Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

UC Irvine and the Over-Production of Lawyers

Stephanie Dowds opines:

The University of California regents, a dominant force in California education, plans to open an additional law school in 2009. The University of California at Irvine is set to cast off in only two years, naming renowned Erwin Chemerinsky dean of the Donald Bren School of Law. Chemerinsky, a household name to any law student that showed up to constitutional law, is a shoe-in for success. Yet, with roughly 9,000 soon-to-be attorneys awaiting their July California bar results, competition within the job market is noticeably fierce.

Despite a historically low bar passing rate, the California legal market is not prepared to assimilate the vast number of entry-level attorneys produced each year. According to the State Bar of California, a total of 14,774 people took the July 2006 and February 2007 bar exams; 6,811 passed, for an annual pass rate of 46%. There are currently 211,973 registered attorneys within the state of California. Since the U.S. Census Bureau estimated California’s 2006 population to be 36,457,549, that equates to about one attorney for every 172 people within the state. With almost 15,000 people sitting for the California bar each year, approximately 6,900 newly inaugurated attorneys will be eligible to enter the California legal market. The question arises: How many new attorneys can California undertake?

The significant disparity between entry-level attorneys and available legal jobs is largely attributed to the overabundance of law schools located within the state. California is home to more law schools then any other state, with 20 accredited legal institutions, 11 of which are top 100 schools. ...

The consequences of California’s surplus of law schools and excess attorneys are monumental. Yet California does not appear to recognize the problem it faces with over-educated, under-employed legal graduates.

Dowds focuses on the consequences to the graduates, such as underemployment and unemployment. Yet, there’s another and socially more important problem; namely, abusive litigation. You get lawyers creating work for themselves, as the Trevor Law Group allegedly did using California Business and Professions Code section 17200 before Prop 64 imposed strict new standing rules. In 2005, the Manhattan Institute documented the problems we face in Trial Lawyers Inc. California, which documented that:

Jury awards have been growing dramatically in the state: from 1996 to 2001, the average jury award in large California counties increased 144 percent, to a staggering $1.5 million. Trial Lawyers, Inc. now has a firm and tightening grip on the state and its resources. The plaintiffs’ bar in California has tremendous influence over the state legislature and has been able to manipulate Sacramento politics to facilitate its “bounty hunter” tactics. The state’s courts have abetted these efforts, allowing California attorneys to collect fees even in losing cases. Little wonder that surveyed executives have ranked California among the seven worst states for litigation in each of the last four years.

In sum, I’m forced to agree with Dowd’s conclusion that “Perhaps the Donald Bren School of Law is not in the best interests of the state of California.”