The Marooned Law School Graduates: An Empirical Investigation of Law School Graduates that Fail the Bar Exam

AbstractIn many countries, the size of a law firm is closely related to the specializations and incomes of the lawyers it employs, and can be considered an index for disparities among lawyers. Gender and school prestige may affect the size of the first firm that lawyers join. Moreover, since the lawyer population has quadrupled over the last 20 years in Japan, mainly due to judicial reform, I hypothesize that this population increase has changed how gender and school prestige affect the size of the first firm law school graduates decide to join. To test this, I conducted a secondary statistical analysis on the effect of gender and school prestige on the size of the first firm that lawyers joined, using survey data collected by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in 2010. Findings suggest that there were no significant differences in the size of women’s and men’s first employer, but that school prestige was significant. Moreover, the importance of school prestige has increased over the years.

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Educational Debt and Law Student Failure to Enter Public Service Careers: Bringing Empirical Data to Bear

Law & Social Inquiry ◽

10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00026.x ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 31 (03) ◽

pp. 677-708 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Christa McGill

Keyword(s):

Public Service ◽

Law School ◽

Law Students ◽

Short Supply ◽

Individual Level ◽

Debt Burden ◽

Student Failure ◽

Level Data ◽

Law School Graduates ◽

Law Student

It is frequently suggested that law school debt is preventing new law school graduates from entering public service careers. The basis for this contention is largely anecdotal, however. This study puts the presumption to empirical scrutiny. Aggregate data from law schools and individual-level data from law students both point to the same conclusion: law students may indeed be competing in a money chase, but it is not because of their indebtedness. Private firms with prestige and high salaries are appealing to many students regardless of their debt burden. And government and public interest jobs may be in too short supply to meet the demand of non-elite students who are essentially closed out of the high-paying jobs in larger firms. The biggest barrier between these students and public service jobs may be the lack of supply of these jobs, not the lack of demand for them.

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