In light of the “Great Recession”, the 2007-2013 economic downtown impacting the United States and many foreign countries, scholars and critics’ criticism of law schools intensified. Stories of lawyers with $150,000+ debt graduating into a weak job market helped lead to a drop off in law school enrollment. After a 52, 488 enrollment peak in 2010, enrollment at law schools fell to levels not seen since 1973.

Minority communities in particular, are less sensitive to precipitous drops in law school enrollment, or in the projected success of a law school graduate. Many people of color view the law degree as a stepping stone to the “in-group”, as a means to enter a society that has resisted their inclusion. Judge and professor Thurmond Arnold, in his 1937 work “The Folklore of Capitalism” framed professions such as lawyering as societal “heavens”. Lawyering became a desirable path in the social order. Society viewed law school as a place to earn a versatile degree—as a means through which one can become a politician, make money as a CEO, or start a business. The law degree became a symbol of power. Many inherently understood what Felix S. Cohen wrote in “The Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach”, or what Oliver Wendell Holmes explained the his famous speech “The Path of Law” – that masters of the law understand what certain people will do in particular situations, and know how to manipulate ideas and concepts in order to serve a social purpose.

The increase in diversity at law schools does come at a price. Taylor couched his analysis with a rebuke of the “conventional wisdom” that “subpar schools are taking advantage of subpar students”. In a National Law Review article about his a study, Taylor explained that “schools that ensure good career prospects aren’t making diversity a priority”. Taylor is correct in noting that top schools need to make diversity a priority, and that the tie between law school and student quality is not as strong as one would think. There is, however, a strong link between career prospects and school ranking. Since 2013, in response to the recession and the decline in law school enrollment, scholars have designed a number of websites dedicated to showing that lower ranked schools possess significant low bar passage rates than higher ranked schools, and students at lower ranked schools face more difficulty finding legal employment.

Today, simply attending law school does not sufficiently guarantee legal work at all, let alone high-paying legal work. The ABA, has sanctioned and forced the closure of a few schools that have sold the dream of becoming the lawyer without any results. Since the recession, the financial realities of the legal field stripped much of the law degree’s economic prestige. Still, to minority communities, the social benefit of becoming a lawyer is still alive and well. The centuries old prestige that came with a legal degree did not dissipate with a six-year recession or five years of school declining enrollment. Marginalized groups could still access the social benefits of becoming a lawyer even without the potential for economic gain. Law school enrollment may have eroded the past ten years, but schools that learn how to capitalize on a degree’s social benefit can still succeed in today’s market.