The front-page, above-the-fold article in the latest issue of the National Law Journal asked whether a legal education makes economic sense these days. The well-publicized recent purge of partners and associates in large law firms, the paucity of jobs (noted in a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education) available to graduating law students, and the massive increase in student indebtedness have generated a flood of articles and Internet posts cautioning would-be law students against entering the profession. This post takes the view that legal education still makes long-term sense for many. A later follow-up post will argue that recent changes in legal education have harmed rather than helped most students, that legal education needs to change significantly, and that it won’t until it is too late.

A paper recently posted on SSRN entitled Momma Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be . . . Lawyers by Vanderbilt University School of Law Professor Herwig Schlunk argues that, whether a law student attends a top-ten law school and does well, is a “solid performer,” or is an “also ran” who attends a third-tier law school, that student will have a negative return on investment. Whether Professor Schlunk’s assessment about opportunity cost (the salary foregone by attending three years of law school) is accurate (I think that a starting salary of a new college graduate today, combined with the insecurity of those positions, makes the opportunity cost lower than he assumes), I believe law school remains, for many, the right decision.