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<p>In general, this is correct, and there should be no sensible reason why it should not be. Unfortunately, too many people seem to be thinking that they ought to be worth that sort of money immediately on graduating law school. Another problem, however, is that many law schools not in T14 cost about as much as the top ones, but don’t offer most students even the possibility of being considered for a high-paying (and very stressful) Biglaw position.</p>
<p>It’s also not entirely accurate that there are too many lawyers. There might be too many lawyers in DC, NY, LA, Boston, etc…but many rural places and smaller cities are quite underserved by the legal profession. Perhaps the answer to the current dearth of biglaw jobs is flexibility and a willingness to search elsewhere for legal employment. This includes when choosing a law school. Many regional schools may not be “Tier I” nationally, but they place very well in their states, and often give excellent scholarships.</p>
<p>My interns cannot find jobs. They are smart kids. Went to really good universities and are at an accredited, good law school. But there is simply nothing for them. I know attorneys who have been laid off from large firms. They cannot find jobs. Going into law school to ride out the recession has turned out to be a bad idea. Every day I am very grateful I have been practicing now for 20 years, not just because I enjoy my job, but because I have it. Law schools need to quit lying about the stats re: hiring and be honest about how hard it is to get a job</p>
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<p>According to CalBar stats –</p>
<p>For calendar year 2010:</p>
<h1>of successful bar candidates: 6,550</h1>
<h1>from law offices/judge’s chambers: 2</h1>
<p>For calendar year 2009:</p>
<h1>of successful bar candidates: 6,529</h1>
<h1>from law offices/judge’s chambers: 3</h1>
<p>So yes, it is possible in theory to pass the California Bar Exam without a law degree.
But it doesn’t happen very often in practice.</p>
<p>Re: “Perhaps the answer to the current dearth of biglaw jobs is flexibility and a willingness to search elsewhere for legal employment.”</p>
<p>Appears to be the case with most graduates of professional school (i.e. business); everyone wants to work in the major centres (NY, Boston). In markets of that size, there is going to be competition at every level - graduate from HLS and you are still competing against other graduates of HLS.</p>
<p>While I think that the word “scam” is probably too strong (and probably intentionally provocative–I smell a book coming), I agree with the anonomous professor on a number of his basic points. The trend among law faculty to be more interdisciplinary and more social science oriented has made their academic research far less useful to the bench and bar and, similarly, far less relevant to most law students who are trying to learn to become lawyers, not social scientists. But unlike other academic fields, almost all of this research is funded out of tuition dollars, which for the most part is money borrowed by law students. This is crazy. </p>
<p>In addition, there is little control over the quality of much of this research since there is a pleathera of law journals and none are peer reviewed. Instead, they are edited by second and third year law students who are good at correcting gramatical and citational mistakes but that is about it. Anybody can get published in a law journal today–the supply far outstrips the demand and the result is that most stuff that is published is pure garbarge. Years ago, it was common for lawyers and judges to cite to law review articles to support a position; today it is rare.</p>
<p>“I’ve never understood why anyone would attend a school not ranked in the top tier.”</p>
<p>Seriously? Maybe because, like most average people, they couldn’t get accepted…just a thought.</p>
<p>Law school is no more of a scam than a state lottery is. Anybody who really wants to know can find out and understand the odds.</p>
<p>Just not true Hunt.</p>
<p>While people look at the overall stats, they also look at things like the employment numbers , bar passage rates and specialties at particular law schools. Law schools play games.</p>
<p>When it comes to employment, IMO, the worst offenders are schools with night law schools. Most of the people who attend night law schools have jobs. If they don’t find legal jobs when they graduate, they stay in the same jobs they had. They count as employed. So, young Joe Wannabeatty, who is planning to attend NYC Local Law School full time looks at the stats and thinks “Wow–75% of grads have a job within 9 months of graduation.” If he had access to the stats for full time students, the stat might be 55%. </p>
<p>Moreover, a very high percentage of the night law students who do get legal jobs get them because of their experience with a company. Thus, if you work for a company that owns a lot of rental buildings in Manhattan and go to night law school, you may land a good job in its legal department. However, the company is hiring you in part because you’ve got a good track record as an employee. </p>
<p>That company may be highly unlikely to hire an attorney who went to the same law school and has not previously worked for the company. But when young Joe Wannabeatty sees the “stats” that local night law school produces, he’ll think “Here’s a guy who wasn’t law review who got a good job with XYZ Corporation” and thinks he can get a comparable when he finishes law school–and he can’t. The ONLY reason the other man got the job is because he worked 10 years for the corporation. </p>
<p>There’s also the old “working in the library” scam. I think it’s nine months after law school that US News uses as a marker. So, to inflate their rankings, some law schools contact unemployed grads about two weeks before the date that counts and offer them part time employment working in the library. Desperate grads accept these positions, which are temporary, and count as employed. A couple of weeks later, they lose their jobs. </p>
<p>Add in the contract attorney/ paralegal issue. A number of major firms hire grads of second and third tier law schools to work doing document review or as paralegals. The law schools tout that “25 of our graduates from the class of X are working at Vault 100 firms.” They leave out the little detail that they are not working as associates. </p>
<p>There’s a lower tier law school in Massachusetts that has a surprisingly high bar passage rate. However, it does flunk out the bottom quarter of the class. LOTS of those who are dismissed for academic reasons aren’t dismissed until the end of their second year, after the law school has collected a lot of tuition from them. That strategy does enable it to have a nice bar passage rate though. </p>
<p>And then there are the poor fools who think the specialty rankings of law firms matter. “Well…NYC Local Law School may be third tier, but US News ranks it highly in some specialty so I’ll go into that specialty and get a good job.” Unfortunately, few if any employers pay any attention to those specialty rankings. </p>
<p>Sorry for the rant…but I don’t think it’s all that easy for young people to figure out the odds.</p>
<p>You’re probably right, jonri–my comment was really the cynical one that people don’t really even try to understand the odds. After all, lots of people buy lottery tickets, too.</p>
<p>Most of you are wrong.</p>
<p>A law degree is a very potent weapon. It is not the goal. View it as such.</p>
<p>A law degree is meaningless if it is from a no-name school. Only the top 50 schools are really worth attending.</p>
<p>Just about every major law firm in the country has some partners who attended law schools that weren’t ranked in the top 50.</p>
<p>Having a license to represent clients in court is hardly meaningless. It’s not a guarantee of wealth, or success in the courtroom, or the ability to attract clients. (Nor is a degree from a “name” school, for that matter.)</p>
<p>The attorneys I’ve known who performed well in front of juries came from a wide variety of law schools. </p>
<p>The ability to attract clients has a lot more to do with an attorney’s personality that his/her pedigree.</p>
<p>A law degree from a top 50 - or top 14 law school has no more meaning than the person who has it on their wall. The very worst lawyer I have opposed in the past 20 years was a Harvard Law graduate. Some of the best I’ve seen went to “no-name” schools. Many of my classmates from <gulp> the early 70’s at my T14 law school don’t practice law at all. It’s true that the top schools attract smart students - but what’s the cause, and what’s the effect? Once you have the license - and that’s not a given, even if you attend a top school - it’s what you do with it after that that really counts. A “top” school can get you a job, but it won’t keep it for you, or guarantee that you don’t hate the field of law you get that job in and will be able to find work that you like.</gulp></p>
<p>What I can say is that, at $40-$50K per year, law school is an outrageous ripoff.</p>
<p>What is your opinion of sites such as Legal Zoom and the like on the employability of law grads? </p>
<p>I’ve also heard that pharmacy grads are having difficulties, because of Wal-Marts, online pharmacies, and now pill dispensers located outside of surgery centers.</p>
<p>(I checked out the website) Legal Zoom and the like should have little effect on lawyer’s jobs. Most of what they provide is forms for routine stuff that would be a minor part of the practice of a minor segment of the profession. There have always been formbooks available to the public which provided much of the same assistance. Most of what most lawyers do is not filling out routine forms, and even the slightest complexity in even those routine tasks requires expertise (i.e. lawyer’s advice) to perform correctly. Pharmacy is a different issue; the things pharmacists do which aren’t routine services appear to me to be a much smaller part of their overall workload.</p>
<p>I have a friend who graduated with an undergrad degree in economics who works for a law firm (with clients such as AIG et al.) Said degree was from UVA and probably cost 14k a year total. </p>
<p>Said law firm charges their clients 300 bucks an hour for her work.</p>
<p>I believe she gets paid like 20.</p>
<p>It is safe to say that your friend is not a lawyer and the 14k a year was what she paid as an in-state undergrad student (probably commuting to school). Tuition in-state for UVA law is ~44k a year</p>
<p>Of course (I did say she only had an undergrad economic degree).</p>
<p>It seems you don’t need to attend law school to work in a law firm.</p>
<p>You probably need a law degree to own a law firm where you can charge young twenty-somethings to work for you at 1500% profit margins though.</p>
<p>The point of the thread is whether or not in this economy one should pay $200k to pursue a JD degree to become a lawyer given the difficulties of obtaining a job as a lawyer</p>