Law Schools, Student Loans

Running a Law School Must Be the Best Job in the World

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Businessmen never rob banks
you can sell s*** and get thanks
that’s what I learned from the Yanks — The Engineer; Miss Saigon.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, 80% of law students would make the same mistake twice. Sorry, that’s not fair: 80% of law students can’t admit to themselves that they made a mistake in the first place. Whatever, that’s probably not fair either. But a new report says that 80% of law students would attend law school again if they could start over. I’m just having a hard time dealing with what those numbers mean.

Because those numbers mean that running a law school is truly the best and easiest job in the world. If 80% of your customers would purchase your services again, and there’s seemingly a never-ending flow of potential law students eager to apply for your services, then you have nearly no incentive to improve what you are selling. You wonder why law schools can charge whatever they want despite the poor job market? It probably has something to do with 80% of law students feeling like they’d do it again….

Maybe students really are getting the quality of legal education they deserve. I’m just jealous that I can’t figure out how to get people to pay me $40,000 a year for me to throw poo at them while they say, “thank you sir, may I have another.”

I think the most shocking stat is that even a majority of the law students who are deepest in debt would go to law school again. From the National Law Journal:

Not all the findings were so positive, however. Forty percent of students felt their legal education had contributed “only some or very little to their acquisition of job or work-related knowledge and skills.”

Debt loads appear to affect how students feel about their education overall. Of students who expected to graduate with more than $80,000 in law school debt, 23 percent would not enroll again given the opportunity to start over and 18 percent were unsatisfied with their law school experience. That compared to a 14 percent dissatisfaction rate for students borrowing $40,000 or less.

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I don’t even know how to process that. I mean … [hysterical laughter] … 77% of people $80K in the hole would do it again! Hey, you’ve just taken a permanent hit to your financial security, how did you like the ride? “Again! Again! Oh, I hope this time there’s no line!”

If I’m a law dean, I look at these numbers, fire up a cigar, and draft an email to the faculty telling them they’re all getting raises. It’s the American Dream: they have a product for which there is unlimited demand, and the product doesn’t even have to work.

When I quit blogging to become Dean of Students at Griffon Online Law and Refrigerator Repair School, you’ll know why.

Students happy with law school experience, with caveats [National Law Journal]

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