…In Australia.
Yes folks, y’all can add Down Under to the list of countries with too many law students chasing too few legal jobs, according to a surprisingly scathing opinion piece in The Australian Financial Review by a law instructor at Macquarie University.
A few quotes:
“Law student numbers are out of hand. Nearly 15,000 finish their degree each year, and enter a market where there are only 66,000 solicitors.” Yikes.
“Law deans are running a bait and switch operation. They hold out the promise of a legal career, while adding to the unemployment queue.”
Finally:
“[The deans’] claim that the legal problems undertaken in law tutorials are a platform for a generalist degree – that will see students who miss out on a job as a lawyer well placed to enter other high-paid spheres of the economy – is a self-serving myth.”
All this is just more evidence that American legal education does a better job of training law deans to advocate their positions than other countries do. The best they can offer here is the versatile-law-degree argument, but if they want to avoid a government crackdown, they’ll have to lean on increasing diversity in the profession or at least gussy up what they have with some kind of human-capital analysis. Otherwise, these Southern Hemispherians will end up like their Japanese counterparts.
The Last Gen X American 