<p>Well, I'm a rising senior thinking about college at the moment. I'm probably going to double major in Film and Humanities and/or English for a Pre-law major. I was just looking up info on Law as a profession and I found some startling articles about it.</p>
<p>This was just one of the many articles I found over on the internet. Is Law really not a promising career. It seems like such a waste to spend 7 years in college, be $100,000 in debt, and beg for work for such little pay. Should I rethink my career choice. Is a Law Degree useless?</p>
<p>That’s why you go to a top 5 Law Schools. :p</p>
<p>But seriously, Firms are very prestige-driven. Some might recruit from the top 20, some ONLY recruit from the top 5, and some only recruit from Harvard/Yale.</p>
<p>It seriously depends on where you live. Most everyone I know that has gone to the top 20 or so law schools is doing absolutely fine. Sounds like that guy is just kind of unlucky. Prestige DOES matter when it comes to law school, so choose wisely, especially according to where you want to live. Keep a good GPA throughout undergrad and law school and you should be fine.</p>
<p>If you don’t go to a t14 law school there really is no reason to go unless you have the finances to take care of it. if you do have the finances it is fine to go to a lower ranked law school as long as you are aware that the likelihood of you getting a very well paid job is low. You’ll probably find a decent paying job and since you won’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans (like most law students do) you’ll be fairly financially stable. The reality is though that most people can’t afford to pay for law school so they take out massive student loans thinking that they’ll be making a lot of money when they are done but unfortunately if you aren’t going to a T14 law school you probably won’t. </p>
<p>I was actually wondering about one thing though. Since law school admission is pretty much based only on your GPA and LSAT score and not as much on the prestige of your undergrad school. Is it better to go to an easier school where you’re likely to have a better GPA or a school like the University of Chicago which has a lot of grade deflation but is possibly a better overall intellectual experience?</p>
<p>^Lol. That’s actually where I got it from yesterday. And I was also searching the same topic (Salaries of Lawyers). Weird</p>
<p>I probably won’t be going to a presigious college for Undergrad. Will this hurt my chances of getting a job at a big firm later on. I’m not even sure if I’m going to go with Law or stick with my passion: Film making.</p>
<p>This guy just got a bad break. In my experience, law is about knowing the right people and getting involved in a big firm doing corporate. Honestly, in New York, being even decently well connected will eventually make you a partner doing 800k a year. That gets you a house in West Chester, private school for kids, and maybe a summer house. It seems like a similar deal in Chicago, Boston, and Philly. Education, by itself, will not guarantee real world success.</p>
<p>It really depends what kind of law you choose to go into, and what kind of background you have. Poli Sci major looking to work in civil suits? Have fun managing a restaurant somewhere. Accounting/Finance major looking to go into corporate litigation? The job market will be a little more open.</p>
<p>But in general, it is a crappy field inundated with unqualified wanna be’s. Like the guy that wrote that article.</p>
<p>Although law may not guarantee you a home in the hamptons, as it has failed to do for my aunt (mostly because she’s incompetent rather than unlucky), I don’t think stories like the one of this one guy are the norm. Think about why the unfortunate stories outnumber the happy ones? Would someone happy with a career in law be wasting time writing an internet article about how well things have gone for him? probably not.</p>
<p>*Honestly, in New York, being even decently well connected will eventually make you a partner doing 800k a year.*That figure would be in the higher echelons of even T5 graduates. A more appropriate point is that after a point a high-end lawyer’s salary can increase greatly.</p>
<p>Medicine and Law are both fields in which the general public has a highly inflated idea of actual earnings. A highly specialized back-surgeon? Sure. A partner at a White Shoe Firm? Obviously. Your average MD/JD? Not so much. The salary range of a lawyer is between 45k and 175k in America.</p>
<p>Paying for law school is one hell of an investment. Some firms will recruit from HY only, forget T5/T10.</p>
<p>This is not necessarily true. There are some fields of law that essentially require a BS (IP especially comes to mind; almost all IP lawyers have a STEM degree), but most areas of law can be practiced without a degree in that specific field. Civil law is an incredibly broad area, and is definitely a field that one can enter with almost any undergraduate degree. Of course, a bachelor’s degree will give a lawyer an advantage in some areas of civil law, but civil law encompasses so many different kinds of cases. Corporate litigation is an example of what I’m talking about. You can go into corporate law with just about any undergraduate major because you will learn what you need to know about corporate law in law school. But someone with a degree in econ who has a firm grasp of business would be more attractive to a firm hiring someone for this type of law. For this reason, many students pursue a joint JD/MBA (lawyers with an MBA often get an added signing bonus even).</p>
<p>"The U.S. is presently the only country with enough lawyers, as well as journalists and sociologists who specialize in studying them, to have widely available data on salary structures at major law firms.</p>
<p>In 2006, median salaries of new graduates ranged from US$50,000 per year in small firms (2 to 10 attorneys) to US$160,000 per year in very large firms (more than 501 attorneys)."</p>
<p>If you work in a big firm you’ll probably make a lot of money. If you don’t you probably won’t. The thing is pretty the only way to get into a big firm is to go to a prestigious law school.</p>
<p>Challenged, I’m not a member of the “general public” who is convinced that all doctors and lawyers make 7 figures. I’ve lived in places like White Plains, Greenwich, the Upper East Side, and London at various points in my life. My impression of corporate law in NY is that most jobs are being given out based on connections and personal relationships. It’s only a handful of brainiacs at Harvard/Yale/Stanford who are getting these top 800k+ jobs based on their academic credentials. It’s not a meritocracy.</p>
<p>I was not talking of you when I said that. It is popular belief, however, that attorneys make big bucks. The White Shoe firms, as they are called, is certainly plagued by cronyism. But hey, big business everywhere is…</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is that lawyers tend to not have a lot of job satisfaction. Big Law lawyers tend to work a ridiculous amount of hours. 40% of associates leave their firm by the end of their third year.</p>