Wednesday, April 16, 2008 6:12 AM
In the National Law Journal article What Law School Rankings Don't Say About Costly Choices, authors William D. Henderson and Andrew P. Morriss suggest that [s]ome students should consider lower-ranked schools that offer more grants, better opportunities. I particularly liked the article because it spends significant time talking through the cost of law school and importance of factoring likely debt load upon graduation.
As I have noted before, it is often difficult for law students just entering law school (especially those coming straight from undergrad) to adequately factor in what their eventual law school debt load could mean in the years after they graduate. Yet, from the vantage point of years down the road (and many monthly debt payments later), many lawyers will tell you that they wish they had had the foresight to not incur such a large debt.
In any case, here are some bullet points snipped from Mr. Henderson and Morriss' article:
Deciding where to go to law school is a difficult decision for many applicants. Law school is expensive and becoming more so each year, making the choice of where to go often the biggest investment decision an applicant has made in his or her life. Yet many prospective law students lack knowledge about the entry-level legal market or even what different types of lawyers do in their daily lives.
During the last three decades, the size and geographic dispersion of the global economy has dramatically increased the demand for sophisticated corporate legal services. In contrast, the demand for personal-services legal work -- wills and estates, personal injury, family law, simple business contracts, etc. -- has grown at roughly the rate of population growth.
These dynamics have resulted in a "bimodal" income distribution, in which there is a heavy concentration of salaries in two distinct ranges, based on salary figures provided by NALP.
For most prospective law students, the most important question is whether law school is worth $100,000 in debt plus three years of lost earnings.
An equally important question is whether to go law school at all. A ranking of 50 law schools by the percentage of students who either flunked out or are unemployed or unaccounted for nine months after graduation includes many schools in tiers two, three and four of the 2007 U.S. News rankings. Thus law school does not guarantee lucrative, or even gainful, employment. Moreover, over-reliance on the U.S. News rankings can be damaging to a law student's financial health.
As the data reveal, the vast majority of students finance their legal education through debt. Some may be surprised to learn, however, that high-rank schools, all with large endowments, are not especially generous with scholarships. In general, their graduates have the highest debt loads. Because of the ready access they provide to lucrative corporate jobs, these schools enjoy enormous market power. They can raise tuition, reduce teaching loads, poach scholars from lower-ranked schools and tweak their course offerings to please tenured faculty.
This data also reveals another key distortion of rankings that combine all 194 ABA-approved law schools: With the exception of a few national firms, the vast majority of legal employment is regional. For T14 schools, 35 percent stay in state upon graduation, versus 58 percent for the rest of Tier 1 and 70 percent to 77 percent for tiers two through three.
Based on our experience with many extremely successful alumni, all of these qualities can be developed (sometimes better and faster) in smaller firms, state court clerkships, government practice or public interest jobs. Yet the key is avoiding the financial vise of excessive law school tuition.
For many prospective lawyers, the best strategy may be a careful evaluation of the regional job market in the area of the country where they want to work. If they are not competitive for admission into a national law school -- or are sure they are not interested in corporate law -- they can use their entering credentials to negotiate for a substantial tuition discount. By focusing on price rather than rankings, they will have the financial freedom to pursue jobs that will build valuable professional skills and mentoring relationships or leave the law altogether, without debt, to pursue other life ambitions. Further, if prospective law students still want a shot at large corporate law practice, their best bet may be to focus on regional schools in major legal markets that will provide them with substantial scholarships. Virtually all large firms routinely interview at regional law schools in close proximity to major branch offices while ignoring higher-ranked schools farther away.
If you find this topic interesting, I encourage you to read the full article, which is posted to Law.com and includes the above snippets in context.
For myself, speaking with the benefit of hindsight, I was drawn to this single sentence from the article: By focusing on price rather than rankings, they [prospective law students] will have the financial freedom to pursue jobs that will build valuable professional skills and mentoring relationships or leave the law altogether, without debt, to pursue other life ambitions.
After all, in the end, isn't the freedom to pursue life's ambitions among everyone's goals for their life?
Don't overlook the role debt can play in ensuring you have that freedom.
Here is the link: What Law School Rankings Don't Say About Costly Choices