I like that idea…
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I work in corporate HR and was never a strong math student. I majored in Classics, got a job in a corporate training program (which I hated) and then went to Business School (which I loved). I had to take remedial math before starting the MBA but it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I learned that weak math students get the weak math teachers in K-12.
This U put the BEST math instructor in front of the “math phobics”, terrible math students, etc. and he was magical. Now that I’ve seen my own kids progression (they were always strong math students and loved math) it’s clear- great math students get great math teachers which reinforces why math is so much fun.
There are thousands of business careers out there. Some are math intensive, others not so. Labor Relations- uses fourth great math. Digital marketing- high school math. Event management- arithmetic. Compensation analysts- some math and being strong in math will lead to senior roles with really interesting work and great pay. Executive Communications (includes speechwriting)- just basic math. PR- no math. Investor Relations- some math, but there are experts on the actual finance piece who do the heavy lifting. Facilities management- you need to be able to read a spreadsheet, but the only real math you’ll do is multiplication. Real Estate development- basic spreadsheets. Internal Communications- virtually no math.
If your D’s notion is “I don’t like blood and don’t like programming so I’ll become a lawyer” we can save her a LOT of aggravation! So many great careers out there!!!
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I liked law school. I graduated in the 80’s and jobs were hard to come by and paid little. I made it. I worked for peanuts. I moved to cities where I didn’t know anyone just for a job. Many people I worked with over the years went to lower ranked schools. My sister went to a lower ranked school and became a partner at a wall street firm (worked at a corporate law department for 10 years first). I know a lot of people who hung out shingles and did quite well. NOT big firm partner level, but they liked their careers. State jobs, federal jobs, corporations.
When I worked for a federal agency, we had 6 paralegals who had law degrees. They liked their jobs and made a lot of money (and lots of overtime if they traveled). It was 2010-2012. They couldn’t ‘move up’ to lawyer level at our agency because we required two years of experience as a lawyer to be hired, and they didn’t want to leave their paralegal jobs ($$$) to go get 2 years of experience. When the agency closed that office, they went and got jobs as attorneys (or stayed with the agency as contract experts), most at the banks we worked with. Most were from unranked law schools (southern California, the state that allows unaccredited schools and Kim Kardashian to sit for the bar) but they made it work. They practiced a lot of law as paralegals.
I was transferred with the agency and the new office was next door to a Fourth Tier law school. We hired two students who were pretty good students as interns and paid them a lot. Why did they go to that school? One because her husband’s job was in that city (only law school available) and I don’t remember why the guy did (maybe money?). Anyway, we got them started on their law careers. I WOULDN’T recommend that path. It was hard for them and honestly, they were lucky to get such good experience with us, but they did it. Many of the students at that school were foreign and weren’t eligible to work for the US govt. This was in 2013, so post the 2008 ‘change’ you all speak of.
At that government agency, the lawyers had gone to all types and ranks of law schools - Wyoming, Harvard, Wake Forest, Vandy, Florida (graduated #1 in her class), Miami. Some had been at big firms, others had always worked in government positions. The head of the legal division had joined this agency right out of law school and worked there for 40 years! We were paid pretty well and we worked 40 hours per week (or were paid overtime or comp time). It was a great gig. I loved it.
I never wanted to work 80 hours per week at Big Law. I know recent grads of non-T14 schools who are getting jobs. They have to work hard, they have to go into the office and can’t demand to work from home. They might be doing real estate when they would prefer to do criminal work, but they are getting jobs. I think it is horrible that some fed prosecutor’s offices offer unpaid internships to recent grads to they can get experience - that means only rich people can take those internships. PAY them!
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Interesting, blossom!! I really do appreciate that list of low-math-bar professions!
I’m not 100% sure what my D is thinking re: the law school ideas. I’m happy to support her in whatever endeavor challenges and engages her (and through which she can comfortably support herself!).
My concern is that she’s seen my career (and we’ve engaged in many policy/legal discussions at home!). She at least has a vision of the legal field (accurate or not!) and it can be hard to pursue something with which you are unfamiliar - or don’t even know exists!
Maybe I’d better start that thread on alternate careers, thumper1! lol Hehe maybe I can quote you in the first post, blossom? 
Crediting this
Yea the hustle is necessary. It wasn’t at T13s before 2008. It is now unless you’re at HYS. The unaccredited are despised in CA but they are very cheap. They won’t ruin your life unlike Thomas Jefferson or Whittier or some other CA accredited dumpster fire.
I do think the picture you paint is unintentionally rosy, even if true in the details provided. In any given year half of law school graduates will not get a legal job, there are only enough for 1 in 2. That half that failed isn’t going into banking or anything desirable, they were blocked from entering the profession they devoted three years to entering. They’re now going into retail and food service. There are plenty of alums from T13, T30, T50 schools that cannot get jobs. If it is 5% or 30%, it is a lot for schools of that caliber. Most of them networked, built up a knowledge base to get through interviews, and studied hard. The legal industry will probably continue to contract in the medium-term, and firms will fire you at a moments notice because they have a dozen candidates to replace you lined up.
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The picture you paint is unnecessarily pessimistic and not my experience. And I’m involved in hiring and have been for many years.
Some of the schools you mentioned have horrible percentages of graduates entering any job requiring a JD, even if the job is fourth string ambulance chasing it counts. The stronger ones like Vanderbilt still don’t go above 50% in big law. They cannot justify their sticker price or three years of study after undergraduate. The hiring market for attorneys is completely broken and no one in good conscience should advocate going to law school unless it is a T13 nearly free due to a high LSAT score. The poster above outlined so many opportunities better than law, without having to do any studying after a BA.
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Might I remind members of the Forum Rules:
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
The conversation long ago went off-topic, but now a couple of users are just debating. College Confidential is not a debate society. Please make your point without belaboring it.
I have to say - as a person in an extremely diverse profession (law) with a daughter contemplating devoting three years of graduate school to that same profession decades after I entered it - I find every single post on this thread incredibly valuable and insightful. Yes, one may paint a somewhat negative/discouraging picture while others paint more hopeful images.
That’s because the topic is nuanced, complicated, and can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. I personally think we are all mature enough to see the big picture here and construe that people are speaking from their own point of view. It’s important to hear all sides and I appreciate it very much.
(I’ll also add - as to the off-topic aspect - when the issue of finances re: law school is raised, it is a quite relevant to discuss projected income/job (or lack thereof) that might result from that finanical investment. At least to me!)
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Interesting thread. Admittedly lacking knowledge here. Question to the group (as it may help some), what is the professional goal of most in law school? Is Big Law the predominant desire? I ask because I know several lawyers who either started their own practice (Estate Planning or general practice) or who were in corporate and have shifted to their own practice. One guy was quite successful in corp law advising major clients on white collar crime issues, compliance, etc. He got sick of the travel and hung his shingle and is doing quite well. The estate planning folks I know do pretty well. Not Big Law well but Pediatrician well. They essentially are running a small business like any other small business.
Just curious how relevant that is for those seeking a law degree?
I am not a lawyer but work in the regulatory area of an industry that is federally regulated. I work with lots of lawyers and spend a large amount of time reviewing legal filings for technical accuracy.
The firms we work with are not big law. I googled big law to see what it is considered to be and I only run into two of those names on a regular basis. They do seem to work long hours. I would not be willing to put in the hours that our outside counsel does. They basically do the same things that I do from a different perspective. I supply technical expertise and technical cites, they do the same from the legal side. All in all, I don’t think it’s a bad way to make a living.
In addition to that, which quite frankly makes even $200k in debt manageable if you obtain certain jobs, one thing not mentioned is how a law degree can set you up long term for lucrative fulfilling non legal careers. Much has been made of not so desirable jobs and at the other end, the possibility of going into IB from law (not that easy). Among my group of close friends from Berkeley Law, maybe 50% stayed in law. Several went into real estate development, a few into banking, a few into wealth management and a few into nonlegal positions in business. Granted, we all started either in private practice/clerkships, but it was relatively easy to transition into a different career, especially one that was related to our practice.
While the connections you make in your field provide direct opportunities to switch career path, the ability to intellectually adapt to new skills I attribute in great part to how top law schools approach the teaching of law. For me it was more like 3 years advanced history and philosophy of law. The top law schools aren’t interested in teaching their students to pass the bar, they figure their students are bright enough to pass any test just requiring mostly rote memorization on their own. A good law school and its professors will challenge you to look at all sides of a problem, identify what the key issues are, apply precedent and logic to support your position, and then ask you to take the opposite conclusion and support that position. This skill and mindset is valuable for any job. At a top law school, almost every class has that caliber of professor and students to make that type of learning work. As we tier down law schools, the percentages of of professors and students capable of sustaining that type of learning diminishes until we get to law schools that primarily are a 3 year bar review course. We then have to ask, how much is that type of education worth vs the other?
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Again, opportunities for graduates of top 10 law schools are very, very different than those who graduate from lesser-ranked schools. But there is one thing that isn’t different: the three years invested and the exorbitant tuition.
And all law schools, more or less, teach the same subjects the same way, and there are few if any “law schools that primarily are a 3 year bar review course”. The reality is that the lesser schools have much worse bar passage rates than the top schools, and some have even offered inducements to their lesser skilled graduates to not take the bar exam.
Bottom line: law is a supremely hierarchical profession, and if you attend a top school, your career choices are much, much better.
And regarding non-law jobs: this will be a point of contention, but the whole point of attending law school is to be a lawyer. And these plum non-law jobs…again, if you attend a top law school, those jobs may be there. Otherwise, not so much.
It’s also important for potential attendees to ask themselves: why does the ABA require law schools to file annual “disclosures” regarding their student body, their graduates’ job status, etc? After all, no medical/dental/pharmacy/nursing schools are required to file such disclosures-so why law schools? The answer: so many law schools published job/salary numbers for their graduates that were simply fictional that there was a firestorm of protest. Hence, actual documents are now filed by the schools-and no other professional school has the same requirement.
That requirement alone speaks volumes about the status of the profession, and ought to give any prospective law school attendee pause.
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I was trying to address the question of whether it was worth it to go to a higher ranked law school that cost more or a cheaper lower ranked law school. There is no argument that grads of T10 have much better and wider opportunities. I was trying to address a point for the OP that I felt was not covered, which is how good legal training can open doors to other fields. Sure, don’t go to law school to become a real estate developer, but that path (and others) is wide open if you practice commercial real estate law (name another specialty) and decide to go to the business side.
I do disagree with you about the education you receive as you tier down law schools. The subjects covered may be the same, but what is emphasized and how well the matter is taught is very different. Further, the quality of students affect the very important back and forth discussions, Socratic method or not. The low bar passage rates of lesser schools has more to do with the quality of students. Here I agree 100%, before you sign up for any law school, it is critical to review the historical outcomes of graduates.
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Crediting this. Any non law jobs are much easier to get without a JD. A JD opens no non law doors an MBA or maters or BA in Econ cannot. A JD can actually close a lot of doors you have open if you have a BA from an Ivy. That advanced degree shows you don’t know what you want
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Well, we’ll just disagree. Getting a JD to pursue a career in a non-legal field is just a bad idea. There are just too many specialized master’s programs which address pretty much everything in the banking/business world. My advice stands: don’t go to law school to become a real estate developer.
And what/where are these “cheaper lower ranked law school(s)”? A brief review of lower-ranked schools reveals them all to be ridiculously expensive.
This is so contrary to my experience. I was an equity partner in BigLaw, an MD in a bulge bracket IB and now run a medium sized company. As mentioned upthread, 50% of my core friends from law school are no longer practicing lawyers. I agree, don’t go to law school if you know you want to do something else, that’s 3 years and huge $$ you could have applied elsewhere, however, many doors remain open after a legal stint, brief or long. I have come across so many senior management types who were former lawyers – our running joke is that we are finally earning an honest living where people are happy to pay for our goods/services.
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Well, I too have been involved in attorney hiring, in my case for a large government agency which has over 200 attorneys. We post an entry-level job and get dozens and dozens of resumes from experienced attorneys, some with 25+ years of practice-again, for an entry level job.
So the professional options of a top 10 graduate with BigLaw experience are very very different from that of an attorney without those credentials. There are very few doors open for these attorneys.
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Yes, based on the resume listed you are definitely a great deal older than current law students. They are facing a shadow of the profession you joined for a time. HR in large companies, finance, and consulting is way more mature. There are more defined pipelines for hiring none of which include going after Yale Law students. They are usually perplexed someone would jettison three years of schooling for a smaller salary, even if there is more upside long term.