had the potential to cost me $100,000 or more before ever working a day as a lawyer. Also, if she always wanted to be a lawyer, isn't that what she would have pursued after school, instead of journalism? Let's make up our minds, 0Ls. Which horrible, dying career field do you want to meet your doom in?

I was glad to see the scambloggers' old pal Professor Tamanaha make an appearance and offer this bold-faced warning (which no one will heed):

The tipping point — when the cost of law school will dissuade those are not seriously interested in practicing law — is on the horizon, Tamanaha said. He cautioned, however, that he has made that prediction before.

"In 15 years of teaching, I've known a lot of students who came here because they didn't know what they wanted to do," Tamanaha said. "A lot of this is about cyclical irrational decision-making. It's based on a very human trait, which is overoptimism. For the people who have always wanted to be a lawyer, they should go to law school. For anyone else, it's not a good decision."

There you have it, kids, straight from the professor's mouth. How many of us really, truly, "always wanted to be a lawyer." Not the majority of current or prospective students, who are mostly here because they (erroneously) believed that lawyers make decent money.

The piece ends with four short profiles of prospective students. Talk about ripe material. We’ve got lifelong lovers of the law, a nontrad, and plenty of willful ignorance. There's a theater major and future victim of Drake. There are people who turned down actual paying jobs, and lots of dreams of entering arcane, impossible-to-crack-into, or nonexistent practice areas.

"I was surprised by how many people were planning on going to law school," said Klatt, 22, who just graduated from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, with a degree in ¬theater and English. "It may be because of the economy. Right now, in the job market, there's nothing."

Klatt isn't using law school as a delay tactic, even if some of her classmates are. She has wanted to be an attorney since childhood and saw no point in putting off her career ambitions because of turmoil in the legal industry. After months of research, she settled on Drake University Law School in Des Moines, Iowa — a school she considers vastly underrated.

She hopes to become an advocate for the disabled, partly because she has watched people take advantage of her handicapped brother and other vulnerable people.

Although Klatt is confident that law school is the right choice for her, the price tag of a J.D. still leaves her a little queasy. Drake offered a scholarship that will cover half her tuition, but Klatt still expects to take out about $90,000 in loans.

I really, really hope Ms. Klatt finds her way over to Third Tier Reality before sending in that first semester tuition deposit.

Then there are the folks who claim they're aware of "how bad things are," but are steaming full speed ahead anyway.

Payne, 25, insists she's not looking at the legal world through rose-colored glasses. She has friends who have been laid off from paralegal and clerk jobs with law firms, and is well aware that the industry is unstable right now. Even so, she would like to land a job at a law firm and perhaps specialize in the legal issues surrounding social media — an area she manages for a Washington nonprofit.

So she's presumably witnessed your friends suffering layoffs and firms cutting back, and that the industry is "unstable." Better still, it appears Ms. Payne has a paying job with a nonprofit. How many 25-year-olds can say that, in this economy? How many liberal arts majors dreamed of working for a nonprofit, only to be on the part-time roster at Walgreens? Count your blessings, Ms. Payne. But you've got nothing on

Yazmin Wadia, who acknowledges that she hasn't been paying as much attention to the legal job market as she probably should, given that she is poised to start law school next month.

Granted, the 20-year-old has had plenty of other things occupying her time and mind — not the least of which was completing her undergraduate degree in political science and history in just three years at Arizona State University.

Wadia turned down a paying job at The Public Forum Institute, a nonprofit in Washington that promotes public discourse, in part because she felt that she wasn't yet ready to join the 9-to-5 workday grind. Instead, she plans to attend Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore., which lured her with a scholarship and a strong public interest law program. She hopes to parlay a law degree into a job with a large nonprofit in Washington such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League or Amnesty International.

While she hasn't done as much research as she knows she should into the job prospects for new law graduates, she understands that she'll face stiff competition to land her dream legal gig. "It definitely does scare me, knowing that you're competing in the job market with Ivy League graduates from Harvard and Yale," she said. "But it doesn't hurt to try. What's the worst that can happen?"

What's the worst that can happen? It'll only cost an inquisitive 0L three years and $100,000 to find out!

The Battle for a 0L’s Soul

Over at the Minnesota Lawyer blog, they actually do a good job of regularly posting articles about the horrible prospects for J.D.s . Thus, I was a little disappointed to see a post seeking advice for a prospective student who wants to decide which local TTT to attend. The result is an ongoing comment war between supporters of TTTT Hamline and TTT William Mitchell. The lost soul who originally asked the question let it be known that she is 100% set on going to law school, so we should not try and dissuade her. She merely wants to hear about the relative merits of these trash bins when making her decision.

As a Minnesotan myself, I feel particularly well-suited to add my two cents on the matter. I applied to William MiTTTchell and St. TTThomas (but not fourth-tier Hambone) when I was a wayward 0L, although I thankfully wised up and made it into the presTTTigious UniversiTTTY of MinnesoTTTa, home to the 30%-employed Class of 2010. St. Thomas actually had the decency to offer me some big bucks, but it wasn’t enough to entice me. Mitchell had the audacity to expect me to pay sticker price to attend their spittoon of law. (The U came through with a scholarship after all. Not like it made any difference in the end.)

Nando over at Third Tier Reality has already done a great expose of the two dung heaps of law that our poor 0L is considering, so I won’t go into the details of how much they will pillage your finances and/or soul.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is a funny legal market. With four law schools in this mid-size city, 1,000 new J.D.s are defecated out into this oversaturated field every year. Minnesota as a state has one of the highest lawyer per capita ratios in the Union, despite it being pretty small population-wise. When I was considering law school, the general consensus was “get into the U of M or else your life will become a living hell.” Well, having gone to the U of M, and my life being even worse than I ever imagined, I don’t know how helpful this advice was. I can’t imagine how much worse things are coming out of the local TTTs.

In a market when T-14 graduates are getting screwed left and right, why would anyone seriously consider one of these dumps? I have to chalk it up to inability to follow the news, and/or "it won't happen to me" syndrome. In better times, Mitchell grads would have had a reasonable shot at eking out an existence in shitlaw or solo practice, but plenty of them still slipped through the woodwork. Hamline did even worse…it’s most prestigious grad is arguably a former local TV news anchor. In this market, students from the “best” school in town, which is generally agreed to be head-and-neck above its peers, aren’t finding jobs. How can any lawyer or law student in good conscience recommend a third-tier-toilet to a clueless 0L, who is looking for help?

The advice given to this 0L essentially devolved into a war between TTT cheerleaders who cite the “great practical experience” these toilets offer, versus disillusioned lawyers and graduates of these schools who are urging this 0L to reconsider.

The shills:

“Mitchell is known for its practical skills courses and clinics.”

“Mitchell has more alumni, which can be good for networking.”

“Hamline was a very good experience for me. I also had a lot of professors who were practicing or had recently practiced and were able to make legal issues come alive.”

“Making the choice between Mitchell and Hamline is simple: Mitchell is the better choice. I know many big-firm lawyers (and people in the government, and people at non-profits, etc.) who went to Mitchell and loved it. Mitchell is a fine school with solid legal education. And their career services people work very hard indeed.”

A nugget of honesty:

“But please reconsider. Mitchell and Hamline are both terrible choices for the vast majority of students. Almost everybody after graduation finds that their job choices are very limited, their career trajectories are flat, and they can’t get the kind of experience they want. . The very best people in any school will do fine. Chances are, I’m sorry to say, that you will not be in the top of the class.”

The best place for this wayward 0L to look is at actual recent grads of the schools:

“I’m a 2009 Hamline grad. I graduated with honors. I’m still unemployed. There’s a data point for you.
Good luck!
PS — it’s not too late to go to medical school.”

“Do not go to law school. The legal market is terrible, and it is going to keep getting worse: law classes are getting larger and larger. Top 1/4 students from UMN Law are having trouble finding jobs. You will be eaten alive unless those schools are offering you full-ride scholarships.”

“The legal market is terrible right now, no real news flash there. But if you are going to choose a MN school either go to the U and make sure to place in the top 25%, or go to Mitchell on a scholarship and place in the top 10%. If you can’t do that, don’t go to law school in the Twin Cities. And I’m not just saying that with regards to placing at a large firm, I’m saying that about having a chance at getting a legal job period when you graduate.
Hamline should never be an option.”

Which side will come away with the victory? Will the law school shills claim another bloody scalp from a hapless 0L? Will this woefully uninformed prospective student find her way to the scambloggers and others dedicated to exposing the law school scam? Classes are two months away, and the oilcan deans are busy making sure every seat will be filled with a warm body. Godspeed, "Jackie" the 0L, and may you see the light and run far, far away from law school.

NYT tiptoes around law school scam

Yesterday brought another mainstream media piece about some of the shenanigans going on in legal education. Grade inflation is not exactly a great way to give students a leg-up in a horrible job market, especially when more and more schools are doing it. Additionally, as the article notes, employers are hip to the jive and are thus unlikely to care that a student's GPA is .333 higher.

It's good to see the paper give a skeptical glance to this grade-meddling. However, the NYT dropped the ball by failing to mention the larger problems that cause schools to come up with half-assed schemes like a GPA boost. The utter lack of legal jobs and the unemployment massacre that J.D. grads are entering after school is the root cause of these limpwristed efforts to aid students. As the article notes, how much of a boon these schemes will provide is quite debatable.

In an article that casts a suspicious eye on grade inflation and efforts by schools to pay employers to "test drive" their grads, more ought to have been said about what a bloody, suicidal clusterfuck law school has become. Instead, readers are given a few lines that passively reference the boiling cauldron of excrement that is the law school scam.

Once able to practically guarantee gainful employment to thousands of students every year, the schools are now fielding complaints from more and more unemployed graduates, frequently drowning in student debt.

"Fielding complaints" from "more and more" (read: tens of thousands) of graduates sounds a lot like the righteous anger of the law school scambloggers and other scammed grads. Yet a mere reference to "complaints" makes the whole backlash against law school seem wholly insignificant and whiny. There is a whole lot more going on than just a few complaints being filed!

As long as mainstream media outlets temper their reporting about the problems in legal education with an overall positive assessment, casual readers (like 0Ls and their parents) are not going to get the message. They might come away with some inkling that all is not well in law school land, but will just write it off. After all, it definitely isn't going to happen to THEM! As long as the plight of the tens of thousands of scammed grads is characterized as "a few complaints," or an aberration on the road to $160k salaries, unknowing students will continue to matriculate. I'm not expecting the NYT or any other respectable paper to adopt the tone of a scambuster, but it would be nice to see them give a harder look to the problems facing law grads.

Government work is NOT an alternative to private practice

It’s exasperating to hear naïve 0Ls, 1Ls, and even some dumber upperclassmen, talk about public-sector work like it is still a viable option for them. They'll say how are disappointed they are that biglaw is closed, but they will just go and work for “the government” instead. They usually cite something about how the lower salaries are worth working fewer hours and devoting yourself to “more meaningful” work.

These jobs were always scarce before the recession, and they also paid crap compared to the 100 or 150 thousand dollar debt students have. For as many law students that professed their desire to work in the public sector, there were never enough of these positions for them even in the best of times. They are even more scarce now as many government and nonprofit employers have seen their budgets crater. Those that are still around aren’t paying you any more than they ever were. Only a few schools have a worthwhile LRAP program that will make any significant dent in your debt, and they all happen to be top schools. If you go to a crap school or even a first tier toilet, and expecting to be bailed out by your school in exchange for taking a $35,000 yearly salary from some legal aid group...it ain't going to happen.

To anyone who has been living under a rock lately, government isn’t exactly a boom industry when it comes to jobs for law grads. Fluff news stories like to talk about how government is one of the only sectors growing. This is true...if you are a temporary census worker, or are willing to enter at the bottom of the pay scale as a Forestry Service technician making $9/hour. There are not, however, thousands of new legal positions being created. The tens of thousands of unemployed or temporarily-employed JDs out there are not going to find full-time attorney jobs with the government.

State and local government is much, much worse off than the feds. Several states that are home to a lot of unemployed lawyers are ready to implode for lack of funding. They aren’t exactly on a hiring boom. Many other states have severely constrained budgets and are trimming their judicial branches, county legal services, and the like. State-level judges are cautioning that this austerity, lack of funding, and lack of personnel is going to be long term (read: permanent).

No, you’re not going to be able to slide into a job as assistant city attorney or public defender with ease. As you may have noticed, every recent grad who hasn’t yet committed suicide is plastering the few remaining government jobs with resumes. There are tends of thousands of newly-minted, unemployed JDs trying to find ANY sort of paid work. Local governments are taking advantage of this bumper crop of unemployed law students and recent graduates by taking them on as volunteers, with no promise, prospect, or insinuation that they will ever get a job.

Back at the federal level, there are only a tiny amount of attorney positions open. They are being filled by biglaw refugees with fancy degrees and gold-plated experience at some of the nation’s premier firms. In other words, not slack-jawed recent graduates, or TTT lawyers looking to move up onto the federal general schedule. One of my good friends, from back in the day before I lost half of my brain mass and decided to go to law school, actually works for the federal government. The Department of Justice probably has a lot of lawyers and is a good place to sample what hiring at the federal level is like. Let’s see what he says:

“Even before the recession a lot of these jobs were only looking at 5% of applicants, now it's much less. No one looks at the thousands of USAjobs applicants, you need something stellar to stand out. We have a lot of solid talent from the private sector coming in, our division hired some experienced attorneys from big firms in the past year or so. All the people in my office who have degrees from places like UConn or non-Ivy schools were here long before the economy got bad. DOJ has its pick of experienced lawyers with white shoe credentials. Everyone is trying to get into the federal government because it’s more secure.”

Wait, where was the part about them hiring new grads or students from shitty schools?

Bottom line: government work is AT LEAST as hard to get as a halfway decent private sector job, if not harder. I think all but the most delusional students outside the very top schools have given up their dreams of biglaw. Students need to start giving up their hopes of government work: local government doesn’t have the money to hire you, and the feds would prefer experienced lawyers with excellent academic credentials from top schools. Your students and grads from the T14 are also shut out of biglaw and are trickling down to take entry-level government jobs that might have considered you in the past.

What does that leave you? Bankrupting yourself starting a solo practice, or working for some schlubby shitlaw practitioner in traffic court or family law for $25k a year. There is probably some of that work to be found, but still not enough for the 45,000 law grads emerging every year. So don’t lose heart, you might still find "a job." Do write back when your prelaw dreams of legal glory clash with the realities of shitlaw.

New York-bound 0L should consider Fordham!

Above the Law did a nice little profile of a typical 0L who is headed to law school to kill time and ride out the recession. In New York, no less, where in addition to paying confiscatory tuition he can cough up for the ridiculous cost of living.

A lot of bloggers try to keep the kid-gloves on when talking about 0Ls. They think that by gently presenting the awful jobs data and sobering testimonials, 0Ls will see the light and reverse course. Prospective law students are really smart, right? Surely they can take these facts and arrive at a rational decision.

Apparently not, as prospective students continue to logjam themselves into schools and take the LSAT in record numbers. For every would-be biglaw associate over at top-law-schools, there are probably two or three times as many Ryan Kams. In my anecdotal experience from 1L orientation, those of us who frequented forums, blogs, and sites like lawschoolnumbers.com, numbered perhaps 30. This didn't make us any smarter, but we had spent the past six months learning what OCI was and trying to one-up each other on our reasons for going to law school.

This would-be 0L doesn't even feign an interest in "the law."

"As far as I'm concerned, evading the real world for a little bit is not a bad idea, especially with the current economic climate," Kam says. "Law school is a great way to kill time."

Yes, it's also a great way to kill your future and finances.

Perhaps we ought to take it to Mr. Kam directly. This can be a case study in shattering the law school myth. His mom joined the service out of college when there were no job prospects, something that in retrospect I also should have done. In any case, more 0Ls need to be taking a serious second look at a J.D. They can start by not believing the self-published employment and salary numbers schools put out. How might they find out what it's really like? Talk to the actual students.

One intrepid 0L over at TLS is on the right track:

“[H]ow would T20-40 grads at median be getting halfway decent jobs... ... ::bites lip:: ... are T20-40 grads at median finding decent law jobs???”

Glad you asked! And the short answer is no. I do give you props for asking, and for assuming that you'll be near the median at a mid-ranked school. Ten points for realistic expectations.

Let's take a look at one of these schools, number 34-ranked Fordham. While previously the top third of the class could look forward to good jobs, these days they're all screwed. And let's not forget what the bottom 2/3 of the class must have gone through, even before the recession. (This would include students at the median.) For only $62,000 a year, prospective students like Ryan Kam can also go to law school and end up working for free, or for $9/hour, like the poor souls in this article. Fordham self-reports 85.3% of its grads as employed, so you might still have a shot at an unpaid six-month volunteer position!

But hey, Fordham can't be THAT bad. I mean, Michael Clayton went there. Plus, it's in New York and is probably right up Mr. Kam's alley. Every prospective 0L who thinks they can hibernate near the median for three years in law school and emerge after the winter of recession, please listen to those who have gone before you:

"I mean, it's not just this summer we're talking about, this is the rest of our lives."

I couldn't have put it better myself, anonymous Fordham 2L. Perspective might be hard to come by as a 22-year old. It certainly was for me, and look where I ended up...in law school!