<p>Don't do it. You will have $100,000 worth of debt and no job prospects. One new trend in the legal profession is to classify jobs as "internships" so that they can get free labor. Here is one such example from Craigslist. On top of that, unpaid internships such as the one below are in complete violation of federal labor laws. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other examples out there. I will copy and paste it since it will likely be deleted:</p>
<p>Are you a new lawyer or law school student?
Do you need experience working in a professional general law practice?
If so, we can offer you the perfect environment!
We will train the right candidate.
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS AN UNPAID POSITION, but the knowledge and resume-building experience you will acquire is invaluable.
Conveniently located in Hanover of Route 53 minutes away from the Hanover Mall.
Please send resumes and cover letter to <a href="mailto:hanoverlaw@yahoo.com">hanoverlaw@yahoo.com</a> </p>
<p>So one Craigslist ad is the sign of doom? I’ve seen ads looking for free wedding photography, does that mean people should not go into that business. CL is ground zero for people looking to take advantage of others.</p>
<p>Homer, you seem like a bitter, angry individual who is now resorting to trying to bring others down to your level rather than raising yours.</p>
Not necessarily true. For some people, it’s actually better to go to a non-top 14 law school in a financial sense, especially if they could go to a ABA accredited law school for nearly free. The state of NJ offers State Tuition Waiver for it’s National Guardsman which makes the total cost of a JD virtually nil at public institutions. Granted, it’s not close to a T14 school, but you can’t argue with ROI when you’re looking at a denominator that is close to zero.</p>
<p>Most third tier schools charge nearly as much as T14s. Seton Hall, for instance, only charges $3k less than Columbia. Unless you are going for free, there is no financial benefit to going to a TTT (third tier toilet).</p>
<p>"Most third tier schools charge nearly as much as T14s. Seton Hall, for instance, only charges $3k less than Columbia. Unless you are going for free, there is no financial benefit to going to a TTT (third tier toilet). "</p>
<p>While this may be true, someone who can get into a t-14 will get a heft scholarship to a lower tier school.</p>
<p>This whole t-14 or bust BS is just that… BS. I can understand the thinking that if all you got into is a tier 4, you may want to consider going a different way. But, saying if you don’t get into a top 14, you’re screwed is just stupid.</p>
<p>“I can understand the thinking that if all you got into is a tier 4, you may want to consider going a different way. But, saying if you don’t get into a top 14, you’re screwed is just stupid.”</p>
<p>Every year 45,000 students graduate from law school. To put that into context, from the day you start law school to the day you graduate, 135,000 new lawyers will have entered the market. Have 135,000 new law jobs been created in the last 3 years? NO. That is why new grads from TTTs are out of luck unless they have strong connections in the legal field. Firms do not have to settle for TTT grads when they have plenty of T14 grads to choose from. And when they do hire TTTs, it is usually those who graduated in the top 10% and made law review.</p>
<p>Homer, Why are you running around like chicken little yelling that the sky is falling? </p>
<p>News flash, perhaps everyone does not want to go to a T-14 school. Not everyone wants to work big law in NY, Chicago, DC and California. Some people are very happy working for the big dog in thier local market.</p>
<p>Going to a T-14 is not going to help someone break into their local market where one has to have really strong ties (ex. Texas). Right now with many schools running OCI, there are students attending T-14 schools that are getting slammed in OCE. At the same time there are students that are in non-T-14 schools getting callbacks at V5 firms . (A friend of my daughter attends a top 20 school. She interned for a federal judge who is a senior partner at a big law firm. She went to NYC OCI and did not even have to interview at the firm, was offered a summer position on the spot at the Judge’s recommendation).</p>
<p>By the same token, if a person does not attend a T-14 it does not mean that their life is full of doom and gloom.</p>
<p>"Students and faculty say they are merely trying to stay competitive with their peer schools, which have more merciful grading curves. Loyola, for example, had a mean first-year grade of 2.667; the norm for other accredited California schools is generally a 3.0 or higher. </p>
<p>“That put our students at an unfair disadvantage, especially if you factor in the current economic environment,” says Samuel Liu, 26, president of the school’s Student Bar Association and the leader of the grading change efforts. He also says many Loyola students are ineligible for coveted clerkships that have strict G.P.A. cutoffs." </p>
<p>^
From the NYT article. I had read about Loyola’s grade deflation, so I can understand the gpa increase. It all isn’t as evil as it may seem. The question we should be asking isn’t how we should adjust grades, but rather, how can we possibly get rid of gpa as an indicator of success in the legal field? Is pass/fail really THAT awful? Should an employer be notified of where a student placed in the class, rather than his actual gpa? A 3.8 may look impressive, but if it places the law student as 297 out of 300, well then, I guess gpa doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Totally appreciate it, but at the same time, there were students from the same school last week who had a number of big law call backs on last week (granted many of them had LR or Journal). Will just wait and see how it plays out.</p>
<p>This is the problem, though. Even if they do get jobs, that won’t prove anything. I had classmates this summer who were not from T14s. The problem is that you have to perform extremely well at a non-T14 to get biglaw, and you can’t go to a non-T14 with biglaw as your goal, banking on ending up at the top of your class after 1L year and on law review.</p>
<p>My point is not to discuss the merits of getting big law job or necessarily to discuss the benefits of going to a T14, but to ask why Op thinks that big law are the only law jobs out there.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, every one is going to do what is best for them and their situation.</p>
<p>I read posts like this and frankly smile in amusement.</p>
<p>Yes, if you don’t attend a top law school, your chances at working for a big law firm a slimmer. That is true. However, you still can get a job there if you do very well in school or have connections.</p>
<p>Secondly, there are many legal jobs besides that of working for a big law firm that have better work environments. You can work for a mid-sized firm, givernment, military etc. In addition, law school training can aid in many professions such as accounting, financial planning, etc. </p>
<p>Bottom line: To say Don’t go to a law school unless it is T14 is much too broad and frankly not good advice. I wouldn’t,however, go to a lower tier law school if you don’t have a solid plan of what you want to do with your legal training. Simply going to law school because you can’t get a job would be a very bad decision.</p>
<p>I don’t think biglaw jobs are the only jobs out there, but if the student doesn’t have scholarship money or isn’t paying out of pocket, not getting a job that pays six figures will severely hinder his or her ability to pay back loans. What’s worse is that many people graduating from college don’t really understand the full implications of this lifestyle choice.</p>
<p>And even for those for whom biglaw is a realistic possibility, the situation is worse. Many law students don’t know whether they would actually want to work in an environment, and the majority of those who earn biglaw jobs end up realizing that it’s miserable. If that’s the case, and all they went to law school for was biglaw, they will have made a bad financial decision.</p>
<p>I know far too many graduates, both from the T14 and outside it, who are no longer in legal positions. To me, the notion that they spent 200,000$ on a degree strikes me as a gigantic waste (assuming a legal job wasn’t a prerequisite to earning their non-legal one).</p>
<p>Flowerhead, I totally get where you are coming from. </p>
<p>It is becoming a vicious circle; D has friends who had SA positions this summer, got extended offers for permanent employment and turned it down. She has friends on the ohter end of the spectrum that got public service scholarships from NYU and are hedging at the prospect of working non profit (which means the money will have to be repaid). She has friends working IB/consulting who are not crazy about their jobs, but have undergrad debt and don’t want to walk away from the money.</p>
<p>It seems like this whole thing is spinning out of control. You also have 17 years olds thinking that their lives are ruined and they will be unemployed if they do not attend and Ivy or Top university/LAC.</p>
<p>Full freight payering parents are now paying/borrowing $200,000 for 4 years of undergrad at top schools.</p>
<p>To me I think the people in the most hellish sitations are people who have massive undergrad debt and then compounded it with massive grad/professional school debt.</p>
<p>I really doubt that you have to attend a T-14 in order to get a decent job after law school. You’re basically saying people who go to UCLA, UT, or Vanderbilt law schools can not find a good job because their school is not of high enough recognition. The real advantage of T-14 is the nationwide reach, but I am fairly certain that if you graduate in the top 30% at other highly ranked schools you can still do well in the job market, though the work you find will most likely be within in your school’s regional reach.</p>