It's getting clearer that law schools may constitute a public nuisance.
Way back in the late 1990s, Fidelma Fitzpatrick, attorney with Motley Rice, applied the concept of public nuisance - that is what contributes to or causes harm to the public - to the traditional category of product liability. That had a good run and is still running in the utility industry. Here is my ebook on public nuisance Download Publicnuisancevoodoo. And here is the Rhode Island Supreme Court decision ruling that the former lead paint companies such as Sherwin-Williams didn't cause a public nuisance in that state Download Statev.LeadIndustriesAssoc.,Inc.
As the glut of lawyers continues and is likely to only increase in number and desperation, more legal game changers might consider filing a class action lawsuit against law schools as constituting a public nuisance. Law professors, who have well paying jobs carrying some status, might already anticipate that. For example, as Karen Sloan reports in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, they are pushing back at the ABA's spotlight on legal education. However, there was that University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson who whined that he could barely make it on $250,000.
Essentially, law schools are a mechanism which seem to be creating a new lost generation. They seem to be overeducated for the overall marketplace as it is. After all, how much formal education do you need to apply for and perform the job of security guard, a position I, who did attend Harvard Law School, was thrilled to get in 2003 [Download Geezerguts.] I also had matriculated and passionately pursued excellence at the University of Michigan's graduate studies in linguistics and literature.
JDs also seem emotionally and socially ill equipped for other kinds of work. For example, are they flexible enough to zigzag the ups and down in compensation, job tasks, status, and mobility of the current marketplace?
And they are usually in six-figure debt. Not a sweet spot, is it.
There is that whiff of entitlement also. That is a sense of feeling special, the very primitive belief which did in Bernie Madoff victims. Such an assumption of being a breed apart does not sit well with the rest of us struggling wage slaves and entrepreneurial hustlers. Our mantra has become: don't cry for the unemployed/underemployed JD.
Those attorneys who do secure employment seem to, in the process, make a nuisance of themselves chasing opportunities for internships, summers, and actual jobs. Then when they are terminated from jobs they are not easy to redeploy to other modes of making a living. And, let's face it, their marketing efforts are often, in themselves, nuisance to the nth degree. Can it be possible that law schools have unleashed upon the nation a kind of plague that will require decades to even manage, never mind eliminate.
Motley Rice could take a shot at putting together a class action lawsuit against law schools. The pool of plaintiffs is large. For example, there was the Boston law student who didn't want to sue but just get his tuition back. Now he might be receptive to a lawsuit.