Here is the post from Brian Leiter:

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2010/05/preident-of-california-bar-calls-for-greater-accuracy-in-employment-data-for-lawyers.html

“CA Bar President Howard Miller (whose son, by the way, is well-known crim law scholar and U of Arizona professor Marc Miller) writes in part:

There is notoriously unreliable self-reporting by law schools and their graduates of employment statistics. They are unreliable in only one direction, since the self-reporting by law schools of “employment” of graduates at graduation and then nine months after graduation are, together, a significant factor in the U.S. News rankings — which are obsessed over, despite denials, by law schools and their constituencies….

[W]e need to be transparent with potential lawyers about the cost and benefits of studying law. All law schools need to gather, verify and report, in consistent and specified ways, the employment record of their graduates, as well report on those who may have started, paid tuition, but never graduated. A good place to start is with our own California-accredited and registered law schools, over which the State Bar and the Committee of Bar Examiners have jurisdiction.

Perhaps it will become a national trend? Let us hope so.”

Maybe, the state of “legal education” – and the GLUT of California lawyers – has improved since that time, right?!?!

I wonder if the unpopularity of HCCs comes in part from them originating from a faction of libertarianism that was deeply hostile to the income tax and not prepared to explain the repayments as a form of supplemental income tax.

NYU, under the leadership of President John Sexton, looks like a real estate developer in drag as a university.

And you wonder why I’m a land-taxer. Also, can I get an $800,000 annual pension?

It says that 176,000 CalBar members are in active practice. That’s *only* 15,000 above the ABA’s estimate, which it got from state attorney rolls. Don’t know why CalBar gets a higher number though. If you use the 176,000 figure, though, then California has 46.26 lawyers per 10,000 residents—barely beating out New Jersey as No. 5 in the country (excluding D.C.).

There’s really no solution to the lawyer glut that doesn’t sell out either recent (and not-so-recent) grads or potential new entrants. I have no idea whether limited practice licenses provide cheap, unbundled services or if they’re just a swinging door for fraud.

I read about Tacoma’s attempt to rebuild its law school after it moved to Seattle. Don’t remember why I didn’t write about it at the time.

At 159,824 and a per capita ratio of 42 per 10,000, it seemed way low. Lord knows there are a ton of lawyers in the Golden State and I would have bet good money that California was in the top 5 in per capita numbers. Granted, the qualifier is that your source data notes only “active and resident” lawyers as of 2012. However, a quick check with the Cal Bar’s Website at http://www.calbar.ca.gov/AboutUs/StateBarOverview.aspx
confirms the overall number as of May 2013 is considerably larger — at more than 242,000 strong.

Good work, though, Matt. The take-away, of course, is that there is a glut and the legal establishment continues to delude itself on solutions. Indeed, tantamount to sending arsonists to put out a fire, they are instead looking at problem-exacerbation.

The latest instance is a move afoot in California to copy what the State of Washington recently did, to wit, to license non-lawyers to practice law under a so-called “Limited Practice License.” http://www.calbarjournal.com/May2013/TopHeadlines/TH1.aspx

Of course, leave it to Washington State, as despite record declining law school enrollments, an oversupply of 200 plus ABA law schools, and new lawyers unable to find jobs, there’s nonetheless a group of clueless Washingtonians hoping to resurrect a law school in Tacoma, WA — as a branch of the University of Washington.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/05/25/2612035/group-hopes-to-bring-law-school.html