Can't decide if I want to go to law school

[mehhhi]

I have been deciding to go to law school for a while now and I’m not sure if that’s the right decision. Mostly it’s because Im scared I won’t be able to find a job with just a B.S in economics and a minor in business. I have been talking to my mom and she’s making me doubt myself. What if I can’t find a job after I graduate from law school and I end up with 3 years worth of debt? I need help

[Demosthenes49]

You should only go to law school if you want to be a lawyer. Doesn’t sound like you do.

[GMTplus7]

The job market for new lawyers is pretty bleak. A lot of simple legal work can be addressed by googling. And other work has been outsourced to india:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?referrer=

At Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm, Mr. Wheeler manages a team of** 110 Indian lawyers who do the grunt work traditionally assigned to young lawyers in the United States — at a fraction of the cost.**

India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more.

[Demosthenes49]

@GMTplus7: That article is irritatingly vague about what it is these Indian lawyers actually do. I’m finding it hard to think they can do anything sufficiently substantive so as to endanger the legal market. At most they might threaten the doc review circuit.

There’s also an awful lot of business cleaning up the catastrophes resulting from DIY legal work.

[HappyAlumnus]

Business/economics is probably more marketable than most law degrees. Remember: the goal should be to find a niche that you can turn into a long-term career. Just going to law school for “a job”–which may not last long if law isn’t your calling- isn’t a good idea.

[GMTplus7]

@Demosthenes49
From the American Bar Association:
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_home/law_practice_archive/lpm_magazine_articles_v34_is5_pg47.html

U.S. law firms are now outsourcing everything from office support services to high-level legal work. ValueNotes’ most recent study focuses on eight broad segments:

Legal transcription
Document review
Litigation support
Legal research
Intellectual property
Contract-related services
Secretarial and legal publishing services

And there’s no shortage of providers wanting to take that work. Indeed, an Internet search on “legal outsourcing” will generate advertisements from a very long list of law firms and legal process outsourcing companies in India and elsewhere, all ready and willing to handle everything from low-level clerical work to high-level patent application processing.

It’s not just low-skill callcenter work. The cheap legal staff in india does the work, then one American lawyer can sign-off on it.

[Demosthenes49]

@GMTplus7: I’m at a BigLaw firm and I’m having a hard time thinking our clients would be willing to offshore their legal research. Half the time they won’t even let US first years on their cases. Transcription, doc review, contract review, secretarial work, sure, that I can see (and it’s what I expected). Most of that is stuff law firms outsource anyways.