The archetype of the college grad who is too scared to really test the job market or real world wanting to spin his/her wheels before law/med/grad school is way too eye-roll generating.
Why do people tell you to work a job? Because it gets you to confront something you seem to be afraid to do. And why to you want to go to law school? Because there’s such a need for law school grads in our economy these days? Nope.
@T26E4 The reason why I want to go to law school is not because I’m too afraid to face the real world. I’m still going at one point or another.
The consensus is to work before law school- that’s good advice for every law school applicant these days.
Just bcos you don’t know anyone doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Perhaps just not in your circle, however. 
In general, law schools don’t much care, IFF the OP is above both means. OTOH, if the applicant is low income and attended a juco where the applicant worked his/her way thru undergrad (as the OP is doing), to me that it is much more telling about character – and many law school adcoms agree – than working at daddy’s law firm answer tin phones and distributing mail.
btw: Gap year EC’s which do get noticed are unique and/or national-class type stuff: Rhodes, Olympian, published author, traveling professional musician, professional skydiver. (These are the types that have a leg up on YLS.)
@bluebayou, we both agree that working at “daddy’s law firm” is a waste.
My rationale for not wanting someone to work in retail is that (1) it doesn’t pay well and (2) it’s usually not a job that is consistent with what the person wants to do after law school, so it’s a waste of time. If something (job or otherwise) won’t put you in a better position (financially or otherwise in life) in the future, why bother with it?
@bluebayou, we also both agree that people lie, cheat and steal. You can see that just as well in an office job as you could in retail–perhaps even more in an office job. The customers in my high school summer jobs (in retail) were generally very nice; people I have dealt with in office settings have certainly not always been.
I’ll jump up on my soapbox for a second to state that I feel very strongly that people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds, more than other people, should focus on high-paying jobs and/or jobs that will lead to high-paying careers in the future.
I see too many of my law school classmates who are from disadvantaged backgrounds or who have characteristics that are correlated with taking low-paying jobs…deciding to take low-paying jobs even though they could take jobs at Cravath or in Fortune 100 companies and earn a lot for themselves (and use that money to help other disadvantaged people). That encourages continuing inequality, which is not good.
@HappyAlumnus thank you
I agree. If you’re from a disadvantaged background. looking at Law school as a way up, I would like to let you know a few things that I wish that I had know ahead of time.
If you go into corporate, get some sort of specialty and then after two years go into in-house counsel. Or stay on the partner track.
I’ll leave other commenters to discuss the nuances of what I have laid out.
Dustyfeather’s post is terrific.
I’d say:
Remember, as long as you’re in law school, employers see potential. Someone who’s a 1L at Yale is a potential president. Someone who’s 20 years out of Yale and works as a solo practitioner is…someone smart, but a solo practitioner (or name whatever type job we working folks have). So use those law school days to the maximum and get the most amazing jobs you can.
I’d quibble with this idea that “aiming high” for someone from a disadvantaged background has to mean Cravath or some other BigLaw firm. Not everyone wants to bill 2,500 hours a year defending big companies in lawsuits or helping big companies buy other big companies. If that’s your dream, then go for it. But there’s nothing wrong with someone having different priorities in life.
@SlippinJimmy, it doesn’t have to be Cravath per se, but when you graduate from law school, if you’re a better-ranked school or do well, $180,000/year starting salaries are yours if you want them. Rather than immediately heading into a low-paying job, I would just hope that people from disadvantaged backgrounds would simply accept the opportunities that are given to them to start off on a highly paid career, and at least give it a shot, with the goal of generating wealth that can help themselves and other disadvantaged people avoid financial strain.
No job is pure fun and games–that’s why people are paid to work–so you might as well pick a job that pays decently.
As has been said over and over again on this thread, don’t get an MA. If the goal is to mature and develop more before entering law school (a great idea!) then get a job or consider some sort of volunteering like peace corps or something that you would find meaningful and enjoy. Good luck!
Or… you could pick a job that you’re passionate about. If someone wants to litigate environmental cases for the NRDC or become a public defender or a prosecutor or work for the ACLU, they can do that too.
At the top schools, most people pick BigLaw. But that doesn’t mean it’s objectively the right path – for disadvantaged students or anyone else. Sure, people could donate their BigLaw money back to worthy causes. But not everyone wants to spend their day grinding away on something they don’t care about (or believe is actively doing harm) just so they can write a big check to a nonprofit.
All jobs have trade-offs. I would like a job that is 1) fulfilling 2) intellectually challenging 3) reasonable work-load 4) high-paying. It’s tough to get all 4. And everyone weighs their own criteria differently. I don’t think people from disadvantaged backgrounds have any special obligation to prioritize salary above all other factors.
If its the only job that you can get with a degree in Poli Sci at age ~22, that is wha you do.
The local sprinkles that I frequent had a very nice worker for the past 5 months who just told me that she was leaving Nov 30. She had graduated from Berkeley with a Poli Sci degree last May and had to work to eat, so she accepted the (likely) minimum wage job to pay bills while she continued to look for a ‘real job’. Dec 1 she started at a local law firm as a paralegal-in-training. She plans to prep for the LSAT and attend LS in the future.
Our firm just hired (Oct 30) a Wellesley honors student for an entry level job who was a double major in English+Foreign Lang. She had been temping retail since she had graduated last May.
Not sure what decade that you graduated from HA, but the vast majority of college grads have absolutely no chance of starting at a Fortune 100. That is just naive thinking. While the unemployment rates are down, good jobs are still really hard to acquire.
Again, I’m not suggesting that Retail is better than any ‘professional’ entry level job, but that Retail is a no-brainer in comparison to going for an MA, particularly if the MA is not ‘free’.
@sybbie719 (post #17)) and @bluebayou (post #32), what’s the characteristic shared by all of the retail worker examples in your posts (possibly with the exception of the Americorps person in #17)?
They’re all women.
See the Huffington Post: women college graduates start off in their first jobs out of college earning less than men. Your first job- temporary or not- affects your pay throughout your career.
Nobody from Wellesley or Berkeley has to do retail; from those prestigious schools, there are plenty of other options, and while there are lots of factors that create gender discrimination in pay, part of the solution to gender (and other) inequality is for people from disadvantaged groups to make choices for higher-paying jobs, at least early on in their careers.
@bluebayou, I finished college when the economy was still in a recessionary job market due to the early 90s recession, but none of my friends took retail jobs (even though my college wasn’t as prestigious as Wellesley or Berkeley), and I don’t know a single person at in my law school class (HLS) who did that after college. My parents wouldn’t have allowed me to.
JET, Teach for America, Peace Corps, working for low pay at a startup, even working at a local human rights nonprofit for low pay: all totally acceptable because those are jobs that add something (international exposure, industry-specific exposure, public interest exposure, etc.) that can help a career. I did some very short-term internships around graduation time back in the day and I keep those on my resume, to show specific experience that’s outside my current job, and those internships have resulted in job offers in those fields for me, even 20 years later.
Retail, not acceptable because it won’t add anything that will help you later in a career. (I’ve worked retail, in a food service business.)
@HappyAlumnus Wow, sexist much??
If an opinion comes from a woman, it’s invalid??? Based on statistics that have nothing to do with the opinion they are posing? I’m glad that you’re not my lawyer, and this #17, the Americorps person talking.
Maybe . … #17 is a woman too. Not knowing may make it hard to judge the value of the comment.
Moving on to other, more important issues:
Law pay is bimodal, meaning that there are two peaks in the data. The first peak is around $60K-$70K mark. The other peak is around the $180K mark.
If you have debt from law school, you will want to figure out some way to pay that debt. One strategy is to hit Big Law salary peak and make $160K, live small, and pay off debt. You also gain experience, gain a specialty, and move into some other type of law, like public interest or in-house counsel, or law teaching, or government work, etc.
The other strategy is to embrace the lower salaries of public interest (the $60-70K starting salarie peak) and plan to attend a school that relieves debt. If you definitely want to become a prosecutor or if you want to advocate for prisoner’s rights or gender equality or immigrants etc, then just make sure that you choose a school that relieves debt for this type of work. Note: many of the top schools have too-few applicants who want to do this, meaning that for some schools this could be an advantage for admissions. They also have debt-relief programs.
If you decide to pursue public interest, then this may guide your decision about what to do between BA and law school. You would find some positions that would educate you about issues that interest you.
@Dustyfeathers, @HappyAlumnus , the Americorps person in post 17 is also a woman
@Dustyfeathers, because I want to reduce gender-based inequality, I’m sexist? Because I want better opportunities for women, I’m sexist? Because I don’t want women falling into a trap of low-paying jobs from day 1, I’m sexist?
I also pointed out before that I want to reduce inequality that adversely affects people from disadvantaged groups generally (e.g., people of color). So you should go ahead and call me a racist, using your logic.
And I also voted for Hillary. That makes me misogynistic, I’d guess? It does according to your logic.
You should apologize.
Also, @Dustyfeathers, it reflects very poorly on you to hurl a slur at someone before comprehending someone’s post. It’s much better to be civil, but if you aren’t going to be civil, at least you should understand my post.
Finally, @Dustyfeathers, you actually think that the gender of the person giving an opinion has anything to do with the opinion’s validity–or you think I’m saying that? Of course I’m not–that has nothing to do with my position.
Did think before saying that? Did you actually read my post?
Again, you should apologize, as your complete distortion of my statements reflects very poorly on you.
@HappyAlumnus I was wondering…where did you go for undergrad?