« Courts - "Wal-Mart to face massive class-action suit" | Main | Ind. Decisions - Court of Appeals issues 2 today (and 7 NFP) »

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Law - "Law school: Big debt, shrinking payoff" [Updated]

Ameet Sachdev writes about this in his "Chicago Law" column today in the Chicago Tribune. Here are a few quotes:

The rising cost of law school is becoming a sore subject as the number of high-paying jobs shrink.

With large numbers of unemployed or underemployed lawyers who borrowed heavily to pay for their educations, legal educators face growing skepticism about the value of a law degree. Anonymous critics have started blogs with harsh names such as "Big Debt, Small Law" or "The Jobless Juris Doctor."

With three-year programs at top schools costing nearly $150,000, not including room, board or even books, some of the criticism is coming from inside the legal profession. * * *

The recession already has forced law schools to rein in tuition hikes that were well above inflation for the last 25 years, including double-digit increases in many years. Last fall, Northwestern University's law school raised its tuition by about 4 percent, its smallest increase in 32 years, said David Van Zandt, its dean. Its annual tuition is still among the highest in the country at $47,202.

Van Zandt said the small tuition hike reflected the tougher job market students face, even at one of the nation's elite law schools. Northwestern could justify bigger increases in the past because typically about 70 percent of its graduates find jobs at the nation's largest 250 law firms, where starting salaries had reached $160,000.

But with law firms cutting salaries and hiring fewer graduates last year because of the economy, Northwestern sent just 55.9 percent of its 2009 graduates to the largest firms, according to the National Law Journal. Yet the school still was No. 1 in the publication's annual ranking of graduates who found jobs at big firms.

Van Zandt said he believes big law firms will never go back to hiring graduates in droves. That means they will recruit from fewer schools.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense to go to law school unless you go to a pretty good one," Van Zandt said.

Still, law schools of every stripe are seeing more applicants than ever before. Loyola University Chicago's law school saw a 35 percent increase in applications for the school year that begins in the fall. Dean David Yellen speculated that the recession had something to do with the spike but otherwise could not explain why the increase was bigger than other schools.

[Updated at 2:00 PM] Elie Mystal of Above the Law has a lengthy entry this afternoon on law school debt

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 27, 2010 11:49 AM
Posted to General Law Related