Top Law Schools

To anyone applying to law schools, this article should make you seriously consider where to go, or whether to go at all.

The result is a nonprofit law firm that Arizona State is setting up this summer for some of its graduates. Over the next few years, 30 graduates will work under seasoned lawyers and be paid for a wide range of services provided at relatively low cost to the people of Phoenix.

Some see a naked attempt to improve the school’s ratings in U.S. News and World Report by increasing the percentage of its graduates who find work while doing little to address the access-to-justice problem.

The good news for this is that it will, to some extent, mean more jobs for recent graduates. The bad news is that these jobs will be much lower-paying than the kind of jobs people typically aim for graduating from law school. Also, keep in mind that this "non-profit" law firm plans to bill people at $125 an hour; like law schools themselves, this will likely be a way for universities to collect more money on the backs of law students.

On the bright side, this should give a little hope to people with full-tuition scholarships to one of these schools. You'll likely have a job when you graduate, and little debt, although I hope you like living in a shoebox and driving your 1997 Civic forever.

“You can’t just hang out a shingle and expect clients to show up in droves”.

Someone has been reading TLS.

They should expand it to 100+ students and call it biglaw

Someone smarter than me please explain this: how are they charging $125/hour for a clinic that is being protected under their umbrella of a non-profit alumni association?! Why on earth are their operating costs THAT high? I'd love to see the budget sheets on this farce and see how they justify charging that much for essentially a student clinic (they might be graduates, but they have just as much legal experience as a 3L I'd imagine) under the guise of giving these poor souls experience. This makes me sad.

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nickb285 wrote:Better than unemployment, worse than a real job, and the group of schools mentioned in the article don't inspire much confidence (TJSL, CUNY, BLS). I'll take it if I graduate from ASU with zero job prospects, but I'd rather they just cut tuition and reduce class size.

Icculus wrote:

“You can’t just hang out a shingle and expect clients to show up in droves”.

Someone has been reading TLS.

Glad I'm not the only one that chuckled at that line.

I thought maybe the by line was Rad's pen name.

pedestrian wrote:They should expand it to 100+ students and call it biglaw

Brilliant. "We sent 60% of our students to firms of 100+ attorneys last year."

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If the "law firms" are non-profit does that mean the students qualify for their school's LRAP program?

pedestrian wrote:They should expand it to 100+ students and call it biglaw

If they are charging $125/hour, that basically prices out the target clients they say they are trying to serve, all the while driving down the costs/profits of actual law firms that charge with downward pricing pressures.