Tag Archives: Ted Seto

2015: THE YEAR THAT THE LAW SCHOOL CRISIS ENDED (OR NOT) — PART II

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Part I of this series addressed the ABA rule change that will allow 2014 law graduates until March 15 — an extra month from prior years — to find jobs before their schools have to report those graduates’ employment results to the ABA (and U.S. News). That change will almost certainly produce higher overall employment rates. But relying on any alleged trend that results solely from an underlying change in the rules of the game — such as extending the reporting period from nine months to ten — would be a mistake.

This post considers a second rule change. It comes from the U.S. Department of Labor, and it’s a whopper.

The Government Makes Things Worse

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently adopted a new statistical methodology for projecting the nation’s legal employment needs. Just about everyone agrees that, by any measure and for many years, the economy has been producing far more new lawyers than JD-required jobs. But the new BLS methodology declares that any oversupply of attorneys has evaporated. In fact, applying the new methodology retroactively to previous years would lead to the conclusion that the obvious glut of new lawyers never existed at all!

Using its earlier methodology, the Bureau has been revising downward its predictions of new lawyer jobs. In 2008, it projected a net additional 98,500 legal jobs through 2018. In 2012, it dropped that number to 73,600 through 2022. Taking into account retirements, deaths, and other attrition, the BLS separately projected that the profession could absorb about 20,000 new graduates annually for the next ten years. Most knowledgeable observers of the changing market for new lawyers have concurred with that ballpark assessment. Unfortunately, schools have been producing about twice that number (40,000).

Remarkably, the BLS’s new approach more than doubles the number of anticipated new legal jobs over the next 10 years. Rather than annual absorption of about 20,000 new lawyers through 2022, the Bureau now projects room for more than 41,000 a year. Overnight, demand caught up with what had been a chronic oversupply of attorneys.

In Defiance Of Sound Statistical Analysis And Common Sense

There are numerous technical and analytical flaws in the BLS’s new methodology. (See, e.g., Matt Leichter’s recent post, “2016 Grads Shouldn’t Take Comfort in New Jobs Projection Approach.”) Beyond those are common sense tests that the new methodology fails. For example, since 2011 the ABA-required data have revealed a persistent FTLT JD-required employment rate of 55 percent for new graduates. That’s not far from the projections that the BLS’s old methodology produced for a long time.

The BLS’s new approach amounts to saying that, somehow, all of those unemployed graduates must have been finding law jobs after all. As the old joke goes, endless digging in a roomful of manure was worth the effort; there was indeed a pony to be found – with the help of a little regression analysis.

Another common sense test considers actual employment numbers. For example, legal sector employment (including non-lawyers) through December 2014 was 1.133 million — about the same as a year ago and down more than 40,000 from 2006. Although the economy generally has recovered from the Great Recession, total employment in the legal sector is still far below pre-recession levels. If the BLS’s proposed approach were valid, it would suggest a remarkable attrition rate, raise serious questions about the state of the profession, and cause many prelaw students to wonder whether law school was the right choice.

The Bad Beat Goes On

Meanwhile, weak law schools that will benefit most from the ABA and BLS changes remain unaccountable for their graduates’ poor employment outcomes as they lower admission standards to fill classrooms. Median law school debt at graduation currently exceeds $120,000, and some of the schools with the worst employment outcomes burden students with the highest levels of debt. But there’s no financial risk to those schools because the federal government backs the loans and they’re not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

The escape hatch is small. If income-based repayment programs survive austerity demands of the Republican-controlled Congress – a big if – then students who persevere through 20 years of IBR will get a large tax bill because forgiven debt will count as income to them in the year it’s forgiven. The shortfall between the amount IBR students actually pay and the amount they owe will come from the federal purse.

Voila! The Crisis Is Over

Sometime in 2015, the synergy between the new ABA-rules allowing law schools to report 10-month employment data (discussed in Part I of this series) and the new BLS methodology projecting 41,000 new lawyer jobs annually will produce a law school chorus declaring that the crisis in legal education is over, at least in a macroeconomic sense. Indeed, the hype has already begun. Discussing the new BLS approach, Loyola University – Los Angeles School of Law professor Ted Seto observed: “If the new BLS projections are accurate, we should see demand and supply in relative equilibrium in 2015 and a significant excess of demand over supply beginning in 2016.”

The operative word is “if.” As noted in Part I, Seto’s similarly conditional prediction in 2013 didn’t come to pass. Meanwhile, only about half of his school’s 2013 graduating class secured full-time long-term JD-required employment within nine months of receiving their degrees. Average law school debt for the 82 percent of Loyola-LA law graduates who incurred debt was $141,765 — placing it 22nd (of 183) among schools whose students graduate with the most law school debt.

Here’s the real kicker. The vast disparity in individual law school employment outcomes makes broad macroeconomic declarations about opportunities for law graduates disingenuous anyway. It’s no surprise that the loudest voices come from schools where many graduates have great difficulty find any JD-required job.

But even at the macro level, anyone concerned about the fate of marginal law students, exploding student debt, or the future of a noble profession should look beyond any distracting noise about the supposed end of the legal education crisis. At least for now, the real question should be whether anything has really changed — other than the rules of the game.

2015: THE YEAR THAT THE LAW SCHOOL CRISIS ENDED (OR NOT) — PART I

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Remember that you read it here first: In 2015, many law school deans and professors will declare that the law school crisis is over. After five years of handwringing, relatively minor curriculum changes at most schools, and no improvement whatsoever in the mechanism for funding legal education, the storm has passed. All is well. What a relief.

The building blocks for this house of cards start with first-year law school enrollment that is now below 38,000 – a level not seen since the mid-1970s when there were 53 fewer law schools. The recent drop in the absolute number of future attorneys seems impressive, but without the context of the demand for lawyers, it’s meaningless in assessing proximity to market equilibrium, which remains far away.

The Search for Demand

To boost the projected demand side of the equation, the rhetoric of illusory equilibrium often turns to the “degrees-awarded-per-capita” argument that Professor Ted Seto of Loyola Law School – Los Angeles floated in June 2013. His premise: “Demand for legal services…probably increases as population increases.”

“Unless something truly extraordinary has happened to non-cyclical demand,” Seto continued, “a degrees-awarded-per-capita analysis suggests that beginning in fall 2015 and intensifying into 2016 employers are likely to experience an undersupply of law grads, provided that the economic recovery continues.”

If only wishing could make it so. The economic recovery did, indeed, continue, but the hoped for increase in attorney demand was nowhere to be found. When Seto posted his analysis, total legal services employment (including non-lawyers) at the end of May 2013 was 1,133,800. At the end of November 2014, it was 1,133,700.

Follow That Dream

Professor Rene Reich-Graefe of Western New England University School of Law relied on a similar per capita approach (among other dubious arguments) to assert that today’s students are about to enter “the most robust legal market that ever existed in this country.” His students sure hope he’s right. Only 49 out of 133 members of the Western New England Law class of 2013 — 37 percent — obtained full-time long-term JD-required jobs within nine months of graduation.

It’s easy to hypothesize that population growth should increase the demand for everything, including attorneys. But it’s more precise to say that population growth is relevant to the demand for attorneys only insofar as such growth occurs among those who can actually afford a lawyer. (The degrees-per-capita argument also ignores the profound ways that technological change has reduced the demand for lawyers across many segments of the profession.)

The ABA and the U. S. Department of Labor’s Bureau Labor Statistics have added two new factors that will feed false optimism in 2015. This post considers the ABA’s unfortunate action. Part II will cover the BLS’s contribution to continuing confusion.

The ABA Misfires Again

Since it began requiring law schools to report detailed employment outcomes for their most recent graduates, the overall full-time long-term JD-required employment rate has hovered around 55 percent (excluding law school-funded jobs). For a long time, the cutoff date for schools to report their most recent graduates’ employment status to the ABA (and U.S. News) has been February 15 following the year of graduation.

Starting with the class of 2014, law schools will get an additional month during which their graduates can try to find jobs before schools have to report class-wide employment results. When the employment status cutoff date moves from February 15 to March 15, the reported FTLT JD-required employment rate will go up. Comparisons with prior year outcomes (nine months after graduation) will be disingenuous, but law deans and professors touting an upswing in the legal job market will make them. Market equilibrium, they will proclaim, has made its way to legal education.

The stated reason for the ABA change was that the February 15 cutoff had an unfair impact on schools whose graduates took the bar exam in states reporting results late in the fall, especially New York and California. Schools in those states, the argument went, suffered lower employment rates solely because their graduates couldn’t secure jobs until they had passed the bar. Another month would help their job numbers.

In July 2013, Professor Deborah Merritt offered powerful objections to the ABA’s proposed change: The evidence does not support the principal reason for the change; moving the cutoff date would impair the ability to make yearly comparisons at a time when the profession is undergoing dramatic transformation; prospective students would not have the most recent employment information as they decide where to send their tuition deposits in April; the change would further diminish public trust in law schools and the ABA. The new March 15 cutoff passed by a 10-to-9 vote.

Watch For Obfuscation

In a few months when the new 10-month employment figures for the class of 2014 show “improvement” over the prior year’s nine-month results, think apples-to-oranges as you contemplate whose interests the ABA is really serving. Consider, too, whether any macroeconomic projections of attorney demand are even probative when there is a huge variation in employment opportunities across law schools.

At 33 law schools (including Western New England School of Law), fewer than 40 percent of 2013 graduates found full-time long-term employment requiring a JD. At most of those schools, the vast majority of students incurred staggering six-figure debt for their degrees. (At Western New England, it was $120,677 for the class of 2013.)

In the some corners of the profession, federal student loan dollars are subsidizing an ugly business.

MORE JOBS, EXCEPT FOR LAWYERS

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During April 2014, job growth exceeded economists’ expectations. The recovery continues, but one line item in the latest detailed Bureau of Labor Statistics report should be particularly troubling to some law school deans and professors who are making bold predictions about the future.

The Facts

As the economy added 288,000 new jobs last month, total legal services employment (including lawyers and non-lawyers) declined by 1,200 positions from March 2014. A single monthly result doesn’t mean much. But over the past year, total legal services employment has increased by only 700 jobs.

In fact, according to the BLS, since December 2007 net legal services employment has shrunk by 37,000 jobs. Meanwhile, law schools have been awarding 40,000 new JD degrees annually for more than a decade.

The Denier’s Plight

Some law school deans and professors still object to any characterization of this situation as a “crisis” in legal education. In fact, one professor proclaimed last summer that now is still a great time to go to law school because a lawyer shortage would be upon us by the fall of 2015! Before rejoicing that we’ve almost reached that promised land, note that in 2011 the same professor, Ted Seto at Loyola Law School – Los Angeles, similarly predicted that the short-term problem of lawyer oversupply would lend itself to a quick and self-correcting resolution when the business cycle turned upward.

Well, the upward turn has been underway for several years, but significant growth in the number of new legal jobs hasn’t accompanied it. Nevertheless, tuition has continued to rise. For prelaw students now contemplating six-figure JD debt, law school deniers have a soothing argument: A degree from anywhere is well worth the cost to anyone who gets it.

Using aggregate data, the deniers ignore dramatic difference in individual outcomes for schools and students. Some deniers even use their lifetime JD-value calculations to defend unrivaled tuition growth rates for law schools generally. In somewhat contradictory rhetoric, they simultaneously promote income-based loan repayment plans as a panacea.

Leadership?

Recently, one dean assured me privately that deniers have now become outliers. If so, the overall reaction of deans as a group remains troubling. In particular, law schools have countered a precipitous drop in applicants with soaring acceptance rates. The likely result will be a fall 2014 class somewhere between 35,000 and 38,000 first-year students.

Likewise, law school sales pitches have devolved into cynical efforts at selling something other than the practice of law. They market the versatility of a JD as preparation for anything else that law graduates might want to do with their lives. But so is medicine. So are lots of things. So what? Medical schools train doctors. Isn’t the core mission of law schools to train lawyers? What will remain after we abandon that sense of professional purpose and identity?

Practicing Law? Oh, I Could Have Done That. 

All of this raises a question: How do the law school deans and professors in denial about the state of things deal with unpleasant facts that don’t fit the world view they’re trying to sell others? Ignore them. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, as the self-designated Wizard of Oz might say to Dorothy. Somehow, we’ll get you back to Kansas — where associate admissions dean Steven Freedman at the University of Kansas recently went public with his denial.

Like similar predictions, Freedman’s analysis is suspect. For example, his projections of a lawyer shortage by 2017-2018 ignore the excess inventory of new law graduates that the system has produced over the past several years (and is still producing). (In a follow-up comment to his own post on “The Faculty Lounge,” Freedman defends his resulting calculations on the unsupported grounds that “the vast majority of them retired or changed careers” — an assumption, he acknowledges, that contradicts the real world observations and data of Jim Leipold, executive director of NALP.)

Even worse, Freedman offers a general recommendation to every prospective student — “Enroll today!” was the title of his first installment at “The Faculty Lounge.” But he fails to mention that employment outcomes vary enormously across law schools. His post’s subtitle — “Why 2017-2018 Will Be a Fantastic Time to Graduate from Law School” — is fraught with the danger that accompanies the absence of a nuanced and individualized message.

Ironically, in the real world of clients, judges, and juries, attorneys who ignore the key facts in a case usually lose. Eventually, they have trouble making a living. Someday, perhaps the law school deniers will have that experience, first-hand.