Who questions the use of central banks? Their purpose, their market intervention in setting the price of new money and creating debt?
Bitcoiners and other libertarians?
Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
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Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#32Many have predicted for a while now that the next big crisis will be the default of student loans (approximated at over $1 Trillion). Perhaps the Law profession will lead the way, but there must be many other professions where people are getting degrees but not jobs. After-all, it takes a lot of people to accumulate $1 Trillion in debt.
MBA's probably supply quite a few of these.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#33How come the overabundance of people practicing law has not driven the cost of lawyer related services down? (Supply and demand makes me assume this would be happening by now..)
People usually want to hire experienced lawyers. So there is a large pool of recent graduates and a small pool of those experienced.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#34How come the overabundance of people practicing law has not driven the cost of lawyer related services down? (Supply and demand makes me assume this would be happening by now..)
I've wondered about this too. I agree that a newly minted JD really isn't typically ready to be a lawyer (they don't do residencies like physicians). But then I read about how much legal help an untrained (legally) but highly literate person in prison can provide to fellow inmates, and it does seem that a new grad would be better than what a lot of people get. Especially since a court appointed lawyer is only available to those who can't afford it under narrow circumstances. There are plenty of things that can lead to prison in a roundabout way that don't qualify for a count-appointed lawyer - and even if prison isn't in the cards, the stakes can be unbelievably high.
Part of the problem, I think, is just how little money many people who need legal help actually have. My guess is that there's a cliff between $150/hr and the next tier that people can afford. In other words, they can pay for the "expensive" lawyer ($150/hr isn't particularly high for a legal bill), or they can't pay at all.
I do think that completely restructuring the system for joining the bar might accomplish this. In other words, allow law to be an undergraduate major, or perhaps allow people to test in through self-study. Find a way for people to join the field without going very heavily into debt. That might make it possible for practitioners to get their fees down, while still offering a service that is immeasurably better than no lawyer at all.
Still, pretty hard when you're multiplying by zero, which may be the case here.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#35How come the overabundance of people practicing law has not driven the cost of lawyer related services down? (Supply and demand makes me assume this would be happening by now..)
The market for legal services is an extreme power law. I used to run an online arbitration service where I paid arbitrators a fixed $150 for handling a case and was amazed at the caliber of people that applied.
Former law firm partners, Harvard Law grads who worked on Capitol Hill before, legal scholars with published books, all of it.
Turns out a tiny number of arbitrators can charge hundreds of dollars per hour for high value arbitration cases, while the rest just begs for scraps.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#36Irony not called out in the article: Despite poor job prospects for law school graduates, LSAT tutoring still pays well.
I'm in this industry. Two comments.
First, if you are going to law school, the ROI of a better LSAT score is astounding. Likely $200000 in scholarships and then who knows how much in future earnings. That is what justifies the high fees.
But second, the market for LSAT tutors has actually shrunk dramatically. It's been cannibalized by an explosion in free/affordable online resources that are as good or better than a tutor.
I know johnathan, the tutor in the article. He has his own platform that generates clients. It's very, very hard to be an LSAT tutor now if you don't have that. Only the visible minority can consistently charge $100+ an hour ar enough volume to do it full time.
For anyone curious about these online resources, the main company in the field is 7sage. They've done the most to destroy demand for tutoring (this is a good thing!). They have free explanations for the logic games section. This used to be what everyone asked tutors about. Now almost no one wants logic games help.
While I do tutoring, I mostly focus on products and on creating free/inexpensive resources. This is my own contribution to eliminating the need for people like me: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/
(They're free explanations for a bunch of LSAT practice tests.)
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#37Many have predicted for a while now that the next big crisis will be the default of student loans (approximated at over $1 Trillion). Perhaps the Law profession will lead the way, but there must be many other professions where people are getting degrees but not jobs. After-all, it takes a lot of people to accumulate $1 Trillion in debt.
But, in the US you can't "default" on student loans, they just keep accruing until the government starts to take it out of your social security payments.
My step father is close to being in this situation, he went to medical school in his late 30's, didn't pay his loans for a couple years, and now nearing his 60's faces the probability that he won't actually manage to pay them off before he retires.
The one loan you never want to take out is student loans, its total debt slavery.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#38What is needed is law school graduate employment numbers broken down by undergrad degree. I would think those who have undergrad in some STEM would be doing better than those with no technical background.
> What is needed is law school graduate employment numbers broken down by undergrad degree. It's too easy to game these numbers if law schools give their grads little temporary (not necessarily temp) jobs right out of school and then lay them off soon after, once the statistics stop following those people.
Check out law school transparency. They've got stats for every school, including what percent are school funded jobs like you describe.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#39Irony not called out in the article: Despite poor job prospects for law school graduates, LSAT tutoring still pays well.
It pays amazing for a part time gig, but it's really hard to scrape together anywhere near 40 hours a week doing it.
Re: Burdened with Debt, Law School Graduates Struggle in Job Market
#40Irony not called out in the article: Despite poor job prospects for law school graduates, LSAT tutoring still pays well.
Selling shovels.