<p>The following are some exerpts from an article on the front page of the Marketplace section in today's Wall Street Journal. I think that some of the perspectives offered differ somewhat from those often stated here (including my own). I, for one, do not agree with some of the advice offered in the article.</p>
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How to Cut Debt, Boost Job Prospects From Law School
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Mike Doty landed a six-figure job this fall as an associate at a big law firm in Minneapolis because of a smart move: The University of Chicago Law School graduate had performed so well at a second-tier school in Cleveland that he was able to transfer to Chicago after his first year.</p>
<p>Many of the friends Mr. Doty left behind in Cleveland graduated with no jobs and a lot of debt. "Law school is definitely a huge financial mistake for a lot of people," he says. "Schools are asking consumers to spend upwards of $100,000 on a product, and there's nobody out there giving them the information they need to make an informed decision."
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Many recent law-school graduates who don't work at big firms are struggling to pay off student loans in an increasingly tough job market. The legal sector has grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce Department data. While the top firms have prospered, leading to ever-rising salaries for new lawyers there, studies suggest salary growth elsewhere has stagnated.
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. . . [M]any schools' data on graduate employment prospects paint a rosy picture that is sometimes less than reliable. And relying strictly on widely publicized rankings can be a mistake, experts say.
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Useful sites for prospective law students:
• <a href="http://officialguide.lsac.org%5B/url%5D">http://officialguide.lsac.org</a>
'Official guide' to American Bar Association-approved law schools, with searchable data
• <a href="http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/stats.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/stats.html</a>
ABA legal education statistics
• <a href="http://www.leiterrankings.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.leiterrankings.com/</a>
Leiter's law-school rankings
• <a href="http://www.lawclerkaddict2008.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.lawclerkaddict2008.blogspot.com/</a>
Ranks schools by percentage of class that gets prestigious federal appeals-court clerkships"If you go to a school ranked 35th or 40th over one that's ranked 70th or 80th, you are by no means substantially increasing your chances of landing a high-paying job," says Bill Henderson, a law professor at Indiana University-Bloomington who studies the legal job market. For one thing, the talent pool at a higher-ranked school is generally deeper, making it harder to perform better than your classmates -- a must if you want a chance at a big-firm job.
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For students aiming for the private sector, here are some tips to help identify the law schools that will provide the best job opportunities and do the least damage to your bank account.
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• Consider an in-state public law school: Unless you've been accepted at a nationally recognized top-tier school, where getting a job is easier regardless of your grades, think hard about minimizing cost.
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• Be a big fish: If your law-school admissions test score doesn't qualify you for admittance at the top 20 to 30 schools ranked by U.S. News & World Report in its annual law-school rankings and your goal is a high-paying law-firm job after graduation, consider going to the school where you will get the biggest tuition discount and where you will be among the top incoming students. That will increase your chances of being ranked at the top of your class (most law schools grade on a curve), making you more attractive to employers.
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• Ask about on-campus recruiting: Many employers consider only the top-ranking students, based on their first-year grades, for interviews for the summer-associate jobs that are the path to full-time employment upon graduation. Ask the school and second-year students what percentage of the class gets interviews with the big law firms that offer the highest starting salaries. At New York Law School, ranked in the bottom half of schools by U.S. News, most big firms will interview the top 5% to 15% of students, says the school's dean, Richard Matasar; at highly rated Columbia Law School, also in New York, the vast majority of students are courted by big firms.
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Some top schools, such as the University of California-Los Angeles, have a lottery-based system that matches students with employers for on-campus recruitment events and doesn't allow employers to preselect students based on factors such as GPA. But some firms still won't seriously consider offering jobs to students with GPAs below a certain level.
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• Look for transfer opportunities: Another perk for big fish: Elite schools are increasingly plucking the best students from lower-ranked schools, administrators say. The top 11 schools in the U.S. News survey had a net gain of about 260 transfer students for the 2005-06 academic year, according to data in the ABA guide, which this year reported those figures for the first time.
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Note of caution: Short of transferring into one of the very top schools, the near certainty of getting a high-paying job opportunity after a transfer starts to fade.
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• Check alternative law-school rankings: Rankings published by U.S. News are dominant in the industry, but they reveal few details about graduates' employment prospects. Some schools greatly outperform their U.S. News rank in placing students at the highest-paying firms or in prestigious federal appeals-court clerkships.
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Brian Leiter, a law professor at University of Texas-Austin, for example, posts lists on <a href="http://www.leiterrankings.com%5B/url%5D">www.leiterrankings.com</a> ranging from Supreme Court clerkship placement to the scholarly reputation of schools.</p>
<p>In the spring, Prof. Henderson of Indiana and another law professor are expected to publish a new ranking in the legal trade publication National Law Journal showing what percentage of a school's class got jobs at the nation's 250 largest law firms.
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• Scrutinize schools' data on graduate employment: Most law schools try to keep track of where their graduates end up and what their salaries are, but some schools are more forthright than others. When schools report that a certain percentage of their students were employed nine months after graduation, the figures can include nonlaw jobs or jobs for hourly wages. Some schools' salary data are heavily based on their most successful graduates who made it to big firms. Don't rely on the salary figure unless it's based on a high percentage of graduates who reported their salaries to the school.
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And schools often include lawyers working on a contract basis in their figures, even though those jobs often don't offer significant career-growth potential.
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• Think about location: Unless a school is nationally recognized, it's tough to take its degree to firms on the other side of the country. In fact, in at least half of all states, at least 60% of graduates got an in-state job, according to the National Association for Law Placement, in part because most employers are more familiar with schools in their region.
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