“Who’s to say to any particular student, ‘You won’t be the one to get the $160,000-a-year job,’ ” says Steven Greenberger, a dean at the DePaul College of Law. “I think they should have all the info, and the info should be accurate, but saying once they know that they shouldn’t be allowed to come, that’s predicated on the idea that students are really ignorant and don’t know what is best for them.”I'll phrase the question differently: assume the law schools told the unvarnished truth, that if you are not in the top (10-25)% of the class (outside the top-10 schools), you will find the job market to be exceptionally difficult, even both in our city and in your hometown, and you may well not be employed after graduation. My fear is that even providing accurate information is irrelevant because however narrow that window is, most matriculants will assume that they're smart and hard-working enough to fit through it. I don't quite know how to describe this heuristic -- I'm sure there's a formal term for it -- but don't most people assume "if they've admitted me, that means the school believes I'll do really well there"?
Based on the seething and regret you hear from some law school grads, more than a few wish that someone had been patronizing enough to say, “Oh no you don’t.” But it’s often hard to convince students about the potential downside of law school, says Kimber A. Russell, a 37-year-old graduate of DePaul, who writes the Shilling Me Softly blog.
“This idea of exceptionalism — I don’t know if it’s a thing with millennials, or what,” she says, referring to the generation now in its 20s. “Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them. It’s a serious, life-altering decision, going to law school, and you’re dealing with a lot of naïve students who have never had jobs, never paid real bills.”
So I don't know how law schools can design the "warning label" accurately enough to provide the necessary message to overcome the denial (though at least with the blogosphere and articles like this one the message is getting out there). A law school's primary job is to teach people about the law, but it also has a duty to be clear as to what one can do with a J.D. in this economy. I'm interested in your thoughts as to what needs to change.
