[Rhodes22-list] Shakespeare - "lets kill all the lawyers"

[Brad Haslett]

My apologies to the attorneys on the list, I keep too many too busy so I
know their value when you need one.  However, I've been consistent over the
years calling for more electricians, plumbers, mechanics, etc., and less
college educated folks with an entitlement attitude.  Maybe this is a start.
As Stan says, "I need people who know how many twelfths are in a foot". My
favorite quote from the article:

"He's making less money than at his last job and has thought about moving
back to his parents' house. "I didn't think three years out I'd be
uninsured, thinking it's a great day when a crackhead brings me $500."
Brad

------------------------------







<http://online.wsj.com/home>
<http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;15359957;6853491;b?http://copiers.toshiba.com/index.shtml>

September 24, 2007



    *
*




By *AMIR EFRATI*
September 24, 2007; Page A1

A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big
law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000.
But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a
supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The
result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling
to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can
exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing
documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are
blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of
the job market.
[image: [See More Data on Law
School]]<http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Law0709-24.html>
1

The law degree that Scott Bullock gained in 2005 from Seton Hall University
-- where he says he ranked in the top third of his class -- is a "waste," he
says. Some former high-school friends are earning considerably more as
plumbers and electricians than the $50,000-a-year Mr. Bullock is making as a
personal-injury attorney in Manhattan. To boot, he is paying off $118,000 in
law-school debt.
[image: [Scott Bullock]]

"Unfortunately, some find the practice of law is not for them," Seton Hall's
associate dean, Kathleen Boozang, said through a spokeswoman. "However, it
is our experience that a legal education is a tremendous asset for a variety
of professional paths."

A slack in demand appears to be part of the problem. The legal sector, after
more than tripling in inflation-adjusted growth between 1970 and 1987, has
grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or
less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce
Department data.

Some practice areas have declined in recent years: Personal-injury and
medical-malpractice cases have been undercut by state laws limiting
class-action suits, out-of-state plaintiffs and payouts on damages.
Securities class-action litigation has declined in part because of a buoyant
stock market.

On the supply end, more lawyers are entering the work force, thanks in part
to the accreditation of new law schools and an influx of applicants after
the dot-com implosion earlier this decade. In the 2005-06 academic year,
43,883 Juris Doctor degrees were awarded, up from 37,909 for 2001-02,
according to the American Bar Association. Universities are starting up more
law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers.
Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be
large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to
196.

Evidence of a squeezed market among the majority of private lawyers in the
U.S., who work as sole practitioners or at small firms, is growing. A survey
of about 650 Chicago lawyers published in the 2005 book "Urban Lawyers"
found that between 1975 and 1995 the inflation-adjusted average income of
the top 25% of earners, generally big-firm lawyers, grew by 22% -- while
income for the other 75% actually dropped.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the inflation-adjusted average
income of sole practitioners has been flat since the mid-1980s. A recent
survey showed that out of nearly 600 lawyers at firms of 10 lawyers or fewer
in Indiana, wages for the majority only kept pace with inflation or dropped
in real terms over the past five years.
[image: [Slow Motion]]

The news isn't any better for the 14% of new lawyers who go into government
or join public-interest firms. Inflation-adjusted starting salaries for
graduates who go to work for public-interest firms or the government rose 4%
and 8.6%, respectively, between 1994 and 2006, according to the National
Association for Law Placement, which aggregates graduate surveys from law
schools. That compares with at least an 11% jump in the median family income
during the same period, according to the Census Bureau. Graduates who become
in-house company lawyers, about 9%, have fared better: Their salaries rose
by nearly 14% during the same period.

Many students "simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support
the debt they incur," wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in
2005, concluding that, "We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law
schools."

Meanwhile, the prospects for big-firm lawyers are growing richer. While
offering robust minimum salaries, those firms are paying astronomical
amounts to their stars.

Now, debate is intensifying among law-school academics over the integrity of
law schools' marketing campaigns. Defenders argue that the legal profession
always has been openly and proudly a meritocracy: Top entrance-exam scores
help win admittance to top schools where top students win jobs at top firms.
Even the system that is used to issue law-school grades -- a curve that pits
student against student -- reflects the law profession's competitiveness.

David Burcham, dean of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, considered
second-tier, says the school makes no guarantees to students that they will
obtain jobs. He says it is problematic that big firms only interview the top
of the class, "but that's the nature of the employment market; it's never
been different."

For the majority of students and alumni, he says, Loyola "turned out to be a
good investment."

Yet economic data suggest that prospects have grown bleaker for all but the
top students, and now a number of law-school professors are calling for the
distribution of more-accurate employment information. Incoming students are
"mesmerized by what's happening in big firms, but clueless about what's
going on in the bottom half of the profession," says Richard Sander, a law
professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied the
legal job market.

"Prospective students need solid comparative data on employment outcomes,
[but] very few law schools provide such data," adds Andrew Morriss, a law
professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the market for new
lawyers.

Students entering law school have little way of knowing how tight a job
market they might face. The only employment data that many prospective
students see comes from school-promoted surveys that provide a
far-from-complete portrait of graduate experiences. Tulane University, for
example, reports to U.S. News & World Report magazine, which publishes
widely watched annual law-school rankings, that its law-school graduates
entering the job market in 2005 had a median salary of $135,000. But that is
based on a survey that only 24% of that year's graduates completed, and
those who did so likely represent the cream of the class, a Tulane official
concedes.

On its Web site, the school currently reports an average starting salary of
$96,356 for graduates in private practice but doesn't include what
percentage of graduates reported salaries for the survey.
[image: [Debtors' Prison]]

"It's within most individuals' nature to keep that information private,
unless it's a high amount," says Carlos Dávila-Caballero, assistant dean for
career development at Tulane, who adds that his office tells prospective
students to use the median figure as a guide because starting salaries vary
widely.

Academics who have studied new-lawyer salaries say that the graduate surveys
of many law schools are skewed by higher response rates from the most
successful students. The National Association for Law Placement, which
aggregates and publishes national data based on those surveys, concedes that
it can't vouch for their accuracy. "We can't validate the figures; we have
to rely on schools to report to us accurately," says Judy Collins, NALP's
director of research.

A prospective student studying NALP data might conclude that the study of
law is a sure path to financial security. For 2006 graduates who entered
private practice, or nearly 60%, NALP shows a national median salary of
$95,000, a rise of 40%, adjusted for inflation, from 1994 graduates.

The NALP data also show that the percentage of graduates employed in private
practice has been steady, fluctuating between 55% and 58% for more than a
decade. But in law schools' self-published employment data, "private
practice" doesn't necessarily mean jobs that improve long-term career
prospects, for that category can include lawyers working under contract
without benefits, such as Israel Meth. A 2005 graduate of Brooklyn Law
School, he earns about $30 an hour as a contract attorney reviewing legal
documents for big firms. He says he uses 60% of his paycheck to pay off
student loans -- $100,000 for law school on top of $100,000 for the
bachelor's degree he received from Columbia University.

A glossy admissions brochure for Brooklyn Law School, considered
second-tier, reports a median salary for recent graduates at law firms of
well above $100,000. But that figure doesn't reflect all incomes of
graduates at firms; fewer than half of graduates at firms responded to the
survey, the school reported to U.S. News. On its Web site, the school
reports that 41% of last year's graduates work for firms of more than 100
lawyers, but it fails to mention that that percentage includes temporary
attorneys, often working for hourly wages without benefits, Joan King,
director of the school's career center, concedes.

Ms. King says she believes the figures for her school accurately represent
the broader graduating class. She says the number of contract attorneys is
"minimal" but declined to give a number.

The University of Richmond School of Law in the last couple of years started
to be more open about its employment statistics; it now breaks out how many
of its grads work as contract attorneys. Of 57 2006 graduates working in
private practice, for example, seven were contract employees nine months
after graduation. Schools "should be sharing more information than they are
now," says Joshua Burstein, associate dean for career services who put the
changes in place. "Most people graduating from law school," he says, "are
not going to be earning big salaries."

Adding to the burden for young lawyers: Tuition growth at law schools has
almost tripled the rate of inflation over the past 20 years, leading to
higher debt for students and making starting salaries for most graduates
less manageable, especially in expensive cities. Graduates in 2006 of public
and private law schools had borrowed an average of $54,509 and $83,181, up
17% and 18.6%, respectively, from the amount borrowed by 2002 graduates,
according to the American Bar Association.

Students taking on such debt may feel reassured by incessant press reports
of big firms scrambling to hire and keep associates. Making headlines this
year was a bump up in big-firm starting salaries to $160,000 from $145,000
in many cities.

And indeed, some law graduates of lower-tier schools do find high-paying
private-practice law jobs. In recent years big firms have boomed thanks in
part to the globalization of business and Wall Street deal making; firms
have been casting a wider net for new lawyers, though they still generally
restrict their recruiting at lower-tier schools to students at the very top
of the class or on the law review. Some students have leads on a job at a
family member's or friend's practice.

But just as common -- and much less publicized -- are experiences such as
that of Sue Clark, who this year received her degree from second-tier
Chicago-Kent College of Law, one of six law schools in the Chicago area.
Despite graduating near the top half of her class, she has been unable to
find a job and is doing temp work "essentially as a paralegal," she says. "A
lot of people, including myself, feel frustrated about the lack of jobs,"
she says.

Harold Krent, Chicago-Kent's dean, said it's not uncommon for new lawyers to
wait a few months to more than a year to find a job that's a good fit. He
added that there is a "small spike" in employment after his school's grads
receive their bar-exam results, several months after graduation, because
some firms wait until then before hiring.

The market is particularly tough in big cities that boast numerous law
schools. Mike Altmann, 29, a graduate of New York University who went to
Brooklyn Law School, says he accumulated $130,000 in student-loan debt and
graduated in 2002 with no meaningful employment opportunities -- one offer
was a $33,000 job with no benefits. So Mr. Altmann became a contract
attorney, reviewing electronic documents for big firms for around $20 to $30
an hour, and hasn't been able to find higher-paying work since.

Some un- or underemployed grads are seeking consolation online, where blogs
and discussion boards have created venues for shared commiseration that
didn't exist before. An anonymous writer called Loyola 2L, purportedly a
student at Loyola Law School, who claims the school wasn't straight about
employment prospects, has been beating a drum of discontent around the Web
in the past year that's sparked thousands of responses, and a fan base.
("2L" stands for second-year law student.) Some thank "L2L" for articulating
their plight; others claim L2L should complain less and work more. Loyola's
Dean Burcham says he wishes he knew who the student was so he could help the
person. "It's expensive to go to law school, and there are times when you
second-guess yourself as a student," he says.

Some new lawyers try to hang their own shingle. Matthew Fox Curl graduated
in 2004 from second-tier University of Houston in the bottom quarter of his
class. After months of job hunting, he took his first job working for a sole
practitioner focused on personal injury in the Houston area and made $32,000
in his first year. He quickly found that tort-reform legislation has been
"brutal" to Texas plaintiffs' lawyers and last year left the firm to open up
his own criminal-defense private practice.

He's making less money than at his last job and has thought about moving
back to his parents' house. "I didn't think three years out I'd be
uninsured, thinking it's a great day when a crackhead brings me $500."

--Mark Whitehouse contributed to this article.

**



    <http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/09/24/the-dark-side-of-legal-job-market/>















<http://online.wsj.com/home>