Josh Blackman » “Producing ‘practice-ready’ graduates does nothing about the problem that there aren’t nearly enough legal jobs that would allow those graduates to practice their newly-acquired skills, and even fewer legal jobs that pay enough to justify the current cost of legal education.”

“Producing ‘practice-ready’ graduates does nothing about the problem that there aren’t nearly enough legal jobs that would allow those graduates to practice their newly-acquired skills, and even fewer legal jobs that pay enough to justify the current cost of legal education.”

April 26th, 2012

Some supply and demand from Paul Campos.

In other words, to the limited extent that making new graduates more practice-ready would enhance their future earning potential, it would to that same extent decrease the future earnings of older graduates. And if the increased cost of producing practice-ready lawyers turns out to be higher than the enhancement of earning potential such reforms produce that would actually make law degrees even worse investments for future graduates than they have been for recent ones. The problem, as these statistics illustrate, is that it appears essentially the same number of real legal jobs that existed 25 years ago are now being pursued by literally twice as many lawyers. Which of those lawyers get and keep those jobs is not nearly as important as the fact that the ratio between legal jobs and people with law degrees continues to get worse every year.