Odd, odds and ends, in the law

I've recently run across a bunch of odds and ends regarding the profession of the law.  I'm not sure how to categorize these, or even if they're all related. But they are interesting, and in some cases disturbing

For the first one, a grim item.

I ran across this article linked in from the ABA list serve that gives all sorts of interesting legal news on Fridays:

CHICAGO, Feb. 3, 2016 – A new, landmark study conducted by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs reveals substantial and widespread levels of problem drinking and other behavioral health problems in the U.S. legal profession.

Posted online this week in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the study reports that 21 percent of licensed, employed attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with some level of depression and 19 percent demonstrate symptoms of anxiety. The study found that younger attorneys in the first 10 years of practice exhibit the highest incidence of these problems. The print edition of the journal will be available in mid-February.

We've run the stories on alcohol here before with some skepticism.  Now we have this one that also lists depression and anxiety, which makes the alcohol ones make more sense and puts it into context.  They likely go hand in hand.  This also puts the efforts by various state bar associations, including our own, to address this in some fashion in context.

What it doesn't address is the root cause of this, which really should be.  Is it something about the recruitment to the field, lack of information about the career, or just the innate stress of the job?  Whatever it is, given that the field attracts a lot of bright people, this really ought to be looked into.  Something is amiss.

Well, apparently money can't buy happiness, but contrary to what has seemingly been noted elsewhere in recent commentary, lawyers are still generally doing well.  This inspite of the unemployment spike a couple of years ago.

Again, according to something linked in by the ABA.

Lawyers trail only doctors on a list of the 25 highest-paying jobs in America for 2016.
Physicians were No. 1 on the list by Glassdoor.com, Time reports. Lawyers, ranked second, had a median salary about $35,000 below that of physicians.
Glassdoor.com created the list based on salary information shared by people with the Glassdoor website.
The top five, along with median base pay for the positions, are:
1) Physician, $180,000
2) Lawyer, $144,500
3) Research and development manager, $142,120
4) Software development manager, $132,000
5) Pharmacy manager, $130,000

Some surprising things there really.  For one, I wouldn't have guessed that we as a profession were that close to doctors. Actually, I wouldn't have guessed hat physicians fell that far down.  But these are averages and we must emphasize that.  It's a mistake to think that every lawyer and doctor is rich.  But what is interesting here is that in spite of all the recent news about unemployed lawyers, apparently the field is doing well overall.

Speaking of unemployed lawyers, this recently from the ABA email listserve, linking to the Washington Post DealBook:

COURT TO HEAR LAW GRADUATE'S SUIT AGAINST HER SCHOOL Five years after suing the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego over the accuracy of its employment data, Anna Alaburda, one of the school's former students, will get her day in court, Elizabeth Olson writes in DealBook. This is not the first time a disgruntled student has sued a law school over publicly listed alumni employment rates, claiming that law schools were counting part-time waitress and other full-time jobs outside the legal field as employment. Those cases often were dismissed because judges contended that law school students should have known that a job as a lawyer was not guaranteed. Only Ms. Alaburda has been successful in getting her case to a trial, thanks to California's strong consumer protection laws.

Ms. Alaburda graduated in 2008 in the top tier of her class but has yet to find a full-time salaried job as a lawyer. After spending $150,000 to attend law school, she now has student debt of $170,000, with loan interest around 8 percent. She sued Thomas Jefferson in 2011, contending that she would not have enrolled in the school had she known that its employment data was misleading. Thomas Jefferson, like other accused law schools, maintained that it filed only the data that the American Bar Association's accrediting body required.

Brian A. Procel, Ms. Alaburda's lawyer, said that Thomas Jefferson stated that 92.1 percent of its graduates were working at full-time jobs, even as legal hiring dropped in 2011, Ms. Olson reports. But a former school employee is expected to testify that she was pressured into inflating graduate employment data even in 2006, when the legal industry was more prosperous. Thomas Jefferson's lawyers are expected to argue that Ms. Alaburda had rejected a law firm job with a $60,000 salary after graduation, but Ms. Alaburda, who is seeking $125,000 in damages, has said in legal papers that she received "only one job offer - one which was less favorable than non-law-related jobs that were available."

Hmmmm.

Speaking of tilting at windmills, Harvard Law, in a fit of goofiness, has voted to change their shield.

The reason for this is that it is based on the family crest of Isaac Royall, who was a wealthy Antiguan slave trader.

 Isaac Royall.  He's dead.

He's dead.

Long dead.

Now, the money did come from his estate.  And Harvard Law School, in a brave move showing it doesn't support slavery. . . in 2016. . . after slavery was abolished in this country . . .in 1865 . . . is going to no longer use the crest.

The money's been spent. The school is there. The donor is dead. And plenty of African Americans, including the current President, have graduated from the school.  That's a better legacy of what Harvard really believes than messing around with a crest whose relationship with a long dead benefactor is hardly remembered.

That's who founded the school.  He was a slave trader. But that doesn't taint the current institution.

Nor does abolishing the crest erase its history.

 Or where the money came from.

If you are going to take a bold step to erase that legacy, well . . . retroactively take back the degrees the school issued, do what you can to take back the special privilege that the degree affords, and sell the school.

But that would actually mean something.

I'll admit, and its probably already evident, that I have a bit of a problem with the Ivy League schools anyway. They've become too big of deal.  There are thousands of lawyers in this country but in recent years graduating from Harvard or an Ivy League school has become too common in the upper judiciary and in politics.  Its fishing too much from the same pond. President Obama just nominated a Supreme Court pick, as we know, and they are both Harvard Law graduates.  In the last election Romney took on Obama and they were both Harvard Law graduates.  Four of the current justices are Harvard Law graduates, and it was five before the recent death of Antonin Scalia.  Three of the current justices are Yale graduates.  Only Ginsberg, who graduated from Columbia, isn't an Ivy League graduate. That's a bit odd.

And in my view, it's a bit of a problem.  Graduating with Harvard is so associated with a certain type of law, that it makes me wonder how many Harvard Law grads have practiced the type of law that most lawyers do.  If you haven't done small claims, I wonder if you should be on the bench, let alone the Supreme Court., frankly.