Law Schools

Law School With Universally Happy Graduates

But why are so many of these former students so happy?

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If you’ve found yourself buried under crushing law school debt and working inhumane hours identifying and properly Bluebooking a sushi memo, you’ll find it hard to believe that there’s a law school out there boasting a 91 percent life satisfaction score from its alumni 30 years out.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening at the University of Virginia. UVA Law Professor John Monahan has kept tabs on the Class of 1990 and found that no matter what life throws at them, the class is overwhelmingly happy.

In his most recent installment of the longitudinal study, a total of 91 percent of respondents said they felt satisfied with their lives, ranging from “average satisfaction” to “very highly satisfied.” What’s more, their happiness has risen over time. In 2007, 86 percent reported feeling satisfied. The average age of participants in 2017 was 53.

That’s an astounding figure. Certainly a study like this will suffer from a bit of reporting bias as unhappy people are less likely to respond to mail from their alma mater without lighting it on fire before spending the night sobbing in the shower. But Monahan reports an 81 percent response rate, which might actually be a more impressive stat than the fact those respondents found themselves generally happy.

The findings cut against the image — cast by popular culture and, Monahan suggests, some suspect high-profile research — that lawyers are a largely unhappy bunch, relatively more prone than other similar professionals to depression, substance abuse and suicide.

Since Professor Monahan may as well be directly calling out Above the Law here, let’s debunk his theory a bit here. This year, a UVA Law student is laying down $70K a year to go to school. Figures for UVA in 1990 aren’t readily available, but the national average for public schools that year was around $3,200. A YEAR. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $6,000. Even assuming UVA was higher than the average back then (private schools charged $11K/year on average), these happy graduates likely paid off law school by the end of their second year on the job, offering them the freedom to pursue positions that satisfied them personally and professionally rather than toil for the next decade plus under the thumb of Sallie Mae before they could even start to think about saving for a down payment. Perhaps it’s not popular culture casting attorneys as unhappy, but a legal academy incapable of controlling its costs and addling its graduates with the price of this failure.

This isn’t a criticism of the study, but an invitation to consider these numbers as something other than a rah rah rally for law schools. Rather than package these results to prospective students as proof that a legal career isn’t as daunting as those trolls over at Above the Law make it sound, consider it an invitation for the academy to undergo fundamental reform to get back to where it once was.

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Law schools in 1990 produced happy graduates. Let’s get back to that.

Grads Report 91% Life Satisfaction [University of Virginia School of Law]

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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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