Columbia Law School costs $74,000 a year. But the glut of law grads has led new lawyers to settle for temporary jobs that pay as little as $15 an hour according to the Wall Street Journal.
Vanessa O’Connell writes,
This new “third tier” of the legal world illustrates the commoditization of the legal profession, which once offered most new entrants access to prestige and power, as well as a professional lifestyle. It also shows how post-recession belt-tightening is permanently altering some professions.
Contract attorneys toil for 10-12 hours a day under the thumb of supervisions that squelch conversation and limit breaks. These attorneys are under the gun of computers that are measuring each lawyer’s work speed.
Ten percentage of legal jobs are now temporary as opposed to less than six percent back in 2007, and temp work is expected to increase by 25 percent over the next couple of years.
These legal contractors make $40,000 or $50,000 a year if they work steadily.
“The pool of candidates willing to work as contract attorneys is bigger this year than it ever has been,” says Mark Yacano, executive vice president at Hudson Legal, which has 10 project facilities around the country, including St. Louis, where lawyers are willing to work on a temp basis for hourly pay in the low $20s. Hudson Legal is a part of Hudson Highland.
In late 2009, Sam Glover wrote a post entitled “The law school bubble is about to burst,” and speculated that,
“There are high-paying jobs for — maybe — the top 1 percent of law school graduates. And the rest? Many will pick up low-paying temp work doing document review. Many others will never practice law. Those who remain will have to evolve.”
So is $74,000 a year worth it?
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People who go to Colombia don’t get those jobs. They get the jobs that are like 150k +.
The problem is for people who go to tier 2 and tier 3 schools that pay like 30-40k per year and come out making less than 75k. Those are the people that law school screws.
Wow, almost makes you wonder if a PhD in economics would be a better “investment.” Plus, as every woman will tell you, “Hey baby, I have a PhD” gets you much farther in the battlefield of dating than “Hey baby, I have a law degree” or the passé “Hey baby, I am a banker.”
(Actually, I hear the modern gal doesn’t even care if you have a job as long as you have six pack abs. The decline and fall of Man to mere visually pleasing plaything for gals is quite disturbing.)
“Hey baby, I’m employed.”
“Hey baby, my paycheck is labeled in an exotic currency” might work.
ummmm. . . I would think that PhD signals dork, while a professional degree signals career ambition.
“Hey baby, I’ve got a reality show.”
In Brazil, there are some 330 law schools in operation, dumping some 3000 lawyers in the market every year. The very best schools are operated either by the federal government or by one of the states. Attending one of those is free (that’s correct: tuition = zero). Then there are a few (5 to 10) private law schools with excellent reputation. Tuition at one of these costs about 20,000 dollars/year.
Then there are schools which are prestigious for one reason or another. Where I live, there’s one such school, run by a catholic foundation. Attending this particular school will cost about 10,000 dollars/year, for a total of 5 years.
I know a recent graduate from this school who was hired by an established law firm. She makes about 1,300 dollars/month. This is not much – as I understand, she cannot save any money, but there’s a lot of potential for growth. She’s allowed to offer her services for new clients, and she gets a (generous) cut out of every client she brings in. Given the mess that the brazilian legal system is, this is not too difficult. In a couple of years, she’ll probably be making two to three times as much, and at that point, life begins to be comfortable.
Many of her friends from school chose to work for the government, where starting wages (no experience needed) average 3,000 dollars/month (plus all fringe benefits ad security only the government can offer).
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On an unrelated note, today I learned about this article of the Brazilian Constitution:
“Paragraph 2 – The states shall have the power to operate, directly or by means of concession, the local services of piped gas, as provided for by law, it being forbidden to issue any provisional measure for its regulation. Paragraph 2 amended by CA 5, August 15th 1998. The original text determined that the concession should be granted to State companies only. The amendment allowed the privatization of the gas companies. ”
Seriously, it’s a miracle anything ever gets done around here…
Our constitution is a joke and one in VERY poor taste.
Some idiots like to say that it miraculously achieves a compromise between goals of the left and goals of the right, when in fact what it really achieves is a compromise between social-democracy and communism.
There. I said it. And I bet that within the 5 hundred odd pages of the brazilian constitution there’s an instance of lese majeste that applies to what I just wrote.
I have to say that the best part about following the Mises blog on an expanded time horizon is watching the predictions come true.
I am glad I didn’t commit any money to law as of yet. I’m in the UK, another market saturated with law graduates. Whilst I think I’d enjoy working within law and especially corporate law, as well as possessing the appropriate aptitudes, the market is so saturated at the moment that you will end up committing tens of thousands of £’s to be a glorified office worker working for £15 – 30k p.a., depending on location. I’m thinking of considering accountancy as an alternative as it isn’t so saturated nor does it come with the same heavy training expenditure, and the payscale is good. I’m not sure why law is so popular amongst “smart” kids, given that other professions offer high returns too – and are more realistically able to bring them into fruition than law, including financial, engineering and IT positions, or even recruitment consultancy. Particularly with respect to the latter, there is a lot of overlap between the characteristics that mark a good lawyer and those marking a good recruitment consultant.
That said, even £10 p.h. sounds like an awful lot of money right now.
I’ve seen very few law grads (as in, only five or less over the past 20 years) able to market their certification and skills outside the profession. Not sure why that’s the case.
Accounting OTOH can get you into a lot of different departments and industries, particularly if you also have good IT skills.
At the risk of sounding like some kind of American rah rah speaker, I advise you determine what you are truly exceptional at. Pursue that skill/career/niche, no matter how much others might be making doing it. Do NOT make your decisions based on what the “aggregate data sets” tell you. Your decision is about you. The data helps refine your decision (ex: I love sales….herion is illegal but Viagra is legal…become a pharma rep instead of a “street” dealer…etc.), but the data can’t make the decision for you.
Well, since only “ten percentage of legal jobs are now temporary ” and “temp work is expected to increase by 25 percent over the next couple of years” which makes it 12.5%. Wouldn’t we have to admit that an average law school grad still has reasons to be optimistic?
What Is New In The Study of Law And Justice?
I just finished combining two books into one and its title is “The Justice of Ethical Economics.” It covers the historical development of ethics and the historical development of law, and it contrasts the disorder caused by ego-driven interventionism with the order of liberty and justice.
Ah, but the guy who can fix a personal computer and who has six pack abs will probably come out on top, no matter what kind of degree he has.
Seriously, though, one has to wonder when the glut of law school grads will start to abate. It’s unfortunate that the economics which have caused some of the best jobs in a number of areas to be sent offshore do not provide a correction for the over-supply of lawyers.
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