Restoring Dignity to the Law: Freakonomics v. Cooley

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Freakonomics v. Cooley

In this article, Freakonomics passes along Jonathan Tjarks of policymic.com's take on how going to law school is like being a high school football player today, focusing on things like hidden costs, low odds, how "lower-tier" players even at elite schools (e.g. Harvard for law, Texas for football) are scoffed at, etc., with seeming approval.

This analogy should sound familiar, as I discussed the NFL-to-law school analogy back on June 17th.

I didn't reach it as a search a good comparison to the law school world; rather, I found it because Thomas Cooley Law School was comparing law school to the NFL as a reason why prestige is erroneous.

What are the odds of that happening? Thomas Cooley looks at law school and thinks, "hey, it's like the NFL; that's a POSITIVE (at least for lower-tiered law schools and students)" while Mr. Tjarks looks at law school and thinks "hey's, it's like the NFL; that's a NEGATIVE."

But that's how it works in Cooley-land. Going to play college football at Talledega School for the Eskimo Orthodox Blind is great for one's NFL prospects if just one Jerry Rice comes out of nowhere. In reality, as Tjarks/Freakonomics remind us, it's not even a good idea to go to Texas if you want to play in the NFL, it's just the best of poor alternatives.

But even if you win the NFL lottery, odds are that you'll be retired in 4 years, and many will be left with medical bills and long-term concussive damage for their sacrifice.

Of course, the comparison falls flat in some respects. The NFL is almost purely meritocratic. You sack the QB every down, you play. Being a workout warrior can get you drafted, but you won't make it through camp when some free agent takes your place. Law school has no such thing. You have a bum running the stopwatch at the combine, you are never going to the so-called "big leagues."

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About RDTTL

I am a current law student who dreads the end of the conveyor belt and wishes to see positive change in the legal community.

To me, a dignified profession is one that is respected, one whose members serve as ambassadors for its social value, one that lets its practitioners lead healthy, productive, and active civic lives, and one where the members of the profession take active steps to protect the profession's honor.

It is self-evident that the legal profession has problems on that front (or all of those fronts, if you want to break it down). Lawyers are twice as likely to kill themselves as the average person. They are significantly more likely to become depressed or alcoholic. Along with other factors, an oversupply of labor has led to smaller salaries for most - putting the ability to have families or manage debt at risk - while making attorney work an impossibility for others. Last year roughly 1/3 of recent juris doctor recipients did not have jobs. Legal process outsourcing makes it far less likely that they'll ever get them.

These issues existed before the recession and extend beyond its effects. This blog explores these issues and seeks to provide helpful information and commentary, especially with regards to legal education, the reform of which I believe would aid many the other issues that prevent the law from being a fully-dignified profession.

I have chosen to use pseudonymous speech for roughly the same reasons outlined by zerohedge, even though I don't think the risk of retaliation is that high in my case (of all the professors I've had, I can only think of one who would "retaliate").

If you wish to contact me, please leave a comment. In the interest of simplifying my life, I am cutting my email addresses down, including the one that used to appear here, which has become unmanageable due to spam.