MBA USNEWS Flawed Numbers, Kansas Applications Down Big, and Duke Finds New Way to Grab Tuition Money

1. Grad School U.S. News Fraud:

From BusinessWeek:

The Gainesville Sun last night reported that the University of Florida Warrington College of Business supplied the magazine with inaccurate job-placement data, resulting in a higher ranking.

An anonymous complaint made through the university’s ethics hotline in August alleged that 37 percent of UF’s 2009 MBA graduating class had jobs at graduation, while 53 percent had jobs three months later. The figures supplied to USNWR indicated 53 percent placement at graduation and 79 percent three months later. UF was ranked 39th in 2009, falling two spots from the year before; in 2010 it fell to 47th.

An investigation found no evidence of willfulness, but you can't help but wonder at the similarities. Does any school ever drop as a result of submitting false numbers? Gee, I wonder why that never happens. In any event, the article gives us another look into the askew, dullard mind of Bob Morse, the laziest journalist/statistician on planet Earth:

[Morse] said he thought data accuracy was not a widespread problem, but it's one that should be addressed by organizations such as the American Bar Association and the MBA-CSC in their capacity as standard-setting bodies, not by the media outlets that conduct rankings.

"It's not my problem" is just about the shittiest possible answer a bona fide journalist or statistician can come up with. People who are actually interested in finding the truth - rather than serving as a press agent for the official organizations that supply them - actually get off their asses and find the truth, ensure accurate data, stop official manipulation where it's suspected, etc. I think at this point any illusion of U.S. News being anything more than a puppet with no journalistic or mathematical intentions is shattered by Morse's own admissions.

2. Kansas Applications Down

From the K.C. Star:

The University of Kansas Law School says its applications declined 23 percent for this year compared with last year.
...
About 850 students applied to the law school this year, down from about 1,100 last year.

They're still far from being underwater (they only admit about 350-400 each year), but this is a state flagship university. If you want to ultimately practice is Kansas or the Kansas City metro area, you can't find a better school to attend. I wonder how the quality of their applicant pool is, and I wonder what this kind of drop signifies for places like Washburn and UMKC that are 2nd-choices for KU applicants. I imagine we start seeing sub-150 LSATs more prevalently and schools have to reach further than they normally would.

3. Duke Innovates in Ways to Leach

From the Nat'l Law Journal:

The school announced this week that it will launch a master of laws program in judicial studies geared specifically to judges....

The LL.M. program will open during the summer of 2012 to 10 to 15 sitting judges. They will take intensive four- to six-week sessions over the course of two summers. The curriculum will include classes and seminars in which both judges and scholars look at the history of the judiciary and judicial decision-making. Participants will examine topics including judicial independence, bias, the selection process and use of specialized courts.

Tuition for this four- to six-week program? $17k. For roughly 1/6 of the normal school year, with a guaranteed small class size and what surely will be the lightest teaching, lowest resource demand in academic history, the school is charging over 40% of its full-year tuition price.

Ca-ching! I'm sure Duke justifies this by some inflated beliefs that the judiciary could use the advanced training, but let's be real: most courts are overworked and, frankly, the judges have better things to do than take classes at Duke for $17k and a worthless L.L.M. If a judge in my district went to this thing and was subject to election, I'd vote against him/her on principle.

But hey, you have to hand it to Duke. If kids are going to start turning down law school to find better uses of their money and time, the law schools are naturally going to move to pushing education for existing practitioners, more than they have already.

That's the Two-Tiered System I Know!

I bet St. Thomas (Fl) is proud to claim Judge Barbara McCarthy as an alumnus, but after reading this article, I have to wonder what the hell she learned there in three years.

To sum up, this wealthy 36-year old "suburban brat" had over 50 previous moving violations and was on probation when he was drag racing his Porsche, killed two businessmen from Britain, and fled the scene. Florida law provides for up to 45 years in prison for this sort of reckless manslaughter. His sentence?

[He] was sentenced by Judge McCarthy to a mere two years of house arrest — in one of his wealthy parents’ luxury oceanfront condos — after agreeing to write big checks to the victims’ widows.

In clearly defining that the rich have their own criminal laws in this country, Judge McCarthy had this to say:

The need for restitution does outweigh the need for prison.

That's a record-scratching admission from a criminal judge, isn't it? Apparently, the guy made a deal with the widows to pay them off immediately so they would go to the judge and ask her to only give him house arrest. The judge's job in this case is to laugh, politely decline, and actually put people like in jail. If restitution outweighs the need for prison, why don't we just saddle people with non-dischargable civil judgments and call it a day? No jail at all - just pay back whatever victims!

Because there is and was no need for restitution to have anything to do with the criminal sanction. They should generally have much to do with each other. We put people in prison to incapacitate them so they can't do this reckless shit to anyone else. We put them there as non-monetary punishment for bad behavior, to deter others from doing the same behavior.

Besides, there was less risk of the victims' families not getting paid here than there normally is. If he doesn't settle the civil suit immediately and the judge throws the book at him, the widows grab a contingency lawyer and sue the shit out of the guy. It will, of course, take more time and may prove difficult to collect, but that's why you buy life insurance. In any event, the guy's family has an incentive to settle the civil case since he's the heir to a jewelry fortune and I can't imagine they'd want either the bad publicity or the hassle (clearly, they didn't even want the hassle of actually raising a child).

What was really needed here was social deterrence, not restitution. This idiot had already spent six months in prison for drug charges and violating his probation. Looking at this, what, exactly, is going to stop the wealthy from trampling on the peons? What about the societal value in having a justice system that applies equally? We have criminal law to help control anti-social behavior. The entire purpose is blown if we let the elite buy get-out-of-jail free cards. That, Judge McCarthy, is worth more than restitution to two families who have a clear and obvious remedy in the civil system.

So to sum up, if you're poor, you will treated like dirt and often sentenced to prison for lower crimes, like petty theft, low-level drug charges, prostitution, etc. One reason California's prison system is so overcrowded is because their "3 strikes law" is a convenient way to saddle poor people with long jail sentences for habitual "lesser" crimes.

But if you're rich, you can rack up minor violations, drug charges, etc. and mow down people while driving a Porsche and YOU, because your family is loaded, get to watch TV for two months in mom and dad's crib instead of going to jail for 5 years. Maybe play a little X-box, too, games like Grand Theft Auto (Why play the game? He could probably do the real deal and get like a year, max).

It begs the question why Florida even wasted public resources prosecuting the guy when they could have been hammering those evil, evil pot dealers and hookers who can't make a good living doing anything else. Why not just let this Thomas Crown wannabe write a check to the officers?

When McCarthy ordered LeVin at his sentencing hearing to take the gum out of his mouth and make a statement, he turned red and blubbery and said he felt shame, but he never actually apologized.

Why would he? Obviously, the elite parents here didn't know how to teach this jackoff how to act responsibly and in 35+ years nothing has made him figure it out. What does he have to be sorry for, exactly? Judge McCarthy's sentence basically endorsed his extreme recklessness so long as there was restitution. Because he killed two people acting like an asshat? So what? If he hasn't gained many socially-positive virtues in 35+ years, do you think he has any appreciation for the value of human life?

Honestly, what use does someone like that have for the criminal laws if they have no teeth to them? Meanwhile, you, I, and the other schlubs will be subject to the other set of rules. Of course, most of us never act like complete asshats because we know if we do, we'll actually go to the slammer.

It'd be nice if the hyper-wealthy could feel exactly the same way.

Young & Rich, J.D.: One Gignatic, Hilarious Fail

Normally, I don't like linking to blogs/sites that are delusional or full of propaganda or illogical conclusions. But today I'm making an exception to give you the epic fail that is Young & Rich, J.D. Reading it makes for high comedy. I can only hope it's an elaborate joke, but sadly, I'm not sure that it is.

The premise of the blog can be explained by the absurd About Me section:

Young and Rich self-made millionaire with a JD from a third-tier law school. A law school referred to by so called "scambloggers" as a 3rd-tier toilet (TTT). Such law schools are often blamed by the students for their own misfortune. The inspiration for this blog was the class action lawsuit against Thomas Jefferson Law School by a graduate who couldn't find a job. Young&Rich, JD is meant to be the antithesis to the typical law school scamblog. We talk about success. We talk about making it. We talk about money and what it buys. We are inspirational yet condescending. We tell the truth even if the truth hurts. We are real.

Sloppy writing aside, I encourage my readers to check it out. Whether it's ironic or earnest, it's genuinely hilarious. It reads like some back-room administrative assistant at a law school decided to make stuff up on a blogger account, complete with god-awful writing ability.

The icing on the cake is that yesterday's entry celebrates Carson Block, a guy who:

• became truly successful by leaving the law;
• graduated top 10% from a T-2 back in 2005 (I don't think any of us would argue that him getting a gig at Jones Day was a surprise)
• left the law to become a researcher for his father, who is an investor wealthy enough to hire someone in this capacity;
• has done nothing post-law that required his law degree; and
• runs a company that engages in extremely shady behavior by short-selling companies they issue public, sometimes-dubious research on, e.g. when they buried Orient Paper's stock price on what turned out to be mostly false allegations. Just today, their recent target, Sino-Forest, is up 16% on an article that rebuts some of Muddy Waters' recent allegations.

To whomever is behind it, it's very entertaining. Like The Onion of legal field blogs, only there's a chance that some anonymous "millionaire" buffoon actually believes this stuff.

More on Thomas Jefferson Suit

When will Beth Kransberger learn to stop talking to the media? From 760 talk radio in San Diego, she first called the suit "bewildering" (seriously?) and then added this:

"We have always followed the system given to us by the ABA," she told News 8. "We have always reported accurately and as thoroughly as humanly possible."

Emphasis mine. Does she really want to argue that their employment numbers have been "as thorough[] as humanly possible?" I about died laughing when I read that. Really? (note: as far as I can tell, this page is not linked to their most current website; it makes one wonder why they're not advertising the '08 and '09 numbers anymore). Here is how they used to present their '09 numbers:

First, note the disclaimer at the top: the sample size is only 86%. So the "total employed" number should actually be given as 72.8% if it's any kind of fair representation (they can't seriously assume that respondents and non-respondents are equal, can they?). Otherwise, one might assume the 84% means 84% of the total student body. Same with the private practice figure, and one is only left to guess whether the missing 14% is factored into the "average salary" figures. I imagine not.

Second, note the conspicuous absence of any category labeled "non-law jobs." What is "business," exactly? Technically, all law firms are businesses. But in the context provided, "business" doesn't seem to be a catch-all to cover waiter gigs, but rather implies working as in-house counsel somewhere, which wouldn't be implausible to someone not familiar with the legal world. Given that "business" is between private practice and government and judicial clerkships, the logical assumption would be that "business" refers to corporate jobs requiring bar passage and not similar to, say, "continuing studies." But the ambiguity of the term itself reveals a major flaw.

Third, why are salaries not provided for academic, public interest, or clerkships? It seems incongruous to list them for the other categories, but not those. Maybe it just wasn't "humanly possible."

Oh, here we are: "Salary information is only provided below where at least five salaries were reported." Ah-ha.

New question:

Fourth, what was the response rate on the salary figures provided? If 36% of respondents in private practice didn't state how big their firm was, how many actually gave their salaries? With how many grains of salt should we take that 90k+ business salary? Did only 7 people respond? Because one could look at this and get the impression that TJLS is a hotbed for filling high-powered business positions in San Diego (and I suppose LA). Is that really the case, or is the data presented not as "thorough" as claimed? This is a major omission and one entirely in TJLS' hands.

Fifth, the use of the phrase "job offer" implies a professional job, something more than landing an hourly retail gig. Mentioning that an "offer" came before or after the bar suggests that the bar was a necessary part of the process.

Sixth, related to the first point, the percentages given seem to be percentages of the employed number and not percentages of the student body. The numbers between private practice and pursuing advanced degree add up to 100% if clerkships are omitted. That leaves the 11% as a percentage of the class as a whole (and one must wonder if "seeking employment" was an option for the employed). So we have a scale problem that's not readily apparent: employed sub-fields are presented as a percentages of a subset, while unemployed are presented as a sub-set of the whole. In other words, from the chart, it appears its twice as likely to wind up in "business" as it is to wind up "seeking employment." Au contraire.

All in all, here is a better presentation of what was known about the Class of 2009, dubious industry practices aside:

Known: 86%
Unknown: 14%

Known to be in private practice: 42.3% of class
Known to be working for the gov't: 6.4% of class
Known to be working in public interest: 5.0% of class
Known to have clerkships: 0.9% of class
Known to be working in academia: 0.9% of class
Known to be continuing studies: 3.0% of class
Known to be working in business: 15.9% of class
Known to be unemployed, seeking employment: 9.5% of class

The numbers wound up a little off (I assume the gap is "unemployed, not seeking"), but you get the general idea. Thorough presentation would clearly define the categories and provide a consistent baseline for the percentages that make the numbers comparable to each other. It would attempt to factor in non-respondents instead of trying to hide the very real possibility that they're overwhelmingly unemployed.

I recognize my presentation is different than the NALP method, and indeed a disclaimer at the top of the page tells us that TJLS' "annual employment statistics are compiled in accordance with the National Association for Law Placement's Employment Report and Salary Survey."

I guess prospective students are supposed to become mini-experts in statistics and look through the NALP's guidelines and realize its crucial flaws before relying on the numbers at all, even though TJLS was obviously doing "everything humanly possible" to report data accurately and thoroughly. I wonder if anyone in the administration ever questioned the use of the NALP standards as being too lax and open to number shaving.

And I hasten to note that the NALP also directs law schools to "establish and implement practices to ensure the fair and accurate representation of students and the institution in the employment search process." I have to think that includes charts as these, even though they're directed at 0Ls.

Truth is, instead of questioning the simpleton NALP rules, they were probably too busy trying to figure out to best soften the data. You can't tell me the placement of "business" and the lack of a non-law category is just a happy accident. They, and most schools, probably had a meeting long ago to decide just how to present people they wanted to call "employed" but they couldn't put in the private practice or government or the other categories.

To claim compliance with NALP is one thing. To claim that you "have always reported accurately and as thoroughly as humanly possible" is a whole new level of audaciousness.

Speaking of audaciousness, check out these quotes from a San Diego "career counselor":

"Even if they keep totally valid statistics, that doesn't say anything about what's going to happen to you personally," said career counselor Judy Kaplan Baron.

Kaplan Baron added that schools are in the business of educating, not finding its graduates work.

"It is the responsibility of the person who is paying so much for an education to figure out what they're going to be able to do with it," Kaplan Baron told News 8. "That is going in with your eyes open: I guess it's a very expensive life lesson."

And what if the school is purposely obfuscating the view when one's eyes ARE open? And why does it matter what eventually happens to one person four years later when the allegedly-fraudulent transaction occurs well before the result is known?

The issue here is inducement. The school doesn't have to do anything to find its graduates work. That isn't the issue. The problem is that the school open advertises solid employment and good salaries for its graduates. Once it does that, it has a duty to be honest if individuals only buy the education with reliance on those numbers.

I reiterate: if this takes place in any other industry, we have no problem enforcing class-based consumer protections and placing the responsibility on the company to have truthful advertising and avoid misrepresentations to consumers. Auto, cigarettes, real estate, foodstuffs, furniture, you name it, even intangible goods and services. Almost always, we place the most stringent burden on the company for a variety of reasons. But you cross over into buying and selling educations and suddenly it's back to caveat emptor.

"Very expensive life lesson," my butt. How about we actually provide consumer protection befitting the scale of the investment and the collective action problems, as we have with real estate, securities, automobiles, and every other product that may cost someone six figures.

An Interesting Answer from New San Diego Dean

The following is a question and answer from AmLaw Daily's recent interview with new U. of San Diego dean Stephen Ferruolo:

[Question]: Law schools have been under fire recently for reportedly misrepresenting post-graduation employment statistics. Did you consider that controversy before accepting the dean position?

[Answer]: I know, from the point of view of someone who's been running a law office for the past few years, what has been going on in the legal marketplace. The expectations of law students from the time they began three years ago to their graduation now have changed dramatically. Students have not been able to fund their lives the way they thought they would be able to when they started law school. But I still believe law is great training for a wide variety of opportunities out there. We just need to work hard to provide our students with the best training and show them the way to the best opportunities.

This may seem unremarkable to some, but notice how the answer doesn't exactly match what was asked. The question was only whether the indisputable controversy (like his lesser cross-town rival being sued) contributed in his decision regarding the job at all. You can admit that a controversy exists without conceding the most salient points of the "other side." And yet, our new San Diego dean didn't repeat the same ol' talking points, but rather admitted flatly that recent students are disgruntled with their return on investment, and that the end result does not match the incoming expectations.

Granted, Ferruolo is a long-time practitioner, so he likely missed the series of lectures about delivering academia propaganda while he was actually working, but consider how radical of a change this is from just a year or two ago, when administrators would defend their statistics and their graduates fortunes.

For all those of you considering going to San Diego law, consider this very carefully: the chief executive at your possible school just admitted publicly that the product did not meet the expectations of its consumers. Would you ever purchase, say, an oven if the CEO came out and said "yeah, the product isn't doing what everyone thought it would?" If the product being sold to you was the exact same thing with no substantive changes? Of course not!

But then one has to wonder: if someone straight from the front line of the legal marketplace says that students are not being able to "fund their lives," how is it that the median salary of San Diego graduates in the private sector is $97,000? And how is the "public service" sector salary $58,000? Will these numbers be similar next year after Dean Ferruolo lets everyone know that the legal marketplace is certainly NOT hiring half the "private sector" graduates at or above $97k??? Will San Diego tuition stay north of $41k to reflect the difficult reality for recent graduates, or will the plundering continue?

Only time will tell.

Arne Duncan is What's Wrong with America

As many of you have probably heard, the Department of Education issued new rules regulating the for-profit education sector, which were significantly watered down from the Department's earlier intentions after the for-profits lobbied extensively, although it still is a net positive.

But if you think the new rules will really have any significant negative effect, or will check colleges' behavior, I encourage you to check out how Wall Street responded to the news:

As the Times article quotes Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, this whole education sector has the characteristics of a bubble, just like the housing market: "that they can capture all the upside of increasing volume while shifting all of the downside to somewhere else, which is students and taxpayers." One would think that applies in equal force for non-profit education as well, as it's hard to imagine how they aren't doing the exact same thing by shifting the downside risk to taxpayers and individual students. And as LSTB explained in its two-part post, people who are skeptical this is a true bubble are missing the mark.

But what really galled me about the Times article was this following quote from government mealy-mouth Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Corporatized Education: "As a country, we need this sector to succeed. This is not about ‘gotcha.’"

Are you serious, Arne? Half your job is to regulate institutions of higher learning, to be a cop that will stand up there and say "gotcha!" to keep ensure that the system stays honest and that good schools that actually exist to better their students' lives can thrive while the dishonest two-bit "you'll be rich!" schools go out of business.

Could you imagine if the executive branch took this approach to all licensing? If the liquor board refused to revoke people's licenses when they regularly sold to 14-year olds because they didn't want to say "gotcha?" Why do we allow this sort of "reform-first" attitude with education? Reform? When has industry-led "reform" ever worked in American education?

This dope had the perfect opportunity to take a major stand against much of the profligate, bad apple behavior that fuels American higher education - not just the for-profits, but the non-profits who were watching from the gallery. Instead, he bent over and let the mafia buy softer policing.

"[W]e need this sector to succeed." Will someone buy this guy a book on capitalism? According to our esteemed Department of Education head, we "need" a sector where students take on non-dischargable debt to give them a credential that may not increase their economic productivity. We "need" a sector that is run by federally-backed loans that would die if left to the free market. We "need" the sector about as much as we "need[ed]" inflated home values, or inflated .com stocks.

Of course, this one is far worse because it involves a generation of consumers taking on debt that can't be discharged, which will move a greater proportion of the future economy into debt servicing and lower home prices, discretionary spending, investment, innovation, new small businesses, etc. Arne, my man, we "need" to ensure that those in generation y can actually earn a living wage and not be bogged with non-dischargable poor investments.

But Arne, I fear, may not be able to see the problems at the ground floor. Let's look briefly at Arne Duncan's biography, shall we?

Arne is from the elite liberal Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, his father being a university professor at the U. of Chicago. He grew up with elite friends attending Chicago Lab School, an elite private school, after which he attended Harvard and majored in sociology and basketball. He then spent four years (1987-1991) playing professional basketball in Australia.

In 1992, a "childhood friend and investment banker" made Duncan - who had no significant work experience, mind you - Director of the Ariel Education Initiative. Four years later, the initiative became the corporate sponsor of a local public school that now feeds kids into "elite" Chicago high schools by getting "half of their funding from the Chicago Public Schools and the other half from a private investor, the Ariel Education Initiative."

Three years later, he got a gig being Deputy Chief of Staff at the Chicago Public Schools. Yes, you read that right: a god-awful public high school system brought in a guy who had done nothing in his life but study sociology, play basketball, and run a school with corporate backing. And of course, the icing on the cake is that two years later he was appointed CEO of the Chicago Public Schools.

How was he qualified, exactly? Running a large public school system means trying to fit square pegs into round holes on a shoestring budget. This guy had no formal training in education, had never actually tried to run a public school, and only had his position in education because of his rich friend. So he added private money to a small, crappy public school and got better results. Anyone could do that, and it's not an option as head of an entire public school system. See here for another take on this.

And now he's our Secretary of Education, and he's a pawn for corporate America and a champion of the "same old, same old" approach. And why wouldn't he be? This guy grew up with elite friends in an elite neighborhood in a professor's house, went to an elite college, and got every major job he's had by association with elites.

He's never been at the ground level himself in anything, preferring to start on third base. He has no idea how real people actually get to third base when they have to start at home, and likely assumes it's 100% the secondary education system (my guess is that he thinks his Harvard degree is what got him where he is). Of course we "need" scamming colleges, because if they're not there, poor people will just remain poor forever and ever! And if we just put a few new multi-billion dollar programs in place, intercity school kids will be doing calculus and they'll have the best test scores and theyll be zit-free and we'll all drive shiny new Bentleys and play polo atop unicorns!

The irony is that Arne may actually want to be helping impoverished youth, but if they go to a college that saddles them with nondischargable debt that can't be paid back, he's only succeeded in making them poorer by his lax standards. Again, this was the perfect opportunity to step in and prevent much of this nonsense, both in the for-profit and non-profit fields. But people like Arne can never truly understand the need for that type of protection when they've never actually had to live near the margin and take a flier on a night program or a new career that will supposedly make them a more attractive candidate in a crowded labor market.

Maybe if Arne had, he would realize that his job is about playing "gotcha" and actually enforcing regulations for the good of the public (note: not equal to the short-term investing public), because if the guy at the top isn't going to stop you, there's no reason to stop the gravy train, which, sadly, is how a large proportion of higher education views incoming students and federal loan money. Arne's apparently too busy with serpent lobbyists hissing sweet nothings into his ear while showing him illogical and skewed charts and clever diagrams, like this one:

'Cause that's pretty much the education plan I'm seeing from our "new and improved" Department of Education.

Kids, if you want to be an executive some day, follow Arne Duncan's lead. Make some rich friends, early and often. Be good at basketball and go to Harvard. Got it?

The next time someone pulls out that ridiculous "pay your dues" line on recent graduates who have the audacity to want enough money to pay back their loans, ask them what dues, exactly, the current Secretary of Education paid, or 75% of people in high places, for that matter. And before you snipe that he graduated with honors from Harvard, I'll tell you there are thousands of kids who graduated Harvard and equally-rigorous schools in far more strenuous subjects than sociology that are struggling right now.

What's wrong with America isn't necessarily that the rich use these connections, though. It's how the sheep just swallow lines like "we need this sector to succeed" without any kind of inquiry, how they accept these unqualified people being launched into public sector jobs, and they refuse to examine basic ideas like the value of a secondary education or the system itself. Arne graduated with honors from Harvard and the best he can come up with is "well, we need this sector to succeed." Brilliant, let's keep sending our kids to these places at any cost and having a malleable-hooker attitude. Just brilliant.

For the [n]th Time, This is Not Recessionary

Prowling through some other non-"scamblogger" legal blogs, I continue to see (mostly older) attorneys claim that the so-called "lost" generation of law graduates, including at least the '08-'10 classes (I would claim more) is somehow purely a function of Great Recession economics.

I beg to differ.

First, I'd like to hope in the wayback machine and take you to the blog Barely Legal, a pretty decent, honest blog run by two University of Illinois students in 05-07ish and no, despite the title, it's not about teen porn or statutory rape (note: with this sentence, my number of hits just skyrocketed). Anyway, I would like to point out these posts:

June 24, 2006: Don't Believe Us? Think We're Just Cynical?, where they cite a Wall Street Journal article explaining bimodal distribution, including the fact that many JDs never find gainful legal employment.

March 26, 2007: The Plural of Andecdote is Data, where they cite the hard statistics to show that there are 670,000 JDs not working as attorneys, noting "[e]ven the national bar association is telling you to be prepared to do something else with your life."

April 2, 2007: Warning Signs, where they note the high number of law students and graduates who cannot find any type of legal employment, including free internships. "[I]f no one is letting you work for free, read the writing on the wall. Even less people will be willing to pay you to work."

The financial crisis and recession did not being in earnest until mid-to-late 2007 (recession "officially" began in December 2007). Bear Stearns did not happen until March of 2008 and Lehman and the mini-stock market crash did not being until September of that year. Despite the housing bubble issues, most financial pundits were not foreseeing the steep declines as of May 2008, and most employers did not take reactionary action until mid 2008:

As you can see, initial jobless claims in early 2007 were virtually as low as they'd been since 2001. So why were these two students at a top 30 USNWR law school - and a place which my experience tells me places fairly well in Chicago - having all kinds of feedback that law graduates and law students were having a hard time finding private sector work?

Because the recession is not the real culprit, that's why.

Which brings me to today's real topic. The NALP has released some of its numbers for the Class of 2010 at 9 months. Of 41,156 law graduates who reported data, 9.4% were completely unemployed at 9 months. 2.9% decided to go back to school. Only 44.6% of graduates are employed in private practice, which makes one wonder how the schools will manage to skew those salaries up over $100k.

But this data isn't entirely helpful in isolation. Let's assume for the time being that the legal market is more or less dependent on private practice and that government positions, clerkships, and public interest positions are a constant. I composed the following chart culling data from the NALP's "summary of finding" sheets from 2001-present:

Year	Entry-Level P.P.	Excess
2001	17976	19711
2002	18246	20330
2003	18387	20487
2004	18407	21611
2005	19458	23214
2006	20347	23573
2007	20603	22915
2008	20511	23076
2009	20149	23852
2010	18325	24997

The second column is the total number of entry-level private practice attorney jobs assumed from the numbers. As you can see, the market itself appears to be identical in size to the private practice market that existed in 2002-2004. Demand for private practice entry-level attorneys apparently did grow in the 2000s, but only at around 10% or so.

What really happened is that law schools began pumping out graduates in a far greater excess to what the moderate increase in private practice demanded. The third column in the chart is the difference between private practice positions and the total number of law school graduates. As you can see, that number increased by almost 20% during the stretch between 2001 and 2006.

Since we think of things in percentages when it comes to employment, that excess is what makes the hiring market so awful. Sure, government and public interest hiring has slowed down, but the increased demand for those positions is largely due to private practice just not having the demand for all of them. The system simply cannot absorb an increase of 500 new attorneys every single year compared to what the economy (private sector) naturally demands by its own growth. If you want to know why every major American city has a backlog, start there. Then add in that many of these hired (especially at large firms) are spit back onto the market after 3-5 years independently of any extra-legal economic conditions. Same with doc reviewers.

The grand point here is that the recession is absolutely not the main reason the legal hiring market is dismal right now. The conditions that led to this glut of entry-level attorneys was evident in the 2001-2006 span, when law schools boosted enrollment by roughly 20%.

Heck, let's assume the recession never happened. Guess what? The excess would be still be so high as to make the entry-level market difficult. It became worse between 2001 and 2006. Why would that trend have ceased?

I'm not saying that the recession has nothing to do with the job market. Obviously, if there 21000 entry-level private practice gigs instead of 18000, the market would be better. But that doesn't change the fact that the main culprit is that ABA accredited law schools started churning out an increasingly-higher excess to the needs of private practice year-over-year before the recession even started. That's the real problem.

Already, one can see that the problem of lawyer supply is unique. There are signs that the job market is improving slightly across the board. But I can tell you from the ground level, that's not really the case for the legal sector. There may be moderate numerical improvement, but if there are 50 fish fighting for a single piece of food instead of 53, it's hardly a practical gain. This is just what happens when you regularly draw in far more input than the market can bear on the other side over a long period of time.