In my country’s higher education undergraduate education, there is a very unique major with a very large enrollment scale, with an annual enrollment of about 100,000 people. However, this major has been on the employment red list for undergraduate graduates for ten consecutive years, but even In this way, there is still no way to stop the college entrance examination candidates in the past years from resolutely and resolutely choosing this major in the process of filling out the application for . Regardless of the liberal arts, science, physics or history candidates, the internal volume is extraordinary. This major is law.
Analysis of the scale of higher education in law
According to data released by the Ministry of Education in 2020, the enrollment scale of the law category (mainly law major students) reached more than 158,000, the number of enrolled students reached 639,000, and the number of graduates also reached 14.7 More than 10,000 people. From this data, we can see that the supply of undergraduate law graduates is very sufficient, which is one of the reasons why graduates have been on the red list for employment over the years. Oversupply is a typical feature of this profession.
Due to the oversupply of law graduates, many graduates are forced to embark on the path of postgraduate entrance examinations in order to gain greater competitiveness in employment. Therefore, the annual enrollment of my country's law master's degree has reached 61,000, which accounts for 41.5% of the law graduates that year. The enrollment rate exceeds 40%, which shows that the degree of involution of this profession is deep and inevitable. Even in the competition at the doctoral level, the number of JD students enrolled in the same year reached 5,500, accounting for 12% of the master's degree graduates that year.
From the scale of higher education in the legal profession, we can see that if graduates want to win in this profession, they cannot gain competitiveness with a simple undergraduate degree and must continue to study. Just as many netizens regard "biochemical environmental materials" as one of the four major pitfalls in college entrance examination applications, in fact, these majors, including medical majors, require continuous further education, from master's or even doctoral levels to gain employment competitiveness. This does not belong to the world of undergraduate graduates. Art graduates only need a bachelor's degree, so graduates in this subject do not need long academic education. Therefore, the proportion of art graduates taking postgraduate entrance examinations is the lowest, as evidenced by less than 10%.
Analysis of the current situation of the domestic lawyer industry
How is the job market for law graduates? Let’s take a look at the 2021 statistical analysis report on lawyers and grassroots legal services released by the Ministry of Justice. As of the end of 2021, there were more than 574,800 practicing lawyers in my country, and there were more than 36,500 law firms across the country, of which 415 were law firms with more than 100 lawyers. There were Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Shandong, Seven provinces and cities including Zhejiang and Sichuan have more than 30,000 lawyers, while 22 provinces and cities have more than 10,000 lawyers.
Among all lawyers, professional lawyers accounted for 458,200, accounting for nearly 80% of the total number of practicing lawyers. Followed by 13,900 part-time lawyers accounting for 2.4%, 72,600 public lawyers accounting for 12.6%, 22,700 corporate lawyers accounting for 4%, etc. In addition, there are military lawyers accounting for less than 0.3%, and other types of lawyers .
Among all practicing lawyers in China, 72.63% have a bachelor’s degree, 19.85% have a master’s degree, only 1.29% have a doctoral degree, and 6.23% have a bachelor’s degree or below. Judging from the current academic level of practicing lawyers, there is still a lot of room for expansion in the scale of subsequent master's and doctoral degrees. Currently, the proportion of doctoral students in law has reached 12%, but in reality, the proportion of practicing lawyers with doctoral degrees is only 1.29%. There is a gap At ten times, the gap between the scale of master's degree training and the proportion of master's students who actually practice law is still two times. This will inevitably cause the legal industry to pay attention to doctoral and master's level talents when introducing talents, which will inevitably lead to a decline in the proportion of talents with bachelor's degrees.
All graduates hope to enter a strong law firm. Currently, there are only 415 law firms nationwide with more than 100 lawyers, accounting for only 1.14%; there are only 700 law firms with between 50 and 100 lawyers, accounting for about 1.91%; there are between 20 and 50 lawyers. There are 3,704 law firms, accounting for 10.13%; while the number of law firms with less than 10 people is as high as 24,200, accounting for 66.3%.Therefore, if law graduates want to enter a better law firm, the total proportion of law firms with more than 20 people is only 13.18%. The proportion is small and the difficulty is high, which can only intensify the involution.
Analysis of the enrollment scale and college entrance examination admission scores of some universities
The annual enrollment scale of law majors in some well-known law universities, such as China University of Political Science and Law will enroll 1114 people in 2022, Southwest University of Political Science and Law 2160 people, East China University of Political Science and Law 1192 people, etc., can be seen The enrollment scales of several well-known law schools are not very large. Competition is still very fierce for college entrance examination students who want to enter these institutions.
For example, in the 2022 Chongqing College Entrance Examination, the minimum entry scores for law, law, or various law-related majors in well-known universities are higher. For example, for history majors admitted to Chinese law majors, Renmin University of China 650 points, Wuhan University 635 points, China University of Political Science and Law 623 points, Jilin University 615 points, East China University of Political Science and Law 607-613 points, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law 606 points, Southwest The scores of University of Political Science and Law are 581-594, and Northwest University of Political Science and Law are 2556-560, etc. The scores are not low.
