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: The Buck Stops Here

Law School: Worth It?

By Stuart Buck, Esq.

I've been digesting the new paper "The Economic Value of a Law Degree," by Simkovic and McIntyre. It concludes:"After controlling for observable ability sorting, we find that a law degree is associated with a 60 percent median increase in monthly earnings and 50 percent increase in median hourly wages. The mean annual earnings premium of a law degree is approximately $53,300 in 2012 dollars. The law degree earnings premium is cyclical and recent years are within historic norms."The paper's introduction says: "The purpose of this article is to estimate, as closely as data permits, the causal effect on earnings of a particular type of education, the law degree. Rather than viewing law degree holders in isolation, we can get better estimates of the causal effect of education by comparing the earnings of individuals with law degrees to the earnings of similar individuals with bachelor?s degrees while being mindful of the statistical effects of selection into law school...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Buck Stops Here on September 14, 2013 (boomark / email).