Comments on: No, Entering Law School Is Not a Smart Way to Deal with the Terrible Job Market

By: Confused

Confused — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:25:29 +0000

I will graduate with a liberal arts degree soon as will all my classmates. Seeing many apply and get ready to enter law school, is this decision still a bad move as many make it out to be? I’ve heard that things are beginning to pick up in terms of associate hiring but is the law school decision still not a right move?

By: Dr. Rob

Dr. Rob — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:19:10 +0000

This is awesome. I read this piece months ago but only recently have I begun treating a number of college upperclassmen. Those that even suggest law school for inelegant reasons get a copy of this post to read and discuss at their next session. Thanks for this.

PL: You realize you’re giving up future patients doing that. Nobody needs more therapy than lawyers.

By: Shantel Jordan

Shantel Jordan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:53:17 +0000

I am in a 1L in law school now. I am not at a top tier school, and the people here are psychotic (the professors and staff). The school, staff, and students suck! They haze their students. Why do they have an arrogance about themselves and ego issues? If finishing law school is the best thing that has happened to them, and their greatest accomplishment, I truly feel sorry for them. I have been in the real world, and have survived some horrible things and overcome so many others. I feel like to come to law school and put up with this b.s. is ridiculous. I’m wondering how realistic it is to be in law school, and possibly not be able to find a good job. Probably won’t be able to do what I planned to do with my degree anyway. As stated above in this article, my performance is measured by others, and it varies, so there is no guarantee that I will do well enough to transfer to another school. I am really considering leaving, but I know finishing law school will help me be able to handle my own business affairs. Yes, I want to be a lawyer, but unlike the other people here, becoming a lawyer is not going to make me who I am. I was shaped and molded long before I came, and will be that when I leave. I’m just pissed I did all of this, and this is it. It is crap; I should have gotten my Ph.D. I contemplating should I leave, or are there any certainties other than debt and hell and chaos?
PL: Serenity now… You’ve laid out some cash. Run the numbers and if it makes sense to leave, leave.
As to misfits running around in your school, ignore that shit. Stay away from the place. All you really need to do is show up for exams anyway. Get a job, have a life away from the place and never interact with the students. It’s not like college. Of the people I knew in law school, I liked about ten. One remains a close friend today. And if you asked him, he;d relate similar numbers to those I just provided. Make a couple good friends, but stay the hell out of the social scene. It’s an ugly, demented world.

By: Sarah K

Sarah K — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:08:31 +0000

I am in my first year of law school now. I came straight out of college. I took some law classes in undergrad and thought hey I like this and lawyers make a decent living. Now I realize though that the people are more douchey than most, the law is so boring, and the whole system is run on mix snobbery and mild insanity. I was also really scared about my job prospects when I get out. I realize that I am probably going to have to work like a madmen with no job security. I wish someone had been a little more real with me when I applied. I am switching to library school next year and am really excited about it. Its less expensive and less time. Librarians get paid less but they also can get jobs more easily and don’t have to work like crazy. I would suggest if you are in school and unhappy to think is about what is important to you and look for other options. Your advice is spot on!
PL: Nothing to add here but good luck and thank you.

By: Me

Me — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:49:58 +0000

PL: Have you read my book?
Nope, but I’ll bet from that answer that it tells the story of how you figured all this out for yourself just like I did. *grin*
In the hopes that it does, and that by buying it I’ll be helping to make whatever makes you happy also make you financially successful, I’ll get a copy. But if you go back to law you have to buy it back from me! *grin*
PL: I’ll never work under another lawyer again.

By: Me

Me — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:59:25 +0000

“PL: You’re the rarity. I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. Well, except for “everything.” I think it’s horrible that we have to choose and stick with one thing. What an awful existence.”
So do everything. What exactly is stopping you from getting excited about something, learning about it and applying for a job in the field? I got into jobs I really didn’t have the qualifications for because the interviewer could see my obvious excitement about the field and because I impressed him/her with my knowledge from learning a lot about it on my own. I’ve written software, designed electronic fuel delivery systems for dual-fuel vehicles, wrote book reviews for a local paper, worked on small budget films and a variety of other jobs I thought I wanted at the time. All during the time between finishing high school and going to college. Sure, I had to do a lot of reading and take some tests for some jobs, sometimes I had to prove my worth with samples of work but if you’re genuinely excited about something then the learning is fun.
You get one chance at life, make it count. Decide if you want to define winning at life as accruing money or as having had as much fun as possible. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to get it wrong. The paradigm of getting an education, a job in the field, and working at the same place until you retire is valid, but no more valid than multiple career changes as your life changes. If you’re like me and you know that change is something you thrive on, then make sure you get an education in something with a large umbrella of jobs under it.
For instance, as a Speech Pathologist, I can work in private practice, nursing homes, schools, hospitals, doing research, etc. I can work with post-stroke aphasics, kids with articulation disorders, fluency disorders, dysphasia (feeding and swallowing), degenerative nerve disorders, primarily cognitive work, primarily neuro-motor work, deaf kids with cochlear implants, etc.
You’re probably going to say “but I don’t have the education for that”, of course you don’t, so throw 2 years at it if it sounds like your life will be far happier. You have a bachelors, you just need the grad component, which you can get while still working. You’ll probably work about 40 years, can you afford to invest 1/20th of your life to make the other 19/20ths far happier?
Are you too old? How old is too old to do something fun? If you’re not finding learning the skills needed for a job fun, you probably won’t find the job fun. Hence, if you’ve chosen something you really enjoy, the additional education should be an enjoyable activity. There were people in my masters program who were in their 50s and 60s, several like me in their 30s and 40s. We all have to work, but we don’t have to hate our jobs. It’s about 1/3 of your day, you might as well make sure that third of your day isn’t awful.
Redefine your terms. decide for yourself what success and failure mean, don’t let society decide for you. Years ago my mother had a mouse in her house which she could not get rid of. Her cat couldn’t catch it, traps didn’t work, it ignored poison. She asked me what to do. I told her that if she couldn’t get rid of it then she had two choices: Live with vermin or live with a pet. She named the mouse Mickey. Did the reality change? No, her perception of the reality changed, and therefore the situation was different. Is going back to school scary, unsettling and risky, or is it exciting, fun and an opportunity for freedom from your old life?
No offense, but it sounds like you’re trapped in a job you can barely stand, you despise most of your colleagues and you’re afraid that abandoning it for something else will make you a failure. When you were a toddler you were great at crawling, but you switched to walking even though you could barely do it, because it was a better fit. Sure you got bumped and bruised as you learned, but would you rather still be a great crawler who can’t walk?
So are you a 30 year old failure back in school because your previous job was a bad fit for you, or are you a 30 year old success who learned and grew and found a way to be happy while still paying the bills? Are you a 40 year old failure since you took a pay cut, or are you a 40 year old success who found a way to love working?
The choice is yours. The choice may be yours again in 5 years if you get it wrong this time. Who knows? Maybe I’m dead wrong and you love your job, I’ve been known to read too much into words before. In any case, I wish you the greatest of joy in your life, since I fully believe that happiness is success and you come across as someone who truly deserves whatever definition of success you choose to use.
As to me being a rarity, I almost have to laugh. I don’t know what I “want to do with my life”, I just know that what I’m doing right now is a lot of fun. I decided a long time ago to avoid massive questions like “what do I want to do with my life”, because they’re unanswerable by me. Maybe there are people out there who can answer that, but the best I can do is answer “what job can I have fun in”. The best way I can explain my view on this is in the way we do not call a person who stutters a “stutterer”, because that is not their defining characteristic. We say person who stutters because we recognize that it is one part of who they are. So I am not a Speech Pathologist, I am a person who practices Speech Pathology. It is one of my characteristics, but not my definition. So are you a lawyer, or a person who practices law? If you change jobs are you changing your definition or changing a characteristic of it?
PL: Have you read my book?

By: Laughing Boy

Laughing Boy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:25:49 +0000

If I didn’t feel so bad for the poor kid who thought his only options were “it is a question of shitty job v. shittier job” of cubicle vs. law, I’d laugh at him. The myriad opportunities out there offer so much more if a person just spends a bit of time looking.
I spend my days playing scrabble, sorry, candyland, blowing bubbles, coloring pictures and generally playing with kids. I make 80K doing it. Sure, it isn’t 160K, but then I’m not drudging through my life trying to accrue enough money to finally quit my hateful and boring prison of a job. Oh yeah, and since I work in a school I can pick up another 20 – 30K over the summer contracting out my services (though I tend to be happier just living on my pay from the county and enjoying a nice long break every year). I also have excellent retirement and benefits (75% of pre-tax salary, so the day I retire I essentially get a raise).
It’s not all fun and games, I put in a few hours a week writing reports and having meetings, but it is supposed to be work after all, and at 3:30PM my workday ends and I bring nothing home.
I’m really not trying to say my job is the best out there, I’m just making the point that if you look hard enough you’ll probably find something you really like to do. For me it’s spending my day playing with kids and helping them overcome speech and language impairments, for someone else it may be being a part of an explosive demolitions team, or raising rare plants, or even being a lawyer.
If you focus on how much a job pays you monetarily, you might miss how much it pays you in other ways. The best advice I can give is to spend some time widening your horizons. I spent 10 years before college learning about a ton of jobs I did not want to do, and when I found the one that I did want to do I walked into college with purpose, motivation and the maturity to be able to walk out at the top of my class.
PL: You’re the rarity. I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. Well, except for “everything.” I think it’s horrible that we have to choose and stick with one thing. What an awful existence.

By: Married to the Law

Married to the Law — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:47:34 +0000

Don’t go to Law School. My husband was hired during the early 90′s (top 10 school. top 10%) which was bad, and even then the bottom third weren’t getting offers. It is 10X worse now. He only billed 1400 hours last year – can hoarding be far behind. He had never billed less than 2100 in his life, and when he was young, usually did 2400-2600. He watched the first years slaughtered before him on Black Thursday (there was no where to hide). A client got re-financed yesterday (he was happy because he billed 8 hours straight yesterday). 2L’s are worried they are not going to get their 160K and are bitching because Skadden cut the year end bonus – who the hell are you? My husband really wonders if he will be seeing any summer associates even make it through the door after last month’s blood bath. He says since the 1st and 2nd years aren’t getting any work, and therefore, any experience, and will be deemed useless come performance review. Most of them are not married with kids either, and even though the hiring partners feel bad that you have run up $250,000 loans – they realize that you do’t have mouths to feed or secured debt. You go home while the 5th year, who isn’t making much more than you but has the wife, kid,experience and mortgage gets to stay (because most AmLaw 100′s don’t keep to the Simpson Thatcher pay scale). Partners are not totally heartless when they make these decisions.
Now, if you really love the law go for it. That is all my husband dreamed of from 9th grade on. He was supposed to become a doctor like everyone else in his family, but no, the Law called. His only regret was when he was an 8th year he was debating taking a MBA at NYU Stern (designed for dinance lawyers wanting to move to Wall Street). It was hard to fit it in when you were billing an 80 hour week, and have kids in diapers. Looking back, he should have gone and raped America with the rest of them.
PL: Nothing to add here. Thank you.

By: Mike D

Mike D — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:55:04 +0000

This is quite the site you’ve got going on here PL. I’m in a perpetual state of schizophrenia as I wait to sign or not sign to a certain law school. Switching from overly excited to crazily pessimistic. Looking at letters from Hastings, Santa Clara, Loyola, thinking about just signing them right then or throwing them in the trash. With the new Presidential Cabinet, Santa Clara looks very promising! I’ve heard this same thing from my Mother the other day, “just ride the bad wave of the economy out”, and I’ll be assured a job in three years. I mean, this past year off out of undergrad has been very hard, even as a “ditch digger” and farm hand. Jobs are scarce and few and far between. Being 23, I’ve never experienced a recession while I’ve been working and caring for myself. I can’t imagine in three years that getting a decent job in the so far recession resilient silicon valley as a lawyer could be as hard as it is for me to find a job as a stock boy at Office Max right now. What do you think? Or is it just not worth the debt?
PL: If you know what being a lawyer involves and want to engage in that work for the majority of the rest of your life, then do it. Otherwise, don’t.

By: Rusty?

Rusty? — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:38:45 +0000

I don’t remember doing it but I guess Rusty is my new pseudonym.
I had basically made up my mind regarding law school last fall, far before that last comment. Irrational fears about others’ opinions and false expectations that I placed upon myself delayed my decision making but finally, about 3 days after that comment, I called the dean and withdrew myself.
I bought your book and finished it literally ten minutes ago and, similar to your final emotions, my decision has left me with no regret or lamenting whatsoever. I honestly don’t have the words to describe how liberating it feels to make such a big decision, knowing it’s absolutely the right one for me.
Anyways, the book was sensational – your writing style is addictive but, for me, it was the way I could absolutely relate to some of your universal statements. The number of pages I have dog-eared makes the book appear twice as long as it is. The “school is the worst preparation in the world for a career” put into words something I have been toiling over for years.
Thanks so much for the amazing read, you’ve got another avid fan. I’ll be pointing a good handful of prospective law student friends your way…they won’t listen to me.
(I know you’re a little older than myself but was “balloon poon” not around during your “double asses” days?)
PL: No. All we had was “gunt” and “double ass.” But thanks. One can never have enough of those descriptions. And thanks for reading the book.
And best of luck in whatever you do in lieu of law school.