Fantastic Front Page WSJ Article on Employment Prospects Post-Law School

[sakky]

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Again, the most important difference is that colleges almost always either guarantee that they’ll meet your demonstrated financial need or waive tuition altogether if your family’s income falls below a certain level. Law schools never do this, and rarely give any need-based aid at all.

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<p>Uh, I don’t know about you, but most people who are attending top law schools didn’t exactly come from poor families. Hence, any such undergrad tuition waivers are irrelevant for those people. I can take a walk over to Harvard Law School right now and look at the students. How many do you think I will find who actually grew up poor? </p>

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And I’m saying that this is a really poor argument. You claimed that people in “many” professions had debt comparable to that of law school grads. You then listed several occupations with no data at all about their average debt load. The fact that it hasn’t been disproved doesn’t mean it’s been proven. This is in addition to the point that the article was never about pure debt load anyway.

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<p>Uh, YOU were the one made the assertion FIRST. You specifically asked, in post #62, for some professions were the average debt level was as high as law. The presumption in that question is that you KNOW the average debt level of law students. But do you know? If you do know, then please present the data. Otherwise, if you didn’t have the data, why did you ask the question? </p>

<p>Otherwise, my tactics are no different from yours. I admit that I don’t have the data. But neither do you. Hence, we don’t know who is right, so you shouldn’t presume that you are automatically right. I admit that I don’t know, but you don’t know either, and you should admit that fact. </p>

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Of course these are the questions on the table. This is the very point of the entire article. The debt is only relevant to the extent that it is difficult to pay off. It was you who decided to caricature the article as saying simply “lawyers have debt and financial troubles,” and then failed to even knock down your own strawman with any proof that their financial situation was comparable to other professions.

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<p>And again, you haven’t shown that it ISN’T comparable. We therefore have to arrive at the conclusion that, at least from prima facie evidence, that the preliminary data seems to indicate comparability (in other words, we can’t rule out the any of the hypotheses yet). </p>

<p>The point is simple. If you want to continue to assert that lawyers have more debt than anybody else, then I have the right to assert the opposite. After all, the bulk of the evidence that supports my case, albeit scanty, is still better than yours. I fully admit that I haven’t built a complete case. But neither have you. </p>

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And many don’t (including nearly all of the top schools) and the ones that do have relatively few spots in their PT programs. I really don’t see why you brought this up at all.

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<p>I bring it up to emphasize the point that these people entered into such high debt by choice. They could have become lawyers in cheaper ways. They chose not to. It’s their choice to go into debt, and they should take responsibility for their choices, especially when they had other options. Going into high debt is not the ONLY way to become a lawyer. </p>

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Well, no, I don’t see how that’s really relevant to a discussion of what happens to the people at the bottom.

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<p>It is entirely relevant because we can always find people in ANY field who are doing poorly. It further brings back one of my questions, which is that why should lawyers automatically expect to never do poorly just because they’re lawyers. Are people automatically entitled to not do poorly just because they have law degrees? You seem to think so. </p>

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The perspective you’re offering is precisely the one the article addresses. Specifically, focusing on averages or the people at the top and ignoring the huge gap between the top and the bottom, the high level of competition and the high rates of un- and under-employment. It’s sort of like refuting the claim that the United States has a higher poverty rate than Sweden by pointing to the US’ higher per capita GDP and far larger number of millionaires. It completely misses the point.

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<p>See above. It PRECISELY captures my point. Why do people with law degrees ever automatically think they deserve to never do poorly? What gives them the right to be shielded from the same problems that everybody else is forced to face, or at least, that they THINK they will be shielded from such problems? </p>

<p>THAT is the perspective that I am offering. Why exactly do these people think they ever deserved special treatment? What, just because you run up a lot of debt, you automatically deserve a good job? How’s that? </p>

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I don’t know why you’d be surprised; you yourself seem to have incredibly inaccurate ideas about the legal profession.

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<p>Uh, no, YOU are the one who seem to have incredibly inaccurate ideas about what this thread is about. I am simply asking why people are surprised to discover that some lawyers are doing poorly. Frankly, it would be highly surprising if that fact weren’t true. For example, if it really was the case that every single lawyer was doing very well, THAT would be surprising. The fact that this article has engendered so much discussion simply leads me to ask why is it that this topic, which should have been obvious to everybody, nevertheless seems to have generated so much interest.</p>