Regret Attending Law School?

ariesathena
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:07:29 +0000

NYU,

Let’s back up to the beginning. This is a “Did you regret going to law school” thread, not a “do you regret being in law school” thread. (The latter is valuable; perhaps you should start it.)

I started law school when you were in high school. Now, I’m not Greybeard, DadofSam, or jonri, but I’ve seen the legal industry change a lot over the almost-decade since I took the LSATs (June 2003, to be exact).

To reiterate, the decision I made in the early/mid-aughts was, given all the facts in front of me, a sensible one - albeit one that I would strongly discourage anyone from doing today, in light of what the legal industry has become. (For the record, I went to a top-tier school, was on a journal, worked in a litigation firm for a year, and graduated with Latin honours. My alma mater was among the least expensive, if not the least expensive, of any school of its calibre. Nevertheless, it now costs about 50% more than when I graduated, and about 65% more than when I started.)

[blockquote]The job market for non-engineering/CS/math/accounting/finance majors are absolutely abysmal. I know people with B.A.'s from top Ivies struggling to find 50k a year entry level job.
ROFLMAO. Um, I hate to break it to you, but no entry-level, unskilled job pays $50k a year - because people who have no marketable job skills aside from “Look at my shiny Ivy degree!” are worth that money. Your friends aren’t going to find a job that feeds them peeled grapes, provides complimentary massages and champagne, and gives them use the company jet, either. Incidentally, this is also some of the crisis facing law school graduates - few 25-year-olds are worth a six-figure salary, and most of them need it to pay off their loans.

As a wise person once said, “A lot of people graduate law school and find out that they don’t like to work; it’s not the legal industry, they just don’t like working.” Perhaps a young’un ought to find out prior to law school what he thinks of 60-hour work weeks, no matter how low-paying the work is.

Which gets me to my next point, which I don’t think you appreciate: one of the biggest sea changes to hit the legal profession is the unwillingness of firms to train people. The lateral job market is opening up, and, from what a lot of partners tell me, will remain strong. However, firms will not train many people - it’s expensive, and some clients are refusing to pay first-year associates to work on their cases. (IIRC, Wal-Mart was the first company to do this, and did so prior to 2008.) Just as a data point, I talked to someone whose friend went to Western New England and got hired at a mid-sized NYC law firm a few weeks after passing the NY bar: he had clerked all through law school.

Likewise, another long-term trend is to hire on people who have some other skill besides being good at taking final exams at high-ranked law schools. Just as the college degree is watered down, so is the JD, and many firms and businesses are looking for people with additional skill sets. If you can’t do anything else besides go to law school, then you’re going to graduate as someone who can’t do much besides be a law school graduate.