No comment needed.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
| Not seasonally adjusted | March | 2015 | 1,112,900 | |
| January | 2016 | 1,114,700 | ||
| February | 2016 | 1,116,700 | ||
| March | 2016 | 1,120,800 | 7,900 | |
| Seasonally adjusted | March | 2015 | 1,116,600 | |
| January | 2016 | 1,123,500 | ||
| February | 2016 | 1,123,600 | ||
| March | 2016 | 1,124,800 | 8,200 | |
| Change from Feb-16 to Mar-16 | 1,200 |
Wow. What a thriving "profession."
ReplyDeleteRegarding schools, I prefer "thieving."
DeleteI lost a gig paying me $250.00 to represent traffic offenders to a more desperate law group (that's the trendy thing) that will do the same work for well under two hundred dollars. I thought I was scraping the barrel, I was told to by the employing gig to give them a "number" in the 100 dollar range and they will place me back on the "rotation" to get cases. As Nando noted, "what a thriving profession."
ReplyDeleteLet's do some math for the snowflakes. Since these people are either completely inept with numbers generally, or because they have nothing better to do with their worthless liberal arts degree, or unable to perform the minimal research to figure out what the numbers actually mean, I feel obliged to make sense of this BLS data for these people.
ReplyDelete1) The BLS cites 1,120,800 "legal services" jobs (using the figure from actual jobs -- not the magical seasonally-adjusted jobs where we pretend like more people find work in March because March is just-straight-goddamn-magical like that).
2) But reasonable people don’t go into over $150K of law school debt to become paralegals or secretaries (averaging a $50K salary). After we take out those 239,130 jobs that leaves us with 881,670. Nor do reasonable people go into debt to get into “office and administrative support occupations,” (averaging a $40K salary) so after subtracting another 417,780 that leaves us with 463,890.
This 463,890 number is THE MOST OPTIMISTIC figure that could fit within the fraudulent “you can do anything with a law degree” sales pitch. Or, stated otherwise, this 463,890 number includes a bunch of positions for which you don’t need a JD, but it isn’t necessarily detrimental (so the JD is simply wasteful for these positions – not the scarlet letter on the resume that it often is)
But wait! There’s more!
3) That number doesn’t say how many openings there are per year. Let’s assume that the average career for is 40 years long. That means that the number we care about is 463,890/40, or 11,600 positions opening per year.
4) Ergo, you CAN do anything with a law degree, EXCEPT this ONLY applies to a fraction of JDs entering the workforce. How large is this fraction? Let’s take the graduating class of 2015 as an example. ABA-approved law schools pumped out somewhere in the neighborhood of 39,500 graduates last year.
5) What’s that mean in numbers that a liberal arts simpleton can understand? 11,600/39,500 = 29.4%.
6) 29.4% is crazy, right? Why is this so low? The only plausible answer is that people don’t work in the legal field for 40 years. Stated another way, your $150K debt can get you a job, but don’t expect it to get you a career.
In the end it’s clear, you can* do anything with a law degree!
* But you’re more likely, statistically speaking, to be out of law within 5 years if you’re luck enough to get the sort of position that can cover the $150K in loans you took out in the first place. In other words, taking out loans for law school if you don’t have a job lined up prior to your 1L year is FINANCIAL SUICIDE.
For further reading on how becoming a biglaw associate is a losing proposition for most see http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_home/law_practice_archive/lpm_magazine_articles_v33_is4_an1.html.
Forget numbers. Just pull open any phone book (Yellow Pages) and flip to the lawyer section. Dozens of pages of lawyers screaming about free consultations. Those are the Solos and small firms that can afford to scape together a few hundred dollars to advertise. There are thousands and thousands out there who can not afford to advertise. Need more proof? Drive down Western Avenue in Chicago or any main drag and every two blocks is a store front "boutique" law office.
Delete