Advice for would-be lawyers

Graduate School Law School
1

<p>A few words from one who has been doing this for many years.</p>

<p>This is the worst time to become a lawyer in the 25 years that I've been doing this. Think long and hard about law school right now, especially if you will be taking on any debt to do it. </p>

<p>In my office, we've cut the # of lawyers by a third, and have no plans to begin hiring again in the future. If anything, we may have more layoffs this summer.</p>

<p>There are no less than half a dozen volunteer attorney's in my office now, who graduated a year ago and have not been able to find employment. These are bright, hard working people who have graduated from good law schools. They'll now be competing with everyone from this year's graduating class as well.</p>

<p>If you can't go to a top 20 or 30 school, or to a good regional public law school, it is far too risky to take on any debt to enter this profession now, unless you are planning to enter a relative's firm, or some other guaranteed job. Graduating from a top school is not a guarantee of employment either - we have those volunteering in my office as well.</p>

<p>Don't rely on scholarships or aid that is tied to GPA. Many law schools offer aid that is tied to future gpa, with the full knowledge that by definition, due to grading curves, large percentages of the students offered such aid will lose it. (1/3 to 1/2 in many cases.)</p>

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<p>And yet I still see many undergrads not heeding this advice and pursuing law school post graduation.</p>

<p>Not surprisingly, many of these students did not major in engineering or computer science and found out the hard way that what they were told in the past were largely fairy tales.</p>

<p>So in an effort to escape the stigma of not being a productive member of society, they decided to double down on their bet and go to law school.</p>

<p>Life is about the cold hard truth.</p>

<p>*Flame suit on for the generalization that I stated above.</p>

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<p>Nope, for me I still got the motivation! The companies that are in the industry with which I am working in right now have a shortage in a particular type of lawyers in which they pay close to the 20000s starting. But that requires both professional engineer status and a lawyer degree. I am only a couple years away for both!!</p>

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<p>BE, maybe that will be true for you. But you should not take the law school’s word for it. Are you in touch with recent graduates of your law school with grades and credentials similar to yours?</p>

<p>I hope that you meant you’ll be in the 200 thousands, not the 20 thousands. I doubly hope that your writing is very different when you communicate with employers.</p>

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<p>Yes I meant 200 thousand and my writing skills are much better at work since I am just casually writing stuff on my mobile devices right now. And no I did not talk to any graduates in my law school, the positions that I am talking about is at the company that I am working in right now as well as other companies of the same industry. I know because I work with these people everyday as I work in managing contracts and setting standards that needs to follow provincial regulations.</p>

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<p>Are you currently working for a firm or are you talking about the salaries of in house attorneys?</p>

<p>Are these salaries for people coming straight out of law school, or did they have at least a couple of years of firm experience?</p>

<p>Does your company recruit 2Ls for summer internships? How many interns are your firm taking on this summer? How many of them have been extended offers following graduation?</p>

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<p>It’s pretty clear BE is addressing the Canadian legal market; regarding the US market anniezz is correct: this is probably the worst market ever for new attorneys. Each year, 44,000 new JDs are produced by US law schools; even in the best of times the economy couldn’t absorb that many. It’s a genuinely bad jobs market; my office routinely gets resumes from bar admitted attorneys offering to work for free. And the media is replete with stories of new law graduates buried in debt with no job. So if you’re going to go to law school, do so only after a cold-eyed cost/benefit analysis.</p>

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<p>Ohhhh…Canada is a different ball of wax. Still a tough market, but just apples and oranges with the U.S.</p>

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<p>BEngineer, I am very familiar with the legal market in Canada and there is no starting job in Canada, NONE, that will start anywhere close to $200,000. None. Are you at a Canadian law school now?</p>

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<p>Nope, not a law firm, I am talking about lawyers that are specifically hired for the utility industry. These are lawyers that need to stand in front and defend all the business decisions and all issues arise if it is needed (can be from the government, engineering board, energy board, tribunals). I was told that there will be representations in court and would call in engineers as expert witnesses. Most work, however, would be being the last person to look at all the engineer contracts to make sure everything is alright before signing. I was told that they would not require alot of experience in law except for the law degree as they also have other lawyers in the team to help out. However, they need someone To be experienced in the utility field and have a solid engineering foundation as well as some knowledge in regulations and contract law.</p>

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<p>I’m afraid you have been misinformed if someone has told you that a job such as you described would pay a starting lawyer, even one with an engineering background (which isn’t that unusual, by the way) anywhere close to $200,000. It just doesn’t happen. The job description you’ve given is kind of unclear. Are you talking about an in-house position? A government position? Who is it that is going to employ you? This isn’t clear. Keep in mind that the highest paid new associates in Canada are those who manage to secure positions at the large national firms and a select few small boutique firms. It sounds like you need to do a bit more research about law positions. Are you at a Canadian law school? You can get this information at your CDO.</p>

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<p>BE, that’s great, if you have a guaranteed position with your current employer. If that’s the case, the employer should offer tuition assistance as well.</p>

<p>Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using CC</p>

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<p>I have been practicing law for 25 years plus as well. My advice is that if you want to go to law school because you want to practice law or because it can help you in another field, do it but do it as cheaply as you can. I have advised people to take a year and work in a law office to see if you really like it, to go to a night program so that you can work for the tuition as you go along, go to a lesser tier school if you get money. Try not to come out in debt as you may not get a job. Just don’t expect to get a job for $200K coming out of Podunk Law.</p>

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<p>This advice is 100% correct.</p>

<p>But I would go even further.</p>

<p>Even if you do get into a top law firm, and even if you then get a good job at a top law firm, you will be working 70 hours a week, and in the end, it is likely that within 2-3 years, you will be begging for jobs at tiny law firms.</p>

<p>Now, if you get into Harvard Law School, that may be a different story.</p>

<p>The world seems like a different place, if you happen to be a beautiful blonde (or a Harvard Law School graduate).</p>

<p>But for most people out there, I would strongly advise you to think long and hard before going to law school. A lot of you kids are planning to pursue that route, without having any idea of the true state of affairs, your viewpoints based on what you see on TV.</p>

<p>I know a lot of you will pooh pooh this advice. I did too, thirty years ago, to my detriment.</p>

<p>It is foolish to enter a field where there is a vast oversupply.</p>

<p>I think most people go to law school because they major in psychology or political science, and then do to law school because they don’t know what else to do, or because they think this means that they are a “professional”. </p>

<p>There have been posts on CC in the past about people hiding the fact that they are lawyers, so they can at least get a paralegal job.</p>

<p>You are talking three years of your life, and a ton of money. For most people, I would choose a different route.</p>

<p>My son got very high SAT scores in CR and writing, so you would think I would be encouraging him to go to law school, but I am not.</p>

<p>I have posted similar messages to this thread on CC in the past, and have been castigated, usually be parents whose kids are at the moment attending law school, so they don’t want to hear the true state of affairs.</p>

<p>Of course, there are exceptions to the general rule, but the general rule should be, don’t go to law school.</p>

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<p>Joan and FloridaDad,</p>

<p>If, as has been mentioned, BEngineer is in Canada and considering a Canadian law school, your advice is not applicable. Canadian law schools are all going to provide a good legal education. The situation here isn’t as it is in the U.S. where you have lower tier schools that will accept anyone with a pulse. It’s much more difficult to be accepted to law school in Canada. The other difference is that students will not graduate with the huge amount of debt that American students often will.</p>

<p>It seems to me that BEngineer is not well-informed and does not have a clear grasp of the job opportunities, or even what the particular job would be, or with whom. And he doesn’t seem inclined to want to clarify things here, which is his right but I think he needs to do a lot more research.</p>

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<p>AlwaysAMom:</p>

<p>It may be true that if you go into something like patent law, where you need an engineering background, the legal job market the US is far better, and might actually be good.</p>

<p>I don’t know the answer to that one.</p>

<p>But even then, I doubt they start you off at $200,000 a year !!!</p>

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<p>It isnt just a problem for grads of “third rate” law schools. Graduates of very very good schools are not finding work. The market is saturated.</p>

<p>Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using CC</p>

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<p>It does not matter if you think that i am misinformed or not, I do not need to clarify and prove anything to you. All I wanted to say is there are still alot of people (myself included) that are still motivated due to certain circumstances. My tuition is partially reimbursed (I know some of my other class mates actually got it fully paid by their employer, but my employer only agrees to pay in full for mba only).</p>

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<p>floridaddad, as I said, I’m assuming based on what was said earlier that this young man is in Canada. If that’s the case, then the position for IP or patent law in the U.S. is irrelevant to his concerns. </p>

<p>annie, I’m well aware of the market in the U.S. My comment about tiers was in reference to Joan’s comment about going to a lesser tier school if you get the money.</p>

<p>BEngineer, you’re absolutely right. It doesn’t matter if I think you’re uninformed, but it should matter to YOU if you’re misinformed. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone but I can tell you with complete certainty that if you believe the things you’ve posted in this thread, then you clearly need to investigate things further. If this is what you want to do with your life, you owe it to yourself to have a clear understanding of what your future is likely to be. I’m happy to discuss it with you off the forum, to provide further advice, if you’d like to do so. You can send me a PM or click on my username and send me an email. If you really are already in law school, pay a visit to your CDO.</p>

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<p>As sympathetic as I am to the notion that many prospective law students should perhaps consider another profession given the dismal prospects of the legal market, I continue to struggle to think of what that other profession could reasonably be. The characterizations by kkuo12887 and floridadad55 seem quite apropos: many such students majored in a relatively unmarketable non-technical major and now don’t have a promising career path waiting for them in their chosen field. </p>

<p>I therefore continue to ask the question: if these students should not consider law school, then pray tell, exactly what should they do instead? Note, it’s not useful in the least to sternly pronounce that such students should have simply majored in something more marketable, because barring the invention of a time machine, their choice of major is all water under the bridge now. Like it or not, they did choose an unmarketable major, and the only relevant question to them now is what they should do now? </p>

<p>Or, put another way, exactly what would you do, if you were faced with their situation? </p>

<p>Frankly, if I was them, I would have to seriously consider law school for that might indeed be the best option of a (constrained and bad) choice set.</p>