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This month, thousands of ambitious young people are asking themselves the same question: Does it make sense to invest $100,000 to $250,000, and the next three years of my life, to become officially qualified to work as a lawyer? For most people considering law school, this question is hardly an easy one. Law schools, however, make it much harder than it needs to be by publishing misleading data about their employment statistics. Many law schools all but explicitly promise that, within a few months of graduation, practically all their graduates will obtain jobs as lawyers, by trumpeting employment figures of 95 percent, 97 percent, and even 99.8 percent. The truth is that less than half will.
<p>I can’t speak for everyone reading this ,but I don’t find this shocking. I think folks must live in a barn without outside TV to not know that there are much fewer legal opportunities. Moreover, is it so shocking to anyone that lower tiered law schools pad their numbers as much as possible, especially in a bad economy?</p>
<p>I have always recommended that no student should attend a lower tier law school without a full understanding of what they are getting into. Not knowing what they want or thinking they might like law school or going to law school because they didn’t get a job aren’t good reasons for attending a law school.</p>
<p>However, thanks for the posting. Maybe this will save the some kid the anguish of incurring over 100K in law school debt.</p>
<p>Most people over 50 seem to think that the same opportunities exist in the legal profession now that existed when they were law school age in the late 70s, which is obviously not true anymore. If you want to be a lawyer, by all means go for it, but be aware that law schools are graduating more lawyers than the economy needs and unless you go to a top 14 law school or are in the top 10%, your job prospects will be iffy.</p>
<p>Agree about how poor job prospects are. The Editor of Law Review for my kid’s regional law school is going into the summer unemployed (I’ll use 2T to distinguish a school ranked 50-80) . </p>
<p>Every lawyer I know has been innundated with networking requests for jobs on behalf of relatives, friends, etc. who have a kid in law school. Our outside law firms are becoming increasingly aggressive about getting more business from our company. It’s a real sharks’ world in the legal industry (no legal pun intended).</p>
<p>“Most people over 50 seem to think that the same opportunities exist in the legal profession now that existed when they were law school age in the late 70s, which is obviously not true anymore.”</p>
<p>Listen, you young whippersnapper, I can assure you that all of us who are over fifty are fully aware of how much better just about everything was during our glory days than they are in these miserable times, especially the job market for lawyers. I’ll grant you that the beer is better now.</p>