<p>Re: paralegal. My son worked as a paralegal while he was at Penn. He had a LOT of responsibility (bordering on unauthorized practice of law…) and was offered a very big salary to stay at the firm (eccentric sole practitioner) after graduation. He turned it down because there was no way to advance except by going to law school. That said, the work was interesting and involved a lot of writing, client contact (high profile clients) and finance.</p>
<p>The paralegals at the company from which I just departed have good jobs. They are treated well, make good salaries and do interesting work (much of the time). Most had law firm backgrounds before they came in-house, and law firm paralegals either love their jobs or have the job from hell. My paralegal at the company could do almost everything I could do and was a huge asset to me. At law firms some are little more than admins. It really varies.</p>
<p>The problem is that if you don’t major in the math or sciences, there is really not much you can do with a liberal arts degree, other than to become a teacher, or a lawyer, or takea sales position.</p>
<p>My son is intending to major in liberal arts, so I have no bias here.</p>
<p>floridadad- This may give you hope. My son (Penn '10) was an English major. He got an excellent corporate job with an industry-leading tech company in a great city NOT in the northeast. However, he had some good work experience, too.</p>
<p>Floridadad, I’d encourage you to start a thread stating what you have stated above and see the thread grow to many pages with posts from CC parents alone who are in satisfying positions in MANY arenas with a non-math/science or liberal arts degree.</p>
<p>“The problem is that if you don’t major in the math or sciences, there is really not much you can do with a liberal arts degree, other than to become a teacher, or a lawyer, or takea sales position.”</p>
<p>You say that my comment “that if you get a liberal arts degree, that there is not much you can do other than to go to law school or become a teacher or get a sales position” is “a bunch of hooey”.</p>
<p>If so, why don’t you enlighten everyone as to exactly what kind of job a kid who majors in history or political science will do with that degree??? In my view, such kids invariably wind up going to law school. Hence, the over-supply of lawyers.</p>
<p>Since my son is planning in majoring in political science, I’d like to know.</p>
<p>Most do not go to law school, according to career surveys, although there could still be too many going to law school relative to the number of (good) lawyer jobs.</p>
<p>It is true that many humanities and social studies graduates do not get jobs where their major is directly applicable (not a lot of art museum jobs for art history majors, for example), though that does not mean that they do not get jobs at all. However, many realize that there are a lot of graduates competing for “non-specific bachelor’s degree jobs”, so they are more likely to set expectations accordingly.</p>
<p>It appears that unpleasant surprises at graduation may be more likely to hit biology and chemistry graduates, who may realize too late that not all STEM majors have good job and career prospects.</p>
<p>Friend’s daughter majored in Art History at Williams and got a job at Google right out of school in the Marketing Dept. She is 27. </p>
<p>One of my nieces’ undergrad degree at Colorado College was Antro with a Religion minor. She is a development officer at a large and very well funded non-profit in NYC. Right now she is in Kenya for the week, before that Uganda for a week, visiting programs in those country seeking grants from her agency. She is 28.</p>
<p>Other niece graduated Kenyon College with a degree in math and religion. Her first job out of college was in the cheese & wine department at a Whole Foods because she needed something to help pay the rent. She parlayed that into becoming an expert in cheese & wine and was promoted to dept. head. She then went to work for a niche shop in SF and becoming their head Cheesemonger. She has now parlayed that into becoming a buyer for a company which only imports cheese and wine only from Italy and she now travels to Italy as their buyer. She just turned 26. </p>
<p>Nephew recently graduated with a degree in Geography from Geneseo and is currently at Ohio State perusing Landscape Architect with an emphasis on public spaces. He has a free ride and is also getting a $1000/month stipend. </p>
<p>I have an undergrad degree in Communications and graduate degrees in Poli Sci and Public Policy. I have worked for Polling firms, legislators and as a lobbyist for a consortium of non profits.</p>
<p>DH has an undergrad degree in Poly Sci and a Masters in Public Admin. He has held numerous positions in gov’t from Budget, to financial management systems and is now head of Emergency Communications for the State of NY. He could have just as easily gone to work for a consulting firm and still may once he retires from the State. </p>
<p>I have no idea what the three recent law school grads in my family majored in as undergrads but one is working as an ADA in Queens ('09 grad), one is an attorney ('07) for the feds in Immigration/ICE and the most recent grad (May '11) was hired by the private firm he interned with during his 3rd yr. None of them went to top law schools, either.
In order Temple, Indiana, U of San Francisco.</p>
<p>You don’t have to work for a politician to have a career in public service. Government agencies hire communications people to publicize the agency’s activities, build support from stakeholders and manage outreach with new media tools.</p>
<p>I took an AmeriCorps internship with the Forest Service doing similar work, and it turned into a graduate program and a career-track job with the agency as an interpretive park ranger.</p>
<p>And no, I didn’t major in math or science - so according to floridadad, I’m doomed :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I second the idea about Human Resources. I work in HR and see a lot of overlap between law and business. There’s advocacy, negotiating, writing, and lots and lots of compliance. Further, since HR usually “owns” an employer’s professional development function, employees in that dept are constantly encouraged to increase their skills and education. </p>
<p>The variety of HR work almost has something for anyone: HRIS for the data cruncher, employment/recruiting for the extrovert, comp and benefits for the strategist, workforce communications for the writer/creative type, and general operations for the relationship builder.</p>
<p>My D (2011 BA in art/arch) is happily employed in marketing, but it’s clear there is no oppty to advance in her non-profit w/o a graduate degree. </p>
<p>She has no interest in law school that landscape arch program in Ohio is more to her liking), but many generalists do opt for law - - and one can get law jobs, even today, but it is difficult, particularly if one does not graduate at the top of his/her class. A regional law school might be a good choice, depending on where OP lives (or where S would attend school) - - the east coast, for example, is a tough nut to crack due in no small measure to the number of T1 law school running from NC to MA (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Penn, Gtown, UVA, Duke). Of course, if one has family/friends with contacts or one impresses the staff at his/her intern placement, one’s chances of employment sky-rocket.</p>
I recall reading about this LS in the news. Some grads are suing it. Do you have any idea why your GF’s sister thought it’d be a good idea to attend this particular LS?</p>
<p>This is obvious hogwash. Approximately 67,000 new law students enrolled for the first time in 2011. This is down by about 11% from its peak a few years ago. </p>
<p>In contrast there are about 1.6 million Bachelor’s degrees conferred annually in the U.S., less than a third of them in STEM majors and another 20% or so in business. So that means roughly 700,000 to 800,000 Bachelor’s degrees annually in non-STEM, non-business fields. If all these people “inevitably” went to law school, law school enrollment would be about 10 times its current level.</p>
<p>The current “surplus” of lawyers has several causes. First, there are a lot of third- and fourth-tier law schools out there—New York Law School is one, perhaps floridadad55’s alma mater is another (I really don’t know)—that have never done a good job placing their graduates, and those who did find placement tended to find unattractive jobs at the bottom rungs of the profession. It’s always been a questionable, high-risk strategy to plunk down a lot of money for a place at those schools, and in the present job market it’s a worse bet than ever. I’d guess that’s where most of the declining enrollment is occurring, as students wise up to the fact that these schools are not a sound investment. Still, they continue to pump out more and more unemployed lawyers. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, at the top end of the market, the business model of high-end law firms is facing some severe challenges. Their newly cost-conscious clients are demanding better value: either fixed fees for services (as opposed to billable hours, with no incentive for the firm to rein in costs), or rate discounts, or leaner attorney staffing/billing. Many of their clients are also taking more legal work in-house, or farming some out to less expensive firms, or even outsourcing routine legal work to offshore platforms or cheaper back-office operations in lower-wage markets. Faced with declining revenues, the big firms are shifting their staffing model: fewer high-wage/partner-track associates, more low-wage contract employees, closing some departments and letting go some attorneys (even partners in some cases). As a consequence, they’re doing far less entry-level hiring than in the past, and that leaves more recent law grads competing for a declining number of well-paying positions. So the gravy train for graduates of the top law schools, while not completely dried up, is not as overflowing as it used to be. Those who graduate in the bottom half of the class even at excellent law schools may have a tough time of it. Those who graduate around the middle of the class may not get the big law firm jobs and will need to scramble for lower-paying jobs at smaller firms, in government agencies, and so on, where they’re currently competing with a lot of other newly minted lawyers as well as many experienced, laid-off or underemployed lawyers. Those who do very well in the top law schools also (in most cases) will do just fine in the job market. But many are also having to scale back their expectations: that $180K associate job at a Wall Street firm may not be there, and they may need to settle for an $80K job at a mid-level firm in a smaller market, or a $40K public sector job. Some may go weeks or months without a job. But hey, it’s a tough economy out there. It’s no different for recent graduates of undergrad business schools, or for a lot of STEM majors.</p>
<p>IMO, although it’s a tough market, the overall outlook for newly minted lawyers is not nearly as bleak as floridadad55 would have you believe (though it’s certainly worse in some markets than in others, and Florida may be particularly hard-hit). But the gravy train is over. If you can get into a top law school and do well there, graduating in the top third to top half of your class, you may do pretty well. Much below the top 20 or 25 law schools, though, and it’s a much riskier proposition. And even at the top 20 to 25 law schools, it may be tough sledding if you end up at the bottom of your class. So there are risks. But what career choice is without risks in this economy? I think there will always be a demand for legal services, and at the top end, demand for high-quality legal services. But the market is undergoing a shakeout right now, probably long overdue, and it will be some months or years before we start to see what the new structure of the legal market will look like.</p>
<p>“The current “surplus” of lawyers has several causes. First, there are a lot of third- and fourth-tier law schools out there . . . .”</p>
<p>But don’t those school exist precisely b/c so many students want a JD – even in a bad economy? No one is forcing students to plunk down $47K for NY Law Sch.</p>
<p>^^ Well, people are starting to figure out what a rip-off it is. That’s why the suit against NY Law School. People have been sold a bill of goods for years now about all the money they will make once they get out of law school. I’ve been practicing for over 30 years and have loved my career (well, mostly), but I did NOT go the big firm route, even though I went to a top 5 law school.</p>
<p>Floridadad, DH was an accounting and computer science major. Was a financial systems analyst (spent time on both the accounting and programming career tracks) for a Fortune 50 corporation for several years, and then went to law school. Escaped with about $47k in loans in the late 80s, which was less than it might have been were it not for some scholarships and a working spouse who covered living expenses. </p>
<p>He did the federal clerkship and law firm associate thing, but is now in a policymaking senior gov’t position doing work that involves accounting, systems and law on a daily basis. Loves being able to wear all his hats, even if the hours are longer than those at law firms, and feel she is making a difference. Attorneys who bring other skills to the table (esp. quant skills) are highly valued.</p>
<p>Our younger S is contemplating fields were a law degree might be useful. He and I have been talking about getting some quant/hard science skills to give him an edge in hiring. Suspect that may be more useful in post-undergrad pursuits than immediately heading to grad school and coming out with two degrees, no work experience and lots of debt.</p>
<p>That is certainly true at most top 25 universities and LACs. At Harvard around 410-430 students/year or an astounding 25% of each class ends up applying to law school. These numbers do not account for the students who started as prelaw and didn’t do too well on the LSAT or had insufficient GPAs and dropped out. At Amherst 111 students applied last fall out of an average graduating class of 430. </p>
<p>If you take away the engineers, premeds, other STEM majors and students going for PhDs, the majority of the rest ends up applying to law school. Most pol-sci majors are prelaw just as most biology majors are premed.</p>
<p>Two thoughts: Many of my friends in the humanities ended up working at google in advertising/communications or in the non-profit sector. These are very high achievers though.</p>
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