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I thought I was in for a touchy-feely hour about how it’s wrong to exclude the awkward gunner in the front row from all the reindeer games. Instead it was a sobering medical breakdown of the mental illnesses that afflict 20 percent of law students — and what career services officers can do to help stop people from literally killing themselves, which happens at way more law schools than I realized.
<p>The best thing you can do to avoid this is to have your eyes open before you go to law school - and understand that you're getting yourself into something that you can't really get out of. (Once you graduate, you will take the bar, then spend the rest of your life working in a high-stress, competitive, overcrowded profession - or trying to get into that profession, or wishing you could get out of it.) I think that 0Ls see law school as an extension of the carefree days of college, when it is in fact quite the opposite.</p>
<p>There is this attitude that once you've started law school, you should stay until you graduate. I wish that students felt more free to take a long, hard look at their mental health, career prospects, and performance in class, and then just pack up and leave if the whole thing looks like a mistake. These boards have mentioned non-renewable merit scholarships, or the ways in which law schools will give you the first year free, then sock you hard for the next two. I wonder why few students, if any, just pack it in after the first year and say, "Thanks for a free year of education, but I'm not paying a hundred grand for the next two."</p>
<p>The “don’t quit” attitude is as pervasive as it is stupid. Law schools should require an undergrad course in microeconomics just so 1Ls understand the concept of sunk costs.</p>
<p>Sometimes the scholarships are weighted heavily in the front and tapered at the end. So, perhaps you get full first year, half second year and none third year. That is all negotiated at the start so you know what your total costs will be. However, if you don’t complete the program you are required to pay back the scholarship you received to date.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of it working that way for law school–ever. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Just that I personally do not know of any law schools that work that way. Would you please name schools that do it that way? </p>
<p>Many law schools that give merit aid require students to maintain a certain gpa. It’s quite common for things to be rigged so that as many as half of the students who enroll with merit aid will lose it for the second year.The name of the game for a lot of lower ranked law schools is throwing $$ at students with LSAT scores above their 75th percentile. Once you’ve enrolled, they’ve gotten what they want from you. </p>
<p>My understanding is that Fordham awards --or at least awarded a few years back–substantial merit money to its top students at the end of the first year. These students are in the best position to transfer up. Fordham hands out merit money to create a disincentive for them to do so. </p>
<p>If law schools cut merit aid for second year without regard to GPA, the BEST students would transfer–and that’s not something law schools want to happen.</p>
<p>Law schools do NOT want to keep the WEAKEST students. They have a major incentive to kick them out–and some really do it. Why? One of the most important factors in ranking law schools and in attracting students is the bar passage rate. One of the Boston law schools had a surprisingly high bar passage rate–until you figured out that it’s 3rd year class was about 60% or so of the size of its entering class.</p>
<p>But telling you in advance that if you leave early you have to pay back more money than if you stay for all three years? Again, I’ve never heard of any law school that does that and I’m just curious as to which do.</p>
<p>Oh and one of my neighbors quit NYU Law at the end of her first semester. I really admired her decision to do that. She hated law school and decided not to continue.</p>
<p>You can take this for what its worth. Paul Campos, a Law Professor at the University of Colorado I believe, for a few years wrote a blog entitled “inside the law school scam”. There are other blogs with the same theme (Third Tier reality, etc.), which is that law school in today’s environment is pretty much a scam. That law schools essentially defraud potential students in to signing up and paying outrageous tuition (paid for by non-dishchargeable loans of course) for three hard years of legal training that will result in more than 50% of would be graduates shut out of the legal market. I know several graduates with more than 200K worth of these loans who can not find any jobs in the law. And not only that, with a JD after your name, many other employers don’t want you either. (You are either overqualified or a possible threat to the business). </p>
<p>The lesson these blogs draw (summarized by Nando) is DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL, but if you must go, go only if (1) You Get into a Top 8 Law School; (2) You Get a Full-tuition Scholarship to Attend; (3) You Have Employment as an Attorney Secured Through a Relative or Close Friend; or (4) You Are Fully Aware Beforehand That Your Huge Investment in Time, Energy, and Money Does Not, in Any Way, Guarantee a Job as an Attorney or in the Legal Industry. </p>
<p>Law today is a fools game apparently, for most students who have to borrow money to attend. Even if you don’t have to graduate with a lot of debt, you still have to work in what many describe as a miserable profession.</p>
<p>This all being said, the Law has been very good to me. But I got into it decades ago.</p>
<p>As much as I agree that attending a non-T14 law school is not an intelligent career move for anyone, people need to remember that maybe the whole higher education, not just the law school (yes I am saying the college education in itself) is a gigantic scam.</p>
<p>Many friends of mine from high school went to Big 10 state schools, majored in stuff like 'Business Administration", “Marketing”, “Political Science”, etc and many of them now work at Old Navy folding clothes, wait tables, work for those crap “finance firms” (glorified retail stock brokerage firms) cold calling/ annoying people 10 hours a day, for no base pay (all commissions), or work as a used car salesmen. Heck, one kid I knew from my college was a bio major and ended up driving trucks after college.</p>
<p>The U.S. bureau of Labor estimates that 18 million Americans with college degrees work in jobs that don’t require a college degree. The sad thing is, most of these jobs don’t even require a high school degree.</p>
<p>Clearly, these is an enormous amount of excessive supply of higher education in this country. Rather than blaming the law schools, I think the large portion of the blame goes to the whole system where there is not any sort of barrier of entry into colleges. Specifically talking about law schools, the ABA is the one to blame in not placing any sort of limit as to how many law schools can exist, or how many new lawyers can be licensed. In Germany, only qualified students can go to colleges, and the rest go into trades. (And the ones who go to college go to school for essentially free) Not everyone’s meant to go to a college. And, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.</p>
<p>^I agree with all of this. The thing is, the view of a college degree as a gateway for social mobility has been so ingrained in the minds of kids by their boomer parents and teachers that it is nearly impossible to change anyone’s mind. It also doesn’t help that the student loan industry completely takes advantage of these kids and their idiotic parents.</p>
Employment rate is also a big factor, and kids with better 1L grades do better in the employment market. (Also, those who do not pass the bar often do not get good jobs.)</p>
<p>Like Jonri, I’ve never heard of a school demanding that a student pay back a merit scholarship (unless you obtained it fraudulently, perhaps by falsifying a transcript or such). </p>
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I don’t think that law schools are particularly interested in having half of their matriculating class depart after 1L year - or for T3 and T4 schools, about 90% of their class.</p>
<p>Oh, I’m sure that law schools don’t want that to happen, and I’m sure the ABA, entirely captured by said schools, doesn’t want it to happen either. That’s why I said it “should” be required. You know, in a world where schools and the ABA actually upheld their ethical obligations.</p>
<p>A strong argument can be made that the ABA protects only the schools and the big law firms. Certainly, the ABA has shown little concern for the debt laden law school students who are unable to find jobs. The schools themselves have not been sanctioned for painting a false but rosy picture to prospective students.</p>