[T]he improving employment rate may not be influencing law school applicants for the simple reason that employment prospects are not their main reason for going to law school.
But even assuming that every law students wants to practice law, and that there are fewer traditional law practice jobs to go around, this misses the point. While there may be fewer law jobs to go around, there is more than enough legal work.
Emphasis added because half of you can't read more than two paragraphs without sobbing uncontrollably and Googling for a summary.
Jobs don't matter, kids, it's all about whether there's work available. This may surprise some, particularly those of you who believe that the "free market" can create jobs to meet existing real "demand."
Oh, no, my friends. Current market participants just can't meet the needs of America's massive prospective client base. There's tens of millions of people willing to pay completely manageable rates of $50/hr to $125/hr for quality legal representation. In the branch of mathematics called fictionometry, that's $500B of sidelines legal work if we simply take the $50/hr number, the minimum of ten million, and say that each lawyer pull just 1000 hours of work each year from this shitpile, bringing in revenue of $50,000, which is sustainable because it's above the national median income level.
You might ask yourself why current lawyers aren't simply meeting this demand. The answer, one must assume, is either that tens of thousands of lawyers aren't good at the whole "business" thing or that they're all getting too rich already to bother with $50/hr work.
The author insists that law schools must - at a minimum! - teach lawyers how to exploit this "low bono" marketplace, you know, the people who get turned down by all the greedy, snooty lawyers presently in practice, among other things.
While I think it's unfair to fault law schools or require that they teach anything, I wholeheartedly endorse enrolling more and more of these boofers in law school to send more infantry to the slaughtering trenches of the justice crisis. Teach them about limited scope representation and digital law practice. Shit, let's teach 'em about dowsing rods, too. It's like chucking handfuls of seed at the barren, salty Earth. If just a few land, we'll soon have trees of justice and new sources of precious ground water.
Scam on...and scam online!
(The author of the linked article helps run "the nation’s first fully online law school" in case you or a dear law school applicant needed an even more innovative pathway to the Million Dollars Express)
"...employment prospects are not their main reason for going to law school."
ReplyDeleteHahaha, hilarious! Law is just something for bored elites to spend their spare time on while waiting for the renovated Concord to take them to Monaco for an afternoon shopping trip.
One has to ask why the Dean himself isn't out there hoovering up all this easy money - must be his higher-calling of monastic self-denial, so that others can benefit...
I held a part-time judicial position for 16 years and passed out a lot of $35.00 to $50.00/hour state-paid appointment work. Some broke free of that orbit once they got established, many did not. Lately a friend with the same position in a nearby area says many old-timers who had gotten out of orbit are coming back because they can't find enough clients willing to pay even $50.00. There will always be deadbeat tenants who need lawyers, but if they can't find the money to keep a roof over their head . . .
ReplyDelete"Law schools need to reframe their focus to help their graduates be more entrepreneurial in their approach to practice, preparing them to make their own opportunities rather than waiting for law firms to serve them up to them"
DeleteAll right, scamster, go ahead and tell us how exactly an "entrepreneurial" person coming straight out of law school, with a license but next to no experience or even skills in the practice of law, can make a suitable living by drumming up clients prepared to pay $50 per hour. Then show just exactly how they are to drum those clients up. Finally, tell us how your unaccredited über-toilet—far worse even than Cooley—evaluates its applicants for their "entrepreneurial" potential, since, after all, you correctly admit that they are not going to get jobs paying $190k per year at white-shoe law firms.
I would describe the article as "unbelievably" dishonest, but everything in the scam is believable. An honest appraisal would be this: "There are many who need an attorney, and would benefit from legal advice. However, while they can afford to pay an attorney, they don't want to pay an attorney under any circumstances. Whether you charge $250/hour or $50/hour, it's all the same: there's no way they will pay."
ReplyDeleteAnd that, quite simply, is the crux of small law/solo practice. All this drivel about "underserved" populations is a smokescreen. The market for paying jobs is glutted, period full stop.
This Pritikin scamster keeps disseminating his propaganda in any publication that will take it. He is the dean of the unaccredited Concord School of Law, an on-line operation.
ReplyDeleteNotice how he glibly asserts that "there is more than enough legal work" only to shift to the hypothetical "If … new lawyers … would charge … manageable rates of … $50 to $125 per hour". Most people in the legal profession need work that pays money and are not moved by the assurance that there is plenty of work that pays nothing. Of course there's no end of demand for free legal services; what matters is the demand for legal services available for a fee that makes sense to a practicing lawyer.
And $50 per hour is not sufficient, even if—and it's a big if—one could get 40 billable hours per week at that rate (with full payment), as I recently explained in detail (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2018/09/just-what-we-need-more-cooley.html):
Two years ago in Massachusetts, court-appointed work—if one could get it—paid $53 per hour:
http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2016/12/u-mass-dartmouth-accredited-students.html
That's very little for a professional who must hold two costly degrees and a license in good standing, with additional training and certification required by the state. At the full-time rate of 1920 hours per year (40 hours per week times 48 weeks, allowing for two unpaid weeks of holidays and two unpaid weeks of vacation), that's only $102k. Now, maybe $102k sounds appealing to you. Let me explain why it is not.
First, one simply would not get that much court-appointed work. There might be only one file here and there, if any. Second, the state won't pay for every hour worked: one might work ten hours but receive payment for only three. Third, running one's own practice requires a great deal of work (file management, administration, professional development, and so on) for which one doesn't get a penny. Fourth, a practice of that size would almost certainly require an assistant, whose wages and the taxes thereon would eat up a fat percentage of that $100k. Fifth, the cost of running an office (the space, utilities, insurance of various kinds, stationery, furniture, legal research, transportation, etc.) would also be substantial. Even many disbursements would not be reimbursed. (One jurisdiction where I have been licensed reimburses parking at the courthouse but not driving within the city.) Sixth, maintaining a professional license and malpractice insurance would cost many thousands of dollars per year, not to mention a lot of time. Seventh, self-employment taxes would take a big cut. Eighth, this arrangement obviously comes with no benefits. Vacation and holidays are unpaid (although the assistant gets them—at the lawyer's expense); health insurance and retirement are one's own responsibility.
Thus even the Pollyanna case of getting full-time work of this sort from the state leads to a decidedly poor (in more than one sense) outcome.
What's your definition of "boof?" Just asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteAnd still, Student Bar Associations keep bringing in judges, scholars and activists to discuss arcane legal issue like human rights and all. Most law students(especially at TTT's) would probably find the following lectures more useful:
ReplyDeleteFifty Ways to Spice Up Ramon Noodles
How Much Protein Does My Child Really Need?
Tax Implications of Barter-Based Transactions*