Coming to a State Bar near You ¬– Beggar Thy Neighbor

In my last post on the Massachusetts Bar Association’s underemployment report, I was flying blind because the link to the report was broken, and it wasn’t readily available on the MBA’s Web site. It’s up today, so I can give it a fairer read, and I was surprised to find two endnotes to the LSTB. [...]

No Massachusetts, Law School Should Not Be More Like Medical School

Lisa van der Pool, “Report: Law school should be more like medical school,” in Boston Business Journal. van der Pool is given the task of reporting on what the Massachusetts Bar Association’s Task Force on Law Schools, consisting of 14 lawyers, thinks needs to be done about “Law, the Economy and Underemployment.” Task force co-chair [...]

Open Letter to the New York State Bar Association

I didn’t intend to write anything about the new mandatory 50-hour pro bono requirement New York will impose on its bar applicants next year, figuring I had nothing new to add. However, I received an e-mail from the New York State Bar Association’s Office of the President, saying: In his Law Day speech on Tuesday, [...]

The Verdict Is in on the Lottery, Why not Law School?

Jenn Ladd, “Law School Letdown,” the Baltimore Sun. The article isn’t bad, but the tagline is: “With a hefty price tag and a shrinking number of jobs, is law school worth all the effort? The verdict is still out.” The Sun, though, is in sort of a bind. Often local newspapers will only consider their [...]

‘What the Numbers Don’t Say: Law School Applicants Are Getting Older, Not Dumber’ on the Am Law Daily

“What the Numbers Don’t Say: Law School Applicants Are Getting Older, Not Dumber“ So I saw the first Softies show in 12 years. It was a real treat. I was so inspired that I started banging chords on my guitar. Then I realized that Jen Sbragia has something I don’t: talent. But when it comes [...]

Bloomberg Casually Slaps Law Schools, Uses Some Misleading Facts

Josh Block and Janet Lorin, “Law School Debt Exceeds $100,000 Amid Jobs Shortage,” Bloomberg. I have to say this has been a weird week for media coverage on law schools. On the one hand they’re somewhat more critical of law schools and show a willingness to research some facts, but on the other hand, they’re [...]

Fewer Quality Law School Applicants in 2012

The LSAC updated the “members only” section of its Web site recently, which for some reason is available to all who deep link to it. Of interest is its “ABA Fall 2012 Applicant and Application Counts,” which it updates weekly. As of March 30, 60,693 people applied to law school, 91 percent of the total [...]

BLS Updates Its 2020 Employment Projections: For Law Students, It’s Very Bad

It turns out the Bureau of Labor Statistics updated its Employment Projections in February, though the Occupational Outlook Handbook will have to wait until later this month. Data for 2010-2020 are now available. For lawyers, the 2010-2020 projection is even worse than 2008-2018, when the BLS predicted that the legal profession would add 98,500 new [...]

New York Spared a 16th Law School, for Now

Emily Melas, Daniel O’Connor, and Nate Fleming, “Plans for law school tabled by BU officials,” in Pipe Dream (State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton newspaper) It appears SUNY Binghamton’s law school has gone wherever law schools go when they’re tabled indefinitely, like Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania. “There are law schools right now who are not filling [...]

Eating America’s Young on the Today Show

If you haven’t already seen the clip on NBC’s Today where Matt Lauer asks a panel of professionals what they think of law graduates’ lawsuits against their law schools, don’t waste your time. It’s nothing new, just three well-off Boomers (Star Jones (b. 1962), Donny Deutsch (b. 1957), and Nancy Snyderman (b. 1952)) wagging their [...]