With their new study, “The Economic Value of a Law Degree," a pair of university professors become the latest academics to try to defend this country's troubled model of legal education. This particular attempt is especially disheartening because coauthor Michael Simkovic spent the year before he joined Seton Hall University School of Law in 2010 as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. At some level, Simkovic must be aware of the difficulties confronting so many young law graduates.
Nevertheless, he and his coauthor, Rutgers Business School assistant professor of finance and economics Frank McIntyre, “reject the claim that law degrees are priced above their value” (page 41) and “estimate the mean pretax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000" (page 1).
