News Roundup: Saturation in Iowa, Crappy Advice from New Jersey, and a Dose of What the Hell from Indiana

1. Message Saturation

From the Des Moines Register, Rekha Basu asks if we need an "explosion" of law students when tuition escalates and job prospects diminish. It's elementary stuff for regular readers of the blog, but the key point here is just how standard these types of articles are becoming. By the end of the year, I imagine it'll be common knowledge for anyone who tries to keep up with news. I'd also like to point out this part of her editorial:

[O]nly 14 percent of college students are majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, according to President Barack Obama, speaking in Durham, N.C., last week. He said while demand for most jobs exceeds supply four to one, the opposite is true for science and high-tech jobs, where skilled workers are in short supply. And those are the jobs of the future.

Although I'm slightly skeptical that this sound advice (I've heard the engineering field is now requiring a master's degree to thin out the pool), herein lies, perhaps, the biggest problem of the law school industry. It's a common refrain amongst petty and jaded people that lawyers aren't smart enough to be scientists, engineers, medical technicians, etc. This is entirely false. Almost anyone who scored a 160 on the LSAT or higher has the mental aptitude that allows for success in so-called "high tech jobs."

In theory, the market should have directed labor where the society's needs were. If the society needs scientists and engineers, those starting salaries would be higher, tuition at the schools would be higher, etc. The market would signal to young people to study those fields.

Conversely, if there's limited or no demand new entrants in a field, the market should signal to prospective students to avoid it, either through low salaries or lowering tuition prices, etc. But even though law became oversaturated long ago, this didn't happen. The institutions (law schools, ABA, US News, etc.) kept reporting rigged statistics to induce talented people (and their higher LSAT scores) to come to law school instead of exploring other career options.

Because here's the truth: very, very few people genuinely love the law or find legal work particularly exciting or life-affirming. No preschooler, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, says "lawyer." Many say relatively non-prestigious careers, like teacher or firefighter or park ranger or construction worker. The shift for my generation was long and slow, but systematically the "bright" people ruled out being a teacher or a firefighter or a park ranger or a construction worker, most often because of the salary and prestige associated with the relative positions. Law only remained an option because people though it was a profession for the affluent and intelligent.

People are, on the whole, rational actors. Most in my generation were presented with blatantly false information from the educational institutions that claimed we would be be able to make some type of living on a liberal arts degree. And in the event that we couldn't, we were virtually assured that by getting a law degree or a master's or an MBA we would make a good living. The institutions willfully engaged in these type of distortions and as a result kept intelligent and hard-working people away from fields like technology where the real demand might be/might have been!

The problem is exacerbated by the duration of education. Law grads are already invested 7 years. When the screwed ones want to "correct" the saturation, they have to take community college classes and then try to get in a master's program, a process that adds another 3+ years. Ten years down the drain, a waste that could have been mitigated if only the schools were required to publish accurate, audited information about their offered investments.

Guaranteed loans haven't helped the situation, of course, but the truth is that our higher educational institutions have completely screwed up the labor market by pushing people towards more profitable options (liberal arts, law, generic business) than more costly - but socially-beneficial - ones (sciences, technology, medical). Everyone suffers as a result of this massive labor misallocation, so I'm truly baffled when people side with the universities when someone has the audacity to use the court system to fix the problem.

2. Hey, Unemployable, Apply for a Clerkship! Speed date!

I started out thinking this article about law students "find[ing] ways to beat out the economy" would be worth it, but after a nice discussion about how saturated the market is, the article boils down to the following:

• Law grads need to be creative
• Law grads need to network (including "speed dating" local attorneys!)
• Look at soloing
• Apply for a clerkship
  

Wow. That'll sure fix the problem, won't it? There's not enough legal work to go around for all the barred lawyers, but hey, you should spend thousands setting up a practice! There's a finite number of clerkships that have never been in want of applicants, but hey, you should apply!

3. Indiana Saturation + 1

Finally, note that in Indiana, public defender gigs for recent graduates dropped slightly when the state reinstated the license of a convicted tax fraud. A former Teamsters attorney, Eric Evans lost his law license a decade ago. I would've thought he would have found something else to do, but apparently he plugged away, did a lot of community service, and now has a law license in an oversaturated market after receiving many letters of support from local judges, politicians, etc.

[One] testified that he wished Evans had been reinstated sooner, because he is "an excellent" attorney and there is a shortage of attorneys, especially local public defenders, in Blackford County. [He] called the crime "an act of omission" and added that Evans probably felt trapped at the time.

The people in Blackford County are either lazy, naive, or lying. All it would take is a drive to Valparaiso or Dayton or Cincinnati or Indianapolis - or even a simple craigslist advertisement - and their shortage would be over in a matter of weeks.

Instead, paid work is going to one who clearly screwed up earlier in his career. Meanwhile, lawyers who have completely-clean records cannot find work as their student loans escalate.

I'm all for rehabilitation, but shouldn't this guy have found an alternative career in the last decade? And shouldn't the state Supreme Court ideally be an active watchguard of the profession? And if there are numerous lawyers in good standing, especially recent bar admissions, who are struggling for work, shouldn't it avoid reinstating convicts?

Just my two cents.