50,000 people are taking the LSAT tomorrow
There are a lot of bad reasons to go to law school. Here are some of the most common:
(8) Everybody in my family is a lawyer
Is everybody in your family also a workaholic with a drinking problem who hates their spouse and never sees their kids? Seriously, as bad reasons go this is a relatively benign one (maybe somebody you know can actually help get you a job), but do you really want to have the same life as your whomever? And law professors may not know very much about the actual practice of law, but I’ve been struck over the years by how few of them seem to have any interest in encouraging their children to become lawyers.
(7) I want to help poor people/save mountaintops from being blown up in West Virginia/stop human right violations in Africa/make a difference in this world.
Cynical law students tend to dismiss their classmates’ interest in doing anything but trying to make money by pointing out how these noble ideals soon crumble in the face of the realities of On Campus Interviewing. But that’s the point: It turns out there’s very little money in law for doing anything other than representing the interests of the rich and powerful. That doesn’t mean people who claimed to want to do something else were disingenuous: more likely they were merely naïve. If you want to go to law school to help poor people, please keep in mind that in America in 2011 nobody who matters gives a rat’s ass about the interests of poor people, so unless you’re independently wealthy or extremely lucky you will not be able to help poor people by going to law school.
(6) I want to be rich
Going to law school in order to become rich is a bad idea. Very few lawyers end up making big money, even loosely defined. If you’re very fortunate you’ll make just enough money to feel poor by comparison to the vastly wealthier people you’ll be dealing with regularly in your professional life. Plus you’ll be making about $12 an hour. Go be an I-banker if working insane hours in the pursuit of filthy lucre is your thing. Oh right — it’s really hard to get a good I-banking gig. (Unlike becoming a partner at an AM100 firm – that’s a piece of cake these days).
(5) Lawyers do all kinds of interesting work
I once saw a T-shirt emblazoned with the message, “Everything you’ve learned from TV is wrong.” Words of wisdom Lloyd, words of wisdom. Most legal work is boring and stressful. Not surprisingly most lawyers are bored, stressed people. (That is, the ones who actually have jobs. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
(4) The previous paragraph is irrelevant to me, because I’m going to graduate in the top ten percent of my class at a T-14, work at a big firm for five years while living like a monk to pay off my debts, and then do what I really wanted to do all along
You get the hell out of here.
(3) My parents will be disappointed in me if I don’t do something respectable instead of pursue my dream of being a ____
Semi-employed permanent bankruptcy is in no way respectable, and there’s a very real risk that that’s where going to law school will leave you. Your parents don’t understand this because their knowledge of what being a lawyer entails is based on TV (see (5), supra). If you want to write the Great American Novel you’ll probably fail, but it won’t be the kind of failure that produces $200,000 in non-dischargeable debt while filling you with self-loathing.
(2) What am I supposed to do with this useless undergraduate degree in English/PoliSci/Sociology/Assyrian Musicology?
It’s a fair question. Here’s the best answer I’ve got: Don’t double down on useless degrees. People who already have educational debt from undergrad and then pay $60K a year in tuition and living expenses to go to law school are like people in a terrible relationship who decide to have a baby because maybe the kid will bring them closer together.
(1) I don’t know what to do with my life
Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t know what to do with my life – so I’m going to spend three years of it going deeply and irreversibly into debt, in a quite possibly futile attempt to enter a profession that I have no actual desire to join?” I bet you haven’t, because who would ever say something that idiotic? Every year, however, thousands of people are perfectly capable of doing something that idiotic. If they weren’t, half the law schools in the country would be out of business tomorrow.
This may sound stupid, but maybe we ought to look at another way of becoming a lawyer rather than attending a Law School, and getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt?
When did Law Schools become the norm?
I’ve read plenty of biographies of famous Americans, and people from other countries, who became lawyers throught apprenticeships – Lincoln being a classic example.
After these people were done apprenticing, I assume that they had to pass some sort of a Bar Exam, or whatever was teh equivalent back in the day.
Maybe apprenticing might become another option? You would pay an attorney, or firm, to apprentice, and when done you’d take the Bar Exam, and work off your apprenticeship, or pay it off, whatever you agree upon.
Like I said, probably a stupid idea.
But I know a lot of lawyerly types read this blog (DUH!), and I’d like to hear what you think might be the solution to the current problem(s)?
And no Paul, none of this is directed at you, or your livelihood at a Law School Professor. :-)
From this story. 2003, so the ABA may have bullied some of these states into closing this door in the meantime.
I met someone in Washington who was a lawyer without law school. She was a paralegal for a long time for a 2 lawyer firm, and they both thought highly enough of her skills that they didn’t want what she could do for them limited by her lack of credentials.
In New York you need a year of law school, proof that you were eligible to continue after that year, another three years of clerking, plus actual instruction from one or more of the lawyers where you clerk in the subjects “which are customarily taught in approved law schools”. Then you can sit for the bar. I have never met anyone who has done this, although I’m sure someone must have.
The “higher standards than a state bar exam can do alone” argument loses what little credibility it might have had when you consider that what freshly minted J.D.s typically do with their is to spend yet more money for study materials as they frantically prepare for the bar exam. It is generally assumed that the instruction provided by the law school is insufficient. In fairness this might reflect marketing from the publishers of the study materials more than reality, but the notion is pretty generally accepted.
This perception is true, unless you were clever enough to select a law school that includes a significant component. (Note: this may conflict with your desire to attend a highly-ranked law school.)
Oops, “significant clinical component.
Law school became the norm when law schools persuaded the states to only license people who graduated from law school
Bullseye.
Every year at LSAT time I read a post like this, or someone’s facebook status, and it reminds me of that morning when my alarm went off and I thought to myself, “fuck it,” shut off the alarm, and went back to sleep.
I’ve never regretted that decision.
The first law school was the famous academy in Roman Berytus (Beirut), which started in the mid 3rd century A.D. So for a long time.
But this is exceedingly misleading: In both 18th C Britain and colonial America, Law Schools were virtually non-existent. For the first century or so of the US, apprenticeship was the primary route to becoming a lawyer, and law schools were quite rare.
Law school seems to have replaced apprenticship as the primary method to produce lawyers over the course of generations. The idea of producing lawyers through a formal education started to be more common in the mid to late 19th century but the appretice rought was also common, particularly for people from a poorer background. Gradually law school overtook the apprentice rought by the 1920s, when formalized education for everything became more common. By the end of WWII, clerking seems to have disappeared in entierty.
That’s what you get when you abandon Roman Law…
Lincoln never attended law school and he did fine.
true,
but that ended rather poorly.
you left out one of the most common reasons for attending law school:
(9) i’m really obnoxious and loudly opinionated, and many people have told me i should be a lawyer.
(10) I do not drink enough.
(11) I am too happy.
As a scientist, I’ve had good results with treating it like a trade, and getting as much hands-on experience as possible. When I was in high school and had no idea what I was doing, I could mix a solution.
Interesting.
Thanks for the info, everybody!
I am from a jurisdiction that required a 3 year post graduate law degree (like the US) AND a two year apprenticeship so I have experienced both. Apprenticeships simply create a mechanism for exploitation. Partners are far to busy to do anything like mentor an apprentice, instead they keep you busy doing the work of a messenger and typist because they can pay you less than a messenger.
I’ve heard the idea of apprenticeships suggested elsewhere in the US, and its by employers, concerned that their costs are too high, and looking for cheap labour. It is not as if there are not too many people with law degrees and lawyers already.
Instead raise the standard of Bar exams, make them relevant to practise. Right now there are lots of failures because it is a poor system of testing; the man who invented multiple choice said it was for “lower order functions”. Instead create a Bar exam which tests not just knowledge but understanding and skills, and Law Schools will (finally) have an incentive to teach those.
I’d guess the majority of students in my law school class were there because they didn’t know what else to do with their lives. About a third had graduate degrees in useless subjects (typically everything but dissertation). A large number worked at a big law firm for a few years before doing what they wanted all along, although teaching and law clerkships were very popular options.
I wouldn’t suggest this course if you’re going to a law school other than Yale, Harvard or Stanford.
I think hits the nail on the head. There are lots of very smart people who don’t have much of a driving passion for any particular field or subject. This means that they really can’t devote themselves to fields that really require a bit of genuine interest in the field like architecture, engineering, science in general, academics, and the arts. You also probably need a bit of actually interest in medicine to become get through medical school.
So what could a person with a lot of smarts but not much of an actual passion do for living? They could enter business but even this requires a bit of entreprenuerial drive that many people lack. They could become civil servants or teachers bellow the college level but these jobs tend not to be money makers. Law is a bit of a defult profession for smart but not necessarily passionate people.
You probably need to get a degree that gives you something solid to use, like being a technician, pharmacist, or accountant. You won’t get rich doing it (it’s hard to do that without a passion for something, even if it’s money), but you’ll make decent middle-class income.
I’m thinking about heading down that track, once I figure out something to do with my mostly-used-for-signaling Political Science B.A.. I don’t mind being a dilletante while working to pay the bills.
I think that the problem with the technician/pharmacy/accountant wrote is that those programs are often started when a person graduates high school. So if you want to go to college, you really can’t become a technician or pharmacist. This rought is often probably not take because of class issues.
That’s not how pharmacists (or accountants) are trained in the U.S. at least. You need a college degree (although I think it can be an associates degree and not just a bachelors) before starting a 4-year pharmacy program. There is nothing stopping someone from going to a tradition 4-year college program and then taking the entrance exam for pharmacy school (I don’t know anything about the class pre-reqs for a PharmD degree; it’s possible that not colleges offer the classes needed for undergrads to qualify to start a PharmD prgram.)
Okay then, never mind my previous post.
Ha, nice. I wonder if there are any reasons left.
Non-lawyer here. Aren’t there lawyers who help poor people — public defenders, or people who work for certain non-profits? I feel like more accurate advice would be “there are some positions like that, but you probably will not make enough money to cover your debt, and most of the work will be very frustrating, since no one gives a rat’s ass about poor people.”
If you want to spend $200k on a law degree to make $40k helping the poor, go ahead. Or you could just, you know, take your religious studies degree and VOLUNTEER AT THE HOMELESS SHELTER. Or campaign for Obama to make sure the Republicans don’t put Debtor’s Prisons back on the map. Or literally ANYTHING else.
The point Paul is making is that it’s ridiculous to go to law law school to “help the poor.” There’s lots of ways to do that. There’s only one way to blow $200k to “help the poor” and get ABSOLUTELY NO RETURN for it. For comparison, if you go to Med School, you can make LESS money then your fellow doctors, but still make something thanks to medical, etc.
It’s an interesting question whether going to law school or working for the Obama campaign is a less effective means of helping the poor.
So very funny.
It was true and funny
There are many people who get law degrees and work with organizations that help the poor, consumers, even animals. They may not be rich, but last I looked they could afford to eat, own a home, and typically a car.
However, I agree with you that the author had a point: you don’t go to law school _just_ because you want to help the poor, consumers, animals, etc.
If you want to help the poor, then you’d probably want to do it later in your career after you’ve done enough whoring to pay off your debts. Assuming you’re able to whore expensively enough.
Barry Scheck started the Innocence Project 18 years after he got his J.D., not right after he graduated.
You don’t need to be a legal advocate for the poor to push for systemic economic change, but to suggest that it is the equivalent or less than volunteering at a soup kitchen is naive. It is also diminutive of the efforts of people who hone their skills day in and day out to further economic justice for ordinary families.
Two points:
1. It may seem there is an overabundance of people entering law school who want to “help the poor”. That is an illusion. The number of people for whom this is truly a motivating factor is very small. Instead, I have found that law school and early legal practice are just like every other walk of life: it is a very easy for a person to profess a love of justice and a hatred for economic oppression, but very rare for anyone to care enough to commit to act in accordance with their values.
When the time comes to decide on practical career paths, most choose to become mercenaries for greed. This is not because they do not have the opportunity in the context of the legal system to help anyone. It is because these never believed in helping the poor. This is just one of the many trappings of status afforded to lawyers: they get to profess the desire to help without ever actually having to put their shoulder to the wheel. Instead, they get to feel satisfied as participants in a legal system that tends overall towards justice, even as they only ever champion the already powerful.
But again: lawyers are not the only members of society prone to convenient delusion.
Yes, bloated debt burdens are a serious problem, but with modest living and planning, and with the advent of income-based-repayment, debt service is not the insurmountable monster most rationalizers make it out to be.
Not all merely pay lip service to the causes they esteem from afar. Some do go into law school with economically progressive values, but when presented with the opportunity to earn a better, more secure living elsewhere, they choose the enhanced economic security for themselves, thereby demonstrating how weakly held their values were. This doesn’t mean there is no way for lawyers to enact progress — there are many, many ways to creatively advocate for progressive change as a lawyer. Most just are not willing to put in the work, take any sort of risk, or make any sort of financial sacrifice to pursue these avenues.
2. I cannot disagree more with the notion that becoming a lawyer is a poor tactical choice for a person motivated to address economic injustice. To compare volunteering at a soup kitchen to representing the marginalized within our legal system is naive.
The legal system is one place where the leverage brought against the weak and marginalized reaches a focal point. The reality of our legal system is that those without advocates are bulldozed and their lives ruined systematically when their plight is not adequately championed. When the state tries to imprison a person, punish him disproportionately, when the financial services industry originates and forecloses a predatory mortgage, threatening to destroy a person’s economic security and financial future, the legal system can either enhance injustice or prevent it. An effective advocate makes the difference in these situations.
It is not at all ridiculous for a person drawn to championing the weak to become a lawyer to put himself in a position to reverse oppression rather than amplify it. Lawyering is one of the only ways to intervene at these focal points (the other, in my opinion, is direct action).
Volunteering at a soup kitchen is a noble act, but does nothing to alter systematic oppression and gives the volunteer no real insight into complex economic oppression. It is worth noting that Elizabeth Warren, who understands economic oppression better than most, and is one of the most powerful advocates for the meek, spent years enmeshed in understanding the bankruptcy code and how individual families interact with it — what economic and political forces brought them into collision with the legal system, how the law, in its structure and application, deepened economic misery, and what to do about this state of affairs.
Public interest law jobs can actually be quite difficult to get. Law schools are full of talented young people who went to law school for Paul’s reason #7, and I’d guess there isn’t a public defender’s office in this country that doesn’t field 50 applications for every opening.
Exactly. Right now public interest jobs in law, including not just being a PD but being a DA etc., are actually harder for most people to get than associate slots with top firms. Nothing annoys me more than law professors who think the employment “problem” is that Kids These Days all insist on getting $160K firm jobs. Not to mention that quadrupling law school tuition has made it literally impossible for lots of people to even afford taking a public interest job, assuming there were any which there aren’t.
No. 4 is my favorite!
I know exactly 3 people (sample size: THOUSANDS!) who left the law to do other things besides raising kids. One is a teacher, one is a movie producer, and one is a democratic party bigwig.
The common thing for all three? Insanely wealthy! All three have Paris Hiltony money.
So yes, little law student, go ahead. Dream on. The sad truth, however, is that the best law jobs pay enough to be too awesome to leave, but not awesome enough to fund a quick getaway. Buy a lottery ticket instead. Or go to Vegas. 200k will buy a LOT of spins on the wheel, and you can always file a 7 if you don’t land on black.
There were actually a bunch of ex-lawyers in my graduate history program. None were insanely wealthy. All were, however, rather ascetic personality types who’d worked off their law-school debts by working terrible corporate law jobs while living more or less like grad students. So even the transition to being an actual impoverished grad student wasn’t such a huge change for them.
Ditto in my polisci grad program a decade ago. Dissafected lawyers getting PhDs in semi-related subjects in order to become academics in that subject seems to be a not-uncommon path though I’m pretty sure nearly all of them would agree that, in retrospect, they would have rather skipped the law degree and started off in the PhD program.
Well, you just depressed the hell out of this lawyer on a Friday morning. Because I can’t dispute a single thing you say. Thanks a lot, Paul!
seconded
largely thirded, see below
I will say, just to back it up one notch: My having gone to law school did, in fact, enable me to spend two years clerking for a federal judge, which was easily the most amazing experience of my life. Well, of my work life anyway, but pretty near the top under any categorization of life experiences. So, I guess there’s that.
8: This is a dumb reason to do almost anything.
7: This is indeed cynical, but I guess I agree. I just get tired of people trying to beat the idealism out of everyone before they even have a chance to try to do something good.
6: Again, stupid reason to do almost anything in modern America unless you’re already rich.
5: All jobs are boring and most of them are stressful.
4: Indeed.
3: Again, a stupid reason to do anything, and is really just a variation on #8.
2: If you don’t have undergrad debt, and can keep your law school debt low through some other means (working, going to school part-time), this seems like a pretty legitimate argument to me.
1: Again, as I’ve commented so many times here, this is a dumb reason to do just about anything. It’s the reason most people go to school at all.
I get a bit tired of the negativity of people who are in or went to law school. They haven’t cornered the market on expensive schooling/shitty job prospects. Almost every criticism about going to law school or being a lawyer applies to just about any advanced degree and the corresponding profession.
Your problem is not with law school in particular, that’s just a myopic take on the shitty state of the American higher education system paired with populist frustration at the wealthy American oligarchy. I think your energies would be better directed at these root causes.
As Paul has pointed out, although law school reflects these larger problems, a number of things do distinguish it:
1) The very loose connection of a law school education to the jobs that almost all (i.e. non-academic) lawyers do.
2) The unusual awfulness of most lawyers’ jobs.
3) The actual future earning potential of law school grads compared to what most people imagine lawyers’ salaries to be.
I do wonder, however, what a similar critique of business school would look like.
I’ll grant you #3. There is a huge misconception there.
But #1 is up to the student in many ways. Law schools that I’m aware of usually offer a number of practical courses that are better than the “appellate opinion” nonsense of all the intro courses. Plus there are clinics and sometimes other opportunities to get more practical skills.
And #2 seems just like more myopia. Everyone thinks their job is awful. Lawyers just complain about it more because of the sexy image they had of the profession before entering school.
A large part of the problem, KBNC, is that law schools work to create that sexy image. Law schools tell you that everyone is employed. Law schools tell you that the average salary is $100K or whatever. Law schools tell you that it’s a good education even if you want to do something else.
The classic line is that “you can do anything with a law degree.” But that’s not because a law degree helps you to do those things. It’s because a law degree is irrelevant to doing anything but being a lawyer. If you want to be business executive or to start your own TV production company (true stories from people I went to law school with) you can do those things after you graduate from law school, but you could also do them without going to law school.
I don’t think everyone thinks their job is awful. There are a ton of people who really enjoy their jobs, and if you think you will enjoy being a lawyer, then by all means go to law school. The problem is that law school is sold as more than a place to train new lawyers. And it is sold that way so that large universities can extract funds from students who end up bearing a huge debt load.
The problem that Paul is trying to address is the legal education system and the legal system more broadly, and that really is broken. I don’t think you’re addressing the issue by claiming that law school critics are being myopic because even non-lawyers have shitty, boring, stressful jobs. That can be true at the same time that the legal education system does not live up to its promises.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of typing that.
I think I agree with most of what you’re saying, but I think the general attitude of hopeless negativity about how going to law school is almost always a terrible decision is just not very helpful. It doesn’t seem accurately aimed at presenting a realistic picture to those who are considering law school. It feels more aimed at drawing commiseration from other people who regret their decisions.
And while law school/practice certainly has unique negative qualities, so does every profession. I’m not claiming all professions have the same issues, just that all professions have issues.
I guess I just feel like the fate of the law student isn’t as hellish as it is often made out to be. We should be trying to present a rational picture of the profession, not trying to scare people away.
It doesn’t seem accurately aimed at presenting a realistic picture to those who are considering law school.
I suggest you peruse Paul’s other blog a bit. It is the advocates of attending law school (that is, the law schools themselves) that are being extraordinarily deceptive in presenting the likely outcomes associated with attending law school. Paul (and others) are attempting to be honest in their placement/outcomes data.
1) Law school does seem to be based on a uniquely bizarre model, but the connection between education and practice is often tenuous in lots of things. My graduate education included basically no training in pedagogy, even though teaching is the main thing you do as a history professor at the vast majority of schools, and a major part of what you do even at R1′s. Even if you mostly engage in research, that’s also something that (depending on how engaged your advisor is) you mostly have to figure out on your own during the dissertation process.
2) I am a bit unconvinced. If it’s in terms of the work being boring, well, there’s lots of work that’s boring. If it’s in terms of hours, yes, those are awful (unless you have a government job like my dad, who never works more than 40 hours a week), but my sister’s hours as an architect are awful too (and she gets paid less than the kind of lawyer that has to regularly work 60 hour weeks), so, I would imagine, are the hours for I-bankers and lots of similar jobs. I’m unconvinced by the uniqueness of this.
3) This seems like the most reasonable point, although, well, there are tons of kinds of graduate and professional training that lead at the end to jobs that aren’t as good as you were hoping to get. This is especially true under current economic circumstances, which Paul never acknowledges. Pretty much everyone I know who went to law school (and I know a lot of people who went to law school) has a good job, which is a lot better than is the case for people I know who went on in other fields.
I guess I agree with KNBC’s critique – Paul’s line here seems to be myopic, to act as though law school is uniquely awful when the bad things about it are actually quite typical of all kinds of problems in our society that have nothing to do with law school.
As someone who did b-school before law school, I think some of the warnings in this post apply to b-school. Reasons 1, 2, 3 and 6 all apply to b-school. And like law school, taking on major debt to pay for b-school is a bad idea unless you’re at one of the tippity-top ones.
On the whole, I think b-school is less problematic though. First, many employers will cover part or all of the cost of b-school for employees. It is much less common for employers to pay for an employee’s law school. Second, b-school is much easier for a full-time employed professional to do part-time because grades aren’t nearly as important to future job prospects, so the opportunity cost is more likely to be low to nonexistent. Third, b-school is only two years (and sometimes only one year), so less debt and less opportunity cost even for the worst-case scenario of people who go full-time to a non-top school and pay entirely with loans.
Almost every criticism about going to law school or being a lawyer applies to just about any advanced degree and the corresponding profession.
Speaking in these sorts of generalities papers over a lot of important differences. The differences are real, and they matter. Most PhDs have poor job prospects and will never get rich but (usually) little to no debt. MDs have loads of debt but pretty good job prospects. JDs are the worst of both.
Just an aside:
Depends on the field, but I’d wager that’s changing. Most of the folks I know in my graduate program are carrying at least some debt, and for some (like me), it’s quite substantial.
I would never advise anyone to go into debt in order to go to graduate school.
Is that possible for many people these days? It wasn’t for me when I was considering Grad School. Loans and Financial Aid were the only way I was going to pay for it if I chose to go.
I guess it may depend on the field, but a solid majority of programs offering PhDs in political science (and nearly all the good ones) offer nearly full tuition wavers and stipends (for some combination of TA and RA work and fellowships) for 5 years or more to the vast majority of students they enroll. The stipends are meager, and if you’ve got dependents you’ll surely need more (and I did in fact add a bit of student loan debt via a few K in loans a couple of times, but that was a lifestyle choice, not absolutely necessary). I do everything within my power to forbid my students to even consider enrolling in a program that isn’t offering them something like this.
Families with dependents do often accumulate a few thousand a year in students loans unless their spouse has a good-paying job. I know a number of single, childless grad students who take out some students loans, too, though this seems to me to be a lifestyle choice as you say. At least where I teach, the stipend is generous enough that you can live on it even without eating ramen for dinner.
I don’t know of any funded grad student in polisci who leaves the program with more than 10k in debt and most leave with no debt.
Further, while the job market in polisci isn’t as good as it was 5 years ago, it seems much better than that in most other social sciences/humanities as well as law school. (Certain subfields, like political theory, excepting.) If one can stand the 5-7 years as a polisci grad student and, more importantly, stand being a political scientist for the rest of one’s life, it’s not a bad choice.
Going into debt to go to grad school for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) might make sense, if you’re in a field where you need a grad degree in order to do anything useful / well paying.
History? Linguistics? Politics of Consciousness? Don’t be an idiot. You’re losing enough just by spending 6+ years of your life in grad school, rather than having a real job, making money, and getting on with your life. Don’t do it if you’re going to have to pick up any debt, at all.
I’m an historian with a lot of debt, so that makes me an idiot. Happens sometimes to the best of us.
“I came to Casablanca for the waters.”
“The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.”
“I was misinformed.”
Yeah, pretty much. Can’t say I have too many regrets, though.
It’s a bad idea for STEM fields as well, unless it’s just a Master’s. It’s common in the biosciences, for example, to actually have WORSE job prospects immediately after obtaining your Ph.D because Ph.Ds are employed in supervisory positions, which require more experience and there are fewer of, while M.S. scientists are employed as technical bench specialists. With the lost opportunity cost in time it takes to get a Ph.D vs an M.S., the only thing that makes it a somewhat reasonable endeavor is not having to pay for it.
Everything but 8 and 4 are pretty much generic wonderings/complaints about the future not really anything specific to law school. Everybody wants a job that provides great rewards (both financial and non-financial) with stimulating work in a great environment that makes the world a better place to live. And you only work 6 hours a day 4 days a week.
or what KBNC said
As Drew Carey once put it:
“Oh, you hate your job? Yeah, there’s a club for people like that. It’s called ‘everybody.’ We meet at the bar.”
The thing is you don’t have to go to much extra effort to get a job you hate. You do have to go to extra effort to go to law school.
Number 7 is way overstated. Poor people aren’t doing as well politically today as they have at various points in the past, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t need lawyers. On many routine non-political issues, e.g., social security, employment discrimination, divorces, wills, poor people have an ongoing and vital need for lawyers. And surely the political issues are still worth the fight, even if the fight is sometimes unsuccessful.
A career in public service doesn’t have to mean a crippling debt load. Programs DO exist for forgiving student obligations of public service lawyers. From literally two minutes on Google, see, e.g.:
http://apps.americanbar.org/legalservices/probono/lawschools/pi_lrap.html
http://www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml” rel=”nofollow”>
http://www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml
So, if a prospective law student wants to be a public interest lawyer, I say go for it. But understand the actual real cost of going to law school, and have a serious plan for paying your student loans or having them forgiven.
And necessarily, a serious plan must accept the reality that any given law student is 50% likely to finish in the bottom 50% of the class. Don’t assume that you will finish in the top X% of your class in law school because you finished in the top X% of your class in undergrad. The level of competition in law school is much, much fiercer, especially in the first year.
Not sure why those links didn’t fully work, here they are again in plain text:
http://apps.americanbar.org/legalservices/probono/lawschools/pi_lrap.html
http://www.finaid.org/loans/publicservice.phtml
Any they came out as links anyway, so I guess the lesson is, don’t bother with the link button.
But understand the actual real cost of going to law school, and have a serious plan for paying your student loans or having them forgiven.
And necessarily, a serious plan must accept the reality that any given law student is 50% likely to finish in the bottom 50% of the class.
Do you see the problem here? A “serious plan” almost always involves, as a fairly central feature, “getting a job.” But substantial number of graduates simply won’t be able to because there aren’t enough of them, and you can’t know in advance whether you’ll be in that group or not. I’m assuming the forgiveness programs require actually working in public interest, not just trying to.
The plan at the second link (for federal direct loans) is available after ten years of full-time PI employment and 120 loan payments.
Forgiveness is available after 10 years of public service defined broadly to include non-profits as well as most local, state, or federal government work.
Income-based-repayment is now available to all people with Direct student loans. Paying for 25 years of income-based-repayment on Direct loans results in forgiveness, regardless of where you worked or how much you earned.
They should all be required to watch this before LSAC can cash their checks.
Well, is there anyone who should go to law school?
And let me say here, I didn’t and will not go to law school.
I tell people that if they have worked for a lawyer and affirmatively decided that that is the kind of work they want to do, then they should go to law school.
You have to know what you’re getting into. But with TV and movies and books and just general cultural perspectives, very few 22 year olds know what the hell it is all about.
And realistically, we need lawyers in this country. Lawyers do a lot of good and they are necessary, but it is a broken model that makes it difficult for attorneys to help people. If law school were free, more attorneys would end up helping the poor and underserved, either at their own firms or at legal services organizations. But legal practice is a business, and a lawyer in most cases can’t help you if there is no money in it.
Random concluding thought:
From my perspective doctors and lawyers shouldn’t even be discussed in the same sentence. The professions are so different as to be incomparable. People think that doctors and lawyers make about the same amount of money, but it’s not even close.
And I say this as a lawyer and a person who lacks that much respect for doctor’s and their ridiculous compensation demands, but society needs MD’s way more than it needs JD’s
The restriction in supply of doctor’s comes from their guild practices, not supply of potential students.
There are also issues surrounding control of the number of schools that create differences between the, ahem, doctor’s and lawyer’s.
Here’s my best-case scenario:
(1) I worked for a DV/SA program before going to law school. Before that, I worked with drug court enrolees. I made in the high-20K range, with few prospects for making more using my existing skills.
(2) I did not want to be a social worker. I was, however, interested in being a prosecutor.
(3) There is a cheap, locally well-regarded third tier law school in the state with the fourth least-worst job market for lawyers. It offered me money to go there. I went, and graduated with $50K in loans.
(4) I graduated just outside the top 10 in my class.
(5) I have connections in the field and a resume with superficially impressive things written on it.
(6) I graduated, and have doubled my income clerking for a state appellate court, after which I have a soft promise from a prosecutor’s office in a city I like. “Doubled my income,” however, means “middle-middle class,” not “100K.”
This is pretty much the best-case scenario. But even I’m not certain that it was worth it.
My response to “I don’t know what to do with my life” is something along the lines you give:
Become a paralegal. Work in a law firm for a few years. Make connections. If law school still looks like a good idea, go for it. But only with the qualifier that you will come out of it with minimal debt. If this means going to a lower tier school, then so be it. The rankings are largely (or perhaps entirely) BS and don’t mean anything once you have actual experience practicing law.
Myself, I stopped early on in this process. The life of a lawyer does not appeal to me, but I am happy working as a paralegal for the right boss.
The only flaw with this is that right now paralegal jobs are hard to get. This is not an argument against the strategy. It is a warning that this decision process might reach its conclusion very early.
Yeah. I guess my advice would be, “Go big or go cheap, and if you want to work in the public sector, go cheap. But not yet.”
I’ve tried to sell this to a few undergraduates recently, but to my knowledge no success yet.
I would argue that this is not completely true — if you can get into a school at the top of the rankings, that will make a huge impact on your employment outlook. At my top-tier school, I don’t personally know of anyone who tried and failed to land themselves a job in a large law firm (which, even if it’s miserable, will pay off your loans in a couple of years). Even in this awful market, the firms are still falling all over themselves to hire from the top several law schools.
OK, so for us non-lawyers out here, give us reasons why in the hell anyone should go to law school?
I was just going to ask this.
acting career craters?
HEY NOW!
I never went to law school.
Go to law school if:
1. You are going to one of the top 15-20 schools, or are getting a irrevocable scholarship to go to another school;
2. You are willing to work 10-12 hours a day, for the rest of your life, doing minutia that won’t matter to anyone except your client and will bore anyone who hears about your day to tears (if they can figure out what the hell you’re talking about) and will probably be making the world a worse place;
3. You are willing to do bankruptcy law, or tax law, or probate law, or some other “boring” practice area. FOREVER. (I’ve done all these and like them, but 90% of the law school grads I talk to want to do “international law,” whatever that is. Or “deals,” but they don’t want to spend their lives making sure the watermarks line up on 1500 page contracts and changing “will” to “shall” in 70 of 135 apparently random usages. That, my friend, is lawyering.)
4. You realize that you ARE going to be giving up vacations, christmas, birthdays and stuff for a while, until you’re not junior anymore;
5. You know that you will not be a DA or a PD, unless you’re willing to be an unpaid intern for 1-3 years. Possible exception: your last name is Kennedy or Bush, your dad or uncle is the governor or mayor or sheriff, or something similar. If you fit with No. 1, you can try the JAG.
6. You won’t be judged so much on the quality of your arguments, reasoning, etc., as your ability to not have a single typo in a 30 page document. (I know somebody who got fired for having a double period on the last page of a draft of supreme court brief. Seems like a lot of pressure.)
7. You know that all the cool stuff you learn and argue about in law school (or poli sci) will not be the stuff you argue about as a lawyer. You’ll be arguing about whether, if the 10th day fell on a sunday, something needed to be filed on a Friday or a Monday. The answer will be clear, but you’ll have filed a 20 page brief on it because $20M rides on the outcome.
8. You’re cool making ridiculous arguments that don’t pass the idiot test because someone’s paying you $5k to do it.
9. No. 8 is likely to be your career. That’s OK, though, because it puts your kid through Harvard, assuming they don’t go to law school.
10. You’re cool with a solid upper middle class, but not wealthy, lifestyle. If you graduated summa cum laude, your friends in business will generally be wealthier than you, and work less, and see their kids more. Your job has less risk (you hope).
To be fair, intellectual property litigation has been a steadily growing area for a while now, especially patent litigation. So if you don’t mind helping businesses engage in anticompetitive behavior, and contributing to a major drag on the economy, then that’s another “boring” option.
The funny thing from my perspective is that I went to law school because I didn’t know what to do with my life, but now I help poor people.
I still hated every minute of law school and I tell people not to do it. My advice is always to work for a lawyer, maybe as a paralegal, for a little while before deciding if that is the type of work you want to do. I think if people knew what they were getting into, they would probably make better decisions.
I am a paralegal who has decided against law school, but not because of law school itself. I have academic leanings, and expect that I would enjoy law school. (And heck: I am already writings some of the briefs coming out of my office.) But I also see how lawyers actually spend their days, and how long those days are. I further understand the economics of a law degree. Taking a huge financial risk with the best possible outcome being an absolutely miserable job to pay off the loan? This makes sense how?
I worked for 12 years processing Social Security Disability claims and of the 500 people who were sworn in with me, I was one of the 50% with a gig.
I DO represent poor people and right terrible wrongs. I also, in the two years since I was sworn in do not make enough from my endeavors to pay for my 80K in loans. The firm gives me roughly 10% of what I bring in for them. It’s a small firm and the partners are incredibly nice (they are doing quite well thank you).
BUT, I am not working for the rich in order to screw the other rich or the poor. Or, working for the State to declare the drunk, deluded, or addicted enemies of the State or defending the drunk, deluded, or addicted from the State.
Morally, I’m doing just fine
My uncle went to law school to avoid going to Vietnam.
Not an applicable reason for today’s kids, of course.
Post college, I tried to crack it as a journalist to moderate success and several lay offs. I now work in a legal department doing marketing stuff, and the company would pay for me to go to law school part time if I wanted, without any sort of life-crushing strings attached to it (hard to believe, I guess, but it is what is it).
So, the whole arithmetic is different for me: I could go to law school for free and not be weighed down by any debt whatsoever, and it is my thinking that the general increase in knowldge that comes with a law degree would be put to good use in journalism or pretty much whatever field I wanted to pursue? I probably wouldn’t take the bar!
Am I still nuts? This is a group psychotherapy blog for prospective law students, yes?
Going to law school without taking the bar is pointless. Law schools exist in order to create a barrier to entry into the profession. This is the reason most states require an ABA accredited education before taking the bar, and in fact it is the essential aspect of creating a “profession.” A job can only really be a profession if there are minimum standards for entry, some clear dedication to the work by the practitioners, and regular oversight from the state or independent bodies. The ABA decided to establish those standards by imposing their accreditation requirements.
People really need to stop thinking of law school as a place where you are educated on a subject in the sense that you can be educated on math or history by taking an appropriate class. Law school prepares you for being a lawyer by forcing you to take time out of a normal life to take a standardized set of courses. By forcing you out of your normal life and burdening you with expenses, the law student becomes dedicated to the profession.
In some ways the debt loads that law students end up with are a feature and not a bug.
For these reasons, a law degree is not useful if you do not want to be a lawyer. As a literate person, you have the ability to read statutes and case law. That and a bit of experience is all you need to be a legal journalist.
Andrew,
There is an opportunity cost to going to law school: your time and your quality of life. Most law schools’ part-time program require school 3 nights/week, and then you have to study at least 6-8 hrs/week in order for any of it to make sense. So expect to give up any social life (and/or any sleep) for the next 4-5 years.
Moreover, expect that almost NOTHING (one week of material, tops) in your first year will be of any use towards your journalism career. And, after that, only 25% (at a max).
Honestly, take a few general “media and the law” courses at a local college, and save yourself.
If you’re not going to take the bar, don’t do it. It’s about credentialing more than learning. Credentialing is not a bad idea if you are not paying. Just make sure you understand what you’re doing.
Be aware that if you get a J.D. and don’t take the bar, for the rest of your life every lawyer you meet who finds out about your J.D. will assume that you failed the exam. A bare J.D. is a negative status marker.
For many years, I worked in the Graduate Admissions office of a big, public university. I was amazed at the number of people with law degrees earned only a few years previously who were trying to get into some other line of work–architecture or creative writing or anything other than law.
My advise to those considering a career in law is BE SURE YOU REALLY WANT TO BE A LAWYER BEFORE YOU GO TO ALL THE TROUBLE AND EXPENSE OF LAW SCHOOL!!!!!
What does it say about Philosophy that it falls below Assyrian Musicology on this list of BA degrees?
That’s strange. At the very least, a Philosophy Major should be able to write well for potential employers.
I would hire someone with an Assyrian Musicology degree before I’d hire someone with a Philosophy degree. Probably better at office parties.
All right a question from a non-lawyer. My wife is in her second year of law school, one with a strong public interest focus. She got a full scholarship, which means her debt will be miminal (under $5,000). I also work full time, so we’re not counting on a three figure salary to pull us through.
Is law school still a stupid idea for her?
If you’re not paying much money, then it’s probably fine. Worst case, she wasted three years of her life on something that doesn’t really want to do, but honestly I think 90% of people do this.
Also, if you don’t have kids. It is one thing to neglect a husband. Kids are another matter entirely.
We do have a kid actually
Given that a high percentage of law school graduates are unemployed or working in out of their field a year after graduating, I’d say it might be a bad idea.
Words of wisdom!
I would think the best reason for becoming a lawyer is because you love the law. You love the high points of the law, and the low: from the brilliant arguments in court to the hours upon hours of doing research.
Why else would you become a lawyer?
I was pre-law before a philosophy professor who taught logic suggested I take a computer class. This was back before everyone owned a PC, and I became intrigued by the potential (and the gadgetry). I then switched to computer science, getting degrees in computer science and industrial psychology.
In the last few years I have, from time to time, regretted this decision because I really love the law. I love exploring case history and reading about important decisions, enjoy research, and I relish the debates–the more esoteric the better.
The court room stuff doesn’t interest me overmuch–it’s the digging through cases, following one after the other, to find just the ones you need. It’s like a puzzle and a mystery, all in one.
However, rather than go back to law school all these many years later (and law school does have a high degree of older students), I decided you don’t have to be a lawyer to love the law. You have to be a lawyer to give people advice, and to “practice” law, but you don’t have to be a lawyer to “love law”, if I can use this term.
You can write on law, argue about laws, and the real lawyers may thing you’re a wanker, but nothing, not even ABA, can stop you from loving the law.
“I would think the best reason for becoming a
lawyerlaw professor is because you love the law. You love the high points of the law, and the low: from the brilliant arguments in court to the hours upon hours of doing research.”FTFY.
Oops, excuse the messed up tags.
“I would think the best reason for becoming a lawyer is because you love the law. You love the high points of the law, and the low: from the brilliant arguments in court to the hours upon hours of doing research.”
Before you attend law school, it is extremely likely you have no idea what the law actually is.
It is the logic of a celebrity stalker.
That reminds me of something I heard from one of my Engineer friends. He told me that he liked literature, thought about studying it in college, but ultimately decided that if he had to actually study it as a major instead of simply enjoying it as a past-time, he’d eventually come to hate it.
Your friend had it right, I think.
At a minimum, I won’t become cynical about the field, as demonstrated in this thread.
Who says law school has to cost $200K? Mine will be just under $35K for four years (at night) and I didn’t have to quit working. Add that to the fact that I work for myself in government advocacy and consulting, and I can actually write the tuition off as a business expense each year. It’s probably one of the best trainings you’ll ever get in how to think and analyze anything, not to mention I find law school incredibly interesting.
This is very similar to my situation. If you go to law school while simultaneously working in a field where the knowledge applies, you’ll get a lot more out of both school and work, and you’ll lower your debt burden.
Of course, it is still a huge time sink with some non-negligible opportunity costs. You have to be great at time management and have an amazing work ethic. The good thing is, when you’re done, employers know that too.
I’m a lawyer, I pretty much always wanted to be a lawyer. While I understand the monetary rewards that come from working a big corporate firm or the prestiege from public interest or working as prosecutor, I don’t understand why so many people who go to lawschool avoid the small to medium level firms that do routine but steady and necessary work in fields like immigration (my field), torts, real estate, matrimony, and probate. The pay or prestiege might not be at the corporate level but the hours are better and your sanity/happiness safer.
…because they aren’t hiring right now, either. And when they do, it’s not going to help pay those six-figure loans off. Living off of ramen and popcorn isn’t any better for sanity/happiness.
The pay at small to medium level firms is not insubstantial. It might take a bit longer to pay back loans but it is very possible at the same time.
Ha ha, I’m taking the lsat tomorrow
(7) I want to help poor people/save mountaintops from being blown up in West Virginia/stop human right violations in Africa/make a difference in this world.
I think your section 7 is badly overstated. I’ve been an attorney for about 13 years, the first two of which I spent as an Assistant State’s Attorney (what they call District Attorneys in Illinois), and thereafter as a legal aid lawyer. I’m certainly not independently wealthy, nor do I think I’m unusually lucky, but I actually have helped a lot of very vulnerable people in my time as a lawyer. (And I think I did so as a prosecutor as well as in legal aid.)
I certainly accept your larger contention that far too many people go to law school
his article is like flashy amusing news for people that know nothing about people who work in the legal system.
Hit the send button too soon. I accept your larger contention; but I think your argument in section 7 is less than compelling.
I think this article itself is loud and obnoxious. I come from a family of lawyers and they are normal people, they go to the pub, work out and do silly stuff with their families, yes they did not make a great deal of money on the first five years, but soon enough they start to do so. They now live very comfortable, have their own property and are able to afford all their little toys. The reason my dears is that there is a process called legal representation and for that I assure you if one doesn’t want to lose thousands of dollars to the judicial system, get behind bars and lose other rights and causes by being sued, they will need someone with the ability to navigate the system and to be helped. Most lawyers do cases where the client is wealthy and is a difficult case they will charge accordingly, and some will also do a pro-bono or almost pro-bono case based on client financial assessment and difficulty of the case. Get a grip, Law school is not different than Financial school. Business School and other colleges even a B.A. and B.S. degree system can be learned at home or with a mentorship. We do it to suffice system requirements…hell our whole entire education could skip school. And yes you can fight for the less fortunate and get heaps of money just have a case of them against government or against a big corporation. I have seen that done by many non-famous lawyers. Just so you have an idea WalMart gets sued an average 5.000 times a year.
Yeah…but everybody can’t be a Wal-Mart lawyer! Even if Wal-Mart had 5000 lawyers that would only be a small drop in the bucket.
[...] bad reasons for going to law school [Campos] Law schools have demographic but not socioeconomic diversity [Richard Sander, Denver U. Law Review [...]
Wow, I’m glad I knew law school wasn’t for me 2 pages into an LSAT prep book.
The only problem is that most of these concerns apply to almost every graduate/professional degree program. You can even apply it to science Ph.D degrees, which generally don’t have to be paid for but make up for it by having even fewer/lower paid job prospects upon graduation.
[...] league catcher. More worrisome to me than his money troubles or his law-school admissions woes (feel better, Schwartzy) is the dangerous relationship he’s fallen into with Pella–both seem cautious, [...]
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Save your money. but Gold and Guns. If History repeats itself, one of the first things they’ll do is Kill all the Lawyers!
BUY Gold and Guns…
Great article! – however, I’m not so sure those 50,000 potential lawyers will be so thrilled..
price abilify…
[...]50,000 people are taking the LSAT tomorrow : Lawyers, Guns & Money[...]…
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