You have very limited insight into corporate law. Working with the board of directors is not “chill”. Securities, compliance, corporate governance - all that’s a pain in the butt even if you use outside counsel.
Outside counsel is super expensive and companies dont give in-house attorneys carte blanche to use them whenever.
It’s fun and refreshing to be part of an internet thread defending lawyers! Never thought I’d see the day! 
I fully agree that corporate law is a broad field that can involve sophisticated and challenging environments. I have a friend who used to be the GC of a company with 1k employees that had a difficult board and a more difficult CEO - it was intense. I would never have wanted that job.
That said, my current lower-level corporate in-house gig is almost exactly what tsbna44 is describing. Low stress, very reasonable work-life balance, lots of reviewing and approving things - as he suggests, that’s why I left Biglaw for in-house to begin with, as did most of my colleagues. So he’s not wrong, maybe just a little too narrowly focused.
Exactly my experience and I think it mirrors lots of industries. 3 Star Michelin chef or fry cook, person selling Lamborghini’s to the stars or the person selling used vans off the freeway, bank teller vs M&A deal maker, it isn’t unique to law.
Consistently the case in my industry and they earn it.
When we are sued, we use outside. I’m involved in arbitrations and depositions so I know this.
Again, I noted my interactions are related to and limited to marketing, programs, franchise laws and I should add customer relations.
That is the side of the business I work in. I don’t work with treasury, corporate governance etc. I believe a lot of that for us is managed from abroad - at both my organizations.
When you work for international firms, many tasks are managed from overseas, even regulatory type things.
Nonetheless, I noted these are from my perspective. I work regularly with legal counterparts. At both my companies, they are in the same job bands and this salaries as other managers. But I specifically stated the areas that I’m involved with.
And noted I can only speak from that perspective which I know is limited to my areas.
If you have to deal with the board or anything SEC related, it’s almost never low stress.
Sure, there are some jobs or industries where you just draft some standard contracts that may not be very intense.
Charting law careers is complicated. What is interesting from the inside is not necessarily what sounds interesting from the outside. Probably the most intellectually satisfied attorney I know does corporate tax, which is a huge fun game for him. I do complex commercial litigation for a boutique midlaw trial firm (I’m that outside counsel the inside counsel is calling), and I also love that.
No TV shows are made about lawyers like that, but the job satisfaction can be high.
As far as law school is concerned, the problem is the balance between credentials and cost. Ideally you can get the credentials you need without a lot of debt, which allows you to skip the jobs people hate but take to pay off debt, the jobs that can kill off careers before they even get to the fun stuff. Easier said than done, though.
Anyway, point is I agree a lot of people default into law for lack of a better idea and it turns into an expensive mistake. But others navigate to a successful, interesting career. It just isn’t possible to generalize.
Thank you everyone for the enlightening discussion of law school/law careers. My D20 is in the process of applying to law school now. She did mock trial in high school, and has been pretty set on law school since then. Even her preschool teacher was pretty sure that she would be a lawyer.
D24 says there is no way she wants to become a lawyer, but I have a feeling she just might end up following in her sister’s footsteps, but we will see.
On the law school thing. I went to night school at Duquesne a long time ago and was able to create a nice career as a litigator in Pittsburgh where many of the lawyers went to either Pitt or Duquesne Law schools.
When she was going into her last year at Clemson my D18 came to me and said she wanted to go to law school. I told that was fine as long as she just wasn’t doing it as a place holder because she didn’t know what else to do. In my view law school is too much work and too expensive to just use as something to do because you don’t know what else to do.
She had a 4.0 in Economics from Clemson and got a 168 on her LSAT. Very good but not T-14 necessarily. She got full tuition scholarships from ASU, UMinn and UF. She chose UF when they threw in a living stipend on top of full tuition. She is going to graduate from law school debt free.
She is now a 3L and 7th in her class of 257. She has a job in big law at a Miami office of a national firm. I don’t say this to brag on my kid (Okay maybe just a little bit of a bragging….lol) but to say you don’t need to go to a top ranked undergraduate school to get into a good law school. And you don’t necessarily need to go to a T14 law school to get a big law job if thats what you want. Rather in undergraduate you need to work hard, get great grades, great LSAT scores and then in law school lather rinse and repeat……work hard and make good grades.
Also keep in mind that unlike undergraduate admission, laws school admission is basically about GPA and LSAT. If you are above the 75%tile for both at a particular school there can be great merit money opportunities.
Following the law school discussion with interest - I graduated from a top 3 law school. My husband graduated from a third tier law school but at the very top of his class, and stayed local for his job prospects. Either works to have great opportunities and a lucrative career, but at the third tier school, being at the top of the class is non-negotiable. Students who are not will not get the same high-dollar opportunities, although they may be able to find themselves satisfying career choices.
7 out of 257 is exceptional. IMO, she would have done really well no matter where she went. And although UF isn’t T14, it’s really good.
The top kids at most schools are similar. The main difference is middle of the pack students at T14 law schools are much stronger than middle of the pack students at second and third tier schools.
She got waitlisted at Michigan, UT, Vandy, and UVA. My guess is if she rode those waitlists she would have gotten into one of those. But it would have been 60k a year at least. She picked school that showed her the love instead of riding the waitlist.
Again my point you can go to non T14 schools and if you do well get Big Law jobs if that’s what you want.
But agree 50 or 60k tuition for middle of pack class rank at a two or tier three school probably not a good investment
I find the discussions about law schools and careers very interesting.
Does T14 ranking of law schools refer to USNews’ rankings? If not, what schools are generally considered T14 or T20?
It referred to US News before recent changes. The T14 were always the same group, though occasionally a school on the edge might tie for last place with the other regulars. Let me see if I can recite from memory, in no particular order: Yale Harvard Stanford Michigan Duke UPenn UVA Northwestern Cornell Columbia UChicago
LOL I’m missing some. Maybe I need to look it up. OK, adding NYU UCBerkeley. Still missing one. UCLA and Georgetown were always on the edge, but is it one of those that I’m missing from the traditional list (not any sort of new-fangled US News rejiggering)… Yes, I’m going with one of those two lol.
Sorta yes, sorta no.
There are a collection of law schools that have been the most “national” law schools for a long time. US News rankings more reflect that than cause it. As another poster pointed out, it has never been the case you need to go to one of those law schools to place very well in some particular legal market. But if you want to have the option of placing in a market not particularly close to your law school, there has always been an argument for strongly considering those law schools.
The boundary of the most national law schools has always been a little fuzzy. Like, Georgetown is a top DC school, and DC is an extremely important legal market that a lot of people from national law schools hope to crack. Does that make Georgetown the last of the more national law schools, or the most important of the more regional law schools?
Then law schools like UCLA and Texas are excellent, but realistically they place a lot of people in West Coast and Southwest positions respectively. Those are enormous and important markets, but again does that make them national law schools, or just really important regional law schools?
In a way, the T14 is just sort of a summary of the law schools where enough people are confident enough in calling them national schools. And realistically, it is mostly pretty accurate in that sense–I really think Georgetown is the only one where there is even a question, and I think DC is truly a special case, so that is that.
But again, lots of great legal careers are launched outside of the T14 anyway.
UFlorida law may not be T14, but it is the best law school in Florida. It is exactly the type of school I was referring to when I wrote if not T14, go to the best regional school in the market where one intends to practice.
When I was in law school, the only graded work was the final exam, so there wasn’t a ton of day-to-day pressure. I commuted on the metro and did my reading on the train every day so I’d be prepared to be called on. I kept good notes, then studied hard at the end of the semester. I won’t pretend my grades were great (IIRC, I had somewhere around a 3.3?), but it was good enough to get me a job. And one nice thing about having to work was that I didn’t have time to stress about school. I just did what I could.
Interesting talk about law school. I wouldn’t encourage one of my kids to do it unless they could get into a top law school or got a great financial package from a second tier school. Law school is expensive and I’ve known a lot of people that couldn’t get a well enough paying job after attending 2/3rd tier schools to address the huge amount of loans they took. Also, of all my friends who attended law school from college only one stayed with it over the long haul. Most went on to other careers because they didn’t actually like the work (which didn’t bear much resemblance to what they saw on TV shows like LA Law).
Mandatory link. Someone REALLY knew the score when writing this:
I just want to add- I am not a lawyer but an MBA and work at a consulting firm. Many of my colleagues went to law school and make excellent business consultants. I have no idea where they went to law school. Just wanted to point out another fulfilling career field where the law degree helps.