The single most effective thing conservatives can do regarding law schools is to correct the record on the job prospects of recent law school graduates. The statistics published in U.S. News and World Report are dangerously misleading and cause people who are considering attending law school to dramatically overvalue a Juris Doctor degree. Unfortunately, most law students don't figure out that they will be unable to practice as lawyers until the end of the second year of law school. By that time, it makes sense to try to salvage the investment already sunk into law school by finishing the third year and then trying to make a go of a legal career.

I graduated from U.Va. law school in 1993. (U.Va. is an extremely elite law school.) I estimate that approximately 1/3 of my class was able to get a prestigious legal job, 1/3 could find a non-prestigious legal job, and 1/3 was unemployed. I estimate that approximately 2/3 of my class no longer practices law, and less than 10% continues to practice law with a prestigious law firm. (I am a partner with a prestigious law firm.) U.Va.'s abysmal placement record is stellar compared to most other law schools.

I am extremely familiar with placement of law schools in the Mid-Atlantic region because my firm hires young lawyers out of those law schools. We won't even seriously consider a candidate who has not held an editorial post in the school's law review, and I know most local law firms are even more selective than we are. That eliminates 98% of legal graduates from consideration for a prestigious legal job. Most law schools cannot place even 5% of their graduates in prestigious starting legal jobs, and cannot place a supermajority of their graduates in any law job.

Furthermore, these recent graduates are burdened with enormous student loan debts that are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Many of them end up working as temporary workers in large document review mills run by the major law firms for $28 per hour without benefits. This is a horrible result that has lifetime repercussions. These people remain in debt throughout their twenties and thirties and cannot afford to get married and have children. They usually waste years of their lives trying to make it in the legal field. This hurts our society in general because it is wasting the talents of an enormous number of people who could be doing so much more with their lives.

In other words, law school has devolved into a scam whereby U.S. News and World Report, the ABA, and the administrations of virtually every law school in America mislead young people into wasting over $120,000 and at least three years of their lives pursuing a legal degree that will probably not be helpful to their lives. This is a horrible injustice that should be publicized so that young people can protect themselves from this kind of exploitation.