Posted on 10/02/2012 1:45:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Paul Campos acknowledges a certain "tension" between his dual roles as law professor and author of the blog "Inside the Law School Scam."
"Of course I feel conflicted," Campos told Business Insider. "I should emphasize that when I started as a law professor [in 1990] it cost literally $3,000 to go to law school."
My, how things have changed.
Tuition at University of Colorado where Campos teaches has climbed to $32,000 a year. Costs have risen even higher at elite universities, while the job outlook for most law school grads remains bleak.
Campos – whose book "Don't Go To Law School (Unless)" comes out this week – says tuition has climbed so much because the government issues massive, unsecured loans to practically anybody who gets in.
At least during the mortgage crisis, borrowers who had taken out huge loans had houses that had inherent value, Campos says. Not so for unemployed law grads, who can't even get rid of student debt in bankruptcy.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
There are WAY too many lawyers in this country, anyway.
RE: There are WAY too many lawyers in this country, anyway.
If the supply is greater than demand, shouldn’t it be reflected in the salaries of lawyers?
Lawyers are our problems.
Tie up everything in BS and nothing gets done.
Lets so about 50,000 students are accepted into law school a year and by his figures they borrow $32000/yr.
I highly doubt the mortgage meltdown would have occurred based on 50000 homeowners borrowing 32000 bucks a year. Most of our politicians are lawyers, this type of thinking might be an example as to why they cant grasp or deal with the budget...
If the supply is greater than demand, shouldn’t it be reflected in the salaries of lawyers?
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I believe that 80% of them quit before they have 5 years in...
In lawyering 99% of it is WHO YOU KNOW .. and unless your father is a lawyer and KNOWS THE JUDGES ... ALL of your clients will lose when you go to court, your reputation will be cr*p and you will starve..
Friends, can you spare $5, $10 or even $50 to help out? Won’t you please give what you can to THE SEND A LAWYER TO PLUMBER SCHOOL FUND? Help save another good American kid from a life of bickering and avarice. Think how much better the world would be today if Lizzy Warren was fixing a leaky pipe or Obama was trying to figure out if water flows uphill or downhill or if Hillary Clinton was cleaning out drains. It’s not too late!
it is... you have a bunch of law grads who make no money as lawyers because they can't get jobs as lawyers... so there are thousands of "lawyers" who make zero dollars as lawyers... then you have the ones who do have jobs and make the big bucks, and then the in-between average earners and government lawyers... and it all averages out...
PFL
“Worse”? Slightly fewer people have law degrees than mortgages.
It's a lot more than that when everything is added up. Easily double that.
College has become a con-job racket. Hundreds of thousands in big time debt.
Better to get into a skilled trade for skills that are actually needed, like electrical, technology, waste management, etc.
Salaries of lawyers reflect lawyers who are employed in the field, and don't count those who were unable to get a job as a lawyer at all. Some of the law school grads who can't work as lawyers get jobs as bureaucrats or work in the regulatory compliance dept -- they are technically lawyers, but not really.
These unemployed lawyers should go to community college, learn a trade. You know, make something of themselves.
They may not be able to find a job, but at least thy qualify for a free Obama Phone
Lawyers make work for other lawyers. The only lawyer in a small town won’t be very busy. Two lawyers in that same town can keep each other busy.
Here in Pittsburgh, we have two law schools pumping out graduates, plus a number of other schools withing an hour or two drive... we have a surplus of lawyers. Allegheny County has more lawyers per capita than anywhre else outside of Washington DC. And there are no jobs. Locally, hundreds of lawyers, with obscene student loan debt, are working for $20/hour on document productions as document coders. Those are the lucky ones. Many more are begging for work. Some have just given up. Others hang up a shingle and are flying without a net, unable to afford malpractice insurance.
Yet the law schools still try to sell these kids (and adults) on the notion that they can graduate and get a great job paying 6 figures. The market is bad. Really bad. Another thing that the schools don't tell these kids is that if they are lucky enough to land a job with one of the big firms, they have to work like slaves for three years... 80 hour work weeks, no life, no fun, just billable hours. And then, after three years of this, they face the prospect of the partnership track review... its up or out. If you are not seen as potential partner material, they show you the door.
Now many of these highly paid attorneys find themselves unemployed and unable to find another job; at least not one paying anywhere near where they were. Why? Because at the big firms, you are just a cog. You never do "real" work. You do research and you draft briefs or contracts... you never see the finished product and don't have any client exposure or court exposure and thus, have no real "work experience", so these 3 and 4 year lawyers get offered 1st year associate money at smaller firms. Money that they can not live on because they got used to that 6 figure lifestyle and really did not save any money while they were working those crazy hours... instead, they bought the Mercedes or BMW and a house, and all sorts of expensive gadgets... and now they find themselves coding documents for $20 an hour and trying to figure out how to make the mortgage payment, the car payment, the credit card payments and their student loan payment. Oh, and those student loans? I know young lawyers who have graduated with $150-200,000 in debt... and when they marry other recently minted lawyers with similar debt, they are royally screwed! I know a couple young lawyers whose monthly student loan payments are more than my mortgage! And I have a big mortgage!
My advice to anyone considering law school is DON'T DO IT!
Raybob
Praciticing Lawyer for 20 years
I am not terribly sympathetic to their plight, especially since the majority of them end up supporting Democrats anyway.
Excellent post.
I believe the category “lawyer” has the largest distribution of wage levels of any profession.
Scalia: ‘We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to’ Lawyering
Well, you know, two chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?
I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.
And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.
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