WASHINGTON - A few months after finishing college, Angela Achen sat in a hospital waiting room and took stock of her assets: A degree in art history, a knack for women's studies and almost no marketable job skills.
She asked her father, who doctors told her was in his final hours, whether he had any last wishes.
He paused, thinking deeply, then smiled and said three words: "Be a lawyer."
"I think he said it because he knew it was something that would make me happy," Achen said.
So Achen enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School, encouraged by the school's statistics on graduates' salaries and hungry for a career in international business. But as graduation neared, she sought job advice from her professors and from practicing lawyers.
Extend your studies another few years, they urged her, or volunteer for a nonprofit. Anything but look for a job.
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"The advice I got from all of them was, don't even bother applying to law firms right now, because you're just wasting your time," said Achen, now 30. "They're not hiring."
A simmering crisis
New data released by the American Bar Association in June revealed that barely half of those who graduated in law school in 2011 found full-time jobs as lawyers within nine months of graduation. A separate June survey from the National Association for Law Placement found the overall employment rate last year was the lowest in 16 years.
Although the crisis has been brewing for about a decade, marked by a sudden jump in demand for law school seats, the warning signs until recently had largely been brushed aside, dismissed as another unfortunate symptom of the so-called "jobless recovery" that has left numerous industries in shambles.
"It is not a blip. It is not temporary. It is a permanent, structural shift," said Frank Wu, the dean of the University of California's Hastings law school in San Francisco, which is cutting its incoming class by 20 percent.
Need for transparency
By far the loudest call has been for increased transparency, so that students can accurately assess whether it's smart to drop such a large sum on a law degree. The need for sunshine, proponents argue, has multiplied over the past decade as the statistics students rely on have deviated further and further from reality.
Here's what happened:
Around the turn of the millennium, the competition for law school seats spiked, just as tuition costs were also on the rise. But demand for lawyers didn't keep up with supply, a gap that only widened when the recession hit in 2007. With fewer people able to shell out hundreds of dollars an hour for legal help, many turned to low-cost options, such as the Internet and legal clinics, and away from the private firms where graduates seek jobs.
The reality was a rude awakening for students who relied on school statistics to weigh the risks and benefits of going to law school.
And salary figures were averaged, meaning they didn't reflect what on a chart would look like a double-humped camel: A lot of people earning next to nothing, some earning six figures and almost nobody in the middle.
Students caught on and law-school applications started decreasing.
With her freshly printed diploma in hand and no job prospects in sight, Achen hopped a flight last summer from Minnesota to Florida, where she moved back into her childhood home in Pensacola. From there she launched a one-woman law firm, where she handles any case that comes across her desk: wills, landlord-tenant disputes and alimony.
She averages about $1,000 per month.
