Fighting the Last War

When time horizons between events are very long, it is very easy to fall into the trap of fighting the last war.  I read a  New York Times Article over the weekend and it reminded me of a conversation that I had with my father when I was a college student many years ago. 

I was trying to figure out what to do with my life and my father (a lawyer) suggested law school.  No surprise there.  He said "Law School offers the maximum amount of opportunity with the minimum amount of commitment."  I bought this argument at the time, but I didn't realize my father was fighting the last war -- in his case almost literally and figuratively.   His statement was perhaps true for a generation trying to escape serving in Vietnam and for a generation for whom very little debt was needed to pay for law school tuition.  My family could still afford to pay for law school when I went, but it was not cheap.  Today, my alma mater (Yale Law School) is still an outstanding institution, but the opportunity cost of foregone earnings for three years is high and tuition, room and board at more than $70,000 per year is not an obligation to be taken lightly.  In fact, it is overwhelming to all but the very wealthiest Americans and is why the vast majority of its students receive some form of financial aid.  Although the Yale Law School is a wonderful institution, it is not as exceptional as it could be regarding costs and financial aid.  Law school students throughout the United States must finance their educations primarily through a combination of significant loans and grants and these schools are on the whole quite expensive.

And this is really the crux of the New York Times article -- "there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available."  These students are fighting the last war and listening to my father's advice and they are playing with other people's money.  

Our society needs top notch attorneys, but we certainly do not need as many transaction costs and as much deadweight economic loss and friction as we have in our economy.  We need greater -- not less -- efficiency and better, more efficient counsel.  And so, we need more highly skilled (and trained) and more technologically savvy attorneys who can leverage their staff and resources more effectively.  Unfortunately for many law school graduates, the trend is toward fewer bodies thrown at legal matters and these legal minds need to be more quick and effective at finding solutions.  My father could not have known that the market for legal talent would become increasingly competitive and global when he made his comments to me so many years ago. 

For top tier academic institutions, I think the current environment presents a tremendous opportunity to revamp pedagogy and outdated curricula and help form very highly qualified and credentialed professionals able to make clients more effective and efficient across the globe.  These graduates can help resolve disputes in a more expedited (and one hopes eventually more just) manner as well.  Nevertheless, the overall demand for law school graduates will probably not be as high as it was in the recent past and many tasks today performed by associates will increasingly be performed by technology and paralegals.  The current economic downturn is only accelerating this transition.  For many law schools that are not highly competitive, I feel it will be very difficult for their students to see a return on the investments that they have made in their educations.  We simply will not need as many attorneys to do the same types of tasks as they performed in the past.  Law School no longer offers the maximum amount of opportunity with the minimum amount of commitment.