Before spending three tough years of study and spending $100,000 or more for a law degree, you might first want to research how much you are likely to earn.
A few years ago most good lawyers could look forward to getting some kind of decent work – obviously not all starting out at $100,000 a year, but many didn.
Today, thousands of lawyers can’t find full-time legal work and end up being contract workers, or temps. What is happening to lawyers is not unlike what is happening to others getting liberal arts degrees and discovering that there is no need for the functions they have learned in college.
Today’s Wall Street Journal turns the light on what happens to many recent law school graduates who are not among the top in their class or don’t have connections.
Many of these young lawyers end up making as little as $15 an hour as contract lawyers, who work in conditions more like a factory assembly line, or piece meal, that a white collar job.
“For 10 to 12 hours a day—and sometimes during graveyard shifts—contract attorneys such…sit silently in a big room, at rows of computer monitors. Each lawyer reads thousands of documents online and must quickly “code” every one according to its relevance in litigation or an investigation,” writes Vanessa O’Connell for the WSJ, which I consider the best newspaper in the world – sorry NYT.
“Supervisors discourage talking and breaks are limited. The computer systems count each lawyer’s speed. Some law firms use their own contract attorneys, while others hire them through third-party agencies,” she writes.
Why. Its the global economy. The same forces that required the auto industry to outsource for parts in other countries is forcing law firms to cut costs by hiring foreign lawyers who speak fluent English and are quite capable of doing the basic research, fact checking, and prioritizing evidence that American lawyers can. The difference is that a lawyer in India is happy with $12 an hour. Also computers have been programmed to do some of the same work, not unlike manufacturing.
And companies are tired of huge legal bills and are demanding that law firms to reduce their tabs.
So a word of advice to students and parents: Before making an investment in an education, make sure it is an investment and not just money and time going down the drain.
Gee…Maybe the UNIONS should step in & protect the poor lawyers…What part of “lowest bid” did they NOT understand when they negotiated the contracts which sent everyone else’s jobs overseas?
The same goes for the tens of thousands of journalism majors in college, who have yet to figure out there are no jobs for them.