Today I received my monthly State Bar (California) Journal today. The front page article screams — Better Job Market for Attorneys!

Yipee! (That’s sarcasm folks.

Santa Monica based Rand Corporation has assessed the legal field in California and has determined job prospects are looking good through 2015. The downside, according to the study, there are less affordable lawyers out there. There are less solo practitioners and rural counties are having problems attracting lawyers and other professionals.

All this is characterized as if this is surprising? Are they kidding? Students are graduation from college with more debt than ever. The tuition and fees at my private law school now top $47,000 per year. Unless you have a full time job, or have wealthy parents, hundred of thousands of dollars of debt come along with the degree. Is it any shock that newly minted lawyers are taking the highest paid jobs that they can get? That solo practitioners want to earn more?

I don’t blame lawyers. I still have debt from law school . . . eight years, and I’m just beginning to reduce the principle — still have $67,000 to pay there. Even in Cleveland, many of my clients earned more than I. High school graudates working at the steel mills — for Ford — making upwards of $80,000 a year and complaining about my fees.

The cry for affordable lawyers is like the cry for affordable healthcare — just a plaintive wail by many who think they should get something for virtually nothing.

In a time when college and graduate school tuition has outpaced inflation for more than a dozen years, that’s just not realistic. With over $18,000 a year in debt payments, how can a recent graduate take a job with a legal aid or public defenders or prosecutors office that pays just $36,000. You do the math.

Yes, the poor are going to fall as the safety net is removed. The young graduates can’t pick up the slack anymore. After all we have to pay the high cost of health insurance too.

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