Law Schools

How Has Law School Changed Over The Decades? Alumni Speak.

Here are some findings from a major new study by Professor Bill Henderson.

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We’ve chronicled in these pages the many ways that the legal profession has changed over the years. One major theme: things have gotten a lot harder out there for law school graduates. As we recently reported, the bar exam passage rate in New York just hit a 35-year low (and it might go lower still). And passing the bar exam is no guarantee of a solid (i.e., full-time, long-term) job as a lawyer; we’ve also extensively reported on widespread unemployment and underemployment among lawyers.

An important new study of law school alumni conducted by Professor William D. Henderson of Indiana Law, a leading scholar of the legal profession, offers some interesting (if perhaps depressing) insights into how law school has changed over the past 40 years. As Professor Henderson explained in his introductory post at The Legal Whiteboard, he and his team reached out to about 4,000 alumni of Northeastern Law who graduated from the law school between 1971 and 2012.

Why Northeastern? It was, to its credit, the law school that was brave enough to have its alumni surveyed. In 2011, then-Dean Emily Spieler invited Professor Henderson to study her alumni. Will other law schools follow suit? Note that Northeastern has unusually happy students and alumni: in the Above the Law Insider Survey, it gets an A+ from students and an A- from alumni.

Here are some highlights from Professor Henderson’s findings. First, how have the motivations for going to law school changed over time?

Professor Henderson noted the consistency across the years in the reasons for going to law school: “the top three responses are essentially identical for all four age cohorts. For each group, the desire to have a satisfying career, help individuals, and improve society were all, on average, very important in the decision to attend law school.”

What jumped out at me, however, was a difference: look at how “eventual financial security” has increased in importance as a goal for attending law school. Do law school grads achieve that goal? It might depend on one’s definition of “eventual” — e.g., “eventually I’ll pay off my student loans.”

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This brings us to the topic of how people pay for law school, discussed in Professor Henderson’s most recent post:

[S]ince its reopening in 1968, Northeastern Law has required every graduate to complete four 11-week cooperative placements, usually in four different practice settings (e.g., government agency, public defender, large firm, public interest organization). As noted in Part I, students can be paid during co-op because it is a university rather than an ABA requirement. Cf. Karen Sloan, “The ABA says No to Paid Student Externships,” Nat’l L J, June 10, 2014.

When Professor Henderson spoke to graduates from the 1970s, several of them told him, “I paid for law school mostly with my income from co-op.” Is that still possible today? This chart shows what Professor Henderson describes as “a steady, four-decade decline in the number of paid co-ops” (the y axis shows the average number of paid co-ops per student):

In light of this latest study, should you go to law school? Sure — if you can build a time machine and travel back to the 1970s, the glory days of going to law school. Imagine being able to graduate from law school with little or no debt because you worked part-time during law school. It sounds about as far-fetched as paying for a semester’s tuition and books by selling your used car.

But let’s end on a happy note: kudos to Northeastern for its willingness to have its alumni surveyed by an objective third party. It’s nice to see a law school so confident in its product that it’s willing to make past purchasers available for study. We’d love to do a similar survey here at Above the Law. If you’re a law school dean willing to have your alumni or students surveyed by our research team, please email us at [email protected].

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You can read about all of Professor Henderson’s findings over at The Legal Whiteboard. They are well worth reviewing by law school deans, professors, and students — as well as applicants who are thinking about spending three years and six figures in pursuit of a law degree.

Part III: Alumni Surveys, Responses on the Law School Experience [The Legal Whiteboard]
Part II: Alumni Surveys, Pre-Law Characteristics and Motivations [The Legal Whiteboard]
Part I: What Can We Learn by Studying Law School Alumni? A Case Study of One Law School [The Legal Whiteboard]

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