What Do Undergrads Think About Law School? The Answers Will Probably Not Surprise You At All!

Undergrads tend to see law school for what it actually is.

After years of declining admissions, America’s law schools finally decided to investigate what the nation’s college population thinks about law school. Even though the “Trump Bump” has fueled a small boost in admissions, law school still isn’t back to where it was in its glory days. The Association of American Law Schools and Gallup teamed up to survey “more than 22,000 undergraduates at 25 four-year institutions and more than 2,700 first-year law students at 44 different law schools” from 2011 to 2016 to get concrete answers to why undergrads weren’t flocking to law school.

Women are more likely than men to say that law school is too hard and that they don’t want to defend guilty people, while men are more likely to say that three years is too long and that too few jobs in the field pay enough money.

The men’s answers directly track the big controversies in legal education. Obama publicly tagged the “three year” problem and its impact on students forced to pay another year of tuition for classes that ultimately have little bearing on their future careers. And it’s good to hear some undergrads are cluing in to the bimodal salary distribution.

But where were they finding these women? This is “Math is hard” level swill. How much does one have to scrape the bottom of the collegiate barrel to find a majority of women talking about school as too hard?

The concern about defending guilty people is understandable though. Even though it’s ludicrous — it would at best represent half of the field of criminal law, which itself is only small part of litigation, which is a small part of the legal landscape. But too many people have no concept of a legal career outside of Law & Order reruns. Personally, I slid into litigation mostly out of a lack of knowledge about what, say, commercial real estate was all about. It’s not shocking to me that others have this same blindspot. Nor is it shocking that this is keeping some people out of law school.

So… undergrads generally see law school as exactly what it is. Cool story. It’s an academically rigorous program that goes on too long, devotes too little attention to transactional work, and dumps students in a job market with a shortage of attractive prospects. The only people shocked by these results are the law schools themselves and that should tell you something about the reality distortion field surrounding the legal academy.

Parental education plays a major role in student decisions about law school. Only 12 percent of American adults age 45 to 64 have an advanced degree, but 55 percent of undergraduate students considering law school had at least one parent with an advanced degree. Family members are also the primary source of advice for undergraduates considering law. To Areen, this indicates that law schools need to work harder to reach first-generation students who might not have that family network.

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This is another no-brainer finding, but an important one for explaining both the confusion students have over what a legal career can look like and a key contributing factor in the continuing lack of professional diversity. Without someone close to the student to help them understand all the legal industry has to offer, it’s hard to see a path in the profession beyond what’s forced down their throats by popular culture and that means the people who enter the field are mostly people from families of lawyers duplicating the demographics of prior generations. Some kind of intervention is necessary to get the students who may not consider law as within their reach. Unfortunately, the prospect of law schools performing this outreach should terrify everyone. Actors with a financial incentive to inflate enrollment are likely to exploit that student knowledge gap to create another generation indebted to their eyeballs with jobs they hate.

But law schools see some inspiring responses:

When asked why they wanted to pursue a law degree, undergraduate students most often reported that law school would be a “pathway for a career in politics, government or public service,” that they had “a passion for or high interest in the type of work,” that a law degree would provide “opportunities to help others or to be useful to society” and that they wanted to “advocate for social change.”

“We think the reasons they give are pretty interesting and will be a surprise to people who think of lawyers as only interested in money and greed,” Areen said.

No, they won’t. Because everyone enters law school saying this stuff as a combination of (a) earnest naivete and (b) cynical knowledge that law schools want to be fascinated by people claiming to be interested in this. Few admissions officers are going, “well, this candidate says they want to be a lawyer for the Peace Corps, but we’re going with the one who says they want to make bank defending corporations in wage and hours suits!” Part of the racket is stroking the noble and high-minded egos of the school itself. Just embrace being a professional school and start telling students that their degree will get them a steady paycheck that’s at least big enough to pay back their loans. That’s the sort of message that will get students to sign up — if it’s true.

But we’re talking about law schools here, so expect more undergraduate outreach based on taking on a rigorous academic experience so they can grow up like Atticus Finch and volunteer their time to protecting indigent children. Change, like math, is hard.

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How Undergrads Think About Law School [Inside Higher Ed]


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.