Inside Higher Ed has a story today, “The Upside of Law School” which tries to make the case that although lots of recent law grads are unemployed or working in low-paying jobs that may or may not have anything to do with the law, things will get better and once again the JD will be “a million dollar degree.”
I find this sort of thing objectionable for the same reason I find it objectionable for the college-industrial complex to tell kids that getting a BA adds a million (or any amount) to their lifetime earnings. Even if the legal industry eventually rebounds (and it might not; during this slump, I suspect that many businesses have found that they can nicely do with less legal advice than in the past), many students who go through law school will find that the best law jobs they can find don’t pay particularly well.