Regret Attending Law School?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>From the internet and talking with one attorney friend of mine, it just sounds that there is a lot of complaint about both law school and working as an attorney. </p>

<p>My friend the other night honestly said if he could do it all over again that he'd have gone to become a Ph.D. in history (something he greatly enjoys reading for pleasure) and not done law school. He feels his debt from law school traps him, at the moment, into working in law, where he is unhappy and has bounced around in several jobs. </p>

<p>It's as if every story he's told me about law school and working in law has been a miserable one. One of the few positives was his high salary, but he's since lost those jobs providing it and working for less than he'd like. </p>

<p>I thought I'd throw this question out there as someone possibly looking to attend law school (I'm looking into also either secondary education teaching or work in industry as I complete my master's degree this year): </p>

<p>Is there any regret from folks who did attend law school? Would you have done differently if given the chance all over again? </p>

<p>Thank you very much for your perspective and time.</p>

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<p>Good question… but I can honestly say, most people I know would have gone into different careers if able to make their choices now (though we are the “parent” population). There is a lot to take into acct. Job availability, location for job market, salary, FT vs PT, etc…</p>

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<p>Agree with Crazed. I wanted to be a teacher but the job market for teachers wasn’t good. I satisfy my yearning to teach by being a mentor, occasionally giving training on issues for my company, being a guest law school lecturer, and other activities. </p>

<p>At times I’ve been in meetings and social events where people have joked about the careers that they wish they had pursued instead of law, accounting, business, engineering, medicine, etc. There are lots of frustrated artists, philosophers, teachers, movie-makers, etc. out there. I was just talking to an accountant who said that he wanted to be a writer. (However, he doesn’t write in his free time.) </p>

<p>I don’t think anyone wishes they were going to grow up and work 60 hour weeks, whether as a lawyer, a physician, a manager of a retail establishment, a landscaper etc. I’m sure many CEOs, movie stars and Harvard Professors love their jobs. Unfortunately, most of us are lucky if we like our jobs. If your friend had actually become a PhD in history, perhaps he’d be complaining about students and tenure today – and wishing that he had gone to law school instead. It’s just human nature to think things might have been better if you had made different choices, as Crazed says.</p>

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<p>There’s a natural human tendency to brag about “how tough we had it back in the day.”</p>

<p>I don’t regret having gone to law school. It’s where I met my wife, and where I launched a career that plays to my strengths.</p>

<p>But the fact is that we had it much easier back in the day, when I actually managed to save enough money for three years of law school tuition the year before I went to law school by moonlighting as a musician. (That sounds like a joke, but it’s actually true.) Plus, 87% of us got jobs that required bar admission, even during a recession where the unemployment rate topped 10%.</p>

<p>Given the obscene levels to which law school tuition has risen, I suspect there are relatively few people who graduated from law school in the last few years without regrets.</p>

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<p>If I could have known that the job market in which I graduated into ('08) was fundamentally different than the one I started law school in, I would have made different choices. I considered, then rejected, the idea of working while going to law school part time - back in the mid-aughts, conventional wisdom was that you would be financially better off going to a higher-ranked law school than going to a lower-ranked night school. Now, that’s hardly true - even at very well-regarded law schools, employment is so spotty that you are best off keeping your debt down. Perhaps I would have just taken the USPTO patent agent exam and been an agent, not an attorney. So some regrets on that. </p>

<p>There’s certainly been some great moments over the last four years that likely would never have happened in my old career, but they weren’t worth $100k in educational debt. On the same vein, I changed a LOT since starting law school, but (a) that’s not worth six figures in debt and (b) the idea that anyone should spend gobs of money on formal higher education in order to grow as a human is just bizarre. </p>

<p>Which gets me to my real advice regarding law school: if we were to shut down every law school in America tomorrow, the people who would be successful lawyers will almost all find a way to be successful in another career. Some of those who would not be successful lawyers (in an overcrowded, stressful field) would also find a successful, fulfilling career. Lawyers who are tapped for leadership roles in their communities and states would probably be tapped for those roles even if they didn’t have a law degree. </p>

<p>So ditch the idea that a J.D. is going to fundamentally change anyone’s boring, middling career into a shiny, successful, amazing one. (It may do the opposite, as you could be told by any attorney who has been passed over for non-attorney jobs on account of being ‘overqualified’. There is a saying that the push for universal home ownership turned “good renters into bad owners,” and the same could be said of law school - it turns good product designers, insurance agents, or salesmen into unemployed lawyers.)</p>

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<p>I don’t regret going, but I was really lucky. I still think it’s a pretty good bet to go to Harvard Law, especially if someone is paying the tuition for you or you have a public interest passion that will qualify for loan repayment. This doesn’t tell you anything about whether it’s a good idea to borrow money to go to Cardozo nowadays.</p>

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<p>ariesathena, great post.
Most college grads would not consider post grad education if they could find meaningful jobs right after graduation.Law school is the easier post grad option, no UG course prereqs nor work experience is required for entrance.</p>

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<p>Hi Hanna, </p>

<p>Now that really sounds like a high bar - Harvard Law School. :slight_smile: I’m not sure that I’d be able to get in, but I may have a shot at some other high ranking schools. </p>

<p>Are you of the opinion then that only a few select law schools are worth attending?</p>

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<p>Greybeard, that’s crazy you could pay for law school like that in the old days. It would be nice if I could do that. Education is like a big business these days. Costs are so much higher.</p>

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<p>Many are discontent with their choices of having gone to law school, since these folks would’ve been better served not going in first place.</p>

<p>In my view, law school is only worth it if all of the following conditions are met:</p>

<p>1) You get into at least a top 14 law school, or a strong regional school in the state in which you want to practice with large merit scholarship,</p>

<p>2) You have no other decent alternate career to fall back on: your B.A. in history or poli sci ain’t getting you any decent employment prospects. If you can get a 60k/yr entry level job in any field, seriously re-think law school and at least work for a few years and think more.</p>

<p>3) You are mentally prepared to drop out of law school, in case your grades after 1L year don’t make the cutoff for the legal employment of your desire, or early 2L year when you strike out at OCI, thus being able to minimize law school debt.</p>

<p>In my view, law school, if you are at the right school and get the right grades, can open doors that otherwise wouldn’t exist for many. At my law school, close to 55-60% of students my year managed to get something from OCI and scored Biglaw or other desired type of legal employment, salaries usually starting at 160k/ yr. </p>

<p>Compare this odds to the job prospects of my undergrad - I attended a top 15 college and majored in Economics. From the recruiters I’ve talked to that came to info sessions on campus, most Investment Banks or top consulting firms (such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et al) typically received ~250 applicants from my college alone, each year. Out of that pool, usually around 10% were invited for FIRST ROUND interviews. After all was said and done, each bank would end up giving offers to 4-5 students from my school, each year on average. Not exactly high odds that someone can receive an offer from finance/ consulting employers, even coming from a top-level undergrad. I know dozens of kids from my Ivy undergrad who are still unemployed, 2 years after graduation, despite having 3.5+ GPA. Yes, the job market really is that brutal.</p>

<p>Compared to those figures, getting top employment with legal employers gives students much higher odds of success - again, provided that you are at the right school to begin with. I would argue that outside of Top 14 law school - your odds of “success” goes down significantly and combined with the cost of law school, one should be extremely careful and think things through before making the decision to enroll in law school.</p>

<p>Law school is basically like a lottery. Harvard Law = 70-75% chance of success, Columbia/ NYU = ~60-65% chance of success, Georgetown = ~40-45% chance of success, Fordham = ~20=25% chance of success… a tier two law school = ~ 5-10% chance of success, and the list goes on.</p>

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<p>“Are you of the opinion then that only a few select law schools are worth attending?”</p>

<p>Only a select few law schools are worth borrowing $150,000 for. If you’re borrowing less than that, or nothing, or you have a guaranteed job waiting for you after law school (like at your dad’s firm), or your whole life you have wanted a particular kind of public service opportunity and you need the law degree first, then that changes the calculation. If you really want to be a prosecutor in Kentucky, it may make a lot of sense to go to U Kentucky Law, especially since it won’t cost a big-city price. But even then, you need to be aware of the risks.</p>

<p>I agree with the lottery analogy, though I think the stated numbers are too low.</p>

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<p>I’d say the numbers are too high. You don’t have a 5-10% chance of BigLaw from a T2. Maybe the top 5 students have a shot…</p>

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<p>Not sure about Harvard Law, but at my school (NYU) close to 65% of student body my year landed employment of their desire, based on the statistics 2L’s received this year from our career office. (Biglaw + clerkship + PI all combined) That still leaves ~35% of the students at my school with less than optimal employment outcome.</p>

<p>Re Georgetown, based on NLJ250 stats, ~31% of their 2L’s landed at big firms. Add extra 10-15% of student body, at most, who opted for clerkships, PI, or other mid-sized firm jobs, and the rough figure comes out at 40-45%.</p>

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<p>Regarding a T2 law school, I don’t consider landing Biglaw as the metric of success, since most people going to a T2 know they won’t get Biglaw going in. I was more addressing the rough likelihood of T2 grads being able to get full-time, associate jobs in their region or other legit lawyer jobs at PI, DA office, government, etc that would justify 3 years of opportunity and financial costs. </p>

<p>I would still say that a JD from a top school is a better bet than a B.A. in non-engineering/CS/math major from a top college.</p>

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<p>cbreeze: I worked in an engineering firm prior to law school, doing meaningful R&D work. That’s part of the regret of law school - I know that I was leaving a remunerative career, not a job that barely pays the bills. That is also why it irks me when people say, “But you’ve done XYZ over the past few years!” Well, yeah, but I was doing some awesome things before law school, too, they were just different awesome things. </p>

<p>College grads who do not find meaningful, high-paying work at the age of 22 also have the option of actually finding a job, working their way up, and then getting a JD/MBA/masters/PhD when it becomes clear that the degree would help them advance into a certain position. (I guess I don’t respect the idea that someone with no work experience is owed a high-paying, interesting job; those are earned.)</p>

<p>Hanna, et al: my advice to anyone who asks is “Go to Harvard or go for free.” If you’re not going to a school that will pay your loans when you graduate, or you’re not going to have any loans, don’t go. (The one exception would be cheap, cheap in-state schools, like UF - last I checked, about $10k a year. That’s back to the Greybeard situation of paying most of law school as you go.)</p>

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<p>We are on pretty much the same page – we just see slightly different margins.</p>

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<p>This is why I believe that no one should attend any law school - including Harvard Law - if that individual is able to land a decent entry level job after college that would lead to a career. </p>

<p>Or at least, work for several years and re-evaluate your goals.</p>

<p>Purely from cost-benefit analysis, it doesn’t make much financial sense to attend a law school given that an individual can land a 60k/yr entry level job after college with decent career progression.</p>

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<p>Not sure if you are aware, but there are 17 million college grads, in the U.S., that work in jobs that don’t require a college degree. The underlying fundamental problem lies in the supply vs demand equation. In the U.S., there are just too many colleges, and everyone and his grandma can get into a college. In Germany, in contrast, only those qualified get into any college, and those that do attend school nearly free.</p>

<p>The job market for non-engineering/CS/math/accounting/finance majors are absolutely abysmal. I know people with B.A.'s from top Ivies struggling to find 50k a year entry level job. However, most of these folks were political science/ biology/ english/ chemistry majors, not CS/ engineering/ math. </p>

<p>However, just because one can’t find a meaningful work after college, one shouldn’t automatically resort to law school or any other grad school for that matter. Going to a law school outside T14 gives someone a tremendous risk that their life may turn out worse than it already is.</p>

<p>I strongly believe that higher education in the U.S. nowadays is somewhat of a double-edged sword. If you hit bulls-eye after your JD, MBA, PhD or what not, you can get solid returns on your education and find meaningful work in the area of your interest. However, you could also easily end up getting more screwed with an advanced degree, compared to not having done a grad degree at all in the first place.</p>

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<p>Don’t go to law school assuming it will prepare you for other careers. It does not. You may decide you don’t want to practice law down the road but you should be sure you want to practice law going in. I graduated from law school in the early '80’s and things were very different. I was $5k in debt and thought that was a lot. I did not graduate from a tier 1 school, but no one had trouble finding jobs. I was told that if I scheduled 4 interviews, I would get 2 callbacks and at least one offer. I did just that. The interviews were with were with 2 biglaw firms and 2 boutiques that spun off from biglaw firms. It could not have been more stress free and was night and day from what kids go through today.</p>

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<p>NYU,</p>

<p>Let’s back up to the beginning. This is a “Did you regret going to law school” thread, not a “do you regret being in law school” thread. (The latter is valuable; perhaps you should start it.)</p>

<p>I started law school when you were in high school. Now, I’m not Greybeard, DadofSam, or jonri, but I’ve seen the legal industry change a lot over the almost-decade since I took the LSATs (June 2003, to be exact). </p>

<p>To reiterate, the decision I made in the early/mid-aughts was, given all the facts in front of me, a sensible one - albeit one that I would strongly discourage anyone from doing today, in light of what the legal industry has become. (For the record, I went to a top-tier school, was on a journal, worked in a litigation firm for a year, and graduated with Latin honours. My alma mater was among the least expensive, if not the least expensive, of any school of its calibre. Nevertheless, it now costs about 50% more than when I graduated, and about 65% more than when I started.)</p>

<p>[blockquote]The job market for non-engineering/CS/math/accounting/finance majors are absolutely abysmal. I know people with B.A.'s from top Ivies struggling to find 50k a year entry level job.[/blockquote]
ROFLMAO. Um, I hate to break it to you, but no entry-level, unskilled job pays $50k a year - because people who have no marketable job skills aside from “Look at my shiny Ivy degree!” are worth that money. Your friends aren’t going to find a job that feeds them peeled grapes, provides complimentary massages and champagne, and gives them use the company jet, either. Incidentally, this is also some of the crisis facing law school graduates - few 25-year-olds are worth a six-figure salary, and most of them need it to pay off their loans. </p>

<p>As a wise person once said, “A lot of people graduate law school and find out that they don’t like to work; it’s not the legal industry, they just don’t like working.” Perhaps a young’un ought to find out prior to law school what he thinks of 60-hour work weeks, no matter how low-paying the work is. </p>

<p>Which gets me to my next point, which I don’t think you appreciate: one of the biggest sea changes to hit the legal profession is the unwillingness of firms to train people. The lateral job market is opening up, and, from what a lot of partners tell me, will remain strong. However, firms will not train many people - it’s expensive, and some clients are refusing to pay first-year associates to work on their cases. (IIRC, Wal-Mart was the first company to do this, and did so prior to 2008.) Just as a data point, I talked to someone whose friend went to Western New England and got hired at a mid-sized NYC law firm a few weeks after passing the NY bar: he had clerked all through law school.</p>

<p>Likewise, another long-term trend is to hire on people who have some other skill besides being good at taking final exams at high-ranked law schools. Just as the college degree is watered down, so is the JD, and many firms and businesses are looking for people with additional skill sets. If you can’t do anything else besides go to law school, then you’re going to graduate as someone who can’t do much besides be a law school graduate.</p>

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<p>The challenging part is getting the job in the first place. Once you are able to break in, many entry level jobs after college pay more than 50-60k a year to start out.</p>

<p>Heck, many of my friends working in I-banking, consulting, or trading are making well over 100k a year second year out of college. Some kids who were government, english, or psychology majors are making that much. Again, no way are these kids the norm in the grand scheme of things, but they were one of the few winners that scored the Wall St lottery pot after college.</p>

<p>Same as Biglaw. Most recent law grads don’t have marketable skills to directly contribute to law firms, but they get paid 160k a year starting out. Besides law, accounting, corporate finance, IT, Operations, or even PWM pay at least 50-60k a year straight out of school, with minimal skills/ experience. Again, the challenging part is actually landing the job in first place.</p>

<p>I had a couple of job offers my senior year college, somewhat finance related, that paid close to 65-70k a year to start. I declined both offers and chose to enroll at NYU Law. Looking back, I somewhat regret my choice, and think that at the least, I should’ve worked for at least several years at those said jobs and re-evaluate my long-term plans all the while building valuable experience and collecting pay check. </p>

<p>The primary reason for turning down those jobs was that both jobs required me to move to cities that I wasn’t so interested in. (both were located in mid-sized cities, in which I knew nobody) I am a huge city person, I naturrally wanted to seek a long-term career in a mega large city, such as NYC, SF, LA, or Chicago.</p>

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<p>NYULawyer, the median household income in America is about $50k a year. Household. Median. Look, very, very, very few people who aren’t engineers, finance people, or accountants make that money straight out of college. (Give it a few years, and things will be different, hence my advice to work.)</p>

<p>Back to my original point: this study applies to college, not law school or graduate school, but illustrates the way in which college (or law school) doesn’t necessarily add as much value as you think it would. Highly intelligent, hard-working people are often going to be successful anyway, and spending $200,000 on the process isn’t going to change things quite as much as one would think: [High-profile</a> studies overrate going to college and picking the right major - Economics - AEI](<a href=“http://www.aei.org/article/economics/high-profile-studies-overrate-going-to-college-and-picking-the-right-major/]High-profile”>http://www.aei.org/article/economics/high-profile-studies-overrate-going-to-college-and-picking-the-right-major/)</p>

<p>Final thought: a linear increase in student loan debt takes an exponentially longer time to pay off. (Debt that increases exponentially may never be paid off.)</p>