A Modest Proposal Forum

[Veyron]

ITT:

Someone with a frog avatar attempts to derail an argument by brilliantly pointing out a spelling error.

[je_ne_regrette_rien]

All I got out of this was ALLOWED and FEWER lawyers.

[Flanker1067]

I wrote here, then decided, who cares.

[UandIaresplittsville]

ITT:

Someone with a frog avatar attempts to derail an argument by brilliantly pointing out a spelling error.

There are spelling errors and there are you-don't-understand-the-language-you-are-speaking errors. "Aloud" is the latter. I don't think I've ever even seen that before. It's incredible.

[Sogui]

ITT:

Someone with a frog avatar attempts to derail an argument by brilliantly pointing out a spelling error.

ITT:

Someone makes an embarrassing spelling mistake and then attempts to judge others by their avatars.

Also, awful, headache-inducing logic.

There are spelling errors and there are you-don't-understand-the-language-you-are-speaking errors. "Aloud" is the latter. I don't think I've ever even seen that before. It's incredible.

Also, this.

[likemiketysonbigass]

Dumb Americans.
It`s not about too many law schools.
The problem is difficulty of bar exams in this country.
Why don't just make the bar exams harder.
In some countries, the overall passage rate of bar exams are less than 10%
You guys should look around the world before giving stupid suggestions.

[reasonable_man]

1) Kohinor is a good poster.

2) ITT, kids that know nothing (and I mean nothing), about the legal profession, talk a lot of shit without any actual basis at all.

That is all.

[Pearalegal]

I wonder how hard it would be to take away accreditations? Ideally, it should happen to the entire T4.

Many regional T4s place embarrassing well. Come on.

[reasonable_man]

To the opp. I'm a TTT grad. Kindly contact me when you have a better job.

Thanks,

RM

[Pearalegal]

Also...every single person enrolled in every single law school has complete responsibility for their decision to attend that school. Every law student is a grown up, and shouldn't expect anyone (let along the ABA), to hold their hand and give them the answers about if law school X is a safe decision for them.

Jesus.

[84Sunbird2000]

OP, even if you are an elitist, the notion that only the top schools take the best and the brightest is a fallacy. The LSAT is used by law schools because it's the best predictor they have, but its .4 correlation is very, very far from making it a foolproof measure. Clearly, there are also excellent students who are poor standardized test-takers and those who don't realize the degree to which the LSAT can be studied for. If we look at actual performance in law school, we see that T4 students often transfer to T2, T1, and even T14 schools. There are also wash-outs at top schools. So, Grand Poobah, can you give us a test or criteria with a .8 or higher correlation to actual law school performance? If law school performance isn't the measure you deign appropriate, should we just test for IQ as an entrance exam (Stanford-Binet or WAIS?)? In that case, have you solved the dilemmas of the Flynn effect and the ongoing debate over ethnicity/sociology/biology regarding measures of G? Do you object to people with good numbers who go to a T3 for free in order to be public defenders?

Now, schools should be forced to report employment data far more thoroughly and honestly, which would likely have a positive and organic effect on people's expectations, but your solution is just plain misinformed and guided by prejudice.

Lastly, and this is coming from a committed social and economic leftist, but... we need the best and the brightest to fight for "corporate rights"? Right, what we need is to defend oligarchic and fundamentally undemocratic institutions. I realize that not all corporations are large and repressive institutions, but the ones paying for broad groups of 6 and 7-figure a year lawyers ARE.

[Veyron]

To the opp. I'm a TTT grad. Kindly contact me when you have a better job.

Thanks,

RM

DESCRIBE said job?

Also, I'm not saying to limit the profession to just the T-14. I take my home state of Arizona as an example. We have two fully accredited law schools (and one provisionally accredited one). Because of this disproportionately small number of schools, lawyers from U of A and ASU, though TTT graduates, enjoyed better job prospects then those from similarly ranked schools in other states. These schools also had less students who couldn't get in anywhere else and more who really wanted to be there. It was win win until ITE.

[84Sunbird2000]

To the opp. I'm a TTT grad. Kindly contact me when you have a better job.

Thanks,

RM

DESCRIBE said job?

Also, I'm not saying to limit the profession to just the T-14. I take my home state of Arizona as an example. We have two fully accredited law schools (and one provisionally accredited one). Because of this disproportionately small number of schools, lawyers from U of A and ASU, though TTT graduates, enjoyed better job prospects then those from similarly ranked schools in other states. These schools also had less students who couldn't get in anywhere else and more who really wanted to be there. It was win win until ITE.

I'm kindof sure you are trolling now. Arizona is a TTT? A solid T1 school that is the best school in the inland Southwest is a TTT? Arizona State is no slouch, either, a T1/T2 in a major market.

[flcath]

I think there are two intrinsic differences between law and medical school that keep things the way they are:
(1) There is a fairly extensive (30-42 hours of hard sciences) pre-med requirement that weeds out alot of the trash, and ensures that you can't just decide to apply pre-med on a whim.
(2) Law schools are profitable (with UG business programs, among the most profitable colleges/schools at most universities), while medical schools are gigantic money pits that always require state subsidy to stay open.

All this ABA/TLS stuff about equal access to law for the poor (this doesn't apply to healthcare?) and equal opportunity for people to pursue their dream of being a lawyer are red herrings, or at least overstated.

I agree completely with the OP, but it seems unlikely to happen. I do wish the ABA would at least put a cap on new schools, though.

Also...every single person enrolled in every single law school has complete responsibility for their decision to attend that school. Every law student is a grown up, and shouldn't expect anyone (let along the ABA), to hold their hand and give them the answers about if law school X is a safe decision for them.

Jesus.

Maybe, but come on, that salary info is purely exploitative. It's grandma's responsibility to be smart enough to not give her credit card number to the friendly young gentleman who calls her about donating to charity, but we still protect her.

[Veyron]

Yes, if the ABA was serious about = access to ls for the poor, surely the fact that many TTT cost as much as T-14s would have some impact on them.

[Renzo]

Maybe, but come on, that salary info is purely exploitative. It's grandma's responsibility to be smart enough to not give her credit card number to the friendly young gentleman who calls her about donating to charity, but we still protect her.

This sounds appealing, until you think it through. You are saying that the government should prohibit some people from trying to engage in a trade they wish to attempt, not for consumer-protection reasons (such as licensing requirements) but because those people are presumably unable to make good career decisions for themselves . This ONLY happens in state-run Communist economies.

Yes, there are too many lawyers. Yes, law school is a bad idea for a lot of the people who enroll. But it is exactly the same as people who move to Hollywood/Nashville/NYC to make it big--it is statistically a very bad idea, but part of the beauty of a capitalist economy is that people who want to dream big can give it a shot, and no one has to pay for it but them.

[Veyron]

As I've said, I have lots of sympathy for libertarian positions, but part of the beauty of a capitalist economy is that private trade organizations like the ABA have (or should have) freedom of action as well.


The other side of the issue, from the Volokh Conspiracy (--LinkRemoved--):

Do We Need Government Intervention to Reduce the Number of Lawyers?

Ilya Somin • January 9, 2010 4:13 am

Attorney Mark Greenbaum has a widely quoted column in the LA Times arguing that there is a glut of lawyers in the marketplace, and that the American Bar Association should combat this trend by reducing the number of accredited law schools:...

[article redacted due to most of it having previously been posted ITT]

I. The Data on Lawyers’ Wages.

Pity the poor lawyers whose wages are being “suppressed.” Based on Greenbaum’s account, one might think that many lawyers are scraping to get by at best. According to the Labor Department, however, the median annual salary of lawyers was over $110,000 in 2008, and even lawyers at the 25th percentile of pay in the profession made some $74,000 per year. Despite the recession (which began just before 2008), this is up slightly up in inflation-adjusted terms compared to the median in 2000 ($88,000, which translates to about $109,000 in 2008 dollars). Note that these are median salaries, not means, so the figures aren’t being inflated by the very high pay of a few elite lawyers at the top of the distribution.

Even if lawyers’ pay were to go down significantly, they would still be near the top of the income distribution, and would still be making more money than liberal arts graduates without science, engineering, or math skills could earn in most other fields. Obviously, the present recession has lowered wages and increased unemployment among lawyers. But the same can be said for virtually every other profession. The bottom line is that most lawyers are extremely well off, and don’t need any special government assistance to prop up their incomes.

II. The Demand and Supply of Lawyers is Not Fixed.

Greenbaum’s argument also relies on several economic fallacies. First, he assumes that the number of jobs for lawyers is fixed and insensitive to price. In reality, of course, an increasing number of lawyers will, other things equal, lead to a decline in pay, which in turn would lead to increased hiring. Of course, other things may not be equal. After all, the demand for lawyers is driven by the scope and complexity of law. Given the growth of government, the expansion of regulation of many types, and the increasing complexity of most areas of law, it is likely that the clients will have more need of legal services over time. Thus, it’s possible that the number of lawyers could increase significantly even as lawyer pay continues to rise.

Greenbaum’s second error is his implicit assumption that potential law school applicants are indifferent to expected costs and benefits. If the return to legal education drops, it is likely that fewer people will apply to law school, and some current lawyers will leave the profession. As with most other fields, market prices give people roughly accurate information on the demand and supply of labor. There is no need for the ABA or the federal government to try to regulate the supply of lawyers. Market competition will do that (and would do an even better job if not for the legal restrictions on entry into the profession discussed below). Indeed, ABA or federal government planners will probably do a far worse job than the market in trying to determine how many lawyers we need. Central planning of the legal profession is likely to encounter the same information problems that bedevil other types of central planning.

III. The ABA Seeks to Reduce the Number of Lawyers, not Increase it.

Finally, Greenbaum contends that the ABA has a “conflict of interest” that leads it to accredit too many law schools. The truth is the exact opposite. The ABA is an interest group representing lawyers. Like members of other professions, lawyers have an incentive to limit entry into their field in order restrict competition and increase their own pay. To say that the ABA has an interest in increasing the number of lawyers is much like saying that UAW workers at GM and Ford have an interest in increasing the number of imported Japanese cars. And indeed, the ABA imposes dubious accreditation requirements that make it very hard to start new law schools. At the state level, bar associations restrict entry into the profession by forcing would-be lawyers to pass bar exams that test enormous amounts of information that most lawyers don’t actually need to know to do their jobs. It’s also worth mentioning that the ABA and state bar associations artificially reduce the number of lawyers by requiring lawyers to spend 3 years at an ABA-accredited law school in the first place. Many lawyers could probably perform reasonably well even after just one or two years of legal education, or after an apprenticeship with a firm. The latter was the standard path into the legal profession in the 19th and early 20th century. Abraham Lincoln was one of many who entered the profession by that route, even though he had almost no formal education of any kind.

For very similar reasons, Greenbaum is wrong to assume that the AALS is free of conflicts of interest. After all, the AALS is an organization composed of existing law schools, most of which don’t want to see new competitors enter the industry.

Far from accrediting too many law schools, the ABA and state bar associations are running a cartel system that has the effect of driving up the cost of legal services. The poor especially often find it difficult to pay for basic legal services.

It’s understandable that lawyers would like to reduce competition in their field so that their pay might go up. People in most other professions probably feel the same way. The rest of us, however, should take a skeptical view of such special pleading (actually, the rest of you, since I’m a lawyer myself).

CONFLICT OF INTEREST WATCH: I’m sure someone will argue that I’m just saying this because, as a law professor, it’s in my interest for people to believe that going to law school is a good deal. Maybe so. But note that I advocate several reforms that are definitely not in the interest of law professors, such as allowing people to join the profession through apprenticeships, eliminating the legal requirement of spending 3 years in law school, and so on. More broadly, I favor greatly reducing scope and complexity of American law, which cuts against the longterm interests of both lawyers and law professors. As I argued back in October, the best way to safely reduce the number of lawyers is to reduce the number of laws.

[Veyron]

"Wow. Just...wow."

That, my good sir, is what she said.

[granger]

The Irish should eat their children.

[Jockin Jay-Z]

Much of the work that lawyers do doesn't require a 170-LSAT type mind. It's the work that, according to many lawyers I've spoken to, a "monkey" can do. Should a TTT cost the same as a T1, or close? Probably not, though.

[Renzo]

Much of the work that lawyers do doesn't require a 170-LSAT type mind. It's the work that, according to many lawyers I've spoken to, a "monkey" can do. Should a TTT cost the same as a T1, or close? Probably not, though.

And this is why such work is done by contract attorneys making $20/hr and no benefits, and is increasingly being outsourced.

[BC2010]

If there's a glaring typo in the first line, I stop reading.

[Veyron]

I find it amusing that all of the students going to a TTT oppose the proposition (and critique my spelling) while all those who are going to a T-14 seem to be split - and less spelling oriented! (I have no info about those who do not disclose acceptances).

This kinda defies economic rationality. It is in the best fiscal interest of every current law student to support the way things are. Unless you are a libertarian I can't even imagine a moral objection - especially since this is a law board and statistically, many of you are likely big gvmt supporting dems.

[granger]

I find it amusing that all of the students going to a TTT oppose the proposition (and critique my spelling) while all those who are going to a T-14 seem to be split - and less spelling oriented! (I have no info about those who do not disclose acceptances).

This kinda defies economic rationality. It is in the best fiscal interest of every current law student to support the way things are. Unless you are a libertarian I can't even imagine a moral objection - especially since this is a law board and statistically, many of you are likely big gvmt supporting dems.

Cut your losses, moron.

[Veyron]

"Cut your losses, moron."

LULZ at "losses" on an anonymous internet message board.