For Most Law Students, Will The Value Of A Law Degree Exceed Its Cost?

If you have a law degree, do you believe attending law school was worth it? If you are currently in law school, are you happy with your decision?

scales money vs diploma law degree law school“Cause, see, they call me a menace and if the shoe fits I’ll wear it /
But if it don’t then y’all’ swallow the truth, grin, and bear it.”Eminem

From 2000 to 2010, the population growth in the United States was driven almost exclusively by racial and ethnic minorities. As the Pew Research Center notes, racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth over the past 10 years. Yet in the legal profession, from 2000 to 2010, minorities in the legal profession have increased by less than 1 percent of the total attorney population.

According to NALP’s statistics (200 law firms), 94 percent of law partners are white. In 2013, 25 percent of law school graduates were minority, while only 5.4 percent of equity partners were minority. Meanwhile, 92 percent of Biglaw partners are white.

In 2012, Oscar Academy voters were 94 percent white. In 2013, the Academy was 93 percent white. Studios have similar demographics to the Academy, according to a 2015 UCLA study. Film studio heads are 94 percent white, while film studio senior management is 92 percent white.

If #OscarsSoWhite, then #LawSoWhite as well. Last Friday, the Academy pledged to double its number of women and diverse members by 2020. I was happy to hear that the Academy “will supplement the traditional process in which current members sponsor new members by launching an ambitious, global campaign to identify and recruit qualified new members who represent greater diversity.” But I don’t necessarily agree that emeritus members should lose their voting rights based on status alone. Overall, it is refreshing to witness the Academy endorse radical change to increase diversity in Oscar nominees and itself.

The legal profession has no “Academy.” There is no 2020 pledge in our profession. All else being equal, the next three graduating classes of law students will only contribute about 1 percent more diversity to our profession. Is there anything we can do to radically change diversity in the legal industry?

According to The National Jurist, overall law school enrollment dropped 15 percent from 2011 to 2013, but it has not been consistent among races. Asian students had the largest drop in law school enrollment – 16 percent. White enrollment dropped 14.8 percent, black law students fell 1.6 percent, and Hispanic enrollment held steady. For the 2012-2013 academic year, St. Louis University School of Law Professor Aaron Taylor found that the number of Asian first-year students fell 51.1 percent among schools with the lowest LSAT medians and decreased 15.4 percent among schools with the highest medians. Are different races beginning to consider the value of a law degree differently? If so, why?

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Law school nationwide enrollment has dropped 27.7 percent (52,488 to 37,924) from 2010 to 2014. Last year, Emory tax law professor Dorothy Brown wrote a Washington Post article titled “Law schools are in a death spiral,” detailing just how dire recent statistics have been. Last January, TaxProf Blog Editor Paul Caron wrote:

First-year enrollments have plunged almost 28 percent since 2010 and stand at their lowest level since 1973, according to the American Bar Association. Making matters worse, there are 53 more law schools now than there were then.

‘This continued decrease in student demand is consistent with our belief that the legal industry is experiencing a fundamental shift rather than a cyclical trend,’ Susan Fitzgerald, a higher education analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said in a January report titled ‘No Relief in Sight.’

Not everyone agrees the enrollment declines are permanent. But even if they aren’t, the change in status for law schools is stunning.

In 2013, Professors Michael Simkovic and Frank McIntyre published a report titled “The Economic Value of a Law Degree,” in which they extol the virtues of a law degree. You can check out the PowerPoint version here and Simkovic’s blog here. Their report abstract reads:

Legal academics and journalists have marshaled statistics purporting to show that enrolling in law school is irrational. We investigate the economic value of a law degree and find the opposite: given current tuition levels, the median and even 25th percentile annual earnings premiums justify enrollment. For most law school graduates, the net present value of a law degree typically exceeds its cost by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My colleague Elie Mystal expressed his views on this study here, while Professor Brian Leiter shared his thoughts here.

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Before 2014, legal employment rates dropped six straight years. In 2014, employment rates improved, but the overall number of jobs fell as the size of the graduating class shrunk.

In his book Growth is Dead: Now What? (affiliate link), Bruce MacEwen writes that based on historically “normal” 10-year business cycles, the U.S. economy will produce 218,800 legal jobs between 2010 and 2020 (“if you believe we’re in a long-term and slow employment recovery, this could be an overestimate”). As MacEwen highlights, “U.S. law schools granted 44,004 [JDs] in 2010, which rose slightly to 44,258 in 2011 and 44,495 in 2012. As they say, ‘do the math:’ 132,757 new JDs in 3 years would fill 61 percent of all available lawyer jobs for the next decade.”

If you have a law degree, do you believe attending law school was worth it? If you are currently in law school, are you happy with your decision? Do you believe that for most law school graduates, the value of a law degree will exceed its cost by “hundreds of thousands of dollars”?


Renwei Chung attends SMU Dedman School of Law. He has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and a MBA from the University of Chicago. He is passionate about writing, technology, psychology, and economics. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.