I dove right in to drawing the connection b’ween the number of law schools and the tuition bubble. Then I realized that I really hadn’t sufficiently distinguished bubbles from bottlenecks and got bogged down. I apologize for delaying your numbers-crunched, but fumbling through this post helped me crystallize my opinions on this project.
Bottleneck and bubble both try to explain rising law school tuition. They accept cost-benefit analyses of legal education’s value (e.g. Schlunk), though bottleneckers emphasize non-monetary benefits to those earning below the break-even starting salary. The term “bottleneck” refers to the upfront costs of entering the legal labor market that eventually pay off. I call the argument for those who do not accept cost-benefit analyses “denial.”
Why is the bottleneck problem important? The bottleneck is the only sophisticated argument opposing this blog’s premise, which is why I addressed it in my first substantive post. The debate is between time and space. The bottlenecker believes in time law school can pay off, just with a few tweaks to the system; the bubbler believes that the legal education system’s size must be reduced to match the legal market’s needs before legal education becomes valuable again.
The bottleneck summarized: (more…)
The Last Gen X American 