Two weeks ago, the New York Times published an article entitled “A Steep Slide in Law School Enrollment Accelerates.” One of the major premises for the article was that prospective graduate school students have increasingly found law school not to be an attractive option anymore. According to the article, students likened their relationship to their schools as a business contract. The article was supported by ABA employment figures that showed that less than two-thirds of law school graduates found jobs that required passing the bar exam. I found the article and its premises unfair. The article, hardly the first to do so, equated law school success to finding long-term employment as a lawyer.
Grading a law school education based on bar-exam-required employment is unfairly simplistic. The breadth of interesting employment opportunities available to law school graduates is incredible. Law school graduates find success in public service (roughly 50 percent of state senators have law degrees), criminal justice, business (ten percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have law degrees), teaching, journalism, and other fields. Marquette Law School’s sports law program highlights this notion of employment success outside of state bars. While almost every classmate of mine would feel successful finding a law firm position, there are many other opportunities for graduates that would rate equal to or higher than to any traditional legal job.
In describing law school solely as a means to obtain a degree and find a law firm position, the article unfairly diminished the breadth of a legal education. In short, a legal education provides skills that benefit any professional, lawyer or not. Take writing as an example. Defying all odds, I completed my undergraduate education while writing no more than one or two written assignments in four years. My first semester legal writing course will, God willing, be my worst grade by the time I graduate. Now, I practice writing every day and consider it a strength. Alongside writing, a legal education promotes analytical thinking, speaking skills, a respect for others and other attributes. No one leaves law school without a set of skills that would help any professional.
In my opinion, success should not be graded on whether graduates become lawyers. I do not think anyone finishes law school without learning something incredibly valuable to them as a professional. All that said, it should be obvious by now: I do not have a job.
A lawyer can always set up her/his own private law practice, or join with your classmates to do so.
I think it’s a nice feature of a legal education to be able to take the skills learned there into other professions. I work for a public school system while attending MULS part-time, and am strongly considering using my law degree to further my career in public education.
That being said, it seems fishy to me to argue that there shouldn’t be a necessary metric between legal education and legal jobs. While many students enter non-legal positions after graduation, I’m guessing many know that before going in. I’d argue that it’s by far the most important factor in considering, or ranking, law schools. Especially considering the student debt.
It’s good to see a more balanced view though, rather than the doomsday rhetoric that has now permeated the legal blogosphere for years.