<p>BDM: While I enjoyed reading your analysis, I would argue that this new process is not similar to the medical school/residency model.
- There are law schools which for years have offered “fellowships”, which are indeed analogous to medical school residencies. Using GU as the example, these were competitive placements for which a JD is required. Selected candidates-and the candidates are from all over the country from numerous different schools-usually work as adjunct professors in a clinic, perform research on their own, receive a nominal stipend, and receive their LLM upon successful completion. Key here is that these are competitive, accepting outside applicants from law schools all over the country. With these newly-created law school post-grad programs, you don’t see these law schools hiring the graduates of other law schools for these newly created positions- only their own grads. There is no way to impute motive for this hiring other than to speculate-and based on all available information, it’s clear that most of these law schools hire their own grads to beef up the “JD required/full time job” category. Why in the world would GW law school hire 80(!) of its own graduates? GW law school isn’t a teaching hospital-it’s a law school.
- As mentioned above, virtually all of these new programs came into existence AFTER the economy-and particularly the law graduate/legal services economy-tanked. For years it was a running joke that law schools didn’t teach anyone how to actually practice law. In fact, the schools were uniformly criticized for it-but the system kept steaming along, with big firms paying outrageous salaries to new grads who didn’t know what they were doing. Some schools-but not all-adopted clinical programs, but all schools uniformly fought against the notion of any substantive change in legal education. Each law student would go to law school for three years, learn Great Things/Legal Division, and whether the student could actually practice law was someone else’s concern.
So the economy tanks, and now schools which never thought twice about clinical training or even the status of its grads after they left campus are hiring-some in huge numbers-their own grads. Frankly seems mighty suspicious. - The residency analogy only goes so far. After you graduate from law school, you take the bar-if you pass, you can practice(or malpractice) law. That isn’t so in medicine. The days of the GP are long-gone; if you want to practice medicine in the US, you’ve got to do a residency. It’s not optional. It’s required for both licensing-and it you want to get insurance. A residency is not required for lawyers, and never has been. For law schools to suddenly decide that the “residency” model is now a good idea-especially after fighting it for years-is disingenuous at best.
- But to accept the residency analogy, if only briefly-most of these jobs aren’t “residencies”. These are jobs as assistant admissions counselors, etc-there’s no real additional training. And don’t take my word for it-look at the schools’ websites. For every UVA giving a full description of its post-grad program, you’ll find several others which note that they hire their own grads. Period. Won’t tell you doing what, or what the grads are paid, etc. And often you’ve got to hunt quite a while to find even this information.
So I would suggest that unfortunately, these are not jobs akin to residencies. Sadly, more often than not they are low-paid genuinely dead-end positions.
But as evidence based medicine is the rule today, let’s go to evidence-based law statistics.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country produces twice the number of JDs per year as there are jobs requiring a JD.
Almost every medical school graduating class has full employment at the end of the “match” and the subsequent scramble. This isn’t true of law schools. A few examples for percentage of graduates employed at graduation:
UCLA: 45.9% (average indebtedness: $109,539)
Notre Dame: 48.9%(average indebtedness: $101, 512)
Both of those are top-25 law schools per everyone’s most reviled bible, USNWR. And don’t take my word for it; the statistics are available for free on USNWR’s website.</p>
<p>So I don’t agree we’re arguing in circles. My argument is that law jobs are tough to find, and if you’re going to embrace over $100,000 in debt to obtain a degree, you ought to know what your job prospects are upon graduation.
Don’t take my word for anything; either go to USNWR or the specific school’s website. The numbers are there, and you can make your own decision</p>