How is law school feasible for middle class families?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>I don’t think you can say the graduates are poorly educated. I haven’t seen any evidence that earlier graduates were educated any differently, not since whats-his-name pioneered the case method at Harvard a hundred years ago. There are definitely too many law graduates though. Even now, where we’ve declined in expected graduates from 45k to 35k (for the incoming class 2014), there will still only be 20k jobs to absorb them. </p>

<p>As for undergrad education, I can’t honestly say I’ve seen much difference in law school performance based on undergrad degree. Similarly, legal employers generally don’t care what the undergrad major is. Most other countries don’t bother with undergrad majors at all, making law itself the undergrad degree. Frankly, I find it hard to credit the idea that undergrad degree makes any difference at all really in how well educated law students are in law.</p>

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<p>padad: do you dispute the BLS’s analysis that today, we are producing 2 times as many JD’s as we need as a society?</p>

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<p>That is strawman argument, bcos even with a 4.3 from Podunk State, the ‘Oz brain’ will still need a high LSAT to attend a decent law school, or at least one worth attending.</p>

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<p>“What is the cost of a state law school these days? Still reasonable? In the old days, a kid could go to his state u, do well, work for a local firm or the government. Are those less glamorous options gone, too?”</p>

<p>They vary a great deal. The top public law schools (Berkeley, Virginia, Michigan) offer very little in-state discount relative to the undergrad in-state discount at the same universities. There are some Tier 1 bargains out there (Alabama, etc.). Yes, you can still have good local options if you do well, but by definition, most 1Ls aren’t going to be in the top 20%.</p>

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<p>Blue, Podunk State graduates majoring in basket weaving will have an uphill battle to score high in law classes, especially if they attend a top law school, and they will be at a severe disadvantage to land non-profit jobs as well as jobs outside of law firms. There are reasons why graduates from elite colleges with sound degrees at top law schools can forego a career in BigLaw.</p>

<p>I don’t think an oversupply of graduates in law is unique in a developed society. We tend to graduate more of everything: art, music, social as well as physical sciences. But so long as these graduates are indeed well educated, then they can be productive members of our society, albeit in jobs that may not utilize directly their advance degrees. What I object is lumping graduates in basket weaving or those who spent 4 years partying with those who received an education in college and expect comparable outcome because they all receive a diploma in law. </p>

<p>BTW, love your pun on “strawman”. LOL</p>

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<p>Perhaps, but I would love to see the data that Podunk State grads are in the bottom half of their class at HLS (as an example). (According to a couple of anecdotes that I am following on that other LS thread, the Podunk State grads with 175’s are doing just fine at HLS.)</p>

<p>If I recall, the LSAT does have some predictive value for 1L grades, no?</p>

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<p>And I object to your assertion that someone who has a 4+ from Podunk State necessarily just spend their time “partying”. Perhaps it s their local, small town school, and they attended for free bcos they have never heard of cc and didn’t know that the world is separated into Ivy-or-bust and everyone else. :D</p>

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<p>Blue, i think you are mincing my words. I never say Podunk State is the problem. It is the combination with a degree in basket weaving that is detrimental, and i never said they spend their time partying. These partying graduates can come from anywhere. </p>

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<p>“C’mon you guys are way too negative. The problem is due mostly to too many law graduates that are poorly educated to start with.”</p>

<p>Um, no, that’s not the problem.</p>

<p>“Education” has little to do with it.</p>

<p>You develop the skills that you need to practice law by…practicing law.</p>

<p>The problem is an oversupply of lawyers coupled with the post-credit bubble decline in the ability of Big Law to create high quality BigLaw invoices that will actually be paid by clients.</p>

<p>It’s sad really.</p>

<p>Someone should write a piece in the NYT every few weeks about the poor, disillusioned 45 to 55 year old de-equitized BigLaw partner who has to spend the rest of (usually his) life wandering around the hallowed corridors of The Law with a career that has run adrift on the shoals of, um…hmmm…the shoals of not having a (portable) $2,000,000 book of business.</p>

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<p>Bringing this conversation back to where it started: Obama’s budget proposal would limit the amount of money that students could discharge with public service loan forgiveness. (I think the proposal is to limit the forgiveness to $57,000.) </p>

<p>About a year back, I predicted this would happen: the government is going to be haemorrhaging money as exponentially-increasing tuition gets paid off in public service (and as graduates who would have moved to the private sector stick it out to get the loan forgiveness). </p>

<p>Loan forgiveness and repayment schemes are current law, not unalienable rights. Remember that as you consider which schools to apply to.</p>

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<p>I guess Demosthenes thinks we should just close all the law schools except the big 14 and those lucky few will rull the world. I’ve met some pretty average lawyers from Harvard and Yale so I don’t think those top 14 are always admitting wisely.</p>

<p>I’ve been a lawyer for 30 years, during times of feast and famine. I’ve been unemployed several times, and self employed when I had to take whatever work I could get, including criminal (and if you don’t think criminals FIND the money to pay the lawyer when they need to, you have never worked in criminal law). I’ve worked in corporations, big (BIG) firms, and for the government. I don’t really like big firms, but I’m okay with not making that kind of money. I worked with a guy who made quite a good living doing DUIs and he was about as far from the top of his class as you could get. I still love being a lawyer, but I’ll admit I like it a lot better when I’m in a good job doing the type of work I like. I just don’t believe that only 1 in 10 grads from the Univ. of Wisconsin finds a law job, since I know a lot of grads from there who have law jobs. They are DAs and work at banks and have small shops throughout Wis. The top 10 or so get jobs at big firms, one or two might even get a clerkship for a federal judge. The others may not even want to give up their engineering jobs, doctor jobs, nursing jobs like those from my section. I worked with a lobbyist who never took the bar. All kinds of people go to law school, not just 22 year old political science majjors.</p>

<p>Are there too many law schools? Of course. Why are there so many? Because it is cheap to assemble 80 students in a room and stick a lecturer up front. Schools are funding other programs on the tuition of the law school. The ABA should stop accrediting schools. Do many take out too much in loans? Oh yes. I work next to a tier 4 law school and I can’t believe that those kids are paying that kind of money, but we’ve hired a few as clerks and they are doing what they want to do - going to law school.</p>

<p>But I stand by my statement that if the only kind of law you want to practice is the kind where you’ll make $150k/yr, go to a big named school, which will increase your chances of getting a big firm job. You could also go to a state school rated in the top 50 and be number 1 in your class and want to work in the big city of your state. If you just want to be a lawyer, a good but not top-14 will prepare you. </p>

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<p>What I don’t understand is why don’t more law school kids who strike out during OCI drop out of law school and cut the loss after 1L. Especially so if someone in question attends a lower ranked school with mediocre grades. </p>

<p>I don’t have any sympathy towards un(der)employed grads of law schools with a ton of debt since they made a series of horrible choices:</p>

<p>1) non-marketable undergrad degree / major (i.e. if someone had a math degree from MIT, that person could probably get a decent job even if things didn’t work out in law school)</p>

<p>2) attending a law school with a risky proposition (anyone nowadays can easily look up information regarding different law school’s employment prospects, etc)</p>

<p>3) not deciding to drop out of law school after 1L grades are finalized (again, anyone nowadays can reasonably predict their chances of landing a firm job when OCI comes, given their 1L grades, school rank, and the help of on-line resources)</p>

<p>4) failure to cut the loss and drop out of law school during first semester 2L when the person in question strikes out at OCI</p>

<p>5) continued trend of mediocre grades and networking efforts until law school graduation, resulting in dreadful employment options</p>

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In conclusion, know yourself and know what you are getting yourself into. Do not blame others; do not blame law schools. Law schools certainly didn’t hold a gun against your head forcing you to attend their schools.</p>

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<p>Why guess? You could just ask. Closing everything but the T14 would be silly. I’d also leave open the state premier schools and the lower T20. Then add in a few of the more successful regional schools and we’d be good to go. There are 20k jobs per year. If we had law schools graduating 19k students per year, we’d be in pretty good shape (we want slightly under to absorb the previous overproduction of lawyers).</p>

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<p>I have worked in criminal law. If you don’t think the public defender exists for a reason, you don’t know a thing about criminal law. Criminals tend to be poor. Poor people tend to not have a lot of money. Those without money have a hard time paying lawyers, no matter how much they want to. What’s your theory, that now that they’re really motivated they’ll just stop being too poor for things? Yeah, there are always rich kids getting DUIs and socialites shoplifting but there’s only so much of that work to go around. </p>

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<p>The numbers don’t lie. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are about 20k law jobs per year. There are 45k law grads per year. What do you think is happening to that 25k difference? U WIs. isn’t putting 1 in 10 in a law job, it’s putting about [url=<a href=“6 Keys to a Stellar Law School Resume - Professional Resume Writers”>6 Keys to a Stellar Law School Resume - Professional Resume Writers]20%[/url</a>] in jobs that can pay back U WIs.'s tuition. That’s 3% in firms that can pay it and 17% in government jobs eligible for PSLF. </p>

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<p>This is not the way it works. There is no evidence that moving down in the rankings increases your class standing. The LSAT/GPA combo are a reasonable predictor, but they aren’t a direct match. You may see a bit of a bump, but probably not much. This is why, for example, transfers do so well. The people who did well enough to transfer at the low school are fairly high ranked at the new school too. It follows that if you wouldn’t be the top at your school and you transferred down, you’d be competing against those who would beat you no matter which school you went to.</p>

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The alternative is that the people who aren’t among the “lucky few” will be in debt up to their eyeballs that they cannot discharge in bankruptcy and have no hope of ever paying back.</p>

<p>I fail to understand what is right, good, or just about having those people be cannon fodder for a misguided attempt at social engineering.</p>

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<p>“I guess Demosthenes thinks we should just close all the law schools except the big 14 and those lucky few will rull the world.”</p>

<p>You still need the $2,000,000 book of business, even if you do go to the T14. </p>

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<p>“I fail to understand what is right, good, or just about having those people be cannon fodder for a misguided attempt at social engineering.”</p>

<p>I’d take it a step further and say that not only is it not good or just, it’s actively bad for society. Inefficient use of human and financial resources hurts everyone. Loan defaults hurt everyone. Having a large population of able college graduates effectively shut out of adult milestones (buying a home, starting a business, etc.) because of inescapable debt that brought no upside is a drag on the economy for everyone. What economic production could these folks have generated in those three years of their lives? What creations would they have built in the future without that debt burden?</p>

<p>“What I don’t understand is why don’t more law school kids who strike out during OCI drop out of law school and cut the loss after 1L. Especially so if someone in question attends a lower ranked school with mediocre grades.”</p>

<p>Because of the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve seen it in action. Almost no one drops out once they’ve put a year and $50k+ into an enterprise. They go down with the ship.</p>

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<p>I think we are getting off track from the original topic. Perhaps it is true that students from middle class families do face more difficulties given the current structure of law schools. Yale law website indicates 56% of its students are eligible for financial aids, suggesting that about half of its student population comes from relatively well to do families. I seem to recall reading somewhere that about a quarter of Columbia law students graduated without student loans. Any of you have numbers for other law schools? Among my acquaintances, I know of law students/graduates at UC Davis, Pace, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago and Yale. All of them have their fees paid for by their parents. </p>

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<p>It has always been a tough road through law school ever since I can remember. I know so many former classmates , my peers who had those dog days of law school, living on ramen and in the student ghetto, some married with the spouse carrying the load of expenses. When it comes to grad school or any school past ug, even those parents who covered the ug load, start dropping out as payers for further education. You have to earn it yourself and take out loans.</p>

<p>What has changed is that now it’s being blared everywhere how hard it is to find a job as an attorney. I don’t think it was that easy and automatic even back in my day. There always was a glut of attorneys. I know a number of friends, peers, acquaintances with law degrees that do not practice law because they found other jobs and in time were entrenched in careers there and did not want to look for law work. </p>

<p>It’s good that there is clarity now about what one can expect with a law degree. it’s not a good thing to do if you are just looking for some place to spin wheels and get the parents off your back about doing something they can feel good about, and it’s not a “might as well be an attorney” type of thing, because those jobs are not going to be dropping on your plate when you are done most of the time. The stats are right out there That’s the case for a lot of courses of study, and so now we have this transparency about law right there to consider when thinking about going to law school.</p>

<p>However, most lawyers out there practicing are NOT grads of top 14 law schools. Most of the lawyers I know, and some are at top NYC white shoe firms are not grads of the top 14 schools, so don’t get it in your head that if you can’t get into one of those, there is no law future for you. Hardly the truth at all. My brother is a grad from a decidedly NOT top 14 law school and has a very successful practice, his own firm and is a multi millionaire and has a number of successful attorneys on staff and none of them from the top 14 law schools. What it means is that those schools have an overall much higher employment rate than other law school grads, and it’s tough out there. But if that’s what you want to do, go right on ahead. The jobs are out there, but it’s a tough go. But if you graduate at the top of your class from any number of law firms, have a knack for doing this, a hunger in your stomache, find a specialty area, you can do this. There are alot of fields that do not have great odds for jobs. Many of the lawyers I know have their own firms, and at this time, they wouldn’t want to work for anyone else, and they are doing just fine. They hire hungry smart young lawyers to take up some slack for them so they aren’t working so many hours after getting their firms up and running.</p>

<p>Anyone contemplating law school should think long and hard about making the commitment, looking at the costs, the borrowing that has to be done in many cases and consider whether this is something the person wants to try to do. Not a light decision to take, and perhaps working a few years in a specialty area and then going to law school with that under the belt is a safer way to go. I have no doubt that had I gone to law school, with my years of working in a specialty niche, I’d have had little trouble finding a job. It was something I did consider seriously at one time. But to just go to law school and think that a job is going to happen just from that degree is not a likely scenario. </p>

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<p>“I seem to recall reading somewhere that about a quarter of Columbia law students graduated without student loans. Any of you have numbers for other law schools? Among my acquaintances, I know of law students/graduates at UC Davis, Pace, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago and Yale. All of them have their fees paid for by their parents.”</p>

<p>Lots of people take out six figure debt.</p>

<p>My father didn’t want me to go to law school and wasn’t about to give me money or co-sign loans or anything like that.</p>

<p>Many law students are on their own, financially, so they take on the debt by themselves.</p>

<p>My roommate, after a grad degree from Harvard and three years of law school got to the point where he was not permitted to take out more loans. I think it was about $185,000 at that point.</p>

<p>And that was 15 years ago, so I’m not seeing what as changed from that standpoint or why we are even really talking about this from a “middle class families standpoint.”</p>

<p>Parents don’t pay. It’s a pretty easy answer.</p>

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<p>I want to add that most families, upper income, upper middle income, middle income and below, most all of those families are hardly able to pay for law school. It’s an exceptionally well to do family that can pay for college for several kids and then pick up the tab for most law schools too. It’s the students, not their families that have to figure out how to do this, with of course varying degrees of some help from families. Students from poor familes particularly have a challenge as they are far less likely to be able help monetarily, and there isn’t any cushion for help with the loans thereafter. The risks are all that more severe for those who well know they are not going to get family support and can maybe see that family is likely to need their support. So those from middle class families are not in the worst shape about this. As most always, it’s those from low income families that have more at stake.</p>

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<p>Jonlaw, parents can and do help. I know a family now who won’t pay for the law school, but they do give some hand outs here and there, and the student has few loans. Parents took care of the most onerous ones, that were at the higher rates. I have a son who doesn’t make much money, and yes, he gets help from us, not just in some money, but in whatever we can do here and there. So it can make a difference. My husband’s colleague has his son living at home right now while he goes to law school full time. Going to a private law school, borrowing for the tuition, maybe some discount, and working a job for transportation and books, but I’m sure mom and dad are giving handouts here and there too. Can make a big difference compared to those who have zero parental assistance.</p>

<p>In my day, some would be attorneys married some good earners to pay the way, heh, heh. Same with med school students.</p>

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<p>Our state supreme court has exactly one T14 JD. Three of other four have JD’s from U of A or ASU (although notably, most twenty years ago). Our Court of Appeals are about evenly divided. </p>

<p>If you want to work at a big firm, you have to get top grades and the better the law school the better. But, by defination as pointed out by Hanna above, that number is a small highly competitive percentage. </p>

<p>The one thing I LOUDLY caution people about, and I have lots of law student interns, is the private law schools that are aimed at the “non-traditional” student. They are top dollar COA and rarely get top candidates. Although non-traditional sounds good and fair and just it most often seems to mean people who couldn’t get into the regular law schools. And that is bad, bad, bad. I see kids who take out debts that scare me, they think getting in is the golden ticket. </p>

<p>Generally, if you have to scrap to get in it is unlikely you will become a star or get one of the jobs you need to get to pay your debts. </p>