Loan default rates Forum

[BruinRegents]

I get that it's a desolate market. I'm curious how bad it is for medical school grads? Please do an analogous search.

Edit: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=doctor&l=Chicago%2C+IL
23 results. 13 looking for administrator types...
only 10 positions in Chicago looking for medical doctors. Pretty sad state of affairs for med school students.

Listen, I know you're new at this thing called "life," but MD's don't get their jobs through job search sites. They get their positions through placements. There's actually a shortage of MD's out there, so it's very easy to get a job. It's not always easy, because you still have a lot of debt and you work pretty long hours, but the bottom line is that you go to school doing what you intended on doing when you graduate.

Lawyers have a similar thing called OCI, but it only places about 10% of the students into jobs. The rest are left to scratch and claw their way into the profession where there's at least two graduates for every one available job working for people like Peter Francis Geraci for $42,000/year.

Boggles my mind that you're able to recognize that doctors do not use Indeed.com, but still think the analaous data is probative in the JD market

Edit to add that I have no idea why you think I'm trying to suggest that the JD market is not bad. Just was to trying to point put the absurdity of your method of demonstrating that. Also I know you're old, but try to avoid being so patronizing -- at least until you can learn the concept of a control group

I think your problem at the outset and why you may not understand what UVA and Cougar are posting is because you began with an analogy that doesn't necessarily work. The employment prospects of med. school graduates versus law school graduates are inherently incompatible.

[Hipster but Athletic]

I'm not comparing to Med school. There's just no reason to think that indeed.com means jack shit w/r/t legal hiring. Since that wasn't obvious enough to cougar to prevent him from posting such diarrhea, I mentioned med school as an attempt to help him recognize that indeed.com is at least a potentially poor indicator in certain instances.

[JCougar]

Boggles my mind that you're able to recognize that doctors do not use Indeed.com, but still think the analaous data is probative in the JD market

Where do you think people who struck out at OCI find jobs? Their CSO's Symplicity website? Guess where the CSO gets those jobs postings? Off of sites like Monster.com and Indeed.

There's no magical job bank for people who struck out at OCI. There's some job postings on state bar association websites, but there's not much else. I can count the number of entry-level law jobs posted on my school's Symplicity site in the state I passed the bar in on one hand. And my school's not missing anything, because I can check out other schools' Symplicity posting using the nationwide BYU job bank. I've seen no more than a dozen or so entry-level attorney postings in a combined three-state area since graduation. A three-state area that has more than a dozen law schools combined. That equals one entry-level non-OCI law job per law school.

[Hipster but Athletic]

You have no idea what you're talking about and your deductive reasoning skills stink too. Please offer no more advice in threads like this.

[Danger Zone]

You have no idea what you're talking about and your deductive reasoning skills stink too. Please offer no more advice in threads like this.

Pot, meet kettle.

[BruinRegents]

There's no magical job bank for people who struck out at OCI.

That's actually quite true. I'm even seeing graduates from the bottom half of the T-14 needing to hustle on their own. The law employment implosion is not cyclical but structural.

Just wait until textual recognition software gets better.

[Hipster but Athletic]

There's no magical job bank for people who struck out at OCI.

That's actually quite true. I'm even seeing graduates from the bottom half of the T-14 needing to hustle on their own. The law employment implosion is not cyclical but structural.

Just wait until textual recognition software gets better.

What is going on in this thread? In order to make this claim, you need to provide SOMETHING (even anecdotal) to suggest that firms are understaffed

[BruinRegents]

What is going on in this thread? In order to make this claim, you need to provide SOMETHING (even anecdotal) to suggest that firms are understaffed

I'm at a complete loss as to what you are talking about. Claim? Understaffed?

[Danger Zone]

I think he's confused about the definition of understaffed.

[Hipster but Athletic]

I think he's confused about the definition of understaffed.

I assumed he was talking about some inefficiency in the labor market...and since he was on the subject of job postings, I was led to believe that he was suggesting that law firms have a difficult time finding the type of new lawyers that they want

[BruinRegents]

I was talking about the labor market but you missed the crux of my post. I'm not sure why you would assume that I was referring to, "law firms have a difficult time finding the type of new lawyers that they want."

I never once mentioned firms explicitly or their desire to hire a specific kind of lawyer.

My post on the legal labor market had more to do with the structural changes it has and will continue to experience as a consequence of The Great Recession.

I think he's confused about the definition of understaffed.

I assumed he was talking about some inefficiency in the labor market...and since he was on the subject of job postings, I was led to believe that he was suggesting that law firms have a difficult time finding the type of new lawyers that they want

[Clearly]

If this is serious, it's both pathetic and hilarious.

[JCougar]

What is going on in this thread?

lol

Pretty much sums it up.

[JCougar]

That's actually quite true. I'm even seeing graduates from the bottom half of the T-14 needing to hustle on their own. The law employment implosion is not cyclical but structural.

Just wait until textual recognition software gets better.

Yup.

I mean, it was probably always a little bit like this. Even in the glory days, people who struck out at OCI were kind of boned...it's just that less people struck out at OCI. Even in the best years of hiring, I think less than 70% of law grads got actual lawyer jobs. I don't know how much of that was due to self-selection. I certainly know some people that went through law school and were so turned off by the profession that they don't even have plans to take the bar.

The systemic hiring crunch is hitting Biglaw the worst. Plaintiff firms never had the option to overstaff a project by putting highly-paid people on doc review or binder-making projects, so e-discovery, etc. isn't having much of an affect on them. And even when government hiring wasn't frozen, it didn't make up a huge portion of job placement.

I have serious doubts about the sustainability of Biglaw in the future. A lot of their profits are made off the backs of first year associates being given menial work yet charging their clients $250/hour. Clients have already found out they can get the same quality work for a quarter of the cost from doc review outlets. Clients are less willing to fork out premiums for empty prestige, and more vigilant about how they value legal expenditures. They'd rather pay a TTT grad with three years of experience who lateraled into a staff attorney position than a T14 cum laude grad straight out of law school who has no idea what he's doing because law school didn't teach him anything.

As Biglaw further contracts, even the T14 are going to have to start lowering tuition and fielding smaller classes. There's just not going to be enough work to do for someone with 0 years of experience that can be billed to clients at $250/hr. The legal process outsourcers are moving on from doc review to motion/complaint filing now. It's not going to get better. Biglaw is incredibly wasteful from a process standpoint, and a few entrepeneurs have figured out how to capitalize on that...and they're cashing in. And so are the clients with expenses saved.

[BruinRegents]

That's actually quite true. I'm even seeing graduates from the bottom half of the T-14 needing to hustle on their own. The law employment implosion is not cyclical but structural.

Just wait until textual recognition software gets better.

Yup.

I mean, it was probably always a little bit like this. Even in the glory days, people who struck out at OCI were kind of boned...it's just that less people struck out at OCI. Even in the best years of hiring, I think less than 70% of law grads got actual lawyer jobs. I don't know how much of that was due to self-selection. I certainly know some people that went through law school and were so turned off by the profession that they don't even have plans to take the bar.

The systemic hiring crunch is hitting Biglaw the worst. Plaintiff firms never had the option to overstaff a project by putting highly-paid people on doc review or binder-making projects, so e-discovery, etc. isn't having much of an affect on them. And even when government hiring wasn't frozen, it didn't make up a huge portion of job placement.

I have serious doubts about the sustainability of Biglaw in the future. A lot of their profits are made off the backs of first year associates being given menial work yet charging their clients $250/hour. Clients have already found out they can get the same quality work for a quarter of the cost from doc review outlets. Clients are less willing to fork out premiums for empty prestige, and more vigilant about how they value legal expenditures. They'd rather pay a TTT grad with three years of experience who lateraled into a staff attorney position than a T14 cum laude grad straight out of law school who has no idea what he's doing because law school didn't teach him anything.

As Biglaw further contracts, even the T14 are going to have to start lowering tuition and fielding smaller classes. There's just not going to be enough work to do for someone with 0 years of experience that can be billed to clients at $250/hr. The legal process outsourcers are moving on from doc review to motion/complaint filing now. It's not going to get better. Biglaw is incredibly wasteful from a process standpoint, and a few entrepeneurs have figured out how to capitalize on that...and they're cashing in. And so are the clients with expenses saved.

Exactly the structural changes I was referring to.

[Tiago Splitter]

BigLaw firms are only hiring a slightly lower percentage of graduates compared to the number they were hiring in 1999. Let's not write Biglaw's obituary just yet. And the number of people hired will probably stay roughly the same for the next few years while the number of graduates drops rapidly, so that percentage will go up.

Ultimately, it's pretty stupid to go to most law schools now, but it was just as stupid through most of recent history.

[NYstate]

BigLaw firms are only hiring a slightly lower percentage of graduates compared to the number they were hiring in 1999. Let's not write Biglaw's obituary just yet. And the number of people hired will probably stay roughly the same for the next few years while the number of graduates drops rapidly, so that percentage will go up.

Ultimately, it's pretty stupid to go to most law schools now, but it was just as stupid through most of recent history.

1. Do you have a source? I find this hard to believe, unless 1999 was a down year before an increase until the crash. And there are more law schools now than then. Is 1999 a meaningful comparison? I mean I know that all the NYC biglaw firms I can think off still have much smaller classes than before the crash, same for Chicago. Not sure about Texas or tech hiring in California.

2. If we are using 1999, what was tuition then? A cost comparison might be enlightening.

3. Do those figures include the staff attorney non- partner track positions.
I'm not one to argue that biglaw is ending but I've seen massive changes over the past 5 years. Not to mention the complete collapse of former biglaw firms.

4. Decent govt and PI hiring used to be real as well.

I think biglaw will remain great for the partners with business but not so much for everyone else.


I didn't read the rest of this thread but from the title it sounds way off track already.

[Tiago Splitter]

1. Do you have a source? I find this hard to believe, unless 1999 was a down year before an increase until the crash.

Yes I have a source. But you seem to be missing the point, which is that during a great economy big law firms were hiring a fairly low percentage of law school students. The fact that there was a big increase in this hiring and we are now going back to the levels of the booming economy of the late 1990's is a sign that Biglaw isn't in dire straits. It just means that the "trap" law schools that got a nice employment number boost during the 2007-2008 period aren't going to get back to that level. But someone going to a middling tier 1 in 2009 should have known that, given the substantial data that existed then.

Here's 1999:

http://www.nalp.org/2001apremploymentprofiles

"just under 13% found employment in the largest firms"

Here's 2012:

http://www.nalp.org/uploads/NationalSum ... rt2012.pdf

People are too focused on the fact that we aren't going back to 2008 and then extrapolating to argue that BigLaw will be finished any day now. When you go back a lot further you realize we are about where we should be relative to history. Law school has always largely been a scam, and will continue to be so. Because even in 2008, only 20% of grads were getting big firm jobs. What were people doing going to TTT's back then?

And since you asked for it, here is some historical tuition data going back to 2004:

--LinkRemoved--

[cahwc12]

But just for the hell of it, here's a link to an Indeed search (an aggregator of all job websites) for "Entry Level Attorney" in the Chicago area:

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=entry+leve ... cago%2C+IL

Notice that you get only 21 results, and 75% of them are for paralegals or legal support staff. And the ones that aren't pay about $50K or less. I don't know how many thousand people just passed the Illinois bar, but the ones that didn't get Biglaw from OCI are all competing for these 4-5 jobs.

I get that it's a desolate market. I'm curious how bad it is for medical school grads? Please do an analogous search.

Edit: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=doctor&l=Chicago%2C+IL
23 results. 13 looking for administrator types...
only 10 positions in Chicago looking for medical doctors. Pretty sad state of affairs for med school students.

Nearly all med school graduates have jobs. The reason med school is so much more competitive than law school is because unlike law school, they only graduate a number of MDs comparable to the number of positions available.

But you have to admit that they are practically slaves to their occupation. Once you have one of those positions you can't stop being a doctor, unless you want to default on all those loans.

Sure they are slaves to the job they went to school for. That's a lot better than being a slave to a job you probably didn't want or were misled about and are unlikely to have long-term, if you get that job at all.

[JCougar]

I just got an e-mail from the fed loan servicer encouraging me to sign up for IBR. Within it contained a revelation that was somewhat startling to me:

Over 70% of our borrowers on Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Plans qualify for a monthly payment of $0.00.

So 70% of people in these programs are making less than poverty-level wages?

I guess that makes sense, given the fact that most law graduates are probably working at Starbucks or volunteering for free at some legal services outfit. But I think this figure is for everyone who has taken out college loans, rather than only law students. If so, however, our government is going to have to bail a ton of people out 30 years from now. It's not going to be pretty.

And also, if true, any figure measuring "default rates" is going to severely understate graduates' ability to pay their school loans.