The legal profession today is in a
quandary. Following the crash of 2008, opportunities for attorneys contracted
dramatically. Due to internet innovation, legal services became available at
low cost online. Clients became much more shrewd about paying young lawyers in
firms to learn on the job. Firms stopped hiring and thinned out their
workforces. Meanwhile, the law schools within universities became huge
money-makers because tuition was set at a high level due to the prestige of the
profession and the only overhead was professors and a library rather than
expensive medical or scientific equipment required for other high level
degrees. Universities had set up their law programs to milk this opportunity
for all it was worth, churning out a glut of graduates who found themselves
without job opportunities.
Attorneys are expensive. They spend
hundreds of thousands of dollars going to school and must repay that money.
They have overhead to pay in the form of office rent, paralegals, secretaries,
legal research software, technology, and supplies. Attorneys intend to make a
good living after meeting these expenses. These facts price most middle-class
and poor Americans out of the services of an attorney, and many cases and
claims are not pursued because legal fees would be more than any possible
recovery. Therefore the legal profession is considering a mid-level legal
worker with more expertise than a paralegal but less than an attorney, much the
same as a nurse practitioner in the medical field. If this occurs, more of the
public will be served, but attorneys will see fewer and fewer jobs.
Therefore, students
considering law school think very carefully about how their choice of school
will affect their employment prospects upon graduation. The U.S. News and World
Report began a law school ranking system which is generally the standard since
1987. Law schools compete fiercely to move up in the rankings because then they
can charge higher tuitions and make their universities more money. Unfortunately, this caused many law schools
to pad their employment-after-graduation statistics in order to move up the
rankings. Law schools would create jobs for their own graduates, count the
self-employed, and even count those not working in legal professions as
“employed.” The point is that while popular, rankings can not necessarily be
trusted.
Unfortunately, whether
or not rankings are accurate regarding employment statistics or not, they do
matter, especially to work in “big law.” However, because of the change in the
employment landscape, the importance of school rankings has changed. While big
city, prestigious law firms still require top-ranked degrees for employment,
many mid-sized and small firms are watching costs and realizing that hiring
graduates from mid-tier and lower tier schools is cheaper. However, prospective
students should weight the cost of different law schools against their
prospects for employment. First, students should attempt to get into the
highest ranked law school possible. Of the highest theirs they achieve,
students should take the one with the lowest cost. Paradoxically, some low-tier
law schools cost more than others just a few numbers higher, so students need
to pay attention to tuition.
Rank of law school is
certainly not the only factor employers consider. They also consider class
rank, whether the student made it onto law review or into the trial team, and
what initiatives the student took while in law school. The key to success involves
getting into the highest tier possible, but even if that is only a middle tier
school, the student should strive to shine in any way possible. Ways to do that
are ranking in the school’s top 10-20%, being on law review or trial team,
having work experience through internships or clinics, or taking initiative to
write papers published by journals. Any way you look at it, it is a lot of
work.
Byline
Kevin Lynch is a freelance author and blogger who mainly focuses on
education, professional school, professional training, employment trends and
other relevant social issues; those interested in finding a qualified lawyer in
the area of Personal Injury should click.
