Decrying the curriculum and cost of law school may be a waste of a good-intentioned rant.
Brigham Young University professor David Wiley, no wild-eyed radical, predicts that "universities will be irrelevant by 2020." Wiley opines this and more in the September 2009 edition of FAST COMPANY in the article "Who Needs Harvard?" by Anya Kamenetz. If ranters wait a few years a degreed law school education will likely be available digitally, along with wiki workgroups and interactive sessions with professors and guest legal scholars. All this for relative peanuts and without having to move out of your childhood bedroom.
The FAST COMPANY perspective isn't new. Actually the technology is available for the shift from the pricey, on-campus degree program to online already. The obstacle, bravely points out FAST COMPANY Editor Robert Safian, is that "Parents tend to be conservative." They hesitate to experiment with their children's future. Therefore, they will, for the time being, continue to invest in funding a traditional route to a degree and at the best institution their children can get into. Safian confesses that if his son "gets into Harvard - or some other college - I'll spend the money to send him. What kind of hypocrite does that make me?"
Law, being in itself a conservative industry, will likely lead the brick-and-mortar holdouts. For a few years. Those planning a career in law will stick with the program: Traditional law school, traditional high tuition, traditional student debt. What will trigger the inevitable shift will be the stark reality of the permanent manpower downsizing in those well-paid full-time positions, associate and partner. More major layoffs are forecast for this fall. The recovery will pick up steam and then the predicted structural changes will take hold in a business which is back on its feet and humming.
That remix will include significantly fewer associates and many more just-in-time contract attorneys paid about $45 an hour. Partners will be doing the lion's share of client work, just as clients are demanding. They will be paid comparatively less than partners earned during the 30 years of boom in the U.S. Those partners who don't know how to make rain will be terminated.
Given the play-out of that scenario in a few years, who would pony up the investment in such a high-risk career? Instead, that old default of picking up a law degree will morph into mostly sweat equity, with the total financial layout possibly under $20,000. A law degree for Everyman and Everywoman: That will be the new reality. Talk about a nation of lawyers.
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