You can’t say you weren’t warned. Law school is a horrible idea right now. The industry is being outsourced and automated into oblivion. Every law job that doesn’t require a real person to appear in front of another real person is being outsourced or given to the lowest bidder. How bad is the legal market? Even the mainstream media has noticed.
University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos has studied the legal job market and found that it’s been shrinking because in part because of outsourcing and computer automation. He estimates that of the 45,000 law graduates each year, almost 45 percent can’t get jobs that require a law degree.
“Many of the people who are going to law school right now are never going to be lawyers,” Campos said.
Campos says that almost all law schools report employment rates of 80 percent or more by including non-legal, part-time and temporary jobs. On average, the real rate is about half that.
“Used car salesmen can’t get away with the kind of claims that law schools get away with all of the time,” Campos said.
To be clear- in the history of lawyering there has never been a worse time to go to law school. Stop if you’ve heard this before, but it’s market distortion created by the federal government.
The feds guarantee student loans which allow law schools to increase tuitiion beyond what the market would bear. Private law schools have responded by raising tuition 73% over the last ten years. Given how cheap it is to provide a law school education (profs use the same material year after year, no labs required etc) it’s a testament to how even “noble” institution of higher learning are still self interested market players, seeking to maximize revenue. The final insult, it’s nearly impossible to discharge a student loan.
Are you considering law school? Then you should be smart enough to know better.