<p>Statistics being statistics, but the BLS projects, currently and into the future(through 2022) that the country is producing more JD grads than there are JD required jobs.<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Legal/Lawyers.htm”>http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Legal/Lawyers.htm</a>
See also <a href=“http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Legal/Lawyers.htm#tab-6”>http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Legal/Lawyers.htm#tab-6</a>
And no, there are no guarantees with any profession(possible exception being some of the health care fields), but it’s a mistake to take on massive amounts of debt if your job prospects are iffy. </p>
<p>As a law school graduate who now teaches business law to undergraduate students, I am an example of what you can do with a law degree besides practice law. HOWEVER, when I got my law degree, it did not cost $200k. I loved law school, but did not like the practice of law. Not sure I could recommend my path if you have to pay today’s tuition.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure what this has to do with a law degree not being useful in non-law fields.</p>
<p>I was answering the question asked about cost versus job prospects. </p>
<p>Your response didn’t make sense in response to that question. He asked if you think it’s worth spending the money on tuition for the uncertain job prospects. Your response was that there are no guarantees anywhere. But that makes no sense because the mere fact that risk is inherent in every field doesn’t mean the risks are all the same size. Now I’m not sure what your response has to do with his question or the thread topic.</p>
<p>Your took the last line of my answer. While I appreciate you two having a little back and forth on these threads. At least quote the whole answer. To answer his question ( which by the way had nothing to do with the original post) I said I didn’t agree you can’t find a job. I’m sorry but how can anyone say spending 200k on a law degree won’t get you a job. It’s a lot of money and you need to take debt into consideration with any education that much I agree with. </p>
<p>i don’t think law school is ‘worthless’ to jobs outside law. There are quite many ex-lawyers who ended up switching their careers into other types of corporate jobs. some go into sales. some enter management. (after getting some corporate experience as in-house counsel) some enter finance. (i-banking) </p>
<p>what i can confidently say is that only few law schools are worth attending. but, I consider that to be the case for MBA, and quite possibly at undergraduate level, as well. The basic reality is that there are millions of college grads that work in non-degree required jobs. A degree in something other than engineering / medicine = no guarantee of anything.</p>
<p>@TigerCC2014: I don’t quote the whole post because it’s available by scrolling up a bit. No need to waste the space when all I want is a reference for people to find what I’m replying to.</p>
<p>The rest of your answer didn’t make any sense either. You talked about a cousin and an uncle. The cousin is irrelevant because it’s an individual blip in the data. Statistically meaningless. Your uncle is irrelevant because he graduated 22 years ago. Grads today aren’t graduating into the 22-years-ago market. </p>
<p>You may not agree that people cannot find jobs, but your agreement is not relevant to the reality of the market. There are 40,000 law graduates per year. There are 20,000 law jobs per year. Simple arithmetic tells you precisely how many can’t find jobs. That includes those spending 200k on a law degree.</p>
<p>You certainly can have an opinion. Mine was an answer to a question. If you didn’t like my answer that’s fine. In the end a law degree doesn’t have to limit someone to practicing law as evidenced by some of the other posters comments. </p>
<p>The question isn’t whether a law degree limits you to practicing law, the question is whether a law degree is beneficial in finding non-law related work. Plenty of people get jobs in spite of their degrees. That’s not a good reason to get the degree in the first place. You only want to invest in a degree if you expect it to make a return (or you’re particularly risk insensitive). Most of the people who get JDs will find work of one kind or another. That’s not the issue. The issue is what kind of work they’ll find and whether they could have found that work without the JD (and therefore the JD debt).</p>
<p>I’m sure everyone appreciates your opinion. </p>