TIME Magazine Article (03/11/2013): Just How Bad Off Are Law School Graduates?

The first thing I’ll note is that this piece focuses on recent graduates, when I say recent I refer to those who graduated in the past four years, primarily when the economic collapse occurred until now. This problem has been pervasive for decades and band-aiding it with non-profit centers while students have nearly mortgage-sized debt and no ability to pay or discharge the debt will not cure the law school malady. Here’s an excerpt:

And it gets worse still. There are a surprising number of job postings for lawyers that offer no salary at all, including government law jobs. That raises the question — as one headline put it — “Would You Work as a Federal Prosecutor — For Free?

Being unemployed — or working at minimum wage — is rough in the best of circumstances. But it is especially crippling for students who get out of school with six-figure debts that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. The average debt load for law school graduates is now over $100,000 — and at some schools, it tops $150,000.

I found this episode interesting on many fronts because–I usually do not watch her show and the people likely to promote education were Black. I find it sad that Blacks remain deluded into thinking that college provides upward mobility in this post 9/11, current global, automated grind we call a world economy. I sympathized with Tatyana? Ali’s view as she graduate from Harvard and people would take her seriously. Worthy that her’s was an exception after having relative success at a young age in the theatrical arts she could actually afford and would know about an IVY league school.

It has always been the history of corporate America that a white male can work his way up the corporate ladder by starting in the mailroom and making connections. If you are a person of color, you are expected to not only be in the mailroom but to stay there. So I was not surprised to hear his viewpoint. The guy actually was a recipient of some fellowship that will pay high school graduates $100,000 to NOT GO to college/university in order to promote innovation. Now that’s an opportunity most of us wish existed when we were making our decisions whether to attend university.

Later, she had Tina Fey and Paul Rudd promoting their movie in which the former plays an admissions counselor in college. Katie Couric asked Tina Fey what advice she would give those considering college. Her response, geez I don’t know, I graduated from UVA, where the price was more reasonable. I was able to live off of $600 a month and take improv class. She said the college experience helps develop you as a young person. Then she looked so befuddled at the current state of affairs and just said I don’t know I guess you guys have to pay back the student loans.

Lastly, the show asked recent undergraduate students to tweet their college debts. Mind you these people haven’t even began to matriculate in graduate or professional level university. I saw three tweets at a glance–they were all female and each one had over $100,000 in student loan debt. Mind you women in America still make only 70% of what their equally qualified and/or educated counterpart makes. This also does not include women of color who, I read months ago in Trans-global report about economic and job progress stated that Black women who earn higher education degrees (university and/or graduate level) still have a harder time gaining employment than black male counterparts. Presumably the latter can find work in construction or labor jobs which do not require college degrees.

College, is it worth it? With all of this information regarding worthless degrees, shrinking economy, interdependent global economy forcing nations to bail out other nations because of a pact while ignoring the tens of thousands of unemployed and underemployed people in their own borders, I think the answer is quite obvious.

The suggestions listed in the article are simply too little too late. Even where it states to train U.S. attorneys to work abroad, in previous posts I have discussed that Spain, England and some Asian countries have a surplus of attorneys, and most of them do not think highly of the U.S. It is unreasonable to think that other countries, some part of the European Union which has their own economic crises to deal with, will welcome an influx of American attorneys with open arms.

Though it is common sense that in any industry, the learner must have “hands-on” experience and some level of intellectual pursuit. Law schools churned out too many “what if” asking professionals instead of those who can actually practice law. Those who can likely went to law schools that catered to local hiring and thus do not fall within the IVY League core, in essence the former has little to no change of upward mobility in experience or expanding their practicing fields. This article also focuses on the ‘future’ and has no solution or even reference to recent law graduates or attorneys who were not trained under apprenticeships though required to CLEs.  Thousands upon thousands of American attorneys who have already been thrown to the wayside, yet we are to believe that all of a sudden a 3-point article offers best solutions for potential law graduates.. Should of any of the law schools and ABA would like to take this article seriously it would have to take an economic loss by choosing a moratorium on any further law schools to be accredited and recommended lower admissions until either the legal industry re-invents itself or the lawyer to job creation numbers reaches a reasonable number. Until then this is simply baiting those who are still in their desperate state of minds consider law school as a viable option for a career and those who have a financial stake in the business aspect of the law school industry. This is just more fluff to keep the facade that the legal industry can recover. Times change, both economically and practically and they appear to change for the worse. The recommendation stays the same, the nearly insurmountable debt and poor quality of life is not worth it. Do not go to law school.

No my words, words of Forbes magazine contributor. Wow, the magazine that is all about investing, making money, describing the wealthiest people around the world telling you law school is a bad investment. May we say told you so? This is major. We already witnessed The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal joining in the protest of ‘say no to law school,’ but Forbes. I must say this is great!

The news for would-be attorneys keeps getting worse. According to analysis from the Wall Street Journal released yesterday, only 55% of class of 2011 law school grads were employed full-time as lawyers nine months after graduation. The other 45% may be unemployed, working at Starbucks or starting their own law school hate blogs. LOVE IT.

The message that law school is no longer a sure bet when it comes to employment security and financial prosperity finally seems to be sinking in for potential students. In the last two years, the number of law school applicants has dropped by almost a quarter and the number of LSAT tests administered by the Law School Admissions Council has declined by 16%. How long we’ve been writing about this? False assurance of upward mobility, excessive debt, financial indentured servant status…This is so redundant, yet so true

“Failing Law Schools” by Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, makes the claim that the real culprits in legal education’s problems are high demand and the fact that law schools have for many years raised tuition beyond the rate of inflation, the National Law Journal reports.

Mr. Tamanaha claims that the mounting tuition has given way to bloated faculties, overpaid professors, the gaming of the law school ranking system and heaps of scholarship money. Elite schools like Harvard Law School, Yale Law School and Columbia Law School have been able to charge more and still fill their classes, while placing graduates in good jobs, but the same cannot be said for non-elite schools, which make up the majority.”

I’m not sure which time frame does he attribute the 0L to law graduates complicitness to the problem. I will say that at least for approximately the past 8 years many resources have become readily available warning potential law applicants of the dire state of the legal industry. More of the article can be found here: New Book Claims Law School is a Bad Deal for Most, Wall Street Journal Law Blog; 06/18/2012

I will sum up this article. You either have to be a parapalegic, suffer under a severely disabling disease or die for a bank/Sallie Mae to CONSIDER fully discharging your student loans.  I’m not sure why the U.S. Department of Education, the Federal Trade Commission (Truth in Lending Act) and other federal departments/agencies take a stand. Oh…Sallie Mae has the money for the lobbyists. That’s how they were able to get Congress to change the bankruptcy laws so discharging student loans is nearly impossible. Welcome to financial indentured servitude. The text of the article is below:

Behind the curtain of student loans By: Dorothy Hae Eun Min Last month, a former law student won a bid in bankruptcy court to discharge nearly $340,000 in education debt because her diagnosis of Asperger syndrome rendered her unable to repay the loans. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland found that Carol Todd, who attended (the University of Baltimore School of Law, met the difficult burden of showing that she would suffer undue hardship if forced to repay her debt. (emphasis mine) Todd received her high school GED during the late ’80s, at age 39. She received an associate degree at Villa Julie College (now Stevenson University) and a bachelor’s degree at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University). She began attending law school in 1992 but did not complete the program. She went on to obtain a master’s degree from Towson University and a Ph.D. from an unaccredited online school in 2007. She filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009. Todd pursued success in education “as a stepping stone toward a measure of liberation…to help her achieve something closer to a normal life.” Carol’s case is a rarity. The difficulty of proving undue hardship —the majority of claims are unsuccessful — and of discharging student loans has prompted the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys to call on Congress earlier this year to pass legislation that would allow graduates to discharge loans taken out from private lenders, including for-profit companies such as banks and student loan behemoth Sallie Mae. Similar legislation has been submitted over the past two years by Congressional Democrats without making much progress, but NACBA holds hope that this will change soon. While Todd’s story raises questions about undue hardships to borrowers due to a permanent mental disability, what does this mean for any changes to legislation when it comes to a borrower who suffers a permanent physical disability that ultimately prevents him or her from holding down a stable job to pay off student loans? Will Carol’s court decision cause lenders to increase scrutiny on prospective students with disabilities? What if the borrower is the victim of a tragic accident that leaves him in a coma? What happens when the borrower dies, but has a parent co-sign the loan? That’s Christopher Bryski’s story. Bryski was a college student at Rutgers University when he suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2004 in a fluke accident. He was in a coma for two years before passing away in 2006. To facilitate taking out private student loans for college, his father co-signed on the loans for him. Because his father co-signed on Christopher’s student loan from Key Bank, he was obligated to continue to make payments under the terms of the private loan agreement. He paid more than $20,000 of the $50,000 debt, which forced him to come out of retirement to make the monthly payments. Key Bank finally forgave the loan this past April, but not before the Bryski family struggled for six years after Christopher’s death to make payments and started a Change.org petition to seek help from the public to fight against the bank. What are your thoughts on these issues? In a volatile economy, many individuals seek further education to improve their prospective job opportunities. Should student loan companies provide more transparency to borrowers with regard to accidents and disabilities that could cause them to have trouble making payments?

The court in the first story may have granted the discharge with additional consideration that with all these degrees, one unaccredited and another (law degree) from a TTTT law school, there was no way she would be hired to pay off the debt. Interesting.

Here’s the article UMass Law School Gets Provisional Accreditation from ABA:The Wall Street Journal, 06/13/2012

Some law schools are endeavoring to produce fewer graduates or to “reboot” legal education, but for others, the accreditation process keeps moving along.

Massachusetts’ first public law school, the University of Massachusetts School of Law in Dartmouth, has received provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association, the Boston Globe reported.

Two words to describe this industry “cha-ching.”

The school will get full accreditation after meeting ABA standards for the next three years. Meanwhile, its students will be able to take the bar exam in any state. Previously, they could only do so in Massachusetts or Connecticut.

The provisional accreditation is expected to bring increased applications to the school, which now has 325 students, the Globe noted.

“ABA accreditation is the gold seal of approval for law schools,” retiring UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean MacCormack said, the Herald News reported.

The school was created in 2010 at the location of the former Southern New England School of Law.

As WSJ reported, the ABA accredited 10 new law schools since 2006, and the number of law graduates increased to 44,495 this year from 42,673 in that time. The number of applicants to law school has been falling recently — 14% this year from last.

Law Blog noted recently that the ABA granted a five-year extension to Tennessee’s Lincoln Memorial University to get accreditation, after denying preliminary approval last year. The extension allows students to sit for the bar exam in Tennessee.

“I thought if I got a higher degree, I’d have a better chance to get a job, but that’s not what happened.”

Ha. My favorite part is the caveat emptor, nonchalant ‘you’re stupid enough to believe what we say attitude from one administrator of the Thomas Cooley School of Law. Leave it to an attorney to justify its clients’ deceptive practices and possible violations of civil law. Yes, this is what you deal with in the real world, your supposed bosses, colleagues and mentors will eat you alive as long as they get paid to do it. “…. James Thelen, general counsel at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, says the institution follows the American Bar Association and NALP’s rules when reporting job placement rates, and its web site lists the sectors its graduates have been hired to work in. Separately, he says, colleges can’t predict how an economic downturn will impact job openings. “No reasonable person could look at the accurate data we report about graduate employment today and believe that it is a guarantee that the very same percentage of job opportunities will be available when he or she graduates,” says Thelen.” You hear that? you are being referred to as irrational, lacking sense or the ability to deduce that you will be gainfully employed or employed at all by believing what law school’s official represent in their statistics. Classic.

From the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and now SmartMoney (this media outlet is designed to inform consumers about financial planning and investments–hint, hint) So if you haven’t received the hint that you should not go to law school, then go ahead, don’t say we didn’t warn you. This is self-explanatory, the rest of the story is here:  10 Things Law Schools Won’t Tell You ; SmartMoney, June 6, 2012.

Anyway, I was behind on the private student loans of which I have two (2). Scrimping and sacrificing to make my account current. For some reason most of the customer service representatives are vindictive women who hate their lives and take joy in making you deal with them. The other day I set up an auto payment and made a sigh of relief. This rude and cantankerous woman chuckled, literally in my ear and said even with these payments you are [this amount of time] behind. She actually had joy that I was still a little late on the most current payment. These people are sick and I’m sure they train their staff to the lowest customer service representative to the CEO that student borrowers are commodities which can be bundled (consolidated), traded (sold) and mocked. I say do whatever you can to pay off any private loans you have and let them see a grand reduction in student loan debt. Let these customer service representatives lose their jobs and see how it feels to struggle with barely anything to try to do the right thing while this corporate monstrosity makes a mockery of your effort. That my dear, will be karma.

*Law school tuition increases, while unemployment in the legal industry steadily decreases.

*Since the 2008 recession, the U.S. national unemployment rate hovered I think around 9+%. For Black Americans specifically it was a consistent 15%. When things are bad, they are really bad for Blacks.

*Unemployment as of last week continued to worsen in the public sector (federal and state government), because as one news article reported the bulk of Black unemployment is in this sector. Translation: whites in the mid to BigLaw firms have always been hesitant if not blatantly refuse to hire you. For those wise enough to apply to Yale or Harvard, a white male from the same alma mater will still win over you.

*The average law student must take out student loans: No ifs, ands, or buts. So an average person of color from working class or middle class will never have ALL of their tuition/fees paid by non-dischargrable Sallie Mae debt. Should you be able to find a job upon graduation, know that you will not make $150,000+ starting nor ever. Since state and federal government have continued to shrink its workforce, by the time new 0Ls apply there will be even less jobs in that sector.

This industry wants to get as many people of color mired in debt. Use your critical thinking skills and common sense. As mentioned before, you are wise to this game they’re attempting to play. Remember when the 4th tier UB Law attempted to open a branch law school in Prince George’s County-a county that has always been historically Black? It didn’t go through (See my post: Does Prince George’s Need a Law School?: An Article in The Washington Post (February 11, 2010) It does not matter if it’s Maryland or Minnesota or Massachussetts, it is a horrible scheme across the board.

Now there’s another scheme in the works in the guise of getting people of color represented in the legal industry. How about getting people of color represented in a legitimate workforce that actually helps them achieve a standard of living and have dignity? No, just more debt. Nothing but legal education sharecropping. You will be calling Sallie Mae “master.”

**Please also see: Minorities Decrease Enrollment in Law Schools: They Figured Out the Game (07/16/2010; Life’s Mockery)