This is the second installment in my series entitled "Idiotic Quotes by Law Profs." Most of the quotes in the
first installment reflected the declarants' idiotic belief that legal instruction is best provided by six-figure salaried scholars (and pseudo-scholars) who have limited background or interest in actual lawyering.
This set of idiotic quotes concerns the versatility of the JD degree, or simply the all-around wonderfulness of being a law student. Proponents of the view that a JD is versatile assert that nonlaw white collar employers are eager to offer employment to JDs in light of the super-cerebral skills that can only be had by attending law school. The truth is
otherwise-- any mystique that a JD once held has been destroyed by the massive overproduction of lawyers. Now, in fact, a law degree carries toxic connotations. It is a degree that seems to convey the message: "I have no marketable skills, but I have elite expectations and an argumentative personality."
The quotes below are clearly idiotic, and so are worthy of inclusion in this series. Yet, I do not really consider these quotes to be scamming, as I define it.
Scamming means offering economic arguments about how a law degree is worth millions of dollars in future earnings or will become a rare and valuable asset as the boomers retire. Such scamming arguments may be highly enticing to those who do not realize that the Bureau of Labor Statistics
projects that the economy will create 218,800 job openings for lawyers, including growth and replacement needs, and including part-time jobs, during the decade of 2010-2020, in contrast to the 450,000 JDs that law schools are primed to confer during the same period.
I doubt that many kids spend three years and $100,000+ on law school in order to compete for a job in human resources or to find inner bliss. So why are these quotes relevant? Why do so many law deans and professors keep yapping about versatility or about the intellectual and personal fulfillment that can be found only in law school? I believe that it is about self-delusion. These academics believe fervently in the myth of versatility because it helps them avoid a painful truth and its moral implications-- namely, that most of their students, the kids who trusted them and made them rich, emerge from law school with brutally curtailed life options and prospects, rather than expanded ones.
Forgive the long-winded introduction. As usual, notes and links to sources appear at the bottom.
1. Prof. Patricia Leary (Whittier): "This [attending law school at Whittier] is an experience that changes them, makes them completely who they are in terms of intellect, emotions, conscience, values. When a student really fully engages in this experience, it is a joy to see."
2. Prof. Steven Diamond (Santa Clara): "A JD is a powerful degree to have in our kind of society and despite the current mismatch in the job market a relatively rare one."
3. Prof. Sam Halabi (U. of Tulsa): "The ability to draft simple but important documents for family and friends; effectively negotiate with future employers and businesses; and, communicate clearly in a variety of media is invaluable no matter which career a student pursues after graduation."
4. Dean John Corkery (John Marshall): "The question is, really, why would someone go to law school? To get a legal education, but also to improve themselves and to improve their ability to meet challenges they might face in life."
5. Dean Harold Krent (Chicago-Kent): "Many people do wonderfully creative and interesting things with a law degree other than practice law, including being a journalist or being an investor or being a counselor."
6. Dean Harold Krent (again): "There are still people who are going to graduate school in art history. There are still people who are going to graduate school in ancient Greek. There are not that many lucrative job opportunities in those fields, but people are engaged, interested and motivated and they think the sacrifice is worth it."
7. Dean Chris Guthrie (Vanderbilt): "One of the virtues of legal training is that it equips you to pursue so many different career paths successfully."
8. Prof. Hazel Weiser (Fordham): "At a time when our country, actually the entire planet, needs a large and diverse reservoir of talented civic leaders with analytical capacity, problem solving, and mediation skills, law school seems like a fantastic educational option. . . . Because legal study is inherently political (although I went to law school when admitting that was considered heresy), law schools offer the curious and the intellectually prepared an opportunity to critique society and the ways in which we have tried (and failed, sometimes) to regulate, to induce, to cajole, to punish, and the ways in which we have succeeded in making a fairer and more inclusive society."
9. Prof. Brian Leiter (U of Chicago): "I've known JDs both here and at Texas who went into consulting firms by choice, not by necessity, and where the JD was an essential credential, though they weren't doing primarily legal work. What we need to know is whether this is common or uncommon."
10. Prof. Michael Olivas (U. of Houston): "I do not view the migrating role of lawyers to civilian life across non-law fields as evidence of our declining competence, as some commentators have in analyzing legal employment figures, but rather this as robust evidence of the growing value of being a lawyer and applying our skills to the many societal problems in need of our multifaceted talents."
11. Prof. Michael Olivas (U. of Houston): "We have erected a substantial system of training lawyers, one that is a spectacular success by any measure, notwithstanding the cracks in the infrastructure."
12. Prof. Kendall Isaac (Appalachian): "At some point, we need to change the expectation for a JD. Yes, some will go on to become lawyers (even if only 28.6%), but is a legal career the only measurement of success for the degree? It is not. I know plenty of people with law degrees that went on to earn as much if not more money than their lawyer brethren working in fields like human resources, contract analysis & marketing, ethics & compliance, amongst others. If we would widen our perspective on the value of the degree, we would be able to appreciate how the degree can help graduates improve their career and standard of living. I see part of my role as helping my students see this bigger picture so that they don't become disheartened by the rhetoric coming from certain naysayers and doomsday speakers out there."
13. Prof. Lisa Glerman (Catholic): "Nevertheless, I suspect that many people who would like to become lawyers are hesitating to apply to law school because of inaccurate negative propaganda and because of incomplete information. Lots of the employment data is distorted because it falsely assumes that all the good jobs for lawyers require bar passage; in fact, there are lots of great jobs in law and policy-making that are not traditional law practice jobs."
14. Prof. Linda Greene (U. of Wisconsin) "Whether the questions involve constitutional protection for undocumented children or cloning or climate measures or the parameters of humanitarian intervention or the ownership of the resources beyond our gravitational field, the best in legal education prepares its graduates to participate in the discourse and arrangements necessary to such complex concerns. It is true that the cost of this quality education, all in, may exceed $200,000. The value of a new generation of law graduates prepared to take on these challenges: Priceless."
15. Prof. Kevin Noble Maillard (Syracuse): "[P]eople go to law school, pay tuition and graduate to become many things: educators, business leaders, politicians and, yes, attorneys. . . . At the risk of sounding "liberal artsy," law school should emphasize educated citizenship. It prepares people to become leaders in our society, which makes it imperative that they be rigorously trained as thinkers. They will become stewards of policies that affect our everyday lives: in our schools, our jobs and our families."
16. Prof. [so cool he only needs one made-up name] SpearIt (SLU): "Rather than short-sighting law schools as a manufacturing plant for attorneys, legal education might be encouraged beyond. Whether one aspires to business, politics, public service, or scholarly pursuits, law school may be a worthy investment. And there is social good in knowing law, or as famously admonished in criminal law, "ignorance" is no excuse. While the high cost of law school probably prohibits many from studying law, it is certainly true that many J.D.s use their degree in creative ways as non-lawyers, including as directors, educators, administrators, and more."
17. Prof. Leonard Long (Quinnipiac): "First, assume that upon the law students’ successful (very good grades, honor societies, etc.) completion of law school, job market for entry-level lawyers shrinks such that their law job prospects approach zero. From that vantage point, will those graduates still view their legal education as a good investment or not? If a legal education’s only, or dominant, value is that it prepares students to be lawyers, then it seem that three years of law school turned out to have been a poor investment. Contrast our law students with persons who happily (that is, successfully) date someone for three years, with plans to marry that someone at the end of three years (say at the end of law school) but, due to some external factors or events, that someone is no longer able or willing to marry (e.g., that someone’s job requires them to relocate to another country). Even though things did not work out on the marriage front, would these star crossed lovers view the last three happy years of dating as a poor investment and a waste? In some instances, yes; but in most instances, probably not."
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Notes and links to sources.
1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsZD5i57Nks (video at 1:05-1:23)
(I sincerely hope that attending Whittier Law is as joyous and life-fulfilling as Prof. Leary says. Because Whittier Law students graduate with an average debt load of
$143,536, which is the tenth highest among the 201 ABA law schools. These same students have a mere
17.1% chance of obtaining a full-time long-term bar-required job within nine months of graduation, the second worst placement outcome among the 201 schools.
2.
http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=43253. The "TU Law Blog" has apparently deleted all posts preceding October 3, 2011. This quote, dated August 15, 2011, can be viewed via the Internet Wayback Machine:
h/t redking 666, commenter in thread on Idiotic Quotes, I.
5. See n. 4
6. See n. 4.
7.
http://www.top-law-schools.com/chris-guthrie-interview.html8.
https://www.saltlaw.org/blog/2011/08/17/in-defense-of-a-legal-education/9.
http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2012/12/the-case-against-law-schools.html10.
http://www.aals.org/services_newsletter_presAug11.php11. See n. 10
12.
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2012/07/what-would-you-tell-aspiring-law-professors.html (comment at Jul 22, 2012 11:16:56 AM)
13.
http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/11/more-turbulence-ahead-another-plunge-in-lsat-takers.html (comment at November 18, 2012 at 11:39 AM)
14.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/21/the-case-against-law-school/a-law-degree-is-priceless15.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/21/the-case-against-law-school/the-right-preparation-for-lawyer-citizens16.
http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/2011/08/29/unmasking-anonymity-whos-scamming/(Professor SpearIt has no experience as a practicing lawyer, though he does have a JD. He also has a Ph.D in religion, so perhaps he can elicit divine assistance in helping his students obtain professional training or jobs).
17. Leonard J. Long, "Resisting Anti-Intellectualism and Promoting Legal Literacy," 34 S. Ill. U.L.J. 1, 36 n.97 (2009).
http://www.law.siu.edu/journal/34fall/1%20-%20Long.pdf(In striking contrast to all the others on this list, and maybe even to his credit, Prof. Long, apparently does not bother pretending to like or respect his students, According to the Quinnipiac Chronicle’s February 28, 2007 article: "Professor offends law students," Long sent an email to his students stating that, “several QUSL students will go off to be smug little assistant district attorneys and such, wearing ill-fitting power suit, and thinking themselves as doing justice.” He then refused their requests to continue the discussion he had started.
http://www.quchronicle.com/2007/02/chronicle-exclusive-professor-offends-law-students/
Hopefully, QU's job placement statistics bring comfort to the irascible Long. The vast majority of his students will never practice law of any sort, and therefore will not harbor thoughts offensive to Long about the value of their legal careers. The Law School Transparency site indicates that only 33.1% of Quinnipiac’s 2011 graduates got bar-required long term jobs within nine months of graduation).
