Yeah, I’d agree that Columbia is out of the picture, but I would not discourage someone who sounds very motivated to abandon thoughts of law school. I’d like to challenge @Demosthenes49 to prove out his wildly inflated figure that law schools graduate twice as many graduates as there are jobs available. That’s patently ridiculous and that fundamentally misunderstands the way employment markets work. NALP reports that law school graduates have an 85% employment rate 9 months after graduation, down from a 91% figure at its peak. Not all of them require a bar exam, but these are higher paying jobs on average (compared to jobs that college students get) and tell me a college in the US that has that kind of employment rate. @iwantlawschool, you are unfortunately walking into a highly volatile period for law school graduates and you can see on sites like CC the debate between the people who believe law school is a scam and those that believe that we are just going through a very difficult period in the economy and the legal profession will recover. Given your sub-par stats for a top law school, you’re especially in a risky spot if you choose to go to law school, but only you can decide whether you will have the motivation and talents to overcome this.
Not Demo, but the numbers are published by the U.S. govt (BLS?) and are available by your friend google. And yes, Demo is correct: we graduate 2x the number of JD’s that can be absorbed by JD-required/recommended jobs.
Anyone can earn and JD and then take a job as a barista, but then that person doesn’t need a JD in the first place.
George Washington Law School hires a ton* of its grads @ $15.00/hour, which may be more than Walmart, but not exactly enough to pay the interest on the LS debt. But I guess its good enough to qualify for free medical care under the Affordable Care Act!
*~15% of its graduating class.
UVA, one of the vaunted T14, hires back 16% of its class at not much more than minimum wage.
@spayurpets: No problem. The Bureau of Labor Statistics [estimates[/url] a projected need for 196,500 lawyers (as new lawyers and replacements) between 2012 and 2022. Assuming an even break (which is fine for our purposes even though there will be fluctuations each year) that’s a demand for new lawyers of 19,650 (both new and replacements) per year. Law schools are enrolling students at [url=<a href=“http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/02/historical-data-total-number-of-law-students-1964-2012.html%5Ddouble%5B/url”>http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/02/historical-data-total-number-of-law-students-1964-2012.html]double[/url] that rate, and graduating them in about [url=<a href=“http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/statistics/2013_law_graduate_employment_data.authcheckdam.pdf%5Dthe”>http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/statistics/2013_law_graduate_employment_data.authcheckdam.pdf]the same amount](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm). In fact, there are just about as many students in law school right now as the entire legal economy will need over the next ten years. And that is including the steep decline in applications.
This has been fairly [widely[/url] [url=<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/the-lawyer-surplus-state-by-state/%5Dreported%5B/url”>http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/the-lawyer-surplus-state-by-state/]reported[/url] so it’s a little odd you hadn’t seen it before, but I have no problem providing the data.
As for NALP, it helps a lot to figure out [url=<a href=“http://www.nalp.org/uploads/Employment_Rate_Calc.pdf%5Dhow%5B/url”>http://www.nalp.org/uploads/Employment_Rate_Calc.pdf]how[/url] they derive their statistics. (I actually can’t seem to find a source for your numbers, so if you could provide it that would be helpful). Notice that they discount all unknowns. Not surprisingly, people are much more willing to report that they have a job than that they don’t. It’s also worth noting that “employment” literally means “employment” and not “legal employment.” Work at McDonald’s for a few hours a week? Congratulations, you’re employed for NALP purposes. School paying you $1000 a week? Employed. Working only the week of the 9-month date, but not before or after? Employed.
I’m also very interested in a source for your claim that the jobs these graduates get “are higher paying jobs on average (compared to jobs that college students get).” That would be some very interesting data, as it would directly conflict with the “overqualified” problem that a lot of JD holders report.
As for the idea that this is just a “difficult period,” you may think so but you are not in good company. [url=<a href=“http://www.ibj.com/articles/51685-no-relief-for-law-school-enrollment-slump%5DMoody’s%5B/url”>http://www.ibj.com/articles/51685-no-relief-for-law-school-enrollment-slump]Moody’s[/url] for example, believes that “the legal industry is experiencing a fundamental shift rather than a cyclical trend.” See also [url=<a href=“http://www.economist.com/node/18651114%5Dthe”>http://www.economist.com/node/18651114]the economist](The Job Market For Lawyers: Side Work On The Rise Amid Continuing Glut Of New Grads) and Georgtown’s annual [url=<a href=“http://www.law.georgetown.edu/continuing-legal-education/executive-education/upload/2013-report.pdf%5DReport”>http://www.law.georgetown.edu/continuing-legal-education/executive-education/upload/2013-report.pdf]Report on the State of the Legal Market/url.
That nonsense about “only you can decide whether you will have the motivation and talents to overcome this” simply must be addressed. Are you seriously suggesting that when legal employers look at her resume and see her bottom-feeder school and 2.7 undergrad GPA, they’ll say to themselves “wait, we better check her motivation and talent before moving on to the next of our 500 applications!”? No one cares about motivation or talent or potential or drive or whatever buzzwords people say to feel good about themselves. Employers care about one thing: results. With a bad GPA, bad LSAT, and undoubtedly bad law school, she will have had–and failed–three different opportunities to prove herself. In a buyers market completely saturated with legal job seekers, what makes you think for a second employers will look past all the obvious negatives?
@bluebayou, I presume you are referring to UVA’s Kennedy Public Service Fellowships http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/publicserv/postgrad_fellowships.htm and, perhaps to a lesser extent, its Powell Fellowships in Legal Services http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/publicserv/powell.htm These programs do allow a second chance to students who didn’t secure firm positions (56.5% of the class of 2013), judicial clerkships (19.7% in 2013), or non-fellowship jobs in govt. or public interest while in law school. I can’t suss out those exact numbers, but the stats are here: http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/career/stats.htm
The Powell Fellowships pay $40K per year, renewable for a second year. The Kennedy Fellowships pay $31K per year and are not renewable. Each provides financial help for bar exam costs, as well. Yes, UVA pays these stipends; however, each student works for an approved sponsoring organization. They aren’t working in Charlottesville doing busywork - they are working as lawyers.
If I were a potential student, I’d find the existence of these programs somewhat reassuring, because I’d rather do a fellowship year as a lawyer and try to turn that into a paying job than work a year as a barista with a law degree. UVA’s record of Biglaw hiring and judicial clerkship placement is very strong, but not every student will secure one of those jobs. I don’t at all disagree with your point that there are far more lawyers than there are jobs - just describing the UVA programs for those who may wonder about them.
@frazzled1, wow, the fact that UVA has to send 10% of its class to fellowships is absolutely astonishing! I just figured that, based on my own (and my classmates’) experiences in law school, everyone at a top 10 school had multiple job offers from large law firms.
With that, I’d think long and hard before going anywhere other than YHS and Columbia.
^^small nit, but UVa has to fund ~16% of its grads… But yeah, it beats unemployment. Of course, I would be willing to bet that 99% of UVa’s matriculants don’t enter LS planning to “need” those fellowships.
The stats are made public by the ABA and on each school’s website. http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org Even Harvard had 22 students in university-funded positions in 2013. Given the impression some people have that a Harvard degree confers lifetime employment automatically, that number surprises me. But I appreciate that law schools make these opportunities possible.
@bluebayou @demosthenes49, your responses deserve a response but it seems a bit unfair to subject the OP to it, as he or she really isn’t asking for this debate . I’d be happy to join the debate on it’s own thread if you want to start it. As to the OP’s concern, I agree that is not the greatest idea to seek a legal career if the OP is going to incur debt or go into it with unrealistic expectations about the job prospects of a person coming out of a middle tier school in the middle of the class. I still believe however, that people with law degrees are more employable than people with a BA, so yes a rational person can still choose a law degree and still come out ahead by playing these odds.
@spayurpets: I’m fine with another thread if you’d like. Since OP would almost certainly be one of the wrong half of graduating law students, I think she deserves the data in this thread. That said, this forum isn’t so active that she couldn’t find another thread if we made one.
It’s also hard to see why you’d think people with a law degree are more employable than people with BAs. (Do you have data about this?) Unless they’re looking for legal jobs, it sounds like classic overqualification. Why would an employer risk a JD, who will run off as soon as they can find a lawyer job, when they can get a BA who won’t? If it’s a non-legal job it’s not like the JD will help any. And that’s not even considering the fear of liability employers have when hiring JDs.
@frazzled1, Harvard indeed has 22 people who are employed by the school. Having gone there, I can assure you that many of those are in teaching roles around the university.
@HappyAlumnus: I think you mean, “Having gone there 20 years ago, I can assure you that many students were in teacher roles back then, so I assume they still are.”
@iwantlawschool : no one is trying to kill your dreams. We want you to be happy.
Having thought about this a bit: take stock of what you are good at. What classes did you do well in? Which ones killed your GPA? When have your employers liked your work? What negative feedback have you received?
Getting into law school, succeeding in law school, and passing the bar requires you to be good at high-stakes testing, writing, and to be willing to work hard every single day. You said you have a “unique learning style;” ask yourself how much that correlates to what your law school grades will be based on.
yeah I get this common ‘belief’, most often broadcast by self-serving Deans of Law Schools ranked in the bottom half, but there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that this ‘belief’ is true. Law School teaches you to become a lawyer – nothing else.
And don’t forget the three years of opportunity costs to earn that JD: not only cost of attendance, but three years’ of no working, of building a resume.
Back to the OP:
- The market for legal jobs stinks, and will continue to stink for the foreseeable future.
- What the OP desires to do requires a top law school.
- The OP can't get there today with really bad numbers.
- To transfer from a crap law school to a top tier LS would likely require being at the top ~3 of the class of said crappy law school.
- Statistically, the odds are really long that anyone, including the OP, is gonna be top 3. (Only STEM undergrads have experienced how a curve works in course grading, and unless the OP was a STEM major she has little inkling of the arbitrariness of it.)
- Then, the question is, what can the OP do with a degree from a crappy LS (if she is unsuccessful in transferring)?
- And the answer is where this thread has traveled -- generally, nothing.
@Demosthenes, no, I mean that many of the 22 people listed as employed by Harvard are certainly in teaching roles. Of my classmates, several were hired directly by Harvard U. to be professors (and of the ones I keep up with, 2 are still there and 1 is at another Ivy). Some of the sharpest students in the class weren’t hired as professors but they were strongly encouraged by star faculty to stay at H and continue to be TAs, before moving on to become professors elsewhere. (Of the ones I know who were asked that, both said no and went on to high-profile firms in NYC and DC).
In short, people who are kept on by Harvard often aren’t paid $15 an hour to boost placement statistics. Many of them stay there because they’re able to, and turn down other career options to do so. If you subtract the superstars who turn down other options in order to remain at Harvard in teaching roles, I am certain that any $15/hour “fellowship” types, if those exist there, are also by choice.
If you go to Harvard Law School and cannot get a job after graduation, something is seriously, seriously wrong with you.
@HappyAlumnus: Yes, and that seriously wrong thing is “graduated during the Great Recession.” Other than your 20 years out of date experience, do you have anything to support your claim that the grads Harvard hired are working as teachers?
just to add some hard data to this discussion…
- 50% of grads from crap law schools are un or underemployed.
- check out the the video to see the real bifurcated salary structure of LS grads. It readily becomes clear that, after three years of LS and thousands of debt, starting salaries are not much more than that of many who get jobs who get jobs right out of undergrad.
btw: These are only Big Law jobs, the firms of which are primarily in the NE (NJ250). And thus, a school like Boalt, which places well into California, won’t be to high on the list. And of course, schools like HYS, who place well into federal clerkships and academia, will be lower as well.
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-ranking-lists-go-to-law-schools-2015-2
@Demosthenes, absolutely. Cross-check the Harvard faculty and staff directory against the most recent few graduating classes. You’ll see plenty of hires into prestigious teaching positions from HLS.
Also, FYI, the Great Recession ended a while ago, and hiring has picked up in the last year or so.
@HappyAlumnus: Would you mind linking a few?
OP I am greatly concerned about your wanting to go for the “education” and are not worried about working. I’m a lawyer who has law students as externs. Trust me that you do not want to (1) go in thinking you’ll get awesome grades/scores when that has not yet been the case (despite maybe having other great soft factors) and (2) incur lots of debt.
You can go for the education if you are full pay.
Your whole future can be ruined by too much debt. It will influence when/if you can buy a house, have kids/reduce workload to be with kids, and even whether someone is willing to marry you. The for profit schools feed off of students who are often first gen, URM, and who did not have the ability to get into other schools.
This is getting off track, as the experiences of Harvard graduates aren’t what the OP will ever concern herself with, but I wanted to address this:
“Also, FYI, the Great Recession ended a while ago, and hiring has picked up in the last year or so.”
By technical definitions, the recession is over, but the labour force participation rate is at a thirty-year low. Yes, legal hiring is “picking up” but is nothing near pre-2008 levels.