Law Grads: You Can Be Just Like Justice Thomas, Too! Just Follow Your Glimmers

It's graduation season, meaning another wave of 40,000 are told they can fit into a shrinking job market that has little use for half of them.

Up first we have Justice Clarence Thomas, who spoke at Nebraska Law School's graduation ceremony last Saturday. Even though Thomas went to Yale Law School almost forty years ago, he attempted to find relevance for today's graduates:

His attempts to get a job at a law firm resulted in numerous rejection letters, stirring anxiety in the future justice who had a young child at the time and staggering student loans. His lone job offer came from the state Missouri attorney general for meager pay and a long distance from his hometown of Savannah, Ga.

"Getting on the bottom rung would have been enough for me, but I couldn't even do that," Thomas said. "But I got to sit where you are today with that solitary job offer as my tenuous lifeline to that glimmer of hope. Little did I know what was in store for me."
...
"As will be the case for each of you, the people who really mattered were supportive," he said. "But many others were not the least bit encouraging, and some even chose to pour salt in the wounds of disappointment and despair. Whether it was those who looked at me with pity, or those who assured me that my one job offer was a waste of a Yale Law School education, many were just plain unhelpful, unsupportive and mean."

What the article (and presumably the justice) left out is that he got his job at the Missouri ADs office because he networked with the sitting attorney general of the state, John Danforth, who wound up being an influential Republican Senator and who was a Yale law alum himself. And on his oyez biolgraphy, it states that he had ample offers and chose to go to Missouri because the AG would left him work on tax and antitrust stuff. And according to a New York Times column, Thomas has previously mischaracterized his past for his own motives.

But all that murky stuff aside, the point is the message, right? That these graduates may be spat on, rejected, or be greeted with people who tell them their education was a waste, but they can really make it if they just follow that "glimmer of hope?"

Yes, kids, if you just happen to be the right color, make the right ally at Yale, finagle your way into the Reagan administration and land a judicial appointment just in time for Thurgood Marshall to retire, you can have great things in store for you, too! Even if you have Anita Hill speaking against you! And when your opinions are mocked by TTT law professors who point out your numerous errors, you get the last laugh!

I'm not going to deny that Clarence Thomas had a rough childhood that he persevered through it all towards success (and I don't question that southern law firms refused to hire blacks at all), but for most of those kids graduating today, their "glimmer of hope" is that a weird disease immobilizes 1/3 of the attorneys in Omaha, or that they win the lottery, or that their student loans are forgiven via an accounting error. Something tells me their networking at Nebraska did not land them in the company of many future Senators.

Frankly, hearing Thomas talk of "staggering student loans" and dim job prospects to this generation is insulting, almost like a celebrity complaining because their double-platinum card's APR rose from 0.7 to 1.2% or because they can't get their custom Mercedes for another month. Thomas' starting salary in Missouri in the early 70s was the equivalent of about 45k today. If you offered that job - which, remember, Thomas got because he was a Yale graduate with connections - 85% of the students in the audience would take it in a heartbeat. And Thomas' student loans from Yale couldn't have been that bad compared to what today's average graduates face. Yale tuition in 1976 was 4150 a year. Assuming it was slightly lower when Thomas was there, his total debt-to-salary ratio would have been manageable, especially since Yale offered him generous financial aid on account of his race. And his student loans were dischargable in bankruptcy. Today, it's become routine for students to try to pay back debt with a 3-1 debt-to-salary ratio, if not higher.

The overall appearance here is one of a condescending, out-of-touch buffoon who thinks his overstated struggles and extremely good fortune can somehow furnish sound advice to people cruelly disabled by a system rigged against them. What these students really need to hear is exactly what Thomas told them to ignore. They need to have a realistic viewpoint and not rely on "glimmer[s] of hope." They need to confront the fact that law is an oversaturated field and that other areas may provide them with better success. For many of them, they need to embrace the fact that their education might have been a waste. If you don't take that view, you wind up with a bunch of people continuing to try and find nonexistent jobs for years.

What really matters to these kids is exactly what mattered to Justice Thomas: finding remunerative work and a healthy role in society. Your family can be supportive, but if you can't find a decent job, all the "you can do it, Billy, we love you, don't despair" in the world isn't going to help you put bread on the table and pay debts. It's a one-way ticket to depression and deep feelings of personal failure where there was very little chance to succeed.

What really galls me is that people like Justice Thomas are in a position (well, at least in theory) to really change things, get people to think differently about education and young adulthood and debt and finding work. And yet they all talk about working hard and fighting through rejection and turbulence and valuing your support system and blah blah blah. I'm not arguing that life should be rejection- and hardship-free (on the contrary, both are necessities), but central to having success in the world are knowing when to fold your cards and knowing when you're being screwed over. If something is more or less impossible, there's no point wasting further energy trying it. We're quickly approaching an age where restaurants, the notorious "look before you leap" business, will have more of an economic life than JDs.

I would love for just one speaker to get up this graduation season and say something like this:

"I'm mad as hell and you should be, too, because 1/2 to 2/3 of you are never going to really work as attorneys. Many of you would be better off finding a restaurant gig and writing your Congressmen daily. Sorry, kiddos, we abandoned professionalism a while back and the law schools decided to exploit the lack of youth jobs, the popular image of the Perry Mason attorney, and the myth that they're all rich. Have fun paying your non-dischargable debt working at the Gap."

Graduation ceremonies are supposed to be a welcome to the next world, right? And in many cases, isn't honesty the best possible virtue you can give to these graduates? It sickens me that the majority of law school students and recent graduates still seem to sit on their hands, waste two years of their life, and have a Pollyanna view of the world that they'll land a high-quality job if they're just tough enough.

Ultimately, that's the sort of passive egocentric optimism that needs to stop. It has nothing to do with you, whether you land a job or not. It's the system. It needs to change, and shame on Justice Thomas for apparently looking away and preaching the same old garbage. You'd think with his background he would be sensitive to social systems that screw people regardless of their merit, hard work, or character.

Yale Daily News Puts Legal Elitism in Black and White

So today the Yale Daily News gives us a long-winded, comprehensive look at "elite" law students, where they come from, how they adjust to life at grand ol' Yale, what happens while there, etc. For anyone who still harbors any silly thoughts of meritocracy, this article should help you see that the upper Ivy League is basically run on a a series of elitist tautologies.

But in the midst of an article trying to make the Yale student body and its aspiring lawyers feel even better about itself, we get a flat-out admission regarding legal hiring:

Rivera interviewed roughly 40 professionals involved in law firm recruitment and hiring, and found that these people give particular preference to candidates from Harvard, Yale or Stanford law schools when reviewing job applications.

Although many recruiters actually believed that graduates of non-elite law schools were more prepared for the practical aspects of being a lawyer, they still preferred to hire from super-elite schools because of the prestige associated with them.

Yes, right there, in the Yale Daily News is an admission that many recruiters believe other "non-elite" law schools prepare their students better for practice.

And yet, (1) Yale is still the best law school in the country, says US News and World Reports and (2) Yale law graduates still get jobs much easier than others.

They're not even trying to hide how screwed up this system is anymore. It's right there in black-and-white, despite the various arguments thrown out by shameless elitists. (Side question: Did the Yale Daily News even realize they were admitting Yale must not be an excellent law school if others prepare their students better? Think about it.) Normal rules of capitalism simply do not operate at the large firm level; or, if they do, the value of a degree that says "Yale" is worth infinitely more than a degree that says "St. Johns" or "Ohio State."

Could you imagine any other trademark having this effect? You're a completely mediocre guy, but you buy a HONDA and all of a sudden your earning power triples what it would if you bought a TOYOTA. It'd be a commercial basically. You buy the product, life changes. Women want to sleep with you, men want to be you, and live in perpetual bliss while the schmucks who buy the cheaper Toyota actually have to work for a living.

This is, of course, absurd, but it's exactly like what happens in legal hiring all the time. The same kid goes to the local state school for dirt cheap and even if he makes law review and wins a gazillion awards and ranks top 5%, he'll be a longshot for BigLaw, whereas if he went to NYU or Virginia and hit the median or higher, he'd have a much easier shot.

Unfortunately for the makers of every other product in the country, their customers aren't as prestige-drunk as large law firms. Yet those in charge of legal hiring are apparently convinced that clients would balk at paying non-elite graduates high billing rates, even if the non-elite associates are more competent lawyers than their Yale peers. One has to wonder if the lawyers can't justify their own best-interest hiring practices (like paying slightly less for equal or better quality from lesser-known schools) to their clients how they can win borderline cases, but I digress...

At least this isn't lost on some Yale students.

While his classmates are well-qualified for these jobs, [one student] said, the law firms’ selective bias overlooks other candidates — such as his friends at the University of Iowa Law School — who may be just as qualified.
...
[Aanother student] said that the recruiting system reinforces the system of class privilege, in which richer students are more likely to attend good high schools, get into elite colleges and professional schools, and then score jobs at top-ranked firms.

Although she is only in her first year at Yale Law, Luna said she already has a summer job at one of the top firms in Seattle — a job she feels she may not have gotten if she attended a different law school.
...
But this is not always the case, said Hedy Aponte, director of attorney recruiting and development at the prestigious Kirkland & Ellis firm’s Washington D.C. Office. Aponte said her firm sometimes chooses recruitment targets based on geographic proximity to the firm rather than elite status.
...

Kirkland & Ellis focuses on schools ranging from Yale to University of Virginia to George Washington University, she added.

When asked to provide data on how many Kirkland & Ellis lawyers were hired from Harvard, Yale and Stanford, Aponte declined.

Whoa, Hedy! Talk about diversity! George Washington? Virginia? Gosh darned, that's egalitarianism at its finest. What, no Emory or Georgetown graduates?

By the way, Yale Daily News, if these people decline to give you the data, you might want to run a Google search. Kirkland and Ellis puts all of its attorneys information online and it's searchable by law school. I get that our ideals of journalism have sunk, but real journalists would at least check publicly available information.

I actually ran the Kirkland data back when I did part 2 of my rankings project (still going on, since I know people are wondering about it).

In the survey, Harvard had 74 partners (12.7%) and 65 (9.3%) associates, the most from any school in either category. Stanford and Yale are actually way down the list; instead, Chicago, Northwestern, NYU, Columbia, Georgetown, Michigan, and the University of Illinois rounded out the top eight. With DePaul, GWU, and Fordham above Yale, it's probably safe to assume it has more to do with their offices in Chicago, NYC, and Washington D.C. than anything. But ultimately, despite Hedy's assertions to the contrary, Kirkland is still elitist (1.7% of your hiring pool came from DePaul. Yippee).

This would be one of those spots where I think the article was very under-researched. Harvard, Yale, and Stanford aren't the end-all of prestige hiring or elitism. But that's really getting beside the point. The point is that it's an exclusive club, and no matter your merits, you're probably not getting in unless you have the right stamp, even if you have objectively offer a superior quality of underlying product at a lower price.

The branding of the Ivy League with regards to prestige is, perhaps, the greatest marketing and advertising success in global economic history. One can only wonder if and when the ultimate consumers (i.e. clients of large firms) will fully catch on.

Yale Applications Down; William Mitchell Goes Transparent

As Above the Law reports today, Yale applications are down nearly 16.5% this year. Naturally, this doesn't quite make sense to Elie Mystal:

The NYT says “stay away from law school,” and applications to Yale drop. But if you read Above the Law, you pick up nuances like “stay away from crappy law schools.” See how much more subtle and informative that is? I know, I know, it bothers me too when the print media sensationalizes things.

No, Elie, you elitist T-14 marketing shill, the point is that it's so bad that even going to awesome schools may be a losing proposition. See, for example, you! People who went to T-14 schools, did well, scored at BigLaw, and were spit out 3-5 years later are a dime a dozen. In a world where even Georgetown has to fudge numbers, you know something's up with the game itself.

But Elie found a "more plausible" reason why there was a catacylsmic drop: Yale decided to start requiring a "dean's certificate" from one's former school:

Ah, now that’s an explanation that comports with what I’ve come to know about prospective law students. For many of them, it’s their first important professional decision; why would they put in the extra work required to apply to the very best law school? Paperwork? Bah. “I don’t want to do no paperwork, I want to be a lawyer.”

Look, I know it seems like I want there to be fewer law students by any means necessary. But really I just want people to be making intelligent decisions.

Not applying to Yale just because it requires more paperwork is not smart. But I suppose the kids not applying to Yale for that reason weren’t going to be Yale Law School material anyway.

Does this idiot honestly believe that otherwise-serious applicants strayed from a tip-top law school because they had to a dean's certificate, something that some other law schools already require, if I'm not mistaken? Seriously?

I know this might be a shock to people like Elie, but it wasn't just the 155 LSATs who are affected by the legal profession's down-turn. Those with 175 LSATs and shiny credentials are less likely to go as well if they understand it (properly) to be a giant crapshoot. If anything, the B.A. holder with the 170+ LSAT is more likely to be able to score a lucrative job absent law school than the 155 LSAT holder. Thus, Yale's prospective applicant pool might drop, as the 165 LSAT kids may not think themselves good enough to even bother.

It's all about alternatives. The kid who can get into Yale often has many of them, meaning there's no reason to take the (increasingly-higher) risk that law will not pan out. Kids lower on the academic totem pole may not have those alternatives and may keep applying to solid schools hoping they can secure a job down the line. Above all else, it's downright stupid to assume that high-achievers are not applying to a top law school because it involved an extra step when the LSAC process is already a bunch of hoop-jumping and the high achievers are more likely to jump through hoops, anyway. How condescending, yet entirely unsurprising.

Elie would, I suppose, rather propagate his elitist worldview that there's something magical about Yale ("Yale Law School material," blech) and the other top schools that somehow immunizes them from a lack of interest in law school unless students are being lazy and irrational.

___________________________________________

In happier news, William Mitchell has decided to be more transparent and has published a wide array of helpful information of its website to better diagnose the school and its propensity for producing quality graduates. Check this out:

• 67% of reporting employed 2009 graduates hold a position where bar admission is required.
• Overall average salaries range between $39,000 and $75,000, although there was a steep decline in the number of 2009 graduates reporting information.
• The 2009 overall average of $58,687 for 176 people includes at least 15 salaries of $100k or more.
• 11 graduates are working in publishing (Westlaw is in Minneapolis, if I'm not mistaken)
• 21 are in "solo practice," a dramatic rise from the '06-'07 numbers.

I still think there's some creative accounting going on here (they get 93% employed by discounting people who went back to school and are not seeking work, which to me presents a chicken-egg problem), but overall it's wonderful to have more informative numbers about what is going on.

Clearly, they're still oversaturating the area if only 2/3 of their employed graduates actually need a J.D. The salary information seems far more reasonable, even if it's still on the high side for 50-70% of graduates. I also find it curious that they used to focus on medians and now they're doing averages (I wonder which one is higher...).

The bottom line is that there's no way in heck I pay 50k a year plus interest to have a chance at a job averaging 58k with all sorts of strings attached.

Hopefully more schools will put out detailed information like this, even if it's buried deep on their side. I'll snoop around and see if I can find some others, and I encourage readers to email me if they spot any that I can dissect here.