<p>So I am going into the junior year of my undergrad and I am currently entertaining the idea of applying to a T20 law school through their binding early admissions process.</p>
<p>I have done a ridiculous amount of research on the legal job market and everyone is just saying run away and don't touch the profession with a 10 foot pole. So basically, I understand that I shouldn't even be entertaining the idea of applying right now.</p>
<p>However, I am a first-generation minority student and my parents would love for me to be a lawyer and I would love to be able to make a comfortable living so I can help them when I get older since they have done so much for me. In addition, I would really love to be a judge in a county or state court where I get to see people everyday and maybe make a difference in their life. To get to that point, I know I have to be an attorney first.</p>
<p>My question is, where do you see the market going in 5 years? If everything went according to plan I wouldn't graduate law school until 2018. Would it still be a bad idea for me to apply to the law school even though I can't deny attending if they don't offer me financial aid?</p>
<p>I hope I don't sound too naive posting this. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>No one can predict where the market will be in 5 years. Just ask law firms circa 2006. </p>
<p>Law school is a good proposition for certain people depending on their interests and financial commitment. In your case, the first question I have is why do you want to be a lawyer? You talked about money and how your parents feel, but I don’t see anything really about how you feel. Going into law to make money is what leads to such high unhappiness among lawyers. I recommend you take an internship with a firm/agency/public defender/district attorney’s office to get a glimpse of what practicing law is really about. Whether you like the day-to-day work is what really should determine your career goals.</p>
<p>I would guess that most T-20 law school graduates in the top quarter of their class have no problem getting jobs. The problem is after a couple years the big firms start making cuts to the hiring class. What do you do then? Anyway most people roll the dice, hoping to make partner. If you can get into a T20 school and graduate at the top of the class, then you should do it. GL</p>
<p>You state “So basically, I understand that I shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of applying right now.”
You then list what can only be described as visceral reasons for attending law school. Keep in mind that unless you get merit aid(and lots of it), you’re looking at between 100-200K of law school debt on top of any UG debt.
Take Demo’s advice and determine why you want to be a lawyer, and if so, make a very dispassionate calculation as to whether or not it’s worth it. Being a lawyer is a job, not a religious calling. The whole point is to be able to earn a living.
And if you decide, even after the cost/benefit analysis that you still want to go, take soso’s advice and get into a top school(although I’d recommend T-10 rather than T-20); the higher the rank the better.
DO NOT go to law school to impress anybody, or because it will make someone else feel good for whatever reason. You’ve got to be the one to make the commitment to get into a top school and then do well once you’re there; nobody else can or will do that for you.</p>
<p>Well that’s the thing, I don’t want to work in a big law firm. I don’t want to try to make 160k working 80-100 hours a week.
I didn’t communicate this very well I guess but I do actually have a genuine interest in law. Like I said, I do want to work for public interest at a local or state level. I understand I will probably be making maybe 70k per year (not sure how accurate that estimate is but that is what I think I have gathered). The only issue is that I don’t want to be under an amazing amount of debt and not be able to pay for it.</p>
<p>Also, it is not like I just came upon this idea, I have been thinking about it since I was quite little. I just am now learning about what it actually entails and how difficult it is to get into the profession.</p>
<p>So that is why I am at the point of analyzing the cost/benefit before deciding that it may be possible to survive doing something that, I believe, will genuinely interest me or deciding that I could find something else to do that isn’t as much of a risk financially.</p>
<p>But I understand that no one can predict the market, I am just trying to get more insight since there is a possibility (maybe?) that the legal job market can change by the time I would potentially enter it.</p>
<p>I definitely do NOT want to be one of the lawyers down the line that I read about that say that there were so many people telling them to not go to law school, they did it anyway, and then they regret it because they are being crushed by debt, can’t find a job, or detest their job. I do want to take all of the advice that everyone is giving in consideration before making a decision as important as this.</p>
<p>If you made 70k at a PI firm I would be astonished. Think more like 30-40k, depending on your market. Public interest work does not pay well because generally your clients have no money. The job market for PI is just as tough as the job market for the major firms. </p>
<p>Luckily however, if you do land public interest you’ll qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness and not have to worry about your debt at all. You’ll pay a percentage of your disposable income for 10 years after which your loans will be forgiven (tax free!). Many schools will cover the 10 years of loan payments for you too under their Loan Repayment Assistance Programs. </p>
<p>I still recommend you get work or at least an internship in the legal field. It is very easy to get the wrong impression of what lawyers do. PI firms are always looking for free work, so interning there should be relatively easy.</p>
<p>First, it is impossible to predict the legal job market 5 years from now(just go back to August 2008 to see the hazards in doing that). That said, things look iffy at best.</p>
<p>In addition, you don’t define “public interest” work. If you mean PD or DA, those jobs pay about 60K/year to start. They are also extremely hard to get; most go to people who have interned in those offices for 1 or more years in law school(usually unpaid). And in the DA’s office where I worked, we had 12 such interns who had been with the office at least one year; after graduation and passing the bar, only 3 were hired as new ADAs.
If you mean “legal aid”, in most of the country those jobs no longer exist; they were purely government funded, and the funding has ceased.
if you mean ACLU, then you’ll need to graduate from a very top law school-they all seem to be top 5 graduates.
If you are URM, you may be eligible for grants from a top school; the trick is getting into the top school. You don’t mention your GPA, but study hard for the LSAT and see what happens. Just remember that attending law school is a business decision: in other words, is attending worth the time and money spent(or debt acquired).</p>
<p>maybe early decision at GW, which provides a full-tuition scholarship. If you worked at a firm one summer, you could cover/pay off loans for a chunk of living expenses. but otherwise, if you’re hoping to do public interest it better either be cheap or get a job you can do with a bachelor’s. My friends who worked at think tanks right out of college earned as much as I did when I started as a public interest lawyer–and I had 3 fewer years of earnings and a bunch of debt. Love my job, but financially it wasn’t the wisest choice.</p>
<p>If you want to go to law school. Don’t let others decide your decision, we all lie in the bed we make. Do not go binding decision though, that is just economically stupid.</p>
<p>^^Second the point about the stupidity of applying ED is you are a URM, (with the exception of George Washington and Northwestern both of which shower money on ED acceptees).</p>
<p>You really shouldn’t make a firm decision about going to law school until you have taken the LSAT, and know where you have been accepted, and how much it will cost you to go.</p>
<p>Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, has written book (sold only as an e-book, for $4.99) that talks in stark detail about how the market for lawyers has really declined.</p>
<p>Over the past few years, the market for new lawyers has declined to the point where only half of the new graduates obtain jobs that require bar membership, and few of those that do make enough money to service their student loans, which generally can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting you give up on your dreams. You can prep for the LSAT. But don’t sign up for a binding early admission process. If it does make financial sense for you to go to law school, it will probably be because you received a big enough merit aid package to make it worth your while. That will require you to have more than one bidder.</p>
<p>One more thing - never base your decision upon guesses about employment outcomes. Law schools have a sordid history of playing “hide the ball” with their employment statistics. The ABA is requiring them to be much more forthcoming. Check the “Law School Transparency” site for more information about this.</p>
<p>The oldest civil law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1848 at McGill University in Montreal, and the oldest common law faculty in Canada offering law degrees was established in 1883 at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The typical law degree required to practice law in Canada is now the Juris Doctor,which requires previous university coursework and is similar to the first law degree in the United States, except there is some scholarly content in the coursework (such as an academic research paper required in most schools). Law Degree in Indonesia are consist of three tier system. The first tier is the Degree of which carried the title of Sarjana Hukum/S.H. (Bachelor of Law) of which can be obtained normally in 4–7 years, after they entered the Law Faculty straight from Senior High School.</p>