Stracher's essay in the WSJ attacks the notion that law school helps you "keep your options open" and cites a few statistics of note:
- Salaries have climbed steadily, and lawyers at the top firms can expect to make about $160,000 upon graduation from law school. Nice, right? Read on...
- Large law firms, those employing more than 500 lawyers, lose nearly 40% of their associates within four years of hiring them.
- After six years, the ratio climbs to 60%.
- According to a recent study by the National Association for Law Placement Foundation, 42% of lawyers in small firms (and 50% in solo practices) have changed jobs within three years of graduation, and two-thirds of them have switched two or more times.
About the last number, Stracher postulates that "One way to interpret the numbers is to conclude that such lawyers have plentiful opportunities and are moving to better jobs. The same group, however, tends to have less stellar credentials and to have graduated lower in their class than their colleagues at big firms, leaving them fewer options, and suggesting that these attorneys are even more dissatisfied than their big-firm contemporaries."
That seems a bit cynical to me, but he gets to his ultimate point again later in the article:
"At $38,000 a year for law school, plus living expenses, law-school graduates certainly have a lot of debt ($60,000 on average, upon graduation). For this price, college students and their parents should be thinking harder about their choices. When I went to law school, nearly everyone tried to convince me that doing so would 'keep my options open.' All this really means is: 'You can still be a lawyer.'"
I think he takes the latter point just a bit too far--having a JD can open doors outside the legal field. One of IU Law's graduates that teaches as an adjunct here is the CEO of a major health/hospital group in Indianapolis. Our Assistant Dean of Admissions told me about one of his classmates that went from a major Indianapolis firm to general counsel for one of his clients to CEO. Is the JD a magic ticket? No, no more so than an MBA or CPA is a magic ticket. It is, however, an important credential that can combine with other experience to put you a leg up over others and a rung up on the corporate path (larger/better companies, public companies, etc.).
Stracher points out another statistic: "The mean salary for graduates of top 10 law schools is $135,000 while it is $60,000 for "tier three" schools. It's certainly possible that tier-three graduates tend to gravitate toward lower-paying public-interest and government jobs, but this lower salary may also reflect the nonlegal nature of many of these jobs and the fact that these graduates are settling for anything that will pay the bills."
Again, I think that he overstates this just a bit, but the subtle point here for prospective law students is to choose carefully. That doesn't mean "Go to the highest Tier 1 school you can get admitted to or transfer to" but it does mean that you should choose carefully. Look carefully at your law school's career services office. Talk to alums and 3Ls about it. Ask them what kind of help they received and whether or not they and their classmates generally got placed in positions they wanted...or just took what they could get.
Look carefully, too, at where students get placed. Based on discussions that I've had with people on our admissions committee and people in admissions and career services offices at other schools, if you want to work for a mid-size firm in Chicago, for example, then the University of Chicago (a great school, don't get me wrong) might not be the best place for you. If you want to teach, U of Chicago is perfect. Or, if you want to work in Indianapolis, you'll find getting placement easier if you attend IU-Indy or IU-Bloomington than you will with Northwestern or Cornell.
For prospective students considering coming to Indiana here in Bloomington, or just looking in general, I'll tell you all that you need to know about IU's committment. Our Dean for Students and the Dean herself are personally invested in seeing IU grads placed in jobs that will be productive and successful for that graduate's situation. When I say "personally invested," I mean that I've watched both of them take time out of their busy schedules to personally stump for jobs for grads who, for whatever reason, didn't get picked up by a firm or just weren't on the ball early enough in the job hunting process. I'm no law school expert, but having visited a bunch of "Tier 1" schools--both for admission and in considering a transfer--I never got that feeling of committment anywhere else.
More interesting than Stracher's essay itself, the WSJ Law Blog has 2 entries and a host of comments both in support of and against Stracher's main points in his essay:http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/06/23/law-school-does-it-keep-your-options-open/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/06/26/law-school-does-it-keep-your-options-open-part-ii/
The article (available to subscribers, but see below), blog entries (available to everyone) and comments (also available to everyone) all raise some issues in the back of most law student, professor and prospective student minds. Some of the comments are awfully cynical and jaded, but keep in mind that the lawyers most likely to post in comments on stories like this will be the jaded ones. Even so, you'll find a number of good things to chew on.
*UPDATE: WSJ has posted this article on their Opinion Journal site for public consumption.
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