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Again it really comes down to the specifics. The ABA disclosures tell you a lot. Some schools bat way above where their USNWR ranking would suggest. Some top schools have really good big law placement rates (and it's not just the kids of important people) while others send more people off to clerkships or public interest. It's entirely possible to make a reasonably informed choice.
You really have to spend time researching it, though. Just because you get admitted to Yale doesn't mean you should go there if there's another top school that has a better success rate at churning out the kind of lawyer you're hoping to be.
It also depends a LOT on how good a student you are! If you do well, chances are you'll find a job somewhere in your field. If you're a mediocre student, chances are you'll struggle to find employment, and to stay employed, once you find a job. Eventually, some start their own independent practice. Some do well at that, some don't. What I've seen really pay off is creating a new niche in an independent practice.
Some law grads end up not working in the law at all, but head up non-profit work of one sort or another.
But if you want your investment to pay off, OP, you'd better be among the top in your class. It could turn out to be be money down the drain, otherwise.
This. And I would add, how much aptitude you have, and how well you like (some aspect of) law. Working as an attorney covers a lot of ground, likely some aspects of it will appeal to you more than others, and will resonate with your aptitudes.
You may be way ahead if you can work with a lawyer or two, relatively speaking on the cheap, to get a taste of what the job is really all about. As an intern, say over a summer.
Being in independent practice means you have to do your own business admin tasks, or hire someone else to do them for you.
I read somewhere that many newly minted lawyers really don't like the work, but feel like they are stuck with it to pay off their loans. Don't let that be you.
Are you getting into a T14 school? Are your grades top notch? Then yes, go for law school.
Any other school, don't bother. Law school is a waste of time and money there. You'll wind up making $20/hour doing "document review" on a contract basis, no benefits.
I'm starting to think there are no other boats left for our youth to board.
Increasingly, there aren't. I'm getting on one of the few boats that's still in the harbor, though it's getting harder, in a way, to break through, thanks to Amazon and people willing to settle for cheap, though, again, but it's still possible without going through too much buttkissing or competing with cheap labor foreigners, to do well as, if you are good enough, companies actually WANT you to do well so they can make more, rather than finding ways to undercut you as an expense in the way of them buying another yacht. The field has been global for centuries but also is quite broad and importing cheap foreigners won't be able to undercut you here. (Granted, well-educated foreigners can beat you, but it's at least something to aspire to challenge in that case, rather than having to go live in the slums to compete with like in other fields.)
Also, as for law, I would think it would not be a field, increasingly, for honest folks, what with the corporatist creeps on the Right and the many radical SJW totalitarian think-like-we-do-or-else creeps on the Left guarding the doors to the law schools and running the system so crookedly that it would be hard to sleep at night even if you did get in. Have you SEEN our laws (and sometimes the lack of enforcement thereof to suit crony purposes of the elites) lately?
It's not coincidence that lawyer is increasingly a profession looked at in the same light as prostitution or drug dealer.
I dislike standing on my feet all day, being scolded for overlooking details (I have innattentive ADHD, without the hyperactivity), and dealing with unpleasant customers.
For you? No way. You would be a walking malpractice claim.
Shortly after I started practicing law, a study said that if the rate of growth at which law schools are growing and producing lawyers continues with a steady increase in the growth rate, then by 2020 everyone in the USA will be a lawyer. We laughed at this. How silly. I think they were not all that far off.
Plain and simple there are too many lawyers. A few years ago a legal journal reported there were over 100,000 more admitted lawyers looking for lawyer jobs than the number of job openings available. That has certainly improved some, but probably not a lot. While there are more jobs now, they have also continued to mass produce lawyers at a faster rate the the increase in jobs. Thus, the 100,000 glut is not gong to get eaten up anytime soon. Luckily, many of the unemployed or underemployed lawyers have moved on to other professions.
Universities discovered 15 or 20 years ago, that Law Schools are one of the most profitable endeavors a University can have. Suddenly every University wanted (and got) a law school. Where college grads would only consider law school if they had the grades and test score to get in someplace, now everyone knows they will get into a law school somewhere. If you can read, you can get a law degree from somewhere. Eventually most people will manage to pass the bar. You can take it as any times as you want to. Many bar review courses guarantee passing or you can retake the course for free. Eventually anyone will learn enough to get though the bar exam with a bit of luck. Then what?
Further the law firm structure from the 1970s and 1980s was basically a pyramid scheme. Lawyers at the bottom work their tails off for decent but not great money and the lawyers at the top take a bit of profit from each lawyer below them. As you climbed the pyramid, you could make insane amounts of money. This worked great as long as law firms grew continuously. It also required the guys at the top retire reasonably early. Those two things did not happen. After dedicating a lifetime to making money and finally getting that seven figure income, the people at the top did not want to retire. Further, the growth of businesses was not sustained, so eventually,there were too many law firms seeking business from a limited pool of potential clients with enough money to pay the crazy cost of legal representation. Attend any industry conference or association event or meeting and the number of lawyers seeking business from potential clients, typically outnumber the number of businesses represented by two or three to one, sometimes five or six to one and it is not getting better. Law firms could not sustain the exponential growth they needed for the people at the middle and bottom of the pyramid to continue to move up. Equity partnership after 5 years became rare. Increased equity year by year became non-existent. Many lawyers ended up on a "super-associate or "non-equity partner track, meaning they would pretty much top out after 10- 15 years instead of continuing to climb the pyramid.
Law firms could not sustain the necessary growth and the explosion of law schools created a virtually unlimited supply of lower level lawyers. Now pay rates are down, increases are down, real partnership comes only from generating large amounts of business ((at least half a million a year) and usually that business is generated by wooing clients away from other lawyers. If a partner has a business hiccup (a major client goes out of business, or starts using another lawyer), they are often let go for someone with slightly more business. Those partners take their book of business and replace someone at a smaller firm who has slightly less business and on down the line, eventually someone with a lot of experience but not much business displaces an associate somewhere. It continues to trickle down until new lawyers who essentially know nothing, are competing for entry level(first year associate) jobs with lawyers who have 5 or more years of experience. A lawyer with no experiences costs the firm money for at least 3 years. Then they frequently take their experience and training and go to some other firm. A lawyer with 5 years experience, an be profitable immediately. Who will the firm hire?
Yes, you can go to work for the DA or criminal defense, but even those jobs are getting competitive and they do not pay well. Often the pay is not enough to make student loan payments unless the lawyer lives in their parent's basement until they are 40. I am not sure what they pay a DA now, but given a judge only makes around $140,000, a top DA will be something less than that. And that is the top guy who usually has to get elected every few years. The people below him are making less than $100K with years and years of experience. They also may get fired if the top DA position, or the top local political positions change hands from election to election. Public defenders make peanuts. Only the very top criminal defense attorneys make a good living financially and they are working for criminals. (Well accused criminals, but safe to say not the paragons of our society).
Some law schools have reduced class sizes somewhat, but many have not. As long as there are paying bodies to fill seats why cut them back? Most of the law schools do not care that their graduates will not be able to find jobs sufficient to pay their student loan payments - the law schools have already collected and spent the student loan money. They need to feed the machine and keep things going. Downsize classes? Why that woudl mean the law school produces less money for the University. No way!
To top off the financial woes facing new lawyers, the profession continues to get dirtier, less professional and ethical, more about playing games and making each others lives miserable than resolving disputes. More about dirty tricks both in litigation, negotiating and in competing for clients. Little remains of the once noble profession. A vestige is still there in pockets, but more of it than not has become a truly dirty nasty business that now lives up to the jokes about it.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 06-13-2018 at 09:01 AM..
Law school will ALWAYS be an investment in yourself. It is still a viable profession, and there is a new specialty of law: cannabis law. It is a combination of many areas of law, but mainly business law, and administrative law.
I don't foresee a day where a JD would be a throwaway degree. You don't have to go to Harvard Law to pull down a good salary. There are other avenues you could take after law school. You don't have to practice law just because you have a law degree.
Do it. Go to law school. To look over this platform, you'd think law school was on a par with a philosophy degree: useless. It is a prestigious degree which tells the world you have intelligence, fortitude, tenacity and aspirations. Obtain the degree of your choice for you, not for an employer. People do want degrees for their own satisfaction.
JUST DO IT. Put blinders on, and earplugs in. People love to tear down another individual. Don't listen to anybody but yourself.
Shortly after I started practicing law, a study said that if the rate of growth at which law schools are goring and producing lawyers continues with a steady increase in the growth rate by 2020 everyone in the USA will be a lawyer. We laughed at this. How silly. I think they were not all that far off.
Plain and simple there are too many lawyers. A few years ago a legal journal reported there were over 100,000 admitted lawyers looking for lawyer jobs than the number of job openings available. That has certainly improved some, but probably not a lot. While there are more jobs now, they have also continued to mass produce lawyers at a faster rate the the increase in jobs. Thus, the 100,000 glut is not gong to get eaten up anytime soon. Luckily, many of the unemployed or underemployed lawyers have moved on to other professions.
Universities discovered 15 or 20 years ago, that Law Schools are one of the most profitable endeavors a University can have. Suddenly every University wanted (and got) a law school. Where college grads would only consider law school if they had the grades and test score to get in someplace, now everyone knows they will get into a law school somewhere. If you can read, you can get a law degree from somewhere. Eventually most people will manage to pass the bar. You can take it as any times as you want to. Many bar review courses guarantee passing or you can retake the course for free. Eventually anyone will learn enough to get though the bar exam with a bit of luck. Then what?
Further the law firm structure from the 1970s and 1980s was basically a pyramid scheme. Lawyers at the bottom work their tails off for decent but not great money and the lawyers at the top take a bit of profit from each lawyer below them. As you climbed the pyramid, you could make insane amounts of money. This worked great as long as law firms grew continuously. It also requires the guys at the top retire reasonably early. Those two things did not happen. After dedicating a lifetime to making money and finally getting that seven figure income, the people at the top do not want to retire. Further, the growth of businesses was not sustains, so eventually there were too many law firms seeking business from a limited pool of potential clients with enough money to pay the crazy cost of legal representation. Attend any industry conference or association event or meeting and the number of lawyers seeking business from potential clients, typically outnumber the number of businesses represented by two or three to one, sometimes five or six to one and it is not getting better.
Law firms could not sustain the necessary growth and the explosion of law schools created a virtually unlimited supply of lower level lawyers. Now pay rates are down, increases are down, real partnership comes only from generating large amounts of business ((at least half a million a year) and usually that business is generated by wooing clients away from other lawyers. If a partner has a business hiccup (a major client goes out of business, or starts using another lawyer), they are often let go for someone with slightly more business. Those partners take their book of business and replace someone at a smaller firm who has slightly less business and on down the line, eventually someone with a lot of experience but not much business displaces an associate somewhere. It continues to trickle down until new lawyers who essentially know nothing, are competing for entry level(first year associate) jobs with lawyers who have 5 or more years of experience. A lawyer with no experiences costs the firm money for at least 3 years. Then they frequently take their experience and training and go to some other firm. A lawyer with 5 years experience, an be profitable immediately. Who will the firm hire?
Yes, you can go to work for the DA or criminal defense, but even those jobs are getting competitive and they do not pay well. Often the pay is not enough to make student loan payments unless the lawyer lives in their parent's basement until they are 40. I am not sure what they pay a DA now, but given a judge only makes around $140,000, a top DA will be something less than that. And that is the top guy who usually has to get elected every few years. The people below him are making less than $100K with years and years of experience. They also may get fired if the top DA position, or the top local political positions change hands from election to election. Public defenders make peanuts. Only the very top criminal defense attorneys make a good living financially and they are working for criminals. (Well accused criminals, but safe to say not the paragons of our society).
Some law schools have reduced class sizes somewhat, but many have not. As long as there are paying bodies to fill seats why cut them back? Most of the law schools do not care that their graduates will not be able to find jobs sufficient to pay their student loan payments - the law schools have already collected and spent the student loan money. They need to feed the machine and keep things going. Downsize classes? Why that woudl mean the law school produces less money for the University. No way!
To top off the financial woes facing new lawyers, the profession continues to get dirtier, less professional and ethical, more about playing games and making each others lives miserable than resolving disputes. More about dirty tricks both in litigation, negotiating and in competing for clients. Little remains of the once noble profession. A vestige is still there in pockets, but more of it than not has become a truly dirty nasty business that now lives up to the jokes about it.
Why did you write a dissertation? How much of that was for him, and how much of that was for you?
By the way, you have points deducted for misspells, poor grammar and a lack of punctuation. Red marks all over your dissertation.
Law school will ALWAYS be an investment in yourself. It is still a viable profession, and there is a new specialty of law: cannabis law. It is a combination of many areas of law, but mainly business law, and administrative law.
I don't foresee a day where a JD would be a throwaway degree. You don't have to go to Harvard Law to pull down a good salary. There are other avenues you could take after law school. You don't have to practice law just because you have a law degree.
Do it. Go to law school. To look over this platform, you'd think law school was on a par with a philosophy degree: useless. It is a prestigious degree which tells the world you have intelligence, fortitude, tenacity and aspirations. Obtain the degree of your choice for you, not for an employer. People do want degrees for their own satisfaction.
JUST DO IT. Put blinders on, and earplugs in. People love to tear down another individual. Don't listen to anybody but yourself.
You do realize OP has no interest in being a lawyer, right? Read his posts, not just this one. His only interest is finding a job that is going to pay a lot of money for doing a minimal amount of work.
If you think that describes the legal profession, then I can only assume you are not a lawyer.
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Law school will always pay for itself.
