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Failing Law Schools
On the surface, law schools today are thriving. Enrollments are on the rise, and their resources are often the envy of every other university department. Law professors are among the highest paid and play key roles as public intellectuals, advisers, and government officials. Yet behind the flourishing facade, law schools are failing abjectly. Recent front-page stories have detailed widespread dubious practices, including false reporting of LSAT and GPA scores, misleading placement reports, and the fundamental failure to prepare graduates to enter the profession. Addressing all these problems and more in a ringing critique is renowned legal scholar Brian Z. Tamanaha. Piece by piece, Tamanaha lays out the how and why of the crisis and the likely consequences if the current trend continues. The out-of-pocket cost of obtaining a law degree at many schools now approaches $200,000. The average law school graduate’s debt is around $100,000—the highest it has ever been—while the legal job market is the worst in decades, with the scarce jobs offering starting salaries well below what is needed to handle such a debt load. At the heart of the problem, Tamanaha argues, are the economic demands and competitive pressures on law schools—driven by competition over U.S. News and World Report ranking. When paired with a lack of regulatory oversight, the work environment of professors, the limited information available to prospective students, and loan-based tuition financing, the result is a system that is fundamentally unsustainable. Growing concern with the crisis in legal education has led to high-profile coverage in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and many observers expect it soon will be the focus of congressional scrutiny. Bringing to the table his years of experience from within the legal academy, Tamanaha has provided the perfect resource for assessing what’s wrong with law schools and figuring out how to fix them.
235 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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June 17, 2012
The recent recession hit the legal industry harder than most, and to paraphrase Warren Buffet, when the tide receded we learned law schools had been swimming naked. Something is obviously badly wrong, but a deluge of scamblogs and overheated articles notwithstanding, very little intelligent is being said about it. Brian Tamanaha—law professor, former interim law school dean, and traitor to his class—changes all that in this wonderful book, replacing hyperbole with facts and sound theory.
Tamanaha first sets his sights on law professors, showing their pernicious effects on law schools both through the ABA-accreditation process (Part I) and through the law school itself (Part II). He then shifts his focus to the malignant effect on law schools of a single ranking—the US News (Part III), before showing why the law school model is broken and suggesting what to do about it (Part IV).
Law professors have proved a potent special interest force both within and out of the law school. It was they who convinced the ABA to mandate a third year of legal education and to adopt accreditation standards that put a premium on well paid tenure-track professors (the ABA had to backtrack somewhat from the latter in response to a DOJ antitrust suit). Professors have also effectively lobbied for the same within the law schools themselves. No dean can withstand the wrath of a unified faculty.
The law is curious among academic programs for being dominated by a single ranking. The law is prestige driven as it is, and the U.S. News & World Report ranking is waited on with bated breath each year by potential applicants. And so “[t]he annual pronouncement of the surviving rump of a defunct magazine thus mercilessly lords over legal academia.” Manipulation is the rule of the day. Most (most) schools won’t outright lie, but they will make the truth dance a mighty fine jig. More rankings (it’s a fool’s errand to expect rankings to go away) are a solution that Tamanaha doesn’t give enough attention, here or in his later recommendations. They could both rely on less imperfect proxies for law school quality and, more importantly, dilute the over-importance of the U.S. News rankings.
A continued influx of large numbers of cost-insensitive students to law schools drives tuition increases and provides the financing for reduced teaching loads and so on. If potential students are acting irrationally, why? Tamanaha identifies three reasons: lack of information and uncertainty make it difficult to estimate a proper long-term rate of return, the optimism bias, and schools are providing misleading and incomplete employment numbers (he gets to another, the government student loan scheme, later, but for some reason doesn’t mention it here). The third reason is the most disconcerting. Schools are providing bad data and doing it willfully. Since it’s easier to gather salary and employment data from the most successful graduates, numbers can be manipulated by just not trying very hard to collect them. One example drives home how important effort is to reporting rates. Two schools, South Texas College of Law and Texas Southern University, both fourth-tier and located in Houston, Texas, with similar names and full of students with similar LSAT scores (one wonders how many students show up to the wrong school at the beginning of classes each year) have dramatically different results. South Texas salary figures represent only 5% (!) percent of the portion of a recent class employed in the private sector, while Texas Southern salary figures represent 97% of the same. The only explanation is that administrators at Texas Southern are working much harder than their counterparts at South Texas to gather salary data.
In Part IV, Tamanaha moves into an exploration of what the preceding and other trends say about the current law school economic model. His conclusion: its broken. Tuition has skyrocketed at far past the rate of inflation (or rate of increase in legal salaries), student debt has similarly ballooned, and an already tepid legal market contracted severely during the latest recession. Market distortions aside, students have begun to take notice, and are taking the LSAT, applying to law school, and matriculating to law school at steadily declining rates.
Tamanaha parts with some sound advice for potential law students and recommendations how to fix the law school model. Law schools show little interest in changing—new school UC Irvine, touted as the opportunity to build the perfect law school, instead looks like every other first tier school in every way. But if current trends continue, all the market distortions built into the current model won’t be able to stop the correction. Tamanaha sees an inevitable end state as a law school model that reflects the bimodal distribution of legal salaries: schools will split between elite schools continuing on much as they have before (along with public law schools offering an attractive price and entrée to the local market) and newly practice oriented lower-tier schools run at a greatly reduced cost.
Tamanaha’s primary recommendation is that the ABA-imposed minimum number of classroom hours be cut by a third (thus allowing true two-year programs), standards and official interpretations written for the benefit of faculty be deleted, and rules on law libraries be deleted.
But Tamanaha has understandably little faith in the ABA (after all, are not all professions conspiracies against the laity?) so he suggests a bypass: state supreme courts use their regulatory powers over state legal industries to circumvent the ABA-accreditation process by allowing graduates of non-accredited schools to sit for the bar.
Another bypass is changes to the federal loan scheme. Tamanaha gives two suggestions: apply federal loan eligibility requirements similar to those applied to for-profit vocational schools (and wouldn’t that bruise a few egos) and cap federal loan totals by schools (Tamanaha also thinks a path to discharge of student loans in bankruptcy should be restored). Neither suggestion is wrongheaded, but both suffer from being overly crude and reliant on the government. If law students are going to continue to rely heavily on debt to finance their law degrees, and they are, then their creditors must play an integral role in policing their spending decisions (as any bank asked for a loan to buy a home or finance a business does). The government simply isn’t competent to do so. They lack the information and the alignment of interests (the current system amounts to massive subsidies to law schools at the students’ expense with taxpayers ultimately left to foot the bill, in true government fashion, far down the road).
Tamanaha’s contribution to the conversation is welcome, not the least because he takes his subject seriously. Like all commentators, Tamanaha has an ulterior motive, but rather than the more common motive of propping up lawyer (and law professor) profits through further cartelization of the legal industry, Tamanaha’s ulterior motive is improving access to justice. It is an admirable aim—and in my mind a moral imperative—and one that requires reform. Unfortunately, Tamanaha is not as effective in his prescription as in his diagnosis.
Tamanaha first sets his sights on law professors, showing their pernicious effects on law schools both through the ABA-accreditation process (Part I) and through the law school itself (Part II). He then shifts his focus to the malignant effect on law schools of a single ranking—the US News (Part III), before showing why the law school model is broken and suggesting what to do about it (Part IV).
Law professors have proved a potent special interest force both within and out of the law school. It was they who convinced the ABA to mandate a third year of legal education and to adopt accreditation standards that put a premium on well paid tenure-track professors (the ABA had to backtrack somewhat from the latter in response to a DOJ antitrust suit). Professors have also effectively lobbied for the same within the law schools themselves. No dean can withstand the wrath of a unified faculty.
The law is curious among academic programs for being dominated by a single ranking. The law is prestige driven as it is, and the U.S. News & World Report ranking is waited on with bated breath each year by potential applicants. And so “[t]he annual pronouncement of the surviving rump of a defunct magazine thus mercilessly lords over legal academia.” Manipulation is the rule of the day. Most (most) schools won’t outright lie, but they will make the truth dance a mighty fine jig. More rankings (it’s a fool’s errand to expect rankings to go away) are a solution that Tamanaha doesn’t give enough attention, here or in his later recommendations. They could both rely on less imperfect proxies for law school quality and, more importantly, dilute the over-importance of the U.S. News rankings.
A continued influx of large numbers of cost-insensitive students to law schools drives tuition increases and provides the financing for reduced teaching loads and so on. If potential students are acting irrationally, why? Tamanaha identifies three reasons: lack of information and uncertainty make it difficult to estimate a proper long-term rate of return, the optimism bias, and schools are providing misleading and incomplete employment numbers (he gets to another, the government student loan scheme, later, but for some reason doesn’t mention it here). The third reason is the most disconcerting. Schools are providing bad data and doing it willfully. Since it’s easier to gather salary and employment data from the most successful graduates, numbers can be manipulated by just not trying very hard to collect them. One example drives home how important effort is to reporting rates. Two schools, South Texas College of Law and Texas Southern University, both fourth-tier and located in Houston, Texas, with similar names and full of students with similar LSAT scores (one wonders how many students show up to the wrong school at the beginning of classes each year) have dramatically different results. South Texas salary figures represent only 5% (!) percent of the portion of a recent class employed in the private sector, while Texas Southern salary figures represent 97% of the same. The only explanation is that administrators at Texas Southern are working much harder than their counterparts at South Texas to gather salary data.
In Part IV, Tamanaha moves into an exploration of what the preceding and other trends say about the current law school economic model. His conclusion: its broken. Tuition has skyrocketed at far past the rate of inflation (or rate of increase in legal salaries), student debt has similarly ballooned, and an already tepid legal market contracted severely during the latest recession. Market distortions aside, students have begun to take notice, and are taking the LSAT, applying to law school, and matriculating to law school at steadily declining rates.
Tamanaha parts with some sound advice for potential law students and recommendations how to fix the law school model. Law schools show little interest in changing—new school UC Irvine, touted as the opportunity to build the perfect law school, instead looks like every other first tier school in every way. But if current trends continue, all the market distortions built into the current model won’t be able to stop the correction. Tamanaha sees an inevitable end state as a law school model that reflects the bimodal distribution of legal salaries: schools will split between elite schools continuing on much as they have before (along with public law schools offering an attractive price and entrée to the local market) and newly practice oriented lower-tier schools run at a greatly reduced cost.
Tamanaha’s primary recommendation is that the ABA-imposed minimum number of classroom hours be cut by a third (thus allowing true two-year programs), standards and official interpretations written for the benefit of faculty be deleted, and rules on law libraries be deleted.
But Tamanaha has understandably little faith in the ABA (after all, are not all professions conspiracies against the laity?) so he suggests a bypass: state supreme courts use their regulatory powers over state legal industries to circumvent the ABA-accreditation process by allowing graduates of non-accredited schools to sit for the bar.
Another bypass is changes to the federal loan scheme. Tamanaha gives two suggestions: apply federal loan eligibility requirements similar to those applied to for-profit vocational schools (and wouldn’t that bruise a few egos) and cap federal loan totals by schools (Tamanaha also thinks a path to discharge of student loans in bankruptcy should be restored). Neither suggestion is wrongheaded, but both suffer from being overly crude and reliant on the government. If law students are going to continue to rely heavily on debt to finance their law degrees, and they are, then their creditors must play an integral role in policing their spending decisions (as any bank asked for a loan to buy a home or finance a business does). The government simply isn’t competent to do so. They lack the information and the alignment of interests (the current system amounts to massive subsidies to law schools at the students’ expense with taxpayers ultimately left to foot the bill, in true government fashion, far down the road).
Tamanaha’s contribution to the conversation is welcome, not the least because he takes his subject seriously. Like all commentators, Tamanaha has an ulterior motive, but rather than the more common motive of propping up lawyer (and law professor) profits through further cartelization of the legal industry, Tamanaha’s ulterior motive is improving access to justice. It is an admirable aim—and in my mind a moral imperative—and one that requires reform. Unfortunately, Tamanaha is not as effective in his prescription as in his diagnosis.
May 26, 2014
"Optimism bias." For me, this was the most fascinating concept in the book. I've thought about this idea for some time, though I did not have a label for it before now. In a way, Tamanaha's Failing Law Schoools is an exposé on why and how the system is broken. Since at least my first week of law school, I have been coming to that same hard realization. Consequently, from almost that moment, I have thought "man, someone should really write a book telling poor aspiring law students/lawyers that, for the vast majority of them (us), it's not going to be the best use of their/our time/energy. You're looking at three years of misery for six figures of debt for a lifetime of stressful, unfulfilling hell that is not worth it financially, professionally, emotionally, at all." In a lot of ways, this is that book. But it won't do any good. Because of optimism bias.
Take your average law school applicant. She's going to be smart. She's going to be used to academic success. So used to it, in fact, that you tell this law school hopeful "only ten out of the hundred people in this class are going to get an 'A,' and only those getting 'As' will eventually get jobs," she thinks "no problem, I'm simply going to get one of those 'As'." The problem is, literally every other person in that class is just as smart, just as driven, and just as certain that one of those ten elusive "As" is hers. But that's a mathematical impossibility.
A similar truth plays out even when faced with the cold, hard facts of an uninviting legal job market. Unemployment for new law grads is at 20%? 30%? 40%? It really doesn't matter. Because, again, of optimism bias. No matter how few the jobs are, each and every one of us is sure that we are going to be the exception. Once again, this can't be mathematically true, but such is the pull and nature of the bias that we keep banging our heads against the proverbial wall.
This book is scary because, being written by a law professor, a veritable insider, it can't really be refuted. He has sources. I'm afraid it's all true. As I mentioned, I've known something was fishy for quite some time now, but it's worse than I ever would have imagined. And the law schools know all about it. In fact, they are openly gaming the system, and largely banking on our ignorance. There is nothing noble going on here; it is a business, and all they need/want is our tuition on the front end. Once they have it, our fate is no longer their concern.
This should be mandatory reading before taking the LSAT and applying to law school. If you can keep your bias in check, it could help you not make the worst decision of your life.
Take your average law school applicant. She's going to be smart. She's going to be used to academic success. So used to it, in fact, that you tell this law school hopeful "only ten out of the hundred people in this class are going to get an 'A,' and only those getting 'As' will eventually get jobs," she thinks "no problem, I'm simply going to get one of those 'As'." The problem is, literally every other person in that class is just as smart, just as driven, and just as certain that one of those ten elusive "As" is hers. But that's a mathematical impossibility.
A similar truth plays out even when faced with the cold, hard facts of an uninviting legal job market. Unemployment for new law grads is at 20%? 30%? 40%? It really doesn't matter. Because, again, of optimism bias. No matter how few the jobs are, each and every one of us is sure that we are going to be the exception. Once again, this can't be mathematically true, but such is the pull and nature of the bias that we keep banging our heads against the proverbial wall.
This book is scary because, being written by a law professor, a veritable insider, it can't really be refuted. He has sources. I'm afraid it's all true. As I mentioned, I've known something was fishy for quite some time now, but it's worse than I ever would have imagined. And the law schools know all about it. In fact, they are openly gaming the system, and largely banking on our ignorance. There is nothing noble going on here; it is a business, and all they need/want is our tuition on the front end. Once they have it, our fate is no longer their concern.
This should be mandatory reading before taking the LSAT and applying to law school. If you can keep your bias in check, it could help you not make the worst decision of your life.
September 1, 2013
Two significant and related take-aways from his book are (1) that the three-year model for law schools is problematic, because it forces all students to incur massive additional debt for the sake of abstract intellectual enrichment, when in fact not all law students require this, given their likely trajectories, and (2) that law schools should be able to differentiate themselves, so that schools serving working class students with working class law trajectories (my phrases, not his) can get to work quickly and without crushing debt, which will mean that those schools not place such emphasis on scholarly research by their faculty. He’s motivated in part by the fact that while we have an oversupply of law graduates, we have a crisis-proportion shortage of lawyers helping the poor. Two other critical points that emerge from the book are the manipulability and corrosive nature of USN&WR rankings and the suggestions that law professors themselves can, through personal sacrifice, do something to reduce the debt of emerging law students. I see the problems he describes, and I share a sense of urgency about some of them (especially the shortage of lawyers able to work affordably for the working class). And I would abolish the USN&WR system altogether; there must be a better way. I would like to see the work that has been done on this, and I would like to see concrete proposals for cutting the handcuffs that seem to bind us to USN&WR.
The main oversight in the book, it seems to me, is the failure to address the role of private law practice in creating and contributing to the problem. (To be fair to Tamanaha, this may have been outside the scope of his project.) Law firm partners chase profit before service, the business model of law firms is unsustainable (we see it now with clients refusing, understandably, to pay for first and second year associates), the billable hour must go, clients are horribly overcharged to support lavish overhead and per-partner-profits that are obscene, and we have swung too far into business and away from profession. My own view is that the solution lies as much in changing law practice as it does in changing law schools, and I think someone needs to tackle these as an integrated issue.
The main oversight in the book, it seems to me, is the failure to address the role of private law practice in creating and contributing to the problem. (To be fair to Tamanaha, this may have been outside the scope of his project.) Law firm partners chase profit before service, the business model of law firms is unsustainable (we see it now with clients refusing, understandably, to pay for first and second year associates), the billable hour must go, clients are horribly overcharged to support lavish overhead and per-partner-profits that are obscene, and we have swung too far into business and away from profession. My own view is that the solution lies as much in changing law practice as it does in changing law schools, and I think someone needs to tackle these as an integrated issue.
December 5, 2012
Feels a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Also could have been an article in the Sunday Magazine of the Times, and would have been as good for it - did he really need 180+ pages to tell us there's a problem with legal education in this country? I did like the second to last page of the book, where he says that the University of Kentucky is doing things right. :)
July 30, 2019
Oh boy, this really got the anxiety going. I learned so much, all of which made me hopeless and furious. Must read for anyone going to law school!
May 12, 2020
on one hand, i feel a sense of schadenfreude when double digiters take out $150k @ 7.99% for law school and end up as doc review lifers or lyft drivers. on the other hand, the federal government is using our tax money to subsidize the loans made by these irresponsible prestige **ores. in any case, there is pressing need for aba as well as student loan eligibility reform, but given the current political climate, i think the situation will merely get worse.
the main problem facing crap i.e. the bottom 80% of law schools is adverse selection.
the main problem facing crap i.e. the bottom 80% of law schools is adverse selection.
April 24, 2015
"Every Fall, the Deans at top law schools welcome the incoming class with the same implicit message: 'You got into this elite institution. Your worries are over. You're set for life.' But that's probably the kind of thing that's true only if you don't believe it." - Peter Thiel
I met Prof. Tamanaha during his office hours at this year's admitted students weekend at Washington at St. Louis School of Law. He used his brief time to provide awareness of the devastating financial risks endemic to almost every Millennial's attainment of a law degree. Welcome to a world of spiraling debt accompanied by limited remuneration. I was aware of the storm clouds of labor oversupply and permanently reduced consumer demand that have enveloped the legal services industry, but his recitation of the stats in person made the burden tangible.
This book provides a comprehensive prospectus on the law school admissions game and the wider world awaiting young lawyers. Read this before you submit your security deposit. I really thought twice at the eleventh hour, before ultimately taking the plunge, after reading this book. At this stage in your life, it is never too late to find another career. 40% of LSAT test-takers don't actually attend law school, so you're in good company.
The structural process by which law school rankings affect the recruitment of faculty and students reminded me of the typical high school social hierarchy. In Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, sociologist Murray Milner explains why the depiction of the most popular girls in movies like Mean Girls misses the mark. Typically the most cool/popular crowd engages in the least bullying and sadism of anyone in the school. At my high school, they were even kinder than the nerds/loners occupying the very bottom rung. This is because those who are securely fastened to the very top no longer need to jockey for status by tearing down those students above themselves, so they can stay above the fray (or below it, if on the very bottom rung). It is in the middle where every Machiavellian reigns supreme.
The same dynamic plays out with law schools, with the most popular schools setting the standard for tuition, transfers, faculty pay, and facilities, to name a few trends heading in the costlier direction during my lifetime. Every school lower down on the chain immediately has to change its ways to maintain position on the rankings, with the frenzy intensifying in the middle rungs. The desperation stops at the lower rung of truly pitiable bottom feeder schools, which somehow still manage to annually dupe thousands of students into giving away their lunch money.
A two-tiered law school system, divided between lawyering for the elites and low-tuition lawyering "community colleges" for the common man, will eventually emerge from the unsustainable financial and ethical bankruptcy of the status quo. But we present-day applicants do not have time to wait out the insanity and must confront the fiscal consequences. Caveat Emptor.
I met Prof. Tamanaha during his office hours at this year's admitted students weekend at Washington at St. Louis School of Law. He used his brief time to provide awareness of the devastating financial risks endemic to almost every Millennial's attainment of a law degree. Welcome to a world of spiraling debt accompanied by limited remuneration. I was aware of the storm clouds of labor oversupply and permanently reduced consumer demand that have enveloped the legal services industry, but his recitation of the stats in person made the burden tangible.
This book provides a comprehensive prospectus on the law school admissions game and the wider world awaiting young lawyers. Read this before you submit your security deposit. I really thought twice at the eleventh hour, before ultimately taking the plunge, after reading this book. At this stage in your life, it is never too late to find another career. 40% of LSAT test-takers don't actually attend law school, so you're in good company.
The structural process by which law school rankings affect the recruitment of faculty and students reminded me of the typical high school social hierarchy. In Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption, sociologist Murray Milner explains why the depiction of the most popular girls in movies like Mean Girls misses the mark. Typically the most cool/popular crowd engages in the least bullying and sadism of anyone in the school. At my high school, they were even kinder than the nerds/loners occupying the very bottom rung. This is because those who are securely fastened to the very top no longer need to jockey for status by tearing down those students above themselves, so they can stay above the fray (or below it, if on the very bottom rung). It is in the middle where every Machiavellian reigns supreme.
The same dynamic plays out with law schools, with the most popular schools setting the standard for tuition, transfers, faculty pay, and facilities, to name a few trends heading in the costlier direction during my lifetime. Every school lower down on the chain immediately has to change its ways to maintain position on the rankings, with the frenzy intensifying in the middle rungs. The desperation stops at the lower rung of truly pitiable bottom feeder schools, which somehow still manage to annually dupe thousands of students into giving away their lunch money.
A two-tiered law school system, divided between lawyering for the elites and low-tuition lawyering "community colleges" for the common man, will eventually emerge from the unsustainable financial and ethical bankruptcy of the status quo. But we present-day applicants do not have time to wait out the insanity and must confront the fiscal consequences. Caveat Emptor.
January 8, 2014
ouch. warning: could be depressing if you're thinking of going to law school. Some of the troubles he notes are applicable to all areas of higher education (corrosive side effects of chasing better USNWR rankings; collision course of ever-escalating tuition and student loan debt with graduates' level or falling high-income-job prospects).
Others are applicable to probably any area with a theoretical/research field alongside professional training (a lot of the discussion of whether faculty scholarship is useful, whether faculty have sufficient practical experience in the field to supervise students' applied work, whether you can learn how to be a good lawyer in law school vs. third year should become a paid apprenticeship......parallels almost perfectly discussions of graduate school for clinical psychology).
And some seemed truly specific to law schools, such as the strongly bimodal income distribution for recent grads (a few in high-paying associate positions in big corporate law firms; most in low/moderate-paying public service, small firms, solo or small practice, and a sizable %, esp. from lower-ranked schools, unable to find legal work at all.
Pretty clearly written. I have no idea if his recommended solutions would work. To his credit he doesn't exempt himself from critique. Acknowledges for instance that as a dean he followed the crowd by temp-hiring alums right around the 9 months after graduation point to inflate job placement stats for US News ranking purposes.
All told, I came away with the idea that if you (a) are hella wealthy and can pay for it out of pocket, (b) find a suitable niche like a good state school at which you qualify for in-state tuition, and you want to practice in that area, (c) are extremely good at LSAT and can get into a top 10 or so school and thereafter write your own ticket, or (d) just really love the law and are willing to take a chance on it as a career, this can still work. But for the type of undergraduate student (thick on the ground in my day, 80s) who used to go to law school because s/he was verbal, aspired to an upper-middle-class lifestyle, inferred from LA Law that the work would be interesting and involve having snappy exchanges with attractive co-workers, and couldn't figure out what else to do after college, probably not such a safe and effective fallback plan anymore.
Others are applicable to probably any area with a theoretical/research field alongside professional training (a lot of the discussion of whether faculty scholarship is useful, whether faculty have sufficient practical experience in the field to supervise students' applied work, whether you can learn how to be a good lawyer in law school vs. third year should become a paid apprenticeship......parallels almost perfectly discussions of graduate school for clinical psychology).
And some seemed truly specific to law schools, such as the strongly bimodal income distribution for recent grads (a few in high-paying associate positions in big corporate law firms; most in low/moderate-paying public service, small firms, solo or small practice, and a sizable %, esp. from lower-ranked schools, unable to find legal work at all.
Pretty clearly written. I have no idea if his recommended solutions would work. To his credit he doesn't exempt himself from critique. Acknowledges for instance that as a dean he followed the crowd by temp-hiring alums right around the 9 months after graduation point to inflate job placement stats for US News ranking purposes.
All told, I came away with the idea that if you (a) are hella wealthy and can pay for it out of pocket, (b) find a suitable niche like a good state school at which you qualify for in-state tuition, and you want to practice in that area, (c) are extremely good at LSAT and can get into a top 10 or so school and thereafter write your own ticket, or (d) just really love the law and are willing to take a chance on it as a career, this can still work. But for the type of undergraduate student (thick on the ground in my day, 80s) who used to go to law school because s/he was verbal, aspired to an upper-middle-class lifestyle, inferred from LA Law that the work would be interesting and involve having snappy exchanges with attractive co-workers, and couldn't figure out what else to do after college, probably not such a safe and effective fallback plan anymore.
March 26, 2014
I borrowed this book from a former President of Santa Clara University who sat on our Law School Dean search committee a year and a half ago. The members of the committee were given this book.
I am depressed and mortified in a bit of the same way that I am depressed and mortified by the child abuse scandal of the Catholic Church.
The intense economic pragmatism of the book roils me as well. I knew that I was getting doubtful about the seeming success of law schools towards the end of my law teaching career. I retired in 2009, as the amount of LSAT takers was falling and just before applications and entrants to law school tanked, cratered as one of my former colleagues said.
The book is part of the continuing lesson of the dangers of success. I am not for failure but the oddity of history is that no one is guaranteed oontinuing success, especially of they try too had to hang on to it.
I am depressed and mortified in a bit of the same way that I am depressed and mortified by the child abuse scandal of the Catholic Church.
The intense economic pragmatism of the book roils me as well. I knew that I was getting doubtful about the seeming success of law schools towards the end of my law teaching career. I retired in 2009, as the amount of LSAT takers was falling and just before applications and entrants to law school tanked, cratered as one of my former colleagues said.
The book is part of the continuing lesson of the dangers of success. I am not for failure but the oddity of history is that no one is guaranteed oontinuing success, especially of they try too had to hang on to it.
December 9, 2012
Your standard jeremiad about law school/higher ed wickedness. A great resource if you're looking for stats and arguments to back up your claims that legal education as we know it is doomed. And a fast read, to boot. I like how Tamanaha constantly references his own privileged position while explaining how unlikely it is that others will reach such heights; he's self-aware, at the very least.
July 7, 2013
A very interesting read that all incoming law students, faculty, career counselors, and deans should read. Certainly, it's a 'doom & gloom' but raises sober issues and presents practical solutions (although they most likely will be ignored - sorry, I'm not usually a pessimist...).
NALP's data is presented a few times - specifically one showing the bimodal salary distribution (page 113).
V
NALP's data is presented a few times - specifically one showing the bimodal salary distribution (page 113).
V
September 1, 2015
this doesn't tell me anything i didn't already know, but i have found this book useful in attempting to talk other people OUT of going to law school. it is a succinct and accurate summary of how absolutely abysmal the market and current climate are. before applying to law schools, please read this and rethink your course.
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March 27, 2013Anybody thinking of going to law school, or sending their kids or grand kids to law school, or advising students about going to law school, should read this first, and adapt accordingly. Not all law schools "fail" but buyers must beware!
June 24, 2012
With average student indebtedness exceeding $100k and plummeting job prospects, attending law school today is a right horror show.
July 8, 2012
Excellent analysis of what's wrong with law schools today and the influence of US News and World Report on legal education.
February 23, 2014
Just finished and upped my rating - this is a must-read before or during law school.
May 2, 2014
Not much new information.
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