Read, Spot the Similarities Between Law and Higher Education

Although I maintain that there are some entirely unique aspects of the legal field (the limited transferability of the law degree, the seismic shifts in BigLaw creating a domino effect), it's hard not to see some similarities with how education has been handled in other fields.

See, for example, the run-of-the-mill PhD, as explained by this excellent article from The Nation by William Deresiewicz. Reading through it, it's hard not to see the similarities with the legal field:

1. "[T]he feeling is universal. Most professors I know are willing to talk with students about pursuing a PhD, but their advice comes down to three words: don’t do it."
2. "In the past three years, the market has been a bloodbath: often only a handful of jobs in a given field, sometimes fewer, and as always, hundreds of people competing for each one."
3. "[T]hings kept getting worse. Instead of replacing retirees with new tenure-eligible hires, departments gradually shifted the teaching load to part-timers. . . "
4. "Less visible but equally important has been the advent and rapid expansion of full-time positions that are not tenure-eligible. No one talks about this transformation—the creation of yet another academic underclass...."
5. "Graduate programs occupy a highly unusual, and advantageous, market position: they are both the producers and the consumers of academic labor, but as producers, they have no financial stake in whether their product “sells”—that is, whether their graduates get jobs. Yes, a program’s prestige is related, in part, to its placement rate, but only in relative terms. In a normal industry, if no firm sells more than half of what it produces, then either everyone goes out of business or the industry consolidates. But in academia, if no one does better than 50 percent, then 50 percent is great. Programs have every incentive to keep prices low by maintaining the oversupply."
   

In other words:

1. Practitioners regularly advise people not to go.
   
2. A dismal hiring market.
3. Systemic changes that have decreased opportunities for recent graduates by replacing them with off-shored and non-barred employees.
4. A downward shift in wages and job titles that creates a whole new underclass.
5. The education system has perverse economic incentives to flood the market and little to no incentive to actually place all of its graduates, only so long as it has relative success (i.e., US News and World Report).

Yup. Of course I'm simplifying for the sake of comparison. The article runs four pages and is full of nuanced differences in academia vs. other professions, but overall, it's hard to ignore that education systems seem to be run exactly like for-profit businesses, albeit at a slower pace. Those running graduate schools have seemingly cast aside the structural protections of professionalism just as quickly as those running law schools have.

And in both cases, you can ultimately blame federally-backed loans and this stupid folk religion that getting a chiseled-column degree - any degree - is better than working as a tradesman or garbageman or any other blue collar job that the American suburban bourgeoisie has turned its nose at for decades, along with a obedient capitalist media that has made higher education into a necessity of respect and a way to thin the labor pool instead of what is should be: a product evaluated for its usefulness and return on investment.

And that brings me to my next point, on the claimed need for happiness and personal satisfaction in a degree. This article is not only absurd puffery of the job market with lots of go-getter fluff (and it repeated the constant business lie that they want "analytical ability" and "writing" and therefore are peachy with liberal arts grads; earth to Ms. Pynchon: they've been saying that for decades, and it's just not true), but the comments betray a really irrational attitude on behalf of the author:

I went back to school and majored in Literature as had always been my plan – my passion. I figured I could always find A JOB but I had only one chance to study the thing I loved. Would my choice have been the same had my U.C. San Diego education cost tens of thousands of dollars rather than simply a couple of grand? I don’t know. But I’ve never for a moment regretted majoring in Literature – a subject that continues to feed my spirit 35 years after graduation.

Tragically, it's common to completely confuse education and knowledge in this way. People feel that if they want to know, say, "literature," they have to get a fancy certificate from Western Tech State. And the converse: if they don't have the certificate, they don't know it.

Well, neither proposition is true. I know dozens of English majors who wouldn't know a Shakespeare reference if it slapped them in the ass. I know a history graduate student who doesn't know what I consider to be basic nuts-and-bolts talking points of world history. And don't get me started on certain political science, psychology, or sociology disciplines who spend 50% of their time restating the obvious.

Conversely, I know many people - mostly older - who have become mini-experts in a particular area solely out of interest. Military buffs are common. Do you think a Civil War lover who visits battlefields and devours books about Sherman and Lee feels unfulfilled by not having done the procedural requirements to get a master's? In our age, almost anyone can get an advanced degree. Only a few actually love learning and seek knowledge to genuinely pursue it. And if you need some kind of structured setting to learn, get in contact with people in the field or set a schedule of visiting conferences or something.

There's simply no reason to confuse education - a certification process - with the love of knowledge, or its effects. That's precisely what the marketers at the universities want you to believe. Same with law schools: "won't you love learning about the law? You'll be enriched by your law degree, even if you don't practice!" Well, bullshit.

Truth is, if you want to be enriched by literature, you always have the chance to pick up a good book. There is no "one chance" with genuine knowledge, nor is the process ever complete become some trash bin gave you a gloried dead tree. Since anyone can pick up a Norton Anthology or explore the annotated classics at their local library, I see no reason to not apply full investment principles to a degree.

Law works in much the same way. No, you won't be able to get a law license, but if your interest is in "learning the law," there's nothing stopping you from reading good books about constitutional law or a history of English property law. Your odds to practice will only be slightly lower than some of those who spend three years, and your personal fulfillment will be identical, if not greater, since yours wouldn't end with some tenured jackass making you regurgitate every nicety in the rules in a three-hour span and then finding a way to slice 50+ practically-identical exams into grading categories.

Law School Psychology 101 And A Texas A&M Law School?

When researchers study the psychology of consumers, they often find that individuals will continue researching information about a product they've already purchased after they've bought it in order to rationalize their behavior and cure any buyer's remorse.

We see this all the time among law students. Today's example would be Marisa Mittelman, who seems excited about going to the University of San Diego Law School in the fall:

When choosing between my final two schools (UC-Hastings and USD), however, I have to say that from every angle these things seemed nearly equal. I heard amazing things from students at both schools, saying they loved their professors, that the administration is always helpful and available, and that job prospects weren’t looking great anywhere. Is this last part discouraging? Of course. The fact is, though, that students who are working hard are still getting jobs. Clearly, the market is not what it once was. That applies to any law school, though, and I think that if you’re one hundred percent sure you want to be an attorney, you need to just sort of go for it. I plan to work my ass off and hope for the best—I don’t think there’s anything more that someone who is intent on practicing law can do.

Here's an idea: How about getting rid of this idea that's it's justifiable to make a bad decision so long as you're "intent on practicing law." Can you imagine this logic applying to any other product?

"But, honey, I was intent on being a Bentley owner! That's why I signed the papers!"

And Marisa is remarkably cavalier about the lack of job opportunities. "[S]tudents who are working hard are still getting jobs" is (a) complete crap that's disrespectful to recent graduates and unemployed 3Ls who are probably smarter than her; and (b) not dispositive of whether she'll have a job if she works hard. (On the bright side, you may not have a job, but you'll integrate words like "dispositive" into your everyday vocabulary.)

Again, this type of logic never shows up in intelligent investment situations. "Yes, I understand the entire sector is down in the toilet and has limited prospects, but this little stock is the best of this small, affordable bunch, so I'll buy it." Not quite. Getting a law school degree right now is like buying a house in 2007. It may work out for you. You might have a nice place to live. But it's a catastrophic financial decision even if you're "100 percent sure" you want to be a homeowner. There are much better options out there. A helpful administration and lovable professors can't pay bills or compensate for the loss of your mid-20s.

USD is an amazing school...Call me an eternal optimist, but I can’t wait to become a lawyer. And I can’t wait to begin my time at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Reality check: USD may be the best school in San Diego, but it is not a well-regarded law school outside that city, therefore it cannot be "an amazing school." This woman wants to be a family law attorney. There are two other law schools in San Diego who feed into areas like family law in addition to the transplants from places like Loyola and Pepperdine. And if she has any designs on moving back to New York, she'll be in for a rude awakening when Brooklyn Law School grads are beating her out for jobs.

And it's not like family law is generally a field for self-styled "eternal optimists," anyway, but she may be saved from that rude awakening by the rude awakening that a much-smaller-than-advertised segment of her graduating class will have full-time employment, no matter how hard they work.

As if it were bad enough that places like San Diego are still reeling in those blinded by an irrational desire to be a lawyer at all costs, Texas Governor Rick Perry threw out the idea of a Texas A&M law school:

Gov. Rick Perry floated the notion in an offhand comment today as he began a speech honoring women in the state Legislature. After being introduced by actress and conservative activist Janine Turner, the governor talked about trying to convince Turner’s 13-year-old daughter, an aspiring lawyer, to enroll at A&M, his alma mater.

“By the time you get there, they will have a law school,” Perry predicted.

With the rate they're being proposed by insane politicians, it wouldn't surprise me if he was serious in his intent to mar a great university with a bubble-fueled law school.

Lawyers, Addiction, and Law School as the Anti-AA

The Huffington Post has an interesting, thought-provoking piece about treating lawyers with addiction problems:

Whether it is because they are members of a stressful, high-stakes profession or because personalities with a penchant for addictive disorders are drawn to the law, studies have shown that lawyers have twice the addiction rate of the general population and are three times as likely to be depressed.

As if that weren't enough, lawyers are also notoriously reluctant to seek help for these problems...."Lawyers are uniquely treatment resistant," said Dr. Link Christin, adjunct professor of law at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota...

The article goes on to allege that law school is a breeding ground for addiction, mostly by custom, and that 20-40% of law students are depressed.

This had me thinking about the nature of AA and the nature of law schools. Having never been to an AA meeting, I can't give any personal knowledge, but my understanding is that the whole point is that you solve a problem by finding there are others like you who face analogous situations and admitting that group help is necessary. Thus, an individual problem is countered with the power of numbers via group support.

It seems to me that law school, in many ways, is the opposite. When one comes as a law school, they come on individual achievement. Up to that point in time, most law students have excelled in the academic sense, at least relative to their peers. In law school, they meet dozens and dozens of people who are exactly like them and often went to law school for the exact same reason. The same sense of uniqueness and exceptionalism that gave rise to thoughts of succeeding in law (and investing tens of thousands in an education) is destroyed by the introduction of two hundred carbon copies. The identical members of the group cause a breakdown of the belief of uniqueness, of success, of achievement.

Thus, a sort-of cognitive dissonance develops. The young lawyer has been trained to believe he or she is exceptional. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise, even for the top 10% graduates. I'm not going to play armchair psychiatrist and say this leads to addictions, but it can't help, and it certainly can't help in treating addiction.

It seems to me that the root problem here is that you have people who on some latent level believe they're some sort of superhumans. While the article speaks of innovative therapy programs targeted solely at lawyers and law school awareness programs, my gut feeling is that the problem needs to be addressed significantly earlier, possibly as far back as high school.

If putting people on a pedestal and calling them exceptional for what are frankly non-exceptional things causes psychological problems that make one resistant to addiction therapy, maybe we should stop putting kids on pedestals for non-exceptional things.