Law students undeterred by job prospects

In a slow-to-recover economy, potential law school applicants might need to reevaluate whether their investment will pay off.

Early enrollment estimates at American Bar Association-approved law schools for fall 2012 show a 16.7-percent drop from the previous year, according to the ABA Journal.
However, in the same ABA Journal article, the Law School Admission Council’s Director of Communications Wendy Margolis said it might be too early to tell. At this time last year, the number of applications represented 48 percent of the ultimate count, she said.

The numbers are not yet available for IU’s fall 2012 applications or enrollment. Frank Motley, assistant dean of admissions in the Maurer School of Law, said the numbers of applications decreased from 3,411 for the 2010-11 school year to 2,751 for 2011-12.

Excluding 2010-11, the number of applications the Maurer School of Law received last year was the highest since 2003-04.

“If one year you have a large increase, and then you go back to where you used to be, it sounds like a decrease,” Motley said. “I think we have been able to attract a nationwide applicant pool that is very confident.”

Motley said the admissions office’s main concern is not the amount of applicants, but the quality. The admissions office can only enroll about 200 to 250 students each academic year, so the more students who apply, the more students are turned down.

Third-year IU law student Mario Treto said he took the LSAT and MCAT before deciding to apply to law school.

“It’s an economic cost-benefit analysis that everyone has to do,” Treto said. “That itself is an individual process, depending on what your finances look like, scholarship amounts at different schools and financial resources. Ultimately, it was the best decision for me.”

IU law professor William Henderson took a critical approach to the law school debt burden in his January 2012 article “The Law School Bubble,” co-authored by Rachel Zahorsky, for the ABA Journal.

They reported that in 2010, 85 percent of law graduates from ABA-accredited schools averaged $98,500 in debt, with only 68 percent finding jobs in positions requiring a law degree nine months after commencement.

“The influx of so many law school graduates — 44,258 in 2010 alone, according to the ABA — into a declining job market creates serious repercussions that will reverberate for decades to come,” Henderson and Zahorsky wrote. “Heavy loans now threaten to consume the future earnings and livelihood of the nation’s young lawyers.”

Motley said the people complaining about the market might not be willing to relocate to less desirable locations to find jobs.

“There is a need for lawyers in parts of the country where lots of people don’t want to go,” Motley said. “There’s a misallocation of people­. They all want to be in urban areas and make lots of money. There are only so many jobs that will provide that.”

Despite less-than-ideal job prospects, Motley said he asks applicants if they would rather have a law degree or just a Bachelor of Arts undergraduate degree when the economy fully recovers. He said that while young lawyers today might not make as much money as in the past, they are still earning more than the average American.  

“This generation’s getting out of law school, and they’re not getting as much money as previous generations,” Motley said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”

Treto said law students need to be realistic about how much money they’re going to make after graduation. If someone gets a law degree expecting to make six figures right away, they might need to reconsider.

“If someone is really passionate about pursuing a legal field or helping individuals out, you can’t put a cost on that,” Treto said.