Tort Reform & The Lawyer Glut

A personal-injury firm like Motley Rice, even with its high profile, has plenty at stake in the coming "Thomas" trial.  Thanks to tort reform, reports Amir Efrati in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL today, the legal scene is not rosy in personal injury, medical malpractice, securities suits, for forum shopping, and in expecting payouts on damages.  Efrati also has a piece on the Law Blog today on this lawyer glut and before 10:00 AM 115 comments have come in from unemployed/underemployed lawyers and law students thanking the Law Blog for outing this reality.

Of course those who graduate at the top of their class from top schools are still thriving. They are the ones courted by Big Law and offered $160,000 starting salaries.  To hold onto to them, Sullivan & Cromwell is throwing in an extra $20,000-something in the fourth year.

But, clearly tort reform has changed this industry.  Too many law students are graduating with $100,000+ debt and grim prospects in the legal profession.  However, they have many other options. 

This same monster industry change happened to us Ph.D. students in the humanities in the 1970s.  It took a while to digest the shock that our degrees were unmarketable.  But most of us eventually realized that our skills were.  We went onto lucrative careers in speechwriting, public-affairs counseling, sales, government work and even managing a Mickey D. 

To today, we expats from academia berate our alma maters for not advising us on how we could reinvent ourselves.  Law school career counseling centers should be creating programs which explain in detail how law graduates can recycle their skills and how to present that on paper and in person.   

Comments

[Stephen Hicks]

This is nonsense! There are too many law schools being approved by the ABA, that produce way too many lawyers to feed the universities and professors pocketbooks while they are cutting off the head of the golden goose! Greed of universities; Greed of law schools; greed of professors; etc., etc., etc. THE ABA SHOULD REQUIRE THAT ALL LAW SCHOOLS REDUCE THEIR STUDENT POPULATION BY 30% OVER THE NEXT 3 YEARS OR FACE REMOVAL OF ACCREDITATION. ALSO, THE ABA SHOULD SERIOUSLY LOOK AT DE-LISTING THE BOTTOM 40-50 LAW SCHOOLS UNLESS RIGOROUS REVIEW IS PASSED!!!