Social Science Statistics Blog

Maybe the title gives it all away, but the gist is that a legal education might not always pay off. While I wholeheartedly agree with this, I'm less enthusiastic about the author's methodology. The author essentially constructs three hypothetical law students: "Also Ran," a legal slacker who attends a lower-ranked law school; "Solid Performer," a middling kind of person who attends a middling kind of law school; and "Hot Prospect," a high-flying and well-placed law student. The essay then more or less "follows" them through their legal "careers" to see if their discounted expected gains in salary match what they "paid" in terms of opportunity costs, tuition, and interest on their student loans. (I know, I'm using a lot of air quotes here.) Unsurprisingly, a legal education isn't a very good investment for any of the individuals.

What's interesting about the paper is that it's essentially an exercise in counterfactuals -- what Also Ran would have earned after going to law school, what Hot Prospect would have made had she not gone, etc., etc. To that extent, it's very fun think about. But, on the flip side, that's kind of what it is -- a thought experiment. Maybe an interesting extension would be a do an empirical causal analysis -- maybe matching pre-law undergraduates along a slew of covariates and then seeing how the "treatment" of law school affects or does not affect their earnings. I'd certainly find that a lot more persuasive (although I imagine that the kind of data that you'd need to pull this off would be well-nigh impossible to collect).

The article has gotten quite a bit of attention from legal types, including from the WSJ's Law Blog and from the NYTimes Economix blog. Thoughts?