Legal Profession?

Have got to cut and paste a few comments from my favorite Legal Blog, Above the Law. The article concerned how DeVry University (you know, the "institute" that provides vocational education with lots of TV spots, mostly in fields like medical billing, human resources - i.e. employment benefits mgmt, network administration, etc.) may be buying the Bar/Bri prep course business from Thomas Reuters (who instead of investing in teaching Americans how to pass the bar and practice in the US is now investing in foreign attorneys/document reviewers by buying Pangea3 - a firm that primarily handles outsourcing legal work to India).

The article's author thinks that the marriage of DeVry and Bar/Bri is perfect because its clear that lawschools don't adequately prepare students to pass the bar, let alone actually practice law. Its truly amazing that three years of education and you still need to take a six-week 'focused' course on how to pass the only test that allows you to practice law. Three years and the school can't even teach you how to pass one friggin test? Considering the profit mills that many lawschools have become, it just makes sense that a for-profit vocational "institute" takes over the only course that actually gives students the information they need to pass the Bar exam.

Seriously, the legal profession used to be looked up to as respectable and you had to be smart and dedicated to law in order to get into lawschool. Now anyone with a pulse can pay $50,000+ a year or more to get three years of crap education, then pay another $6,000 for the Bar/Bri course to learn how to pass the bar.

So anyway, here are some of the comments:

"When I read these types of articles, it makes me appreciate the fact that I left this corroded profession. The value of a JD is at its nadir. When I became a lawyer, an LLB was the key to the kingdom. Kids today cry about a $160K/year salary. When I joined this profession, I was barely making $16K a year (1/10 of what kids think they deserve today). I was able to buy my first home outright with no mortgage within 3 years of becoming a licensed attorney. I had no student loan debt and I was financially secure within 5 years from passing the bar. Folks, the sad reality is that the dream is dead and has long been dead for decades. I recall a normal partnership track being 5 years. I remember being mentored and groomed, not hectored or humiliated. Times have changed and if you still signed up for a JD today, then you are truly a masochist. Kids, do yourselves a favor and go to a trade school. Mechanics and refrigeration technicians will earn more money than you and will serve a function in society. I never thought I would be alive to see the value of a JD being equal to a diploma issued by the Sally Struthers School of "Fill in the Blank." That is all."


"Isn’t Devry one of those schools that advertise on TV at times when everyone with anything better to do is away from a television set? If you’ve ever been sick at home and stuck in front of a TV you know what I’m talking about.

If an organization I only know about from bad TV is going to buy Bar/Bri, I think it should be that ‘Feed the Children’ Christian charity. I can see the commercials now: slide after slide of somber, doe-eyed 3Ls staring up at the camera from dim and dusty library tables while that fat bearded guy’s voice tells a few of their tales: “This is Margaret. She went to Baylor. There was a time when Baylor graduates could at least count on legal staffing jobs in Houston to pay their bills. Now Margaret faces a future as the bottom rung of her aunt’s Mary Kay distributorship pyramid. For just a few dollars a day, you could help her sit for the Texas Bar. The Texas dream of a lexis may not be in her future, but with your help, she may afford the payments on her Hyundai.” "


"My point here is that the line between "professional" school and "vocational" school has substantially blurred, that it actually makes sense for DeVry to take on this responsibility, and that to the extent that people graduate from 3 year law schools still needing to go to a finishing or vocational school before they can actually practice is a damning illustration of the state (and outsized cost) of legal education.

-- The ATL comment thread is the DeVry of commenter education schools."