Law School as an Investment

14 November 2009

This past Thursday the New York Times profiled a new research paper entitled Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be…Lawyers that said “Law school is a bad investment”.

The paper tries to measure the return on investment in a law school education, using three prototypical students (the “Also Ran,” the “Solid Performer” and the “Hot Prospect”) and the results are somewhat disheartening, especially considering the surging interest in law school during this tough job market.

As the New York Times article points out, attempts to calculate the return on investment of a given degree are difficult.  And there is also the matter of nonmonetary returns from higher education.  Neither the new research paper on law school R.O.I. nor most of the other related studies try to quantify the psychic rewards of additional social prestige, expanding one’s mind, being better equipped to make the world a better place, and so on, that come from earning a J.D.  And as we have reported, many Posse List members have used their law education/their law training to move on to other pursuits, other fields.  But we thought the information would be interesting and of use to our readers.

For the New York Times article click here.

For the full research paper click here.

And for an analysis of the research paper from the TaxProf blog with some more links click here.