thd3737

I am 24 years old and kind of iffy about my current career choice, teaching. I like it but I don't know how effective I will be. I saw a show last night about law school and it interested me. I wanted to some advice on my chances of succeeding in the field given my (granted limited) qualifications. I've heard that GPA and LSAT scores matter the most in getting into law school. I have a degree in English from the University of Connecticut and my GPA was 3.76. Obviously, I've never taken the LSAT but I took the new GRE. My percentiles were 95th (CR) 96th (writing) and .....(groan) 26th (QR). I thought about grad school for English but I only applied to one place and got rejected. My essay was terrible. I couldn't narrow my interests down to one focus of study. I am currently enrolled at a local campus, getting a masters in education and interning at a high school, but I find the idea of law school intriguing. I was wondering how I would start and what degree of success I could expect.

Greybeard

About half of the graduates of ABA law schools last year failed to find work for which a J.D. was required. Many of them incurred $150K in non-dischargeable debt to get these degrees. Maybe ten percent of them went to work for what are commonly referred to as "Biglaw", large urban law firms, where they work long hours, but make enough to service their loans.

The legal services sector of the economy has been seriously shrinking for quite some time. I'll be surprised if the number of enrolled law students doesn't shrink drastically in the next few years.

It's not an auspicious time to go to law school.

I will confess that I was warned by an attorney in 1978 that the legal profession would soon be hit with a serious glut of new attorneys. I ignored him, and went to law school anyway. The job market was indeed bad when I graduated, but I did manage to find a job. The pay was poor, but the experience was great, and I eventually prospered. But tuition was low, and my debt service was the equivalent of a car loan. Tuition is high almost everywhere now, and a lot of people who enrolled in law schools three years ago face desparate circumstances.

You may decide to go anyway. You owe it to yourself to go to the "Lawyers, Guns and Money" website, and read all of Paul Campos's blog posts first. If you decide to go anyway, you won't be able to say that you weren't warned.

crankyoldman

I'd take graybeard's advice; I'd also recommend reading his other posts. A couple of other points:
First, everything in finding a job out of law school is pedigree. If you go to a big name law school, finding a job will be much easier. I went to state law school and graduated 30 years ago; it was almost impossible to find a job-but my debt was virtually non-existent as tuition was so low. That's not true anymore; even state law school is 20k+ for tuition alone. And where you went to law school follows you your whole career.
Second, don't fall for the "I want to work in the public sector" trap, as if those jobs are easy to get. Right now, the feds have a hiring freeze. And it's not easy to get a DA/PD job; I worked in a DA's office which averaged 15 unpaid law student interns; when all was said and done, a total of three got job offers upon passing the bar. Why? There were so many experienced attorneys willing to take starting DA pay the office choose them first. We currently have two unpaid interns in my office, both graduated from law school and passed the bar, and are similar to you(both are in late-20s and went to law school after a couple of years in another field). They can't find jobs.
Everybody thinks it's going to be the other guy who won't find a job. Every year almost 45,000 JDs graduate, with jobs for approximately half that number. So check out the blogs graybeard recommended(there are a bunch-third tier reality, etc) to get a contrarian view to attending law school.
And if you decide to go 1. Do very well and 2. be ever mindful of the debt

JonLaw

Campos is now posting regularly over at "Inside the Law School Scam" blog, which he created.

You can also check out some of Jennifer Alvey's posts over at Leaving the Law.

Granted, I won the law school lottery, so to speak, in that I graduated during the dot-com boom when good paying jobs were being handed out like candy.

The best practical advice would be try working as a paralegal in a larger firm to get a sense for the profession.