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Last time, I wrote about a recent interview with New York Times journalist David Segal on Richard Heffner’s WNET talk show Open Mind. In that post, I focused on law students coming out of law school with the deck stacked against them. Students were relying on big law firms to provide the practical experience to finish off their law school educations, but those firms are no longer hiring lawyers right out of law school.

During the show, Segal mentioned the plight of Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law, which has been trying to win accreditation from the American Bar Association. The Knoxville, Tenn., school is trying to draw students from economically challenged areas, such as the state’s Appalachian Mountains and eventually send those students out to serve the region.

The problem, as Segal detailed in a story in the Times late last year, is that despite the school’s efforts to keep costs down for the students, tuition still runs about $50,000 a year. Pete DeBusk, one of the school’s benefactors, blames the high costs on the standards it has to meet in its effort to get accreditation.

“If you just want to move up the management ranks at Macy’s, you can take part-time evening classes and spend $10,000 for a degree. The part-time school may not be accredited, but this gets to the difference — state law says you can become an attorney only if you attend an accredited law school. There’s no law that says you need to attend an accredited business school in order to practice business,” Emory University School of Law professor George Shepherd told Segal in December.

Because states require that potential lawyers have graduated from an ABA accredited law school to take the bar exam, and because the ABA standards boost faculty salaries forcing tuition costs to skyrocket, most law students are essentially forced to take on huge amounts of debt if they aspire to practicing law.

Just last week (April 24), the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners granted Duncan a five-year extension of its state preliminary accreditation, allowing its students to take the state’s bar exam. However, Duncan students will not be allowed to sit for bar exams in other states.

The school is still fighting to gain accreditation from the ABA. Duncan has filed an appeal with the ABA and a decision is expected by May 3.

If the ABA relaxed some of its standards, prices for law schools might drop and, in turn, new lawyers wouldn’t be suffering under a heavy debt burden. And that might lead to more affordable legal advice.

“There are too many lawyers who charge $300 an hour,” Andrew Morriss, a University of Alabama School of Law professor, told Segal. “There aren’t too many lawyers who will handle a divorce at a reasonable rate, or handle a bankruptcy at a reasonable rate. But there is no way to be that lawyer and service $150,000 worth of debt.”

Still, law school graduates face a pretty bleak job market right now, with spots at large firms drying up, despite law schools painting a pretty — if false — picture of the employment landscape. But ABA president William Robinson seems to be blaming the debt-laden law school grads for their unemployed status. Robinson recently said: “It’s inconceivable to me that someone with a college education, or a graduate-level education, would not know before deciding to go to law school that the economy has declined over the last several years and that the job market out there is not as opportune as it might have been five, six, seven, eight years ago.”

As inconceivable as it may be for Robinson, we’re still left with a glut of new grads looking for a job in law. With big practice jobs dwindling, some are even entertaining the idea of opening their own practices.
But for a newly minted lawyer bogged down with student debt, setting up a practice seems an expensive and distant dream. The overhead involved in maintaining an office is prohibitive, especially for someone tackling a mountain of debt.

For recent grads in our area, a virtual office in NYC is an ideal solution. YourWallStreetOffice’s virtual office services can provide office space NYC, mail and parcel delivery services and a virtual office assistant, as well as personalized phone communications give you a professional edge, without the expensive overhead.

The low cost also includes a YourWallStreetOffice virtual office at a prominent Manhattan location and have them greeted by a guest receptionist when they arrive. Giving the new lawyer the sheen of a seasoned professional.