Wall St. Journal: “Laid-off Attorneys Search for Work Far Outside Traditional Law Firms. ‘Quite frankly a significant number of lawyers are simply moving out of the profession, just looking to do completely different things,’ says Jerry Kowalski, a law-firm consultant based in New York and Washington, D.C. ‘The overall picture is the huge oversupply of lawyers‘.”
National Law Journal: “Despite grim job statistics in nearly every corner of the legal world, law school applications increased by 7% over last year. The grim job statistics in nearly every corner of the legal world are surely enough to make any aspiring lawyer think twice about diving into massive debt to attend law school. So why are so many people lining up to do just that?
New York Times: “For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, . . . 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s. The college-educated among these young adults are better off. But nearly 17 percent are either unemployed or not seeking work, a record level . . . . The unemployment rate for college-educated young adults, 5.5 percent, is nearly double what it was on the eve of the Great Recession . . . .”
Above the Law: “Over the weekend, a tipster sent us the pitch North Texas is using on Texans who don’t know any better. Here’s the school’s headline: “Opening a public law school at the right time in the right place.” You have got to be freaking kidding me.”
USA Today: “Over the past five years, I have seen students who didn’t have the skills one would expect of a ninth-grader going off to four-year colleges where fewer than 30% of entering freshman graduate. That means that 70% of the freshman class is likely to end up not with a diploma but a pile of debt. In these days of tight budgets at every level of government, it’s also hard to ignore that these schools are heavily subsidized by the federal government.”