A Boston College law student recently wrote an open letter to the dean requesting a refund in exchange for leaving school without a J.D. The author argues that he shouldn’t be saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans at a time when the job market for newly minted attorneys is atrocious. I sympathize with his plight, but I’m not sure I find his argument to have much merit. Law schools make no guarantees about a graduate’s ability to find a job even in the best of economic times. They may brag about job placement rates in their brochures, but any 1L knows that this doesn’t rise to the level of a contractual promise. Law schools are in the business of providing a legal education; what happens after that is largely up to the individual. That service may be vastly overpriced given current employment prospects, but that’s a different argument. College students across the country who are confronting the strong possibility of unemployment or underemployment could make similar demands, but most studies show that college grads have increased earning power over the long run. Law school grads will probably enjoy even greater earning power than college grads over the long term, but that’s admittedly little consolation to those currently searching for work.
