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Monday, September 24, 2007

Law - "The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market"

"A Stingier Job Market Awaits New Attorneys" is the headline to the top story today (perhaps $$$) in the Wall Street Journal. A couple brief quotes from the long and comprehensive story reported by Amir Efrati that gives the other side of the $160,000 starting salaries in NYC. It begins "A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days." But perhaps starting a law school is, according to this:

On the supply end, more lawyers are entering the work force, thanks in part to the accreditation of new law schools and an influx of applicants after the dot-com implosion earlier this decade. In the 2005-06 academic year, 43,883 Juris Doctor degrees were awarded, up from 37,909 for 2001-02, according to the American Bar Association. Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196.
Later in the story:
Many students "simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support the debt they incur," wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in 2005, concluding that, "We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law schools."
The freely accessible WSJ Law Blog has a post this morning by the author of the WSJ article, headed "The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market." It begins:
For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from long-term economic trends are suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don’t score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can top $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market.

That’s the subject of a page-one story in the Journal Monday. The story includes lots of data and real-life examples showing how life outside BigLaw has gotten tougher, and how some law schools are doing their best not to let the word out. The 2,300-word story even has a shout-out to the infamous Loyola 2L, who has been beating a drum of discontent about the legal market around the legal blogosphere.

The entry is already followed by a lng list of comments.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 24, 2007 06:15 AM
Posted to General Law Related