<p>Although the article spent too much time focusing on Mr. Wallerstein’s financial irresponsibility, it also validated my thinking towards my son’s law school aspirations. S graduated magna cum laude from a top university last May and was accepted at a T14 law school. Sounds good, right? He already had experience working in the legal field and was pretty sure law school was the next step. He went to the accepted students’ day at his school of choice and was favorably impressed. However, he stopped dead in his tracks when he went to the session on affording law school. The amount of debt and the time it would take to pay it off blew him away. I don’t see him as a corporate law type so those big salaries probably wouldn’t be coming his way. He returned to campus, gulped, and with a lot of maturity (and probably some wistfulness), declined the admissions offer. Shortly thereafter, he did land a very interesting legal job. He plans to stay there for a few years and rethink his interest in law before he makes that huge financial commitment.</p>
<p>Mansfield- that sounds a lot like my son, although he didn’t get as far as yours did! He also worked for several years at law firms during college. He had a great offer to stay full-time from his last firm, and was tempted (big $$$), but decided to get some corporate experience before he made the decision to either go to law school or go back to the firm. </p>
<p>I am pretty plugged into the strong regional firms here in the SE and particularly in Nashville. They are still hiring, but a lot fewer clerks are brought in for the summer and a lot fewer of them get offers for post-law school employment. Vanderbilt bottom half of class is having a lot of trouble getting jobs. They sent our letters to alums asking for help getting jobs for the grads.</p>
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<p>So true. But I felt that a key point of the article was to point to the fact that such facts are largely missing from the landscape. </p>
<p>It is only a matter of time, IMHO, before we start to question all of these ranking systems and the fact that they rely upon the universities and schools to self-report so much of the information. I know firsthand from years of working in a top business school that so so so much energy and resources are put into the ratings game…that has NOTHING to do whatsoever with improving the product. Indeed, the emphasis to pay the rankings game actually took away from faculty and staff’s resources that should have been going to the most important thing: education of students. </p>
<p>And why on earth we continue to think that universities are providing accurate information, when their life depends upon it, is beyond me. There is no regulation here.</p>
<p>Couldn’t agree more with the point about the ratings game. What applicants don’t understand is that if you can’t get into a top 14/20 law school, the best thing that you can do is to go to a school in the market where you want to practice–ratings be damned (Of course, with the market the way it is, unless you are a really good student at one of those schools, you still might not be able to get a job).</p>
<p>Not directly related to the article, but one thing that many forget – even at the best schools – the high paying jobs in law are almost always corporate law related. It’s not a good idea to go to law school banking on one of the highest paying jobs, if you know you have no interest in anything corporate, business or finance related; you may be able to land such a job but will not have much interest in working the long hours on such issues. It’s amazing how many top law school grads I know were liberal arts focused, went to great law schools, got these jobs and now can’t get over the fact that they’re working long hours on things they find boring – when they never had the underlying interest to start with – but have to keep doing it to service their loans. Law is a profession that supports business, gov’t etc. so that underlying interest in a topic is important.</p>
<p>One of my law interns passed up a full-tuition grant a a 2nd tier NYC law school in favor of G’town, which offered her no grant aid; this student will graduate with $120K of law school debt. She has the pedigree for a top NYC firm (Williams undergrad), but has not performed well enough (3.1 gpa) to have received any big money offers. </p>
<p>I am sure that, when the dust settles, she will have a job; most of my T14 interns do (though not necessarily at top firms). But she probably would have gotten a job regardless (and may have had more prospect from tier2 schools w/ higher gpa) - - minus the debt. Like Wllerstein in the NYT article, this young woman believes her degree is worth the debt; I think they are both sadly mistaken.</p>
<p>This kid does sound like an idiot and I wonder how much company he has - as was pointed out, the article is very anecdotal, short on facts. This is a familiar kind of journalism - a person is portrayed with such an acute sense of entitlement that no one could be sympathetic to his/her plight. I hope his parents didn’t co-sign his loans.</p>
<p>The market for new lawyers is very poor. S is at one of those well-ranked regional schools. He was invited to some OCI interviews this Fall for summer internships. The firms interviewed approximately 5 students from his school…but he found out that the firms were also interviewing the same numbers of students from 5 to 10 other schools. They were each potentially filling 3 to 5 positions. </p>
<p>S is still looking for that summer clerkship, a part-time job, and/or future employment. Excellent resume, good work ethic and not arrogant, extremely presentable, well-spoken, good grades. Willing to relocate. Although I’ve been practicing 30+ years, my network is coming up dry…everyone has a friend’s kid, neighbor’s kid, niece or nephew, etc. either in law school or recently graduated who is also looking for work. Many employers have hiring freezes or have eliminated positions. If you have any leads though, please PM me and I’ll pass them to S! </p>
<p>S isn’t borrowing anything close to $150K-$200K, but it’s definitely a worry. He’s committed to practicing law, the way some kids are drawn to accounting or engineering. I tried to get him to look to another career because I knew how bad the legal marketplace is for young lawyers. Obviously, I was unsuccessful.</p>
<p>I agree with the argument in the article that the law schools are being disingenous by not telling students up-front that the majority of them will be struggling for work, and that the return on investment (not counting the years that they could have spent starting another career) is so risky. I can’t imagine why anyone thinks new law schools are a good idea, except perhaps because it puts a few attorneys to work as professors.</p>
<p>One young man I know, five years out of college and underemployed after losing a good job fundraising for his alma mater, has decided to attend a low ranked law school where he can have classes nights and weekends while still working days. It’s cheap enough that he won’t be horribly overwhelmed with debt, but I see it as a waste of his time. He is aware of the current state of the profession, but has convinced himself, as I think many others have, that by the time he graduates the economy will have turned around, and the inventory of graduates from the last several years either will have melted away because they have turned to other employment or will be unattractive to law employers because they have been kicking around the job market for so long. Both his mother and I have tried to point out the folly of his plans, but it’s hard to fight delusions with facts.</p>
<p>We personally know four recent grads that are attending law school only because they could not find acceptable employment with their undergrad degree. (And also because they didn’t want, for the first time in their young lives, to be thought of as “unsuccessful”.) All four and their parents are borrowing heavily. </p>
<p>Poor and desperate reasoning that will be somberly regretted if you ask me.</p>
<p>I agree. Know a girl who recently graduated from Wisconsin - and decided to go to law school - not sure that this was something she had always planned on or more of a senior year decision. She was accepted at William & Mary and American - chose American because she felt the social life would be better! Her parents are paying for law school and an apartment for her - really stretching them thin. I hope for their sake she does find a job when she graduates in 2 years.</p>
<p>^^^Ah, financing law school through the good old Bank of Mom and Dad!</p>
<p>I really hate that this has happened to law school. I think the education you get in law school is really excellent- at least mine was. You really learn to think in a way that serves you for the rest of your life- no matter what your profession. I really think my son would have enjoyed law school if he didn’t have to have the “will I ever get a job” thing hanging over his head the whole time. He was really sick of that. In high school there was the pressure to get into a good college. In college you needed a good GPA so you could get into law school. He just burned out on the whole thing.</p>
<p>I agree with everyone that law school shouldn’t be a vacation for the undecided, that there should be more accurate information about debt loads and employment (and how much you really have to pay each month once your loans come due!) and that attending a highly-ranked law school (and doing well there) makes a colossal difference.</p>
<p>However, the idea that no one should go to law school, especially a high-GPA, high-LSAT kid who actually wants to be a lawyer (and knows what it entails, and has a reasonable idea about the market in his/her area of interest) is silly. </p>
<p>I say this as a 2009 law school grad. I went to a good school, and some of my classmates are definitely underemployed. Others were unemployed for a long time or were deferred from jobs at major law firms. But I can’t imagine graduates in other fields are any worse off (in fact, since I did a dual degree, it seems the law grads are actually doing better!).</p>
<p>I didn’t think I’d like law school, but I did. I thought I’d like being a lawyer, and I was right (even though my annual salary is exceeded by my loans and I am in a very low-paying area of the law). I feel just as bad for people who miss out on or postpone a legal career they might enjoy and would likely find a job in as I do for people who go to law school despite not really being qualified to succeed or having an awareness of the costs.</p>
<p>My nephew graduated from a second-tier law school in 2009. He passed the NY and NJ bar on his first go-round. He has yet to find appropriate work and currently doing pro-bono for Haitian immigrants affected by the earthquake.</p>
<p>I agree with you, MOWC. My D also feels that the law school education would be an asset to her in the business world, but it is just not worth the money … she could most likely get into a top school, and she would probably do well in law school. But in order to justify the cost, she would need to get a high paying job. Those are few & far between these days, and she isn’t interested in the types of jobs that are hiring. For her, it doesn’t make sense. But she knows a lot of her fellow undergrad students who are planning to go to law school on Mom & Dad’s dime … for them, it’s a place to be for the next couple years.</p>
<p>I suppose Bank of Mom & Dad might have been able to support the whole law school idea for S. However, the pressure would have been on S to land a very very good job…because he’d be supporting M&D in their golden years. Too bad sheer love of learning comes at such a high price!</p>
<p>“I agree with the argument in the article that the law schools are being disingenous by not telling students up-front that the majority of them will be struggling for work, and that the return on investment (not counting the years that they could have spent starting another career) is so risky.”</p>
<p>^^ Hard to lay the lion’s share of the blame on the law schools. I doubt the students referenced in posts #26, 29 and 30 could have been disuaded - - prospects for are dim for liberal arts grads, so they apply to law sch, which is better suited for generalists (or the undecided) than other grad/prof programs. Would thay have been better of going into debt for a MA/PhD in English?</p>
<p>^ A PhD does not normally entail a lot of debt.</p>
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<p>A very bright student with top scores and college grades can receive a scholarship to these types of schools, obtain a good grounding in law and not have much debt at all. In some ways, it makes sense for a top student to pass up the T14 for a nearly free ride at a regional like Loyola if they want to practice in that area of the country. Chances are that they will be a top student at the second tier law school and be competitive for clerkships and internships. For someone who knows they like the law, this isn’t a bad way to go in this economy.</p>