The debate over law degrees, student debt, and being a lawyer rages on. What follows is one lawyer/recent law student’s take on the whole mess. I’m not going to rely on a whole lot of legal analysis here, but more on traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice (see what I did there?)
First, some brief procedural history:
- A while back, I ranted twice about law school, debt, and the various issues facing newly-minted lawyers such as myself. They’re basically a pie-in-the-sky, idealistic philosophy major’s take on the subject.
- Recently, a fellow grade/former classmate/person sitting in front of me during swearing posted an article on Facebook discussing the New York Law School class action, so I asked him if our Alma Mater should be sued.
- He responded with his own blog post, which I briefly commented on and am now expanding upon here.
The facts:
- Two law schools, Thomas Cooley School of Law and New York Law School, are being sued by former students alleging that statistics used in recruiting new students are fraudulent.
- Specifically, the former students claim employment numbers ranging in the 90-95% for graduates are misleading because they do not differentiate between those employed in a legal career and those who are just…employed. They also claim that the average income for graduates is misleading because it is self-selecting and does not reflect reality.
- My law school was accused of being a degree mill last summer. I disagree.
Analysis:
Let’s start off with the legal theory, as described over at The Legal Reason:
The legal argument is deliberate misrepresentation of the NYLS alumni employment rate. Deliberate misrepresentation is the tort theory of intentional fraud. (Note: The same theory is also a contract defense to formation that may be applicable to the plaintiffs.) To plead this theory with merit and particularity, the plaintiffs must allege a (i) deliberate, (ii) misrepresentation of fact, (iii) intending to reduce reliance, (iv) actual and reasonable reliance, and (v) resulting damages.
My issue is two-fold, and centers on element (iv):
- Whether it is reasonable to rely on solely on the statistics in question when making such a hefty decision.
- Sub-issue: is there a heightened expectation of what is “reasonable” given the nature of your typical law school applicant?
I think the answer lies in Legal Reason’s closing thought re: application essays – the students most likely to have relied on the statistics are the ones who went in expecting to pull a six figure income. So is it reasonable for someone applying to a non-top 10 school (read: Columbia, Harvard, Yale, etc) to expect the lofty income? Does the school have an obligation to disclose the non-financial burdens that come with a career in the fabled big law world? Should an individual who hopes to pursue a career in the law be expected (pre-legal knowledge) to attempt to verify facts before relying on them?
Massive student debt is nothing new; some argue it’s the new bubble. I also think there is a rush to hyperbole with law degrees given the building concern over student debt at the undergraduate level. I find it hard to equate law school with sham schools that are actually bilking students (see generally, University of Phoenix). I’m inclined to view this as an analogy for the right to counsel – law school is like a secondary appeal, you have a right to pursue it if you’re willing to incur the costs in the name of what you think is right. It might not be a winning bet, but that is on you, not the system.
No Lawsuit ≠ No Problems
Simply because I find the class action to be somewhat misguided is not to say that there’s not an issue or issues afoot. There are some significant issues facing law students and newly minted lawyers, and I believe they come from the law schools, the ABA, and the employment field. While I am critical of many law students blaming others for their woes, that does not exculpate the other parties here. I’ll take them in turn.
Law Schools Have a Duty to Law Students Even After They Graduate
In the interest of full disclosure, here is what drove my interest in my choice of law school (in no significant order):
- Father is a lawyer
- Philosophy major with an interest in legal theory
- Hatred of the RIAA + Experience in college radio from RIAA royalty schemes = interest in IP
- My school has a decent IP program, and I received a concentration in Intellectual Property
- Location (close to NYC + home).
- Reputable alumni network.
I did not get in to my school initially. I ran into some First Amendment problems during undergraduate (to over simplify) and it caused a spot on my record. I went to another, much-lower ranked school to cut my teeth and transferred out to my first choice. The school is ranked #50 with a few others, making it second tier by US News & World Report Standards. (I’m not mentioning the school by name, though it’s probably easy to figure out).
I worked hard, or at least, hard enough to graduate. My GPA is nothing to brag about (it equates to a B) and to complicate that, as a transfer student, my GPA does not include my 1L marks for better or worse. Big picture, they probably wouldn’t do much as far as raising or lowering it. My GPA for my IP core requirements is great, but no one cares about that. So, what’s the issue?
Now that I’ve graduated, career services has little use. They were great for resume placement and whatnot early on, however for an IP student, unless you had an interest in health law or patents, there wasn’t much for you. There is an entertainment externship, but I never heard back from my applications. What that says to me is that other students were more qualified than me, and I didn’t take advantage of all the opportunities. However, it also tells me that career services likely focuses on the positions that will lead to the statistics they need to help their recruiting. The rest of us can fend for ourselves.
Eventually, I did land a position post-graduation. I worked as an RA during my third year, and my connections there landed me a fellowship that eventually led to two interviews with the office I was at, and I will hopefully hear back in the coming weeks. The moral of this story: I had to do my own work. Which I think is a good thing, and I also think is something that law students should be taking away as a by-product of a legal education. No one is going to do your work for you, and my number one complaint about law school generally was the number of students who whined about having to read. I’m not going to pretend I read every single case assigned. I did know how to prioritize my workload and assess what needed attention in order to not draw the ire of my professor. A good way to do that is to not rat them out for assigning too much work.
As a side note: Law Schools stress to students the importance of being public servants and doing “what is right”. I think that generally, law schools could listen to themselves a bit more. When law students are increasingly becoming borderline-employed or relying on public assistance, that is a drain on society as well. I understand that society will not look favorably upon the “poor lawyer who has the first-world problem of graduate loans”. But if we’re taught to watch our public perception with the MPRE and similar courses, this will significantly undermine that goal.
My Solution: I think law schools could do more to help students once they’re out in the world. Here in the NY/NJ area we have to satisfy certain basic levels of CLE credits. Sometimes they cost money or can be a decent commute. The law school could do more to facilitate these CLEs to at least ease the burden, whether it be offering a stipend for students to attend or hosting the CLE’s at the school since, as regional schools, many of the alum stay in the area. They could also offer more workshops on how to hang your own shingle, especially given my next issue:
New Jersey Needs to Help Its Own Lawyers By Relaxing the Bona Fide Office Requirement
This is pretty straight forward. A good measure of a legal education is if it gives you the basic skills necessary for a lawyer to guess his way through simple litigation and not get disbarred (so says me). MSNBC reported on this recently, during a time when I was unemployed. I considered doing it myself, until I saw the challenge: New Jersey. The article details the experiences of new grads who were able to open a practice with minimum overhead. Google Voice phone number, social media awareness, and a laptop were all they needed. But here in New Jersey, where it is pretty expensive to begin with, the state also requires you to have an actual office. Not a virtual one – you need to add monthly rent to the overhead. When you have no client base and are already mired in debt, the last thing you want to do is take out another loan just to afford a storefront you may never actually need except to satisfy some arcane law.
My Solution: relax this requirement for the first 24 months at the very least. Or permanently. NJ is famous for being protective of its bar members, so why not protect its bar members from unemployment?
The ABA Must Use Its Monopoly For Good
Ok, so maybe Monopoly is a bad word, I don’t know. I never took anti-trust law. This is a short point: the ABA is in charge of accrediting law school, and by default, acts as gatekeepers to the legal world. If the market is flooded and hurting its members and potential members, perhaps there should be some reflection upon that by the ABA.
My Solution: ratchet up the accreditation standards for new schools or, once the statistics debate is settled, place requirements on schools to maintain a certain level of Juris Doctor-dependent employment.
Pro-Bono, Pro-JD
My final rant is on the private industry. After graduating from school, I was dismayed while reading the New Jersey Law Journal article on pro bono hours hitting an all-time high. Lovely, great. But perhaps private industry could also couple their pro bono work with some pro bono hiring so the indigent and disadvantaged clients they are helping aren’t unemployed lawyers?
My Solution: many students will be happy to work for a living wage. You do not have to offer a six-figure income to ALL students. Many just want the experience and ability to pay down some debt. You, as firms with a PR message and an ethical obligation, want to help out society. Why not take on some unemployed students for half the starting salary of a typical first year, and tie the new hires to a pro bono campaign? After all, it’s not like you can bill these new lawyers to half your clients, since they won’t pay for first year associate work. Lawyers get paid, experience and all. You get the PR work, and you’re not putting a $155,000 per year associate to work for free.
Conclusion
While this is a long-winded rant, it’s still I think an accurate assessment of the landscape that new graduates are facing. It is easy for the “powers that be” to blame law students for knowingly and willingly getting in debt, but it’s a fallacy to then turn around and say “we’re glad to take your money but not take your work”. Education should not be a liability. What does it say about a society that is not willing to reward pursuing a greater outcome in life? Some might say “get educated in the area where there is demand”, however I worry about a society that ascribes solely to a market-demand approach to job training since once the market changes, the situation repeats itself. It also seems somewhat like a Futurama career chip mentality.
Plus, many of the partners at these firms will be retiring soon, and society in general is facing a retirement boom in the coming years. While they might want to sit pretty and pad their 401k’s (or what’s left of them) with their job now, it is to their benefit to harness the power of a willing working professional class. As a generation, we will have no choice but to support our elders. But as of right now, we are reliant on them for our education expenses, our jobs, our regulation for making our own jobs, and generally, the majority of opportunities for employment in the NY/NJ tri-state area. We, as a generation, feel eschewed by those ahead of us. Perhaps the real issue here is not that law schools are reporting false numbers, but instead building billboards obstructing the view of reality. And that, if I remember correctly, is a nuisance.
