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<p>Actually, I would say that that depends heavily on which school you obtain your law degree from. I can agree that law degrees from most schools carry little weight outside of law. </p>
<p>But then there are those law degrees from certain schools that have proven time and time again to be highly effective gateways towards obtaining jobs outside the law. As expected, yes, I am talking about the Yales, Harvards, and Stanfords of the world. I can think of numerous HLS graduates who never practiced the law at all or did so only briefly, before embarking upon highly lucrative careers in consulting and banking. For many years, and may still be true today, the single most prolific recruiter at HLS was not any law firm, NGO, or government agency, but rather was McKinsey. Heck, McKinsey has a dedicated webpage devoted just to recruiting HLS grads, and dedicated webpages for some of the other top law schools as well. </p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Law Recruiting | APD Recruiting Recruitment](<a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apd/campus_calendar/harvard_law_recruiting.aspx]Harvard”>http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apd/campus_calendar/harvard_law_recruiting.aspx)</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Law Recruiting | APD Recruiting Recruitment](<a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apd/campus_calendar/yale_law_recruiting.aspx]Yale”>http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apd/campus_calendar/yale_law_recruiting.aspx)</p>
<p>In fact, I’ve heard it said that HLS (and presmably peer law schools) are viewed by some people as an ‘alternative’ (albeit a higher risk one) to a Harvard MBA in that HLS allows access to many of the same top-level recruiters as Harvard Business School does. Granted, you need to spend another year in school, but you also don’t really need work experience. Somebody with top grades but no work experience is far more likely to be admitted to HLS than to HBS. </p>
<p>To be clear, I am not personally advocating that people who want finance or consulting careers should pursue law degrees. I recommend that only those people who actually want to be lawyers should obtain law degrees. </p>
<p>Having said that, I cannot deny that many graduates of top law schools have indeed successfully parleyed their degrees to jobs at elite non-law employers. Put another way, if somebody says “I will attend HLS, and if it turns out that I don’t really want to practice law, I can at least use the degree to garner a nice job in consulting or banking”, I can’t honestly tell him that he’s completely off-base.</p>