<p>Have you looked at the stats for lawyers these days? The chances for employment? The average pay for those who do find work? Grim, given the money it costs to get a law degree. Very grim. They really never were all that great, but now it’s at a point that they are not being ignored except by those like the likes of you. </p>
<p>If you don’t get into a top law school, or be at the very top of your class at a law school, your chances of finding a job in law are very small, and the pay lousy. If you come from the area, know people, get to know people, take advantage of those connection , you can beat those odds, but getting a degree from a school not on the TOP whatever list and then going to CA is not a very good plan. The likely returns on that are very small.</p>
<p>My close friend’s DD is at a top firm in a major city. Got the job through prestigious clerkships that she got for being top of her class. Top of a law school class is not a given, very competitive, very difficult to achieve. Judges will often open up spots for the top kids at each law school locally, and that’s where she got her ins, which made her valuable at local firms. So she’s doing gangbusters great there and has a wonderful future, and is making loads of money. Except she want to move. She married a guy who doesn’t want to live there, whose opportunities are elsewhere, plus her parents are ailing, there is a family home, she’s tired of being away, wants to raise her child elsewhere. Two years later, not a job offer in sight. Zip. Her clerkships and whatever mean nothing in other venues. And she is at a top firm, making top dollar, on the partnership track and she can switch firms to nearly any major firm in that city. But when she talks transfering within some companies that have national offices, she’s shut down.</p>
<p>My neighbor is a top gun attorney who finally got NY as her locale from her firm with NY offices. She wryly tells me that she is probably the only one who took a major cut coming from her minor city to NYC. She’s tried for years to make this work. And she’s pedigreed to the nines. </p>
<p>So that’s what you are facing. </p>
<p>I don’t know beans about the rep of W &M Law school. I love the college. But where that would take, you, you had better scrutinize the employment, placement and salary stats. I don’t think it’s going to get you far very easily in California, I’ll venture to say.</p>
<p>A lot of people are saying that law school is really a lousy investment, and I agree, but I still beileve those who really have an interest in becoming a lawyer, not just thinking it’s good field, but really want to do this, and have put some research into this, can make it work. Even at a small local law school if they stay locally, as many areas do hire locally. But portability is not good at all except at the top firms. Don’t know where W&M stand in that list. </p>