<p>I recently came across a few blogs by former law students that make it their express purpose in telling people that unless you attend an "elite" school or graduate top of your class you will not find a job and should drop plans for getting a JD.</p>
<p>I realize that much of this is exaggeration or the musings of a bitter former law student who didn't put in enough effort to get good enough grades in UG to go to a T14 nor applied himself in law school, but I was just wondering if current law students/attorneys would share their thoughts on whether or not there is any truth to this.</p>
<p>There's definitely truth to this. In fact, the first blog post is dead-on honest, IMO, and not bitter at all. The supply of law school graduates far outstrips the demand for new attorneys. I was on the hiring committee at two law firms. We would only look at students from either top-tier schools or reputable law schools in our region, and even with that cut, there were so many candidates that we could afford to be extremely choosy.</p>
<p>Even graduating from a top-tier law school is no guarantee of employment. I graduated from a top 10 school and had many friends who did not have a job lined up.</p>
<p>I was under the impression that if you went to a T14 school and did well, as in upper half of your class you would have no trouble finding employment. I realized that going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school would make it almost impossible to get on a big firm but if it's that damn hard coming from a top school I'm not sure if I want to take the gamble of a six figure debt when I could be working in a career which I may not find as rewarding but I will at least be employed at a comfortable salary.</p>
<p>It's a tough decision, no doubt, but my usual advice (FWIW) is to go to the best-ranked law school you can get into. Getting a job will be challenging no matter what, but the law school you went to and the first place you worked seem to be the things people latch onto no matter how many years you've been out. I've been out for 11 years, and my law school and my first law firm employer stiill opens doors for me now. No one even cares that I went to a (relatively) no-name undergrad school.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees, but you can at least stack the odds in your favor. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice, but what exactly do you mean by challenging? Do you mean 10 grads clamoring over every position or challenging in the sense that it's not guaranteed? I'm speaking in terms of going to a top school here and if anyone else would like to chime in it would be helpful.</p>
<p>I've never known a student at a T14 law school who wound up with absolutely no job opportunities (and who explored all of the options open to them, meaning that the student with the very worst grades and least experience in the class did not interview on campus exclusively with Wachtell and Cravath).</p>
<p>That said, however, even a student at a T14 law school may struggle when looking for a job for several reasons: (1) their interviewing skills are not up to snuff, or they completely lack social skills, (2) to the extent that a student finds a law firm job during the summer after first year of law school, that student fails to receive an offer of employment/an offer to rejoin the firm the next summer or (3) the student has absolutely dismal grades across the board (actually, this is pretty difficult to do without completely disregarding your studies). I'm sure there are additional reasons. It is true that no one, even law students at T14 law schools, is guaranteed a big firm job paying big bucks after graduation. It may take a little bit more work for some students, and some students may have to seek out jobs that are not typically represented during the on campus recruiting process, or take jobs that are not their first or second (or perhaps even third) choices.</p>
<p>Thanks Sally, that's what I was looking for. The blogs I've been reading had me a little scared that even with a JD from a T14 school I would have a difficult time finding employment.</p>
<p>I'm not planning on graduating at the bottom of my class(hopefully near the top) and I have good social skills so hopefully I will be able to land a position at at least a decent firm.</p>
<p>I attend a t14 law school. The class of 2006 has 99.4% employment 6 months after graduation and the class of 2005 had 99.7% employment 6 months after graduation (this is just for students who were seeking employment; some went on to other grad programs or started families). </p>
<p>I'd be cautious about comparing employment rates at graduation--many government and nonprofit jobs don't hire until later, so a very high rate might reflect that all students at a school go into big firms (and I think it's better when there's a chunk of people doing public-interest work...it makes classes more interesting, and it reduces competition for those seeking firm jobs!). 6 months out is a more telling statistic.</p>
<p>Thanks Stacy, do you know if there is any publicly available breakdown of where grads go, whether it be big law or government jobs. I don't think I've seen this available at many schools but perhaps I haven't been looking in the right place.</p>
<p>It's pretty accurate and a valuable read for anybody considering law school. A lot of people seem to apply without much idea of what they're getting into, which probably contributes to their misery afterwards.</p>
<p>It is also important to note that if you graduate from most schools with a JD, you CAN find employment, be it in the non-proft sector, at the municipal level or whatever, but alot of these jobs are not very appealing to a kid that just spent four years and 120K getting a law degree. The simple truth, however, is that most kids don't go to law school in the hopes of landing a relatively low paying job in the public sector.</p>
<p>bear in mind that the chart is only one year's worth of data, and this is just people's first job out of school--many people bounce around between firms/clerkships/nonprofits/government/academia over the course of their careers, and especially in the first couple years after graduation.</p>
<p>This is certainly a discouraging thread! My son had some interest in intellectual property law. Does this specialty area suffer the same dearth of jobs and the same discontent that seem to pervade the profession in general? Maybe he's better off with an MS or MBA?</p>
<p>From my observations, intellectual property law (patent law in particular) seems to operate in a different market than the rest of the legal field, probably because so few people with engineering degrees are crazy enough to go to school for another 3 years and get a JD. The market has gotten a little tighter because many laid-off engineers are going back to school for their law degrees. Law students and attorneys with EE degrees seem to be in particularly high demand. Is your son interested in patent law or another branch of IP law?</p>
<p>Actually, he is a MechE student interested in patent law. He has 4.0 and is also considering MS and MBA in addition to JD. I would just hate to see him waste other opportunities for a field that has a questionable future. I guess I'll just have to wait and see which way he turns. :)</p>
<p>It depends on the type of job you want. If you get your JD, especially from a Top 100 school, you will probably have options. By options I dont mean private practice options, I mean ANY options. However if you wanna do biglaw in NYC, and make 195,000 your first year, you are gonna have to go to a T14 school and finish top 60% of class or so, or go to a 15-30 school and finish top 15% (Fordham, since it is in NY, you can get by with top 1/3).</p>