<p>
</p>
<p>No, for several reasons.</p>
<p>1) There are way too many law schools in this country. At least half of them (probably more) need to close ASAP in order to correct for the oversupply of lawyers in long-term. What is disturbing is that new law schools are actually being established each year, not closing down. Guess why? It is because law schools are big money-makers to universities, and highly profitable business. Law schools don’t cost much money at all to run: it just takes a professor to lecture in front of like 200 students. No labs or expensive stuff involved like when schools educate doctors or dentists. Yet, law schools charge 50-60k a year in tuition. They end up with huge profits and try to fund that money from law school to other parts of university.</p>
<p>2) The general public as well as many future law students aren’t that well exposed to the extent of scarcity of job opportunities if one gets a JD from a non-T14 law school. When law schools advertise on their career statistics that ‘90% of our grads employed within 6 months of graduation, and median starting salary = 100k’, it doesn’t really help.</p>
<p>3) The demand for lawyers isn’t growing at all, it is actually shrinking rapidly. Even at large BigLaw firms, many of junior associate positions have been cut down over last few years. For example, in Chicago, the total number of BigLaw slots that are given to law students in 2010 decreased to about 300 slots, down from about 1000 slots in 2006. Also factor in the clients of big law firms who are increasingly refusing to pay for astronomical costs of work done by junior associates at BigLaw (many of times doing doc-review type of work that can be outsourced to India for much cheaper), the new trend may well be that junior associates may not bring in large profits to law firms as they used to before. Hence, the demand for junior associates at large firms is likely to decrease over time. Note: this means that even students at T14 and T10 law schools will find it increasingly more difficult to find jobs.</p>
<p>At state government agencies that used to hire decent number of lawyers, they are actually laying off lawyers with years of experience and cutting lawyer jobs left and right due to budget crisis. Imagine getting a paid job with legit benefits like health insurance, etc, with a legit government agency. You can bet that those jobs are insanely competitive to get. </p>
<p>4) Some people out there never cared about attending a high ranked school. Many of my friends just went to a local state university because they liked it, and want to do the same for law school. However, law as a career is a very pedigree-obsessed field, and these kids have no clue what they’re putting themselves into.</p>
<p>5) The vast majority of law students or future law students aren’t good enough to get into a T10 law school. But, if you can’t crack 170 on LSAT, learn to deal with it and look at other career possibilities. Going to a horse$hit law school with a 155 on LSAT, paying sticker, isn’t the answer to your problem. Many times, people fail to realize this. Unfortunately, many of my friends from my high school fall into this category. Note: no law school, even ones ranked outside of T50, has run out of business due to lack of students or lack of tuition money. Essentially, no law school has much problem filling most of their seats. (even Cooley) This trend will not stop just because some articles warn people about law schools. </p>
<p>6) Mass media. Shows like Boston Legal, Legally Blonde, and Suits inspire thousands of wanna-be lawyers when these shows don’t really reflect what a lawyer actually does.</p>
<p>7) Even before the recession, there has always been oversupply of lawyers in this country. This just got much worse in recent years because many horse$hit law schools opened in last decade.</p>