Innumeracy strikes Above the Law

Elie Mystal lauds Canada for having a better legal education system than we do here in the United States:

Canada’s key to success seems to be actually regulating its law schools and assuring a basic level of high quality across the board. There are only 20 law schools in Canada, which means that (gasp) not everybody who wants to go can go. Yet despite demand, Canadian law schools also cost less than their American counterparts.

I can't speak to the cost factor, especially since one never knows what law students are actually paying; certainly, not everyone is paying "rack rates."

But as to how Canada has only 20 law schools and is therefore not providing an oversupply of lawyers, Mystal -- and a Canadian career services director -- seem to be overlooking a very important fact: the United States has about 9 times the population of our northern neighbor!  Therefore, we would expect to have approximately 9 times as many law schools.

We have 199 ABA-accredited JD programs, so about 10 times as many law schools.  I guess you could argue from that that we're slightly over-supplied in law schools, but it looks a lot different than saying, gosh, Canada only has 20 schools and we have 200, wow, we should have so few too.

Comments

[James]

Number of law schools isn't the only consideration - the US had 43,000 new lawyers enter the market in 2009 (almost 14 per 100,000.) That number has been rising for many years. In the meantime, Canada has had 2,000 graduates (almost 6 per 100,000). There are also 245 lawyers per 100,000 people in the US and only 218 per 100,000 in Canada. The US legal market is simply saturated and getting worse.

Moreover, a point made in Mystal's article is that the limited number of law schools in Canada not only prevents oversaturation, but also ensures that all of the law schools are the best. There is no Third Tier Turd status in Canada. In the US, basically anyone with a BA can go to law school if they're willing to go low enough, take on a huge debt load, and have no reasonable prospect of getting a job with a salary that could pay that debt off. The ABA seems to be actively encouraging this ridiculous way of doing things.

[DavidLat]

Elie and I thought about this point. The relevant comparison is lawyers per capita:

"[In Canada,] there’s about one lawyer or notary for every 421 people. In the U.S., it’s one lawyer for every 265 people."

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/02/02/where%E2%80%99s-a-lawyer-when-you-need-one/

[Tung Yin]

Those are indeed more relevant numbers, and make a better case for the assertion of Canada vs. U.S., although one wonders whether the U.S. is (a) more litigious; and/or (b) more regulated, either of which might lead to some disparity in lawyers per capita.

But those statistics are a far cry from the 200 to 20 comparison.