A Sense of Entitlement?

As recent law graduates continue to strenuously question the benefits of a JD degree, one response has been to suggest that the current generation of JDs suffers from an inflated sense of entitlement.  This argument holds that would-be law students, should they decide to risk borrowing money to pay for an expensive JD, must be willing to take an active, entrepreneurial approach to their career.  For graduates of non-elite schools, being entrepreneurial means hanging up a shingle and making one’s way as a solo practitioner soon after licensure.  Or, it means young lawyers must start their careers on a precariously low rung, servicing their student loans while working as temporary project attorneys paid by the hour or as public sector attorneys with median starting salaries in the range of $42,000 to $50,000.

Even as law schools move toward greater transparency in reporting post-JD employment data, I predict a continuing disconnect between what young lawyers expect from their legal education and the reality they face upon graduation.  The harsh post-graduation reality faced by many JDs greatly conflicts with the implicit story law schools tell students before and during law school.  It may not be something that law schools ever directly state, but law school admissions staff, deans, and professors have long connected legal education with access to a “noble” profession that provides its members with a comfortable and esteemed position in society.  The idea that law provides a clear path toward social mobility and respect, even though it might conflict with a school's actual employment numbers, is a powerful narrative that will continue to draw many to law school.

One of the premises in this implicit story is that successful legal careers will happen to young lawyers as long as they work hard.  This idea has become deeply embedded in our legal culture, perhaps because older generations of lawyers, including most current law professors, began their careers during the height of the so-called Cravath model, where law firms mentored and groomed young lawyers along a set path from summer associate, to associate, to partner.  Success within the Cravath model certainly required hard work, but it also provided a mentoring structure, generous salary, and a certain amount of job security. 

With the current job-market the way it is, working hard is not enough to guarantee success.  For instance, when we suggest that young lawyers take an entrepreneurial approach and hang up their own shingle, we are suggesting a radically different career model, one fraught with financial peril and risk.  In this situation, an unknown and inexperienced attorney is expected to start a successful small business financed by vast amounts of non-dischargeable student-loan debt.  This is not a standard recipe for small business success. 

If entrepreneurship is a solution to the current crisis in legal education, then we must provide graduates with better kindling.  Infusing more practice skills into legal education is one obvious step that most law schools have committed themselves to. But if we want to make it possible for new generations to make their way into the profession and not have it slide into an exclusively elite profession serving exclusively elite clients, then we have an obligation to make the JD radically less expensive. 

Deeply reforming legal education means that legal educators may have to swallow some tough pills concerning their own professional identity and job security.  Those of us who make a living educating soon-to-be lawyers have a moral obligation to put aside our self-interest and consider these issues. 

-- Lucille A. Jewel, Assoc. Prof., Atlanta's John Marshall Law School

 

Comments

[Bruce MacEwen]

As a lawyer and entrepreneur (having founded two companies, Adam Smith, Esq., and JD Match), my experience has been that practicing lawyers are all but constitutionally incapable of being "entrepreneurs" in the truest sense. To paraphrase Andy Grove (he was talking about the government), "startups move at three times the speed of normal business and law firms move at one-third the speed; this is a 9X difference."

And when I say "my experience," it has been absolutely without exception.

If there are to be solutions to this supply/demand mismatch, I respectfully suggest that making lawyers better risk-takers is not one of them.

[WM]

I don't think that a sense of entitlement is the right way of looking at it. When law schools publish that the vast majority of their students are employed within 6 months and that the their median salaries are in the six figures usually around $140,000, it could be considered an informed decision to attend law school.

That being said, I don't know that the market is there to support an army of entrepreneurial law school graduates any more than non-entrepreneurial ones. I think law schools need to be more honest (as you are here) about job market realities and the ABA needs to step up their scrutiny of published employment statistics and accreditation requirements.

[Adult observer]

Professor Jewel, I question the wisdom and propriety of linking to the "Thied Tier Reality" blog, whose proprietor appears to be mentally ill or simply a sociopath.

[BL1Y]

I second Adult observer's remarks about linking to Third Tier Reality. Last week the author of TTR posted my contact information on his Facebook account, and had someone hand deliver a rather creepy letter to my home.

As for the substance of your remarks, I have to say that I've seen no evidence of a young lawyer saying that they are entitled to a job. I've seen plenty of people say that they don't have jobs, that they feel misled by their schools, and that their financial situation stinks, but that's far from saying they are entitled to a job or that someone owes them one. You will however find many young lawyers who feel lucky to have any job at all (even one that pays poorly and isn't in their preferred practice area); that's essentially the opposite of a sense of entitlement.

[Steven Ellis]

Professor Jewel,

I am not sure I would call it an entitlement mentality either. I will agree the gentleman at the blog you referenced can be pretty caustic ( he could perhaps, be articulating what I have felt the last 4 years though.) I hung my own shingle out after looking for a job for a year after I passed the bar in 07.. I had 5 clients in 2010 and was forced to close my firm and am in a bigger mess than I would have been had I not opened my own firm at all. I have applied for and interviewed for many jobs outside of law to no avail. I don't have the right legal pedigree to get hired in the legal sector ( including applying for jobs at JMLS and never even being called for an interview) and my law degree is held against me when I apply for non-legal jobs. I am seriously contemplating taking any reference to my legal education off my resume and hope that might get me a job in a decent paying non-legal position.