CHAPTER 
FINANCING LAW SCHOOL 



 

QUOTES RELATED TO EMPLOYMENT

  • Law school applications are down around the country amid growing skepticism about the promise and payoff of a legal education. The job market for new lawyers is the worst it's been since the early 1990s. The average loan debt for law school graduates is spiraling upward. Those who might have been tempted by law school in years past are staying away in droves. SOURCE (August 19, 2012)
  • Just 55 percent of 2011 law school graduates had found long-term, full-time jobs for which they needed to pass the bar nine months after graduation, just two thirds had any sort of long-term, full-time professional employment. SOURCE (August 19, 2012)
  • Nationwide, the median starting salary for 2009 graduates in private practice was $72,000, and that's only among those working full time. For the Class of 2011, it was $60,000. "The only way you can comfortably manage that debt is to earn a salary in excess of $100,000. Fewer than 15 percent of the students last year got that. What that's telling you is that this is completely out of whack, the economics of it," said Brian Tamanaha, a professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and the author of "Failing Law Schools." SOURCE (August 19, 2012)

LAW SCHOOLS ATTEMPTING TO DECEIVE

  • UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS (Champaign-Urbana) admitted in September that the grades and test scores of incoming classes had been inflated for several years.
  • VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY, for years prior to 2010, knowingly reported inaccurate admissions data (limited to LSAT and GPA scores) to the American Bar Association (ABA) (ABA Journal, February 4, 2011).

LATEST HEADLINES OF INTEREST


LAW SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

The Augus 9, 2012 headline says it all: Law Schools Could Be Admitting 80 Percent of Their Applicants This Fall, Statistics Suggest.

A bleak jobs picture for law graduates is apparently dissuading more would-be lawyers from applying to law school. As of Jan. 13, [2012] the total number of applicants at ABA-approved law schools stood at 31,815, a drop of 16.7 percent from last year. The total number of applications was 233,361, a drop of 15.3 percent.



EMPLOYMENT SITUATION FOR LAW GRADUATES

  • Tough choices for law schools amid jobs crisis (August 7, 2012) consists of what should have been two independent articles. The first article consists of the first seven paragrahs (interresting but irrelevant) and the last three paragraphs (a sequel to the first seven paragraphs). The second article is the remainder of this article and it provides a big picture of the cause of the present day employment situation for lawyers.
  • The go-to law schools. The National Journal ranked the top 50 law schools by the percentage of 2011 juris doctor graduates who took jobs at NLJ 250 firms. The top thirty are listed.


THE SITUATION AT SOME LAW SCHOOLS

THOMAS M. COOLE LAW SCHOOL, the largest in the nations, faces huge enrollment declines.



FINANCIAL DATA FOR LAW GRADUATES


PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH LAW SCHOOL



Home
2015 LAW SCHOOL RANKING
Is Law School for You?
Sources of Information
Preparing for Law School
Prelaw Enrichment Programs
2013 Law School Rankings
2012 Law School Rankings
UGPA
LSAT
UGPA and LSAT: Together
Other Admission Factors
When and Where To Apply
Applying to Law School
Choosing the Law School
APPENDICES
Improving LSDAS and LSAC
Inforrmation for Prelaw
MBA Rankings
Historical Rankings
Best Research Universities
FAQ
2208 Ranking Realtors
For Law School Advisors
Score
2009-2012 Changes
Number of Visitors
Financing Law School
  
Underegraduate Financial Aid
Copy 0.3 inflatin
Links
New prototype
colors