<p>There is an article in today's WSJ by Cameron Stracher, the publisher of the New York Law School Law Review and the author of "Double Biling: A Young Lawyer's Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair" basically saying that if you can't attend top law schools then perhaps it's not economically advisable to attend second, third , fourth tier law schools because the average salary of those graduates are only about $60,000 and you have incurred crushing debts attending law school.</p>
<p>What if you graduate debt free?</p>
<p>Does this mean the top 14 or the entire top tier?</p>
<p>Here's an excerpt</p>
<p>"The legal profession is really two professions: the elite lawyers and everyone else. Most of the former start out at big law firms. Many of the latter never find gainful legal employment. Instead they work at jobs that might be characterized as "quasi-legal" : paralegal, clerks, administrators, doing work for which they probably never needed a J.D.
Although hard data about the nature of these jobs is difficult to come by (and relies on self-reporting, which is inherently unreliable),the mean salary for graduates of top 10 law schools is $135,000 while it is $60,000 for "tier three" schools. It is certainly possible that tire-three graduates tend to gravitate toweard lower-paying public-interest and government jobs, but this lower salary may also reflect the nonlegal nature of many of these jobs and the fact that these graduates are settling for anything that wil pay the bills.
At $38000 a year for law school, plus living expenses, law school graduates certainly have a lot of debt ($60000 on average, upon graduation). For this price, college students and their parents should be thinking harder about their choices.</p>
<p>Just something to think about but I know people who went to law school with no intention of being a practicing lawyer. That's kind of what I'll probably do. I want to go to law school but there is a good possibility that my actual profession won't be law but rather a field that I can get a "leg up" in with a law degree. Are second/third tier schools so bad if those are your intentions to start with?</p>
<p>This might address your concern. I'll type in the rest of the article......</p>
<p>On the surface, the legal profession appears to be booming. Although growth has slowed since the 1960s and '70s , each year 40,000 new lawyers join a field that now totals one million, about the same size as the nation's stte prison population. Salaries have climbed steadily, and lawyers at the top firms can expect to make about $160,000 upon graduation from law school. But look beneatht the statistics and a few facts jump out. First, large law firms, those emploing more than 500 lawyers, lose nearly 40% of their associates within four years of hiring them. After six years, the ratio climbs to 60%.</p>
<p>Some might suggest that the fault here lies with the firms' policies regarding advancement. A number of recent articles have bemoaned the lack of female partners (only 17% of the partners at major law firms are women, while women compose nearly half of all law school graduates). The mumber of males who don't stick around long enough to make partner,however, is only a few percentage points lower. Thus while it may not be easy to be a woman in law, the guys aren't doing much better. In fact, it could be argued that women are leaving in slightly higher numbers beause they can while many menm trapped by their gender-typed "provider" roles, have fewer options.</p>
<p>The attrition numbers are even worse in other parts of the profession. According to a recent study by the National Association for Law Placement Foundation, 42% of lawyers in small firms (and 50% in solo practices) have changed jobs within three years of graduation and two-thirds of them have switched two or more times. One way to interpret the numbers is to conclude that such lawyers have plentiful opportunities and are moving to better jobs. The same group, however, tends to have less stellar credentials and to hae graduated lower in their class than their colleagues at big firms, leaving them fewer options, and suggestiing that these attorneys are even more dissatisfied than their big-firm contemporaries.</p>
<p>What happens to the recently departed? While many go to other law firms, or into other legal jobs , such as in-house counsel at corporations, anecdotal evidence shows that a significant percentage drop out of the legal profession entirely. This doesn't surprise me: Among my own law school classmates, for example, only one of my friends is still practicing at the firm he joined upon graduation. The rest have moved on or dropped out of the profession.</p>
<p>When I went to law school, nearly everyone tried to convince me tht doing so would "keep my options open." All this really means is :"You can still be a lawyer."</p>
<p>If I wanted to be a screenwriter, waiting tables would have kept my options open, too. In fact, many wannabe screenwriters find themselves going to law school, misled by adults into thinking that it will help them get into the movie business. It won't. Sure, you can be a talent agent or a movie producer with a law degree, but you can be one without a degree, too. Most of the skills you learn in law school (and legal practice) won't help you mnake a movie, and the few that will may not be worth the cost (more than $120,000, including tuition, living expenses, as well as three years of forgone experience and salary). Rather than keeping options open, the crushing debt of law school often slams doors shut, pushing law students to find the highest paying job they can and forever deferring dreams of anything else.</p>
<p>It's time those of us inside the profession did a better job of telling others outside the profession that most of us don't earn $160,000 a year, that we can't afford expensive suits, flashy cars, sexy apartments. We don't lunch with rock stars or produce movies. Every year I'm surprised by the number of my students who think a J.D. degree is a ticket to fame, fortune and the envy of one's peers-a sure ticket to the upper middle class. Even for the select few for whom it is, not many last long enough at their law firms to really enjoy it.</p>
<p>There's something wrong with a system that makes a whole lot of people pay a whole lot of money for jobs that are not worth it, or that have no future. If we wanted to be honest, we would inform students that law school doesn't keep their options open. Instead , we should say that if they work hard and do well, they can become lawyers.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree.</p>
<p>It seems like people who go to poorly ranked law schools expecting to make big bucks after graduation simply do not understand economics. </p>
<p>Heck, I am only 18 and just got my GED from a free, public high school and with the job I currently have, I could make 36,500 dollars a year if I worked sixty hours a week. That's not so bad considering I have no college debt!</p>
<p>You don't get paid for your job title, you get paid for your contribution to the economy. </p>
<p>I don't know if times have changed in the past 20 years, but for the record, my father went to a tier 3 law school and graduated towards the top of his class, and he has accumulated a lot of wealth; enough to buy a big house and pay three children through 40k college educations. So, if you graduate high in your class at a tier 3 law school, I think you have opportunities to land a solid local job.</p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote, or hearsay.
Anecdotal evidence is often unscientific because it cannot be investigated using the scientific method. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy.
The problem with arguing based on anecdotal evidence is that anecdotal evidence is not necessarily typical; only statistical evidence can determine how typical something is.
Psychologists have found that people are more likely to remember notable examples than the typical example.</p>
<p>In the absence of reliable statistics, anecdotal evidence can be quite illustrative of a problem or situation, though you have to take it for what it is. I would never discourage someone from sharing their personal experiences. You simply have to mentally preface anecdotal evidence with, "Well, I don't know what anyone else has experienced, but I have seen ... ".</p>
<p>Some very successful lawyers I know went to law schools I never heard of. But, some have their own practice and some have worked in several jobs to get to their present position. Does work experience supercede college name in the legal profession as it ususally does in other fields?</p>
<br>
<p>Anecdotal evidence </p>
<br>
<p>Are you trying to argue that we should take the article seriously? Because the author is right.</p>
<p>If there is no science, and 99% of the anecdotes reported by knowledgeable people go the same way, you can be pretty sure you're getting an accurate picture.</p>
<p>The majority of students who incur massive debt to go to T3 and T4 schools will find that it was a very poor economic choice. Sure, people at the top of the class at these schools sometimes get great jobs -- but those people are disproportionately likely to be kids who got merit aid, not those who borrowed the whole shebang. And sure, some marketing geniuses will make money solo no matter where they went to law school. But betting that you're going to be in either of those groups is a rotten bet.</p>
<p>US News, grad school edition, has a very useful back section. It will tell you the median private sector salary for all law schools. It will also tell you how many people go into private practice. Some schools send a lot of students into clerkships - but not all clerkships are created equal. You can start to guess at what your employment options will look like upon graduation. </p>
<p>Consider strongly before even sending out an application. Don't even waste $60 on a place that isn't going to get you a job that can pay your bills.</p>
<p>I think that in the absence of reliable and accurate statistics, a mass of anecdotal evidence can create a picture of what is occuring in a given situation (perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt - you have to analyze the source). I completely agree with you that a lot of lawyers out there, particularly lawyers from lower ranked law schools, struggle to find jobs that pay enough to pay back their loans. A lot of lawyers can't find jobs at all. I've seen so many lawyers come and go from the law firm where I used to work -- all hired as temps to do document review or other relatively mindless work, making little money and working long hours -- and from the conversations that I had with them, each of them seemed to be somehow hoping that their work would be noticed and that they might be offered a full time job at the firm. The reality was that my law firm had never hired as an employee anyone from their lower tiered law schools, and I can't imagine that the firm ever would. Harsh? Absolutely. That is my anecdotal evidence.</p>
<p>Which law schools would say are the 'safe' ones, where assuming you did decently you would have an excellent shot at a good job? The top 50 on US News? The top 25?</p>
<p>Depends what you want to do, and where you want to live, and whether we're talking about six-figure debt or smaller debt. What's a "good job" in your opinion?</p>
<p>Schools outside the top 14 and top 25 that are totally dominant in their market -- like, say, U of Alabama -- can be pretty good bets if you want to stay in that area, especially since many or most of the students are getting in-state tuition, and it's very cheap to live there.</p>
<p>Just to use the choices I would make in my own market as an example, let's say I want to go to a big firm in Chicago, and I can't get into the top 30. I focus on Chicago-area schools. If I pay full tuition at any school in Chicago, I'm going to have 6-figure debt. Kent is ranked higher than Loyola and DePaul, but if I get a big scholarship from Loyola and nothing from Kent, I'm going to Loyola. If I get a high-paying firm job, the debt won't be much of a problem, but I can't assume I'm going to get one from Kent. If I don't, I'm in big trouble. IMHO, the risk isn't worth it -- if i go to Loyola, the odds of the firm job may be a little lower, but no matter what happens, I know I'm going to be OK. I would probably only go to John Marshall if I get a full ride.</p>
<p>I agree with Hanna that "safe" depends on where you want to live, what you want to do, and how much it costs.</p>
<p>Consider that, even with the increase in salary for the highest-paying jobs, that total debt has outpaced the highest possible salary upon graduation. I think CalMom had a good rule of thumb for taking on debt: debt should be equal or lesser to salary upon graduation. Arguably, if you apply to law school now, Northwestern might not be "worth it." It's over $60,000/year now (if you pay for everything in loans); assume $190,000 in debt when you graduate. Over ten years at about 5% interest (probably higher in a few years), this will be about $25,000/year. Worth it? Questionably.</p>
<p>Several years ago, college became too expensive to borrow one's way through. Used to be that you could pay your way through - sure, might work a lot, might have some debt when you graduate, but you could pay it all. Law school, IMO, used to be that way. It is fast becoming something in which one cannot pay his way through - you really need either scholarship or parental support, even assuming the best jobs. </p>
<p>Look at the attrition rate from big firms. Those with a lot of debt are going to be locked into those - and that's the best case scenario.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I want to go to law school but there is a good possibility that my actual profession won't be law but rather a field that I can get a "leg up" in with a law degree. Are second/third tier schools so bad if those are your intentions to start with?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What exactly do you have in mind? There aren't a whole lot of jobs that having a JD is going to help you with.</p>
<p>Americanski:</p>
<p>I think I want to get a masters in real estate development and a law degree focusing on real estate. My undergrad is in civil engineering with a focus on construction management. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do but I think I'd like to do something with commercial development or land use/zoning and either working on the private side as a developer or on the government side as county offical or urban planning type position. </p>
<p>I'm interning this summer at a urban planning and engineering firm and I have spoke with people in their legal department and most of them have some background in urban planning or civil engineering. Working in this type of job has also crossed my mind. </p>
<p>Because I'm not aiming for one specific field for employment I feel like the JD might open up more doors and give me more options... I like having options.</p>
<p>Schools have become more and more rent-seeking in economic terms.</p>
<p>A college degree at a top school is worth, on average, about an extra 1 million dollars in earnings versus just a high school diploma. Granted, for such a large sample size, such a statistic will ignore the huge variation in incomes of high school and college grads.</p>
<p>A high school grad who is lucky enough to land a job at a toyota factory can make a middle class salary. A college grad who is a history major at a second tier college is probably going to be lucky to land a job with a blue-collar wage.</p>
<p>In the same way, law schools can effectively charge rent-seeking prices on students. At Harvard, 180-190k of debt may be worth it since a solid 140k corporate job will be easy to get no matter what your class rank. At a school skirting the outer edges of the top 14 such as northwestern, such a job may be much riskier, lowering the expected value of a law degree.</p>
<p>For the most part though, a law degree from a top 14 school is probably worth it and thats where most people focus on getting into.</p>
<p>But what percentage of applicants find a spot in a top 14 school? What about everybody else? I promise that I know lawyers who make a very comfortable living with decent hours who didn't attend a top 14 LS.</p>
<p>What if you don't aspire to a back-breaking corporate job? Is is still worth going to a top school if you can accepted?</p>