Academic

Innumeracy strikes Above the Law

By Tung Yin

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.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on January 26, 2011 (boomark / email).