Law School Horror Stories

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>For those of you considering law school, you are hereby warned:</p>

<p>"Koth recalls one family of four in particular, where both parents were highly educated – the mother was a lawyer, and the father was a mortgage broker. “They were in the business of buying and selling homes, and they had three foreclosures within the same span of time and were homeless for the first time.”</p>

<p>[One</a> in seven Americans is living in poverty, Census shows](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091602698_pf.html]One”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091602698_pf.html)</p>

<p>“But for 27-year-old Mike Kremen, a law degree landed him a job as an assistant manager at Radio Shack.”</p>

<p>[Trouble</a> with the Law: Laid-Off Attorneys Pursue New Paths - WNYC](<a href=“http://beta.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/apr/08/trouble-with-the-law-laid-off-attorneys-pursue-new-paths/]Trouble”>http://beta.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/apr/08/trouble-with-the-law-laid-off-attorneys-pursue-new-paths/)</p>

<p>After spending a year looking for a job, an out-of-work lawyer dusted off her resume and added a new profession: housekeeper.</p>

<p>Last week, Alice Lingo posted 30 flyers on the upper West Side that say she’ll tidy up apartments for a price and asks, “Haven’t you always wanted to see a lawyer clean a toilet?”</p>

<p>[Jobless</a> lawyer has tough time finding new gig, so she’s offering to clean homes … even toilets!](<a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/10/2010-09-10_jobless_lawyer_misses_babysitting_job_offers_to_do_housekeeping_one_more_attorne.html#ixzz0zimNak8S]Jobless”>http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/10/2010-09-10_jobless_lawyer_misses_babysitting_job_offers_to_do_housekeeping_one_more_attorne.html#ixzz0zimNak8S)</p>

<p>India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1284664248-JLmNtL44l79N1PrnaIQ5tg[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1284664248-JLmNtL44l79N1PrnaIQ5tg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

2

<p>This piece was written by a law school professor:</p>

<p>Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise </p>

<p>Brian Tamanaha </p>

<p>It’s grim reading. The observations are raw, bitter, and filled with despair. It is easier to avert our eyes and carry on with our pursuits. But please, take a few moments and force yourself to look at Third Tier Reality, Esq. Never, Exposing the Law School Scam, Jobless Juris Doctor, Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition, and linked sites. Read the posts and the comments. These sites are proliferating, with thousands of hits.</p>

<p>Look past the occasional vulgarity and disgusting pictures. Don’t dismiss the posters as whiners. To a person they accept responsibility for their poor decisions. But they make a strong case that something is deeply wrong with law schools.</p>

<p>Their complaint is that non-elite law schools are selling a fraudulent bill of goods. Law schools advertise deceptively high rates of employment and misleading income figures. Many graduates can’t get jobs. Many graduates end up as temp attorneys working for $15 to $20 dollars an hour on two week gigs, with no benefits. The luckier graduates land jobs in government or small firms for maybe $45,000, with limited prospects for improvement. A handful of lottery winners score big firm jobs. </p>

<p>And for the opportunity to enter a saturated legal market with long odds against them, the tens of thousands newly minted lawyers who graduate each year from non-elite schools will have paid around $150,000 in tuition and living expenses, and given up three years of income. Many leave law school with well over $100,000 in non-dischargeable debt, obligated to pay $1,000 a month for thirty years.</p>

<p>Read the rest of the article:</p>

<p>[url=&lt;a href=“http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/06/wake-up-fellow-law-professors-to.html]Balkinization[/url”&gt;Balkinization: Wake Up, Fellow Law Professors, to the Casualties of Our Enterprise]Balkinization[/url</a>]</p>

3

<p>As much as I enjoy ripping on your Doomsday attitude Homer, I do have to admit I would never consider attending a mediocre law school.</p>

4

<p>Homer: </p>

<p>How much of a threat do you think the outsourcing of legal jobs to India poses to graduates from YLS, HLS and other top American law schools?</p>

5

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<p>Right now, outsourcing does not present a huge threat/opportunity (depending upon your viewpoint) to those attorneys in Biglaw who are working on cutting edge matters. So, if you plan to go to YLS, HLS or any other top law school with a goal of working in Biglaw you may never come into contact with an Indian outsourcing arrangement.</p>

<p>Right now, generally, the kinds of work being outsourced to India are primarily document review, and some contract drafting (generally the kind of work that a contract manager would handle). So, to the extent that one plans to do work that requires more face-to-face client interraction or is more cutting edge, outsourcing (in its current state) is generally not a threat to most law school graduates. That said, you could be a Biglaw attorney working on a large litigation matter, and the attorneys handling the first cut of your document review may be in India.</p>

<p>Now, for those law graduates who end up working as “contract attorneys”, who typically sit in law firm annexes or basements doing document review for large litigation matters (and who get paid on an hourly basis), outsourcing to India may be a significant threat. Please keep in mind that few, if any, law school graduates from any law school graduates with a goal of becoming a contract attorney. Any attorney from any law school can end up in that situation.</p>

6

<p>You could probably make more money as a cop than an average lawyer.</p>

7

<p>^^^ That’s definitely true</p>

<p>Become a cop, put in your 20 years and after you get a pension, you can go to law school and become an assistant DA or criminal defense attorney.</p>

8

<p>^^^ Many cops are also Reservists ;)</p>

<p>Put in their 20 odd something years in and get two pensions…and do what they want to do afterwards…</p>

9

<p>quality of life as a cop sucks so its not worth it tho in my town they make on average $105k but they basically do nothing and honestly if u are not gonna either mmake urself VERY RICH or BENEFIT A LOT OF PEOPLE what is the point in life?</p>

<p>cops for the most part are idle and idleness is terrible</p>

10

<p>Looks like the law school horror stories don’t stop coming in:</p>

<p>Unemployed Lawyer Offers Pizza, Soda And Legal Advice </p>

<p>At the Gorham House Of Pizza in Gorham, Maine, you’ll find a rather unique combo: pizza served with a side of legal advice.</p>

<p>On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, George Sotiropoulos, 29, an unemployed lawyer, fills pizza orders at his parents’ restaurant. </p>

<p>He lives at home, enjoys his mother’s cooking and dons a sauce-stained T-shirt with a cheerful, wistful smile. His wages, almost the same he earned while working there in high school, go towards paying off his $175,000 student loans (a figure he finds so ridiculous he can only joke about it: “I am stuck with my student loans till I die.”). </p>

<p>On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sotiropoulos indulges in his higher education: he works pro bono as a foreclosure prevention lawyer at Pine Tree Legal Assistance.</p>

<p>[Unemployed</a> Lawyer Offers Pizza, Soda And Legal Advice](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Unemployed Lawyer Offers Pizza, Soda And Legal Advice | HuffPost Impact)</p>

11

<p>"Then a 30-year-old law school graduate said he’s no longer able to make the interest payments on his educational loans, much less able to have a mortgage or a family. He said he had been inspired by Obama’s campaign. But now, “that inspiration is dying away,” he said. “I really want to know: Is the American dream dead?”</p>

<p>[Political</a> Economy - At CNBC town hall, Obama is asked: ‘Is the American dream dead?’](<a href=“http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2010/09/at_cnbc_town_hall_obama_is_ask.html]Political”>http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2010/09/at_cnbc_town_hall_obama_is_ask.html)</p>

12

<p>

Quality of life is VERY subjective as it depends on a person’s values, culture, social network, etc. There are so many soft factors that are very hard to factor into a generalization.
A lot of it really depends on your locale. In a rural and well off suburban town, police officers probably don’t see the amount of action they would in an “A house” at a large department like the NYPD.
You realize that 99.999% of the population will never be “very rich” nor will they “benefit a lot of people.” Take a look at your parents (and I’m not saying this in a denigrating fashion) or other adults in their 40s and 50s around you, but d*mn, life DOES in fact get to you, no matter who you are. It’s just a matter of time. There are some people making $200,000+ per year that hate their lives, careers, what they do, etc. A vast majority of the power earners that make headlines probably LOVE what they do that the monetary aspect is no longer important to them.</p>

<p>But one this is common among all successful people, they come from all walks of life whether it be from government, private sector, heck even the adult entertainment industry. They all beat the odds.</p>

13

<p>Likely none of them went to a T-14 law school. There are just too many lawyers in the United States though. There is a limit to how many litigations one can have in any environment.</p>

14

<p>Managing a Radio Shack or running a pizza place are perfectly good occupations. Hopefully, the law degree helps them to do a better job of it.</p>

15

<p>Why not tie the financial position of law schools more directly to graduate job prospects?</p>

<p>That is basically why the T-14 law schools have money to be “elite”, successful graduates donating to the school.</p>

<p>Eliminate debt slavery. Let bankruptcy eliminate student loans. Have the law schools underwrite at least part of the loan. If enough of their graduates cannot get jobs, they lose the endowment and go out of business. Win win for everybody but the underperforming law schools.</p>

<p>This policy would eliminate many educational scams. Like going a quarter million in debt for an unmarketable degree in photography or theatre. </p>

<p>In the beginning, higher education was only for the wealthy, the hyper intelligent, and a few people who could do things the college community; alumni, administration, and faculty, valued. Most, 90%+, of students paid full price from family resources or could work their way through as costs were not that high.</p>

<p>Then came “sputnik”, the very wellspring of American higher education as it exists today.
I will explain below.</p>

<p>Circa 1957: OMG the commies have a THING “orbiting” just a few miles overhead!!! What if they drop a bomb on us? What if they drop the BOMB on us? We couldn’t retaliate! We have to get our own THING ASAP!!!</p>

<p>Wait. We don’t have enough scientists and engineers to build our THING. We must train more. Let’s loan kids money to study math, science and engineering so we can smite the comminies, but only if necessary. We are a peaceful people who would never allow national defense to consume large portions of our national resources. So the National Defense Student Loan program was initiated. This was the sole, exclusive, and only way to borrow money for education ,other than your folks mortgaging the house, at that time. Really. No joke.</p>

<p>A few years later the English, History, Pottery and even Business departments of colleges and universities noticed a lot of good students were studying math, science and engineering because they could get money to do so. Their own departments were suffering in terms of prestige and importance. They lobbied for their own loan programs and got them. The rest is history.</p>

16

<p>The truth is that the legal profession is in deep trouble. They are already offshoring and outsourcing legal work to India. Indian lawyers do the work for 10% of the cost of American lawyers. Then it is sent over by email or some digital format and some partner in New York reviews it and signs off on it. Making it cheaper for the law firms and cheaper ultimately for the clients. Now American Lawyers are trying to find work in India. Its insane.</p>

<p>Many large multinational law firms are actually living on gas fumes…borrowed funds to stay afloat. They can no longer bill large Fortune 1000 companies with teams of lawyers at 300.00 an hour. There are fewer companies available for billing schemes. The internet and globalization and digitalization has streamlined companies…and they simply don’t have the need, the money or the people. </p>

<p>Our economy is shrinking…now growing. And its really scary. Technology is eating up more jobs than it is creating. Don’t plan on working for Google or Facebook either. </p>

<p>There are too many lawyers looking for too few jobs that pay enough money to make a living and pay off law school debts. Lawyers, in case you didnt know, NEVER RETIRE. There is no provision in State Bar Rules for retirement. They keep working until they die. They can go “inactive”, but their license is still governed by state law. Most just keep working well into their 80’s. They aren’t dying off fast enough. Tens of thousands of lawyers come on stream each summer after taking the bar exam. </p>

<p>Its a profession in crisis.</p>

17

<p>Much of this is overstated. The law business, like any other business, is cyclical. When I was a young lawyer (late 80s/early 90s), there was a downturn in the economy (remember the S&L crisis and the collapse of commercial RE?) and a similar downturn in the legal industry. Offers of employment withdrawn, associates laid off, law firms failing. By the mid to late 90s, law firms could not find enough qualified people to hire. And–it’s always been a risk going to a third tier law school, that hasn’t changed at all. A little surprising people don’t understand that going in.</p>

18

<p>I have dealt mostly with corporate or contract lawyers. Every time I have dealt with them I have found them to be highly inefficient and painful to deal with. Yet, they charge ungodly amounts as rates, pad hours, bill for even a trivial question like 'Why did you have to send it FedEx overnight when you could have just sent by regular mail?" This particular attorney is in the same zip code as me. I hope this news lights some fire under them.</p>

19

<p>Ghostbuster, I believe you have overstated the crisis you perceive in the legal profession. </p>

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<p>I disagree. As long as there are companies doing business, people/companies suing each other and increasingly complex regulations coming out of Congress, there will be a need for attorneys. </p>

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<p>The work that is being outsourced to India today is generally document review and simple contracts. The more complex work continues to be done by U.S. attorneys located (generally) in the U.S.</p>

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<p>Three hundred dollars an hour would be an inexpensive rate for top lawyers at top firms. The billing rates for partners at top law firms is significantly higher than that.</p>

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<p>An attorney will continue to be a member of the bar until they die. That does not mean that they are actually practicing law on a day-to-day basis. I know plenty of very comfortably retired attorneys. There are attorneys who choose to work well into their golden years, but that is largely a product of choice and/or personal financial situation.</p>

20

<p>A lot of the information in this thread is quickly becoming outdated. While it is true that first year lawyer recruiting was at a very low point during the past two years, a healthy number of large firms this fall have offered jobs to 100% of their summer associates. Campuses are seeing upticks in both summer and permanent recruiting. Also, many companies have begun to pull back work that was previously outsourced to India because of QC and responsiveness issues, as well as rising costs. The worst of the crisis in the legal profession may well be long gone by the time this year’s law school applicants are looking for jobs.</p>