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November 16, 2009 -
1:34 PM
Big Law, We Have a Problem
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Big Law, We Have a Problem”.
This makes me happy that I did not go down that law school path. Good thing I listened to myself and not my mother.
I appreciate the efforts that law schools are making to help their students find alternate opportunities.
The numbers are definitely up and I think this will be a competitive application cycle, but the new rules regarding postponing the LSAT also are playing a role here.
http://moststronglysupported.com/lsatninja/the-numbers-are-in/
Jodi-
Thanks for all the awesome research. As we get near to the 1L summer job search, it’s good to see some 2Ls who weren’t entirely jaded by their experiences so far.
It will be interesting to see where all the young lawyers who once planned on going directly into Big Law, but had to start somewhere else because of the economy. are in five years. Will they end up going back to Big Law if given the chance, or stay on different paths…
[...] Law School Admission Test has skyrocketed. In late September, 60,000 people took the test — a worrisome number, since law jobs are shrinking. [Most Strongly [...]
You’re mistaken in suggesting that BigLaw firms are only now starting to consider flat rate or other fee rate alternatives to the traditional hourly rate structure. At the three BigLaw firms where I practiced from 1981 through 1993 (Baker Botts, Weil Gotshal & Manges, and Thompson & Knight), the firms would certainly consider any kind of fee proposal. I’m personally aware of many specific examples of unconventional fee arrangements at all three of those firms, and I’m confident there are many similar examples at their BigLaw competitors.
Why would you think that BigLaw partners would be oblivious to, or uninterested in, fee structures that would make them more competitive and that might earn them more money on a net basis?
This post — like much discussion among law students and/or law profs — is focusing on statistical changes at the margins. But be careful not to lose sight of the big picture too. There have always been, and will always be, boom and bust times in legal recruiting. BigLaw itself changes, but incrementally and chaotically. Any one participant’s career path is a bubble that may be borne up or down, with or against the prevailing stream, and due to factors never mentioned in discussions like this one.
A record LSAT turnout is indeed an interesting datum. But don’t make too much out of it.
Beldar- Thanks for the comment. It’s always nice to hear from someone who survived a Big Law career.
Our point was not that this was the first time in Big Law history that a flat-fee rate has been considered, but rather what was a non-standard peripheral practice is becoming much more widespread as economic factors are wreaking havoc at Big Law firms. To use your language, this may have once existed at the very margins and now it appears to becoming mainstream.
It almost seems as if you’re suggesting (though I think I must have read you wrong) that the billable hour isn’t the de facto standard in Big Law. That of course, would be silly, as the billable hour is one of Big Law’s defining features (as discussed below).
Speaking of which, with regard to the obliviousness of Big Law firm partners to their fee structures, we don’t care to comment. However, we would distinguish between what makes a law firm “competitive” and what “earns the partners most money on a net basis.” The billable hour and the associate/partner earning structure may have been quite lucrative for partners over the last generation, but it has caused enough associate-level misery and inflated billing that we hope a paradigm shift is on the way.
Nor are we alone in this. The Wall Street Journal discussed dramatic departures from the billable hour recently with their coverage of the Pfizer Legal Alliance. The New York Times recently claimed that the billable hour is “the most basic yardstick of the legal business” and goes on the quote the presiding partner of Cravath, Swaine & Moore (otherwise known as the Big Law of Big Law) as stating that “[t]his is the time to get rid of the billable hour.” Not sure what further authority one would want…
With regard to blowing the LSAT stats out of proportion, we kind of have to dig in our heels a bit. I mean, let’s be serious. Law Shucks has documented the most intense period of firm layoffs in more than a generation (roughly 15,000 since January 1st, 2008 and 12,000 of those occurred in 2009). In addition to this historically large shedding of associates, almost every Big Law firm in the country has (1) reduced its number of incoming associates (2) frozen associate salaries and/or substantially reduced bonuses and (3) reduced OCI recruiting dramatically. Cravath is actually paying first year paying some first years $80,000 to stay home.
Even some law schools are offering students money to delay their enrollment, because even law school deans are worried about the glut of people moving into the legal profession.
And yet, even after all of the above has been exhaustively documented, we learned that more people had taken the Sept/October LSAT than EVER before, a 19.8% increase from 2008.
This isn’t the margin. Short of three crows flying across the sun, I’m not sure sure what other signs there could be. It’s pretty clear that (1) the job market is bleaker than bleak and that (2) the entire business of law might well be undergoing a paradigm shift and that people applying to law school should be alerted to (1) and (2).
With all due respect, claiming that it’s all cyclical and these statistics don’t amount to much seems tantamount to writing off global warming as the natural ebb and flow of temperature.
It would be interesting to see the structure of the scores. Just because more people take the test doesn’t mean the number of high scores will increase. Some of these people are just wasting time and money taking the test. They are not qualified. It would be interesting to see if applications to law schools go up accordingly. Probably a greater increase in LSAT takers than law school applicants. I could be wrong.
[...] most recent LSAT test had a record number of takers. out-of-work young ppl are looking to law as a fallback option, but the problem is that a lot of [...]
sg-
I think you’re both right and wrong.
You’re entirely right that this influx of people could perform poorly on the test. It’s entirely possible. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that the whole test administration got far more answers wrong than any group did before. There will still, necessarily, be more high scores to come out of this test than any administration in history.
It’s weird the way the test works. The scores are curved such that a score of 172 doesn’t refer to an absolute number of right answers, but rather to a percentile (in this case the top 1%). That’s what’s referred to as the “scaled” score as opposed to the “raw” score.
So, if 100 people take the LSAT there will be 1 score of 170 and if 1000 take it there will be 10 scores of 170 (that’s actually rather crudely put and not precisely right, but you get the idea).
Thus, by definition, the more people who take the test the more high scores there will be. Of course, there will be more low scores as well, but a glut of very low scores tends not to change things as much as a glut on the high end does.
Twice as many scores in the top 2-3% means that top schools will literally have twice as many qualified candidates (again, this is crude and assumes all things are equal). Twice as many scores in the bottom 2-3% won’t have much effect at all, since virtually no schools accept such candidates.
In this way, more people taking the test does kind of make it harder to get into law school. There is no way, even theoretically, that all 60,000 people could get low scaled scores. Roughly, 1% of these people (or approx. 600) will score above 171.
But there is one way in which more poor test takers make it actually easier to get into law school. Assume, as we are, that this influx of people scores very poorly, my score will be higher than it would have been otherwise because they’ll all fall into the bottom of the curve and effectively buoy the rest of us.
I think you might have been suggesting something like this.
Matt Riley is assuming a bit of this effect in his predictions for December:
http://moststronglysupported.com/lsatninja/december-lsat-predictions/
TT
[...] Most Strongly Supported [...]
I can’t help but think that this has a silver lining that is actually pretty damn thick. People who would otherwise be going to law school solely for the promise of a big paycheck will hopefully be applying less, while those with a genuine interest in becoming lawyers for non solely-monetary reasons will probably be less deterred. Having a higher percentage of lawyers who are in it for an actual love of the game is a good thing, I would think.
[...] revealed in the Most Strongly Supported Blog, a record number of 60,746 test-takers sat for the LSAT exam this past September, up from 50,721 [...]
Actually, the LSAT score conversions on different forms are compared using a process called equating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equating
Contrary to popular belief, they are not curved. The raw score to scaled score conversion is determined prior to the administration of the test, and the percentile ranks attached to scores can and does change somewhat in different administrations.
However, more takers will almost certainly lead to more high scores; even if the additional takers are proportionally less qualified, it would be asinine to claim that all of them are.
I’m fairly certain that’s false.
I think you’re equivocating between the scaled to raw score conversion and the percentile to scaled score assignment.
The latter of these is reset every few years by LSAC (though the changes are very slight). So, in a few years a 172 might no longer correlate with the 99% (it might then refer to the (99.5 or 98%).
But the former, the raw to scaled score conversion, is a product of the actual test-takers who took that actual exam. In a sense it represents your rank among the people who sat for the test that day. When you score a 172, you’ve scored better than 99% of the people who took that test.
If LSAC used an equating process, then on a given test there could, in theory, be a disproportionately high number of skilled test-takers who scored 172 or above. But if that happened and more than 1% of people scored 172 or above then the number would lose it’s meaning.
I’ll stand corrected if you have some evidence that LSAC uses equating to determine scaled scores, but I’m fairly certainly they’re a product of raw scores and percentile rankings.
I wrote a book to discourage students from going to law school, at least to let them know what they were in for (LAW SCHOOL RED INK WHITE COLLAR BLUES), but of course the book had no impact whatsoever (except, possibly, to convince a few career services offices to hold off job interviews until December 1). The new book tells the truth about the practice of law for many, but legal publications haven’t rushed to review it because it takes such a harsh (realistic) look at the profession. New book is called ADAM AND EVE GAVE BIRTH TO AN EVICTION LAWYER. Both books are “novels.” Good luck to anyone who tries to practice law in this environment.
WSJ picked this up: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/11/18/you-and-60000-others-have-taken-the-lsat-now-read-this/
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[...] Commonwealth’s private law schools reported increases in applications this year as well. Nationwide, almost 20% more people took the LSAT last year than the year before. This is what happens in a recession: people unable to find jobs retreat into school in the hopes [...]
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In our country it’s different. There were years where qualifying exams for these aspiring lawyers were diminishing successively and there were also years going up in percentage.
One reason is the financial capacity of the sponsoring individual or the parents to let their student continued.
The other reason is the kind of qualifying test they would take this includes some fraud, discrepancy and anomalous system of taking the exams. Most often than not the percentage of not to go on their law studies or never to attempt to try their luck is greater than pursuing.