Source: CNN Money

By Maya Itah

For starters, it admits highly ambitious students, pits them against each other with little attempt to level the financial playing field, and releases them into a market that can’t absorb them.

You know law schools are deeply troubled when you ask a dean what it feels like to be under constant fire and he answers the question with a question of his own.

“When you say ‘coming under fire,’ what are we really talking about?” asks John Corkery, dean of the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “Which fire are we talking about?”

You can’t blame him for seeking clarity. Truth is, law schools have not merely fallen out of favor in recent years, as jobs have become scarce and unemployment among freshly minted JD graduates has soared. Law schools have become the most despised part of the academy.

Most people associate lawyers with misery: an unfair lawsuit, a divorce. But at least previous attacks had come from outside of the profession. In recent years, plenty of criticism has come from insiders, mostly law school professors who acknowledge that schools have supplied far too many lawyers than the market can absorb, and from graduates who now carry six-figure debt loads and can’t get jobs in law.

Corkery’s school has been sued by its graduates for embellishing employment prospects. When asked if he considers his position difficult, though, he deflects: “The fire I’m thinking of is that there are a lot less people going to law school,” he says.

It’s telling that Corkery first lists a problem that afflicts the schools rather than the graduates. He’s on the mark about one thing, though: Law schools are trying to put out fires from all directions.

For the past three years, the media has picked up the attacks with relish. The New York Times, in an article on a graduate with $250,000 in loans, put it this way: “Is Law School a Losing Game?” Referring to the graduate, the Times wrote, “His secret, if that’s the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash,” writes the author. Or consider this blunt headline from a recent Business Insider article: “‘I Consider Law School A Waste Of My Life And An Extraordinary Waste Of Money.'” Even though the graduate profiled in the piece had a degree from a Top 20 law school, he’s now bitterly mired in debt. “Because I went to law school, I don’t see myself having a family, earning a comfortable wage, or having an enjoyable lifestyle,” he writes. “I wouldn’t wish my law school experience on my enemy.”

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