Category: Law School

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LSAT Test Taker Numbers Continue to Drop

As reported by the New York Times, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is reporting that there has been a 16% drop in the number of LSAT test-takers from the previous year.  That drop represents a decade low according to the Law School Admissions Counsel.

According to the Times:

The Law School Admission Council reported that the LSAT was given 129,925 times in the 2011-12 academic year. That was well off the 155,050 of the year before and far from the peak of 171,514 in the year before that. In all, the number of test takers has fallen by nearly 25 percent in the last two years.

Those are some pretty interesting numbers.

No doubt, the drop in the number of test-takers can be directly tied to the recent recession and the news of student’s suing their law schools for false employment data reporting.

My two cents?  I’m not at all surprised.

My wife asked me the other day if I would talk to one of the children of someone she works with about being a lawyer and going to law school.  The first thing I did was frown and say, “I hope she isn’t another liberal arts major that doesn’t know what else to do with her life.”  (Ok, I’ll admit to being a cynic and rather negative at times.  I’ll also admit that I was that liberal arts major).

However, I was speaking with a local judge in Minnesota recently about practicing law, starting a law practice, and, in general, being a lawyer.  It was a great, lawyer-to-lawyer, conversation.  I don’t have them all the time, but I enjoy the chance to speak with a good lawyer about what the law means to them.

We talked about many things related to practicing law.  The judge had been a solo lawyer for a while, he had been a public defender, and then he became a judge.  He talked about how he enjoyed nearly every aspect of the being a lawyer – no matter in what capacity.  His candor to me was refreshing.

The judge also made a statement that many people ask him “should my son or daughter go to law school?”  After all “isn’t there a lot of competition?”  His response?  If you like the law and you want to be a lawyer, yes, of course, I would recommend law school.

I smiled and nodded.  I don’t know if I would give the same answers to people who ask me if their son or daughter should go to law school.  I hope I would.  However, I knew what the judge meant.

The law is a service profession.  There is much joy in it if you like learning, having an active mind, enjoy competition, and like helping people.  It was the judge’s life work – his ministry, if you will.

So, I am thinking that maybe it isn’t the lawyer part that is bad.  Instead, it is the misconception that I think people have about what law school and being a lawyer means.  People shouldn’t think of it as a means to an end.  The law is the means.

Being a lawyer won’t make you happy if you are in it for the money or prestige or whatever reason you have.  You should only take the LSAT and go to law school if you want to be a lawyer.  If you don’t know what that means, I suggest you go intern a while and figure it out before you make the financial and life-altering leap that is going to law school.

 

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Law School Applications Way Down

Whether you are thinking about starting a law practice or just hoping to get a legal job, you might want to reconsider whether the law is even a good field for you.  According to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, law school applications are at a 10-year low.  Additionally, the article states that LSAT applications are at a 24-year low.  Recession anyone?

If you weren’t aware, the lawyer job market is not so good at the moment.  Heck, the job market as a whole is not so good right now.  For many newly minted attorneys, the loans and the lack of jobs has become unbearable.  For instance, it appears that one attorney was denied admittance to the Ohio bar – despite passing the bar exam – because he wasn’t repaying his large law school loans.  Ouch.

I don’t know if it is a good or a bad thing that law applications are down across the country. On the good side: the article does a nice job pointing out that now, perhaps many people are not going to law school as a “backup plan” or because they don’t know what else to do with their lives.  Both are not good reasons to go to law school.

Many lawyers may think this is good news.  In fact, many attorneys I know have made a comment that often goes something like this: “great, that’s what the world needs, another lawyer.”  I wrote a post a couple months ago about how I counted over 30 attorneys in the little town of Northfield, MN which has a population of a little over 17,000 people.  Seems like a lot of lawyers.

I do find it disconcerting that nobody talked about the bad job market that was coming at me when I started law school in 2004.  In 2004, the economy was doing quite well. The housing bubble had not yet burst.  In fact, some of my friends from college were doing quite well as a result of the inflated real estate market.  Did I join in on those shenanigans?  No, I went to law school.

I realize this blog is ostensibly about starting and building a law firm.  Therefore, it is a self-made job market.  But, when the economy stinks it is going to have an effect on any law practice.  I worry about that.  A lot.

I am hoping to be admitted by motion into the Minnesota state bar and move on with my life.  I don’t regret becoming a lawyer, but I do regret not knowing how bad the job market would be when I got out of law school.  I regret not being more informed.  So, if anybody gets to this post and reads it, I hope you think twice about whether law school is right for you.

At the very least, I know I made an effort to inform somebody about the job prospects and large loan obligations related to choosing law school.  If you read this, you can’t say somebody didn’t tell you so.