Thursday, August 16, 2012

They write letters

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago from someone I'd corresponded with a bit during his/her 1L year at a law school well within the top 20.  The person finished with top quarter of the class grades and had a substantial scholarship, but decided to drop out anyway.  His/her thoughts:

Whenever I talk to people thinking about law school for the "what else do I do with a poli sci major?" approach (I was one of them), I tell them to look for jobs with startups.  I work at one now, and when I decided not to pursue law as a career, I shotgunned as many startups as I could find that were hiring (which is almost all of them), and got great responses. I ended up getting to pick the job that made most sense to me.  The thing about startups is that they have more to do than employees can complete, and are really just looking for smart, motivated, hard working people willing to learn on the job.   I was lucky to find a company that employs 6 JD's, as well as myself, and had designed a pathway to hire people like me (hence it made the most sense compared to the others).  But instead of going to law school, these "smart kids who did everything right," should just apply for marketing or business development positions with startups.  

The kids who on the surface, pre-ITLSS, think law school is a good career move (I mean the ones who got into Top 30 schools with scholarships), will get these jobs, although I do have to add the caveat that being in a city that is full of startups (Bay Area, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, Austin, Boulder, Portland, Seattle are probably the best bets now, but new hubs are popping up in all kinds of places) makes this much more feasible.  Anyway, I've given this advice to 4 or 5 undergrads considering law school who actually took it and all have thanked me within a month.  Thought you might be interested in another response to stupid reasons for attending law school, from someone who made that mistake and then recovered.

I'm not going to comment on how feasible this route may be as an alternative to law school, or for law students who are considering dropping out (I know nothing about startups),  but I'm posting it as something some people may want to consider.

87 comments:

  1. First, and thank you for sharing this insightful email LP! As always, you're looking out for folks.

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  2. I did this same thing after graduating top 10% from a mid T2. I had to move and it was a super shitty first job, but within a year I had my feet on the ground in a growing industry.

    Best decision that I have ever made.

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  3. The great thing about all these "startup hubs" listed by this correspondent is they all have great restaurants and bars that one could work at on evenings and weekends to supplement income if necessary.

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  4. A friend of mine got into Georgetown Law. He decided to go to a 3 year program to become a soccer coach in Spain instead. It sounded like the best life decision ever.

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  5. While this is sound advice for students who have not fallen into the law school scam, I wonder how much of it is still operative under the current paradigm for JD holders, though. A glut of JD's is still a glut of JD's, and there are only so many startup opportunities available at viable income levels (I know almost no one in NYC who can hold down a startup gig as there only source of income, if any). It might be a different story in Portland or Austin.

    As admirable as it, it would interesting to have a discussion over why "pulling a geographic" is pretty much the only viable options for students at the outset of their legal career these days, and then far from a winning bet.

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  6. I also decided to take a leave of absence from law school after finishing my 1L year in the top 25% of my class. I will be working during what would have been my second year. I did not go to law school as one of the "what else am I going to do" crowd. This does not dive deep in to the specifics or context of my decision, but I thought sharing this bit of my experience might help others.

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  7. File under "the versatility of not getting a JD."

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  8. Here's a company, Axiom, whose CEO says it always is in the market for highly talented people--and it grew 62% (revenue) last year: http://bit.ly/THp2Qt

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  9. Over 50% of startup businesses fail within the first 5 years. More than 70% are not alive by year 10.

    http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html

    I wonder how appealing those odds sound
    to your typical risk-averse law student?

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    Replies
    1. Are you serious ? Law students are the epitome of gamblers who think they can beat the house. They make spreadsheets and calculate their budgets on their big law salary before they even start school. These students are willing to ignore what happens to the bottom of the class and assume they will beat the odds

      There are few risk averse law students. If you don't believe me start posting on TLS about having a backup plan if you don't get big law. Almost no one has one - they are sure they will get big law .

      Another aspect of this -most of these students have no clue what big law even means. They just see dollar signs.

      Delete
  10. "What else can you do with a poli sci "
    You can go to med school or become a CPA. But you probably have to take course as a post bac.

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  11. One of the Anons said:

    "While this is sound advice for students who have not fallen into the law school scam, I wonder how much of it is still operative under the current paradigm for JD holders, though. A glut of JD's is still a glut of JD's, and there are only so many startup opportunities available at viable income levels (I know almost no one in NYC who can hold down a startup gig as there only source of income, if any)."

    I think that the point isn't whether you can survive working for a startup.

    If you're an unemployed debt-addled JD, you might as well get *some* experience *somewhere*.

    What else are you going to do? Sit at home faxing your resume to the $10 per hour jobs on Craigslist?

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  12. If you're an unemployed debt-addled JD, you might as well get *some* experience *somewhere*.

    I would add that this post is also good for liberal-arts types -- and their parents -- who have no idea what possible paths there are besides law school.

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  13. A friend of mine did two years of law school as a part-time student and earned grades that put her solidly in the top 25% of the class. She dropped out, moved to Wyoming, and opened a yoga studio. I doubt she would be as happy as she is now had she continued on with law school, doubled her student loan debt, and finished the JD.

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  14. Hi Bruce - isn't Axiom primarily interested in experienced JDs?

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  15. "Over 50% of startup businesses fail within the first 5 years. More than 70% are not alive by year 10.

    http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/04/startup-failure-rates.html

    I wonder how appealing those odds sound
    to your typical risk-averse law student?"

    I think it's less risky than incurring the "sure-thing" of 200K in non-dischargeable debt for a coin-flip at legal employment, especially if you save your money and supplement your income working part-time like someone already suggested.

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  16. You should not lump all "liberal-arts types" together. Their fortunes often depend, in part, upon what schools they attended. Liberal arts majors from good schools can get good jobs. But it helps if History majors, English majors, etc., put together as diverse a transcript as they can-- some colleges require this--by taking quantitative and science courses. That might be especially helpful if the student is not from a top school.

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  17. 99% of potential JDs would view trying to find work / working for a "startup" as more risky than going into debt and getting their JD.

    Might as well put the info out there, but it isn't going to help much.

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  18. Axiom probably grew last year because they had no work in the prior years. They are just a temporary agency, although they have placed quality lawyers in quality temp positions. Right now a company that needs a temp can get one without paying a 30% to 100% markup that most of these agencies charge to employers.

    On the topic of going to med school, many of the people who are not making it in law will not be able to go to med school. For one thing one needs a 3.62 or so GPA on average. For another, one needs high test scores that will land the person at the top of the test taking pool. There is a 44% acceptance rate to med schools, but that excludes two or three times as many people who started out and never made it to med school. Bottom line - if you went to a law school below the T20 except on full scholarship, you will not have the stats to get into med school. Even if you do have the stats, is harder to convince med schools to take you if you actually went to law school and did not get a job as a lawyer and are applying for that reason.

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  19. It's also possible to do both. When I graduated college, I had a couple buddies who really wanted me to join their startup. I wanted to go to law school, but we agreed that I would work half-time (which was about 30 hours a week) and get half as big a share as the other guys.

    So I studied for the LSAT in the evenings and worked the rest of the time. Eventually I had to juggle work with law school, which basically meant a lot of commercial outlines. After law school, when I got my clerkship, I had to stop working but by then my stock was vested.

    By the time I landed my first gig as a law professor, my shares were worth just under $15 million dollars.

    I enjoy my salary (which is now about $230k plus gold-plated benefits) but it's also nice to know that I don't really need it.


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  20. 9:27: Cool story bro. I bet you've seen Morgan Fairchild naked too.

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  21. Stay thirsty, my friends!

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  22. I think just trying to go to med school because you don't have other good options is a terrible idea. It likely just gets you into more debt with less options.

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  23. Seems silly how much people whine when others tell success stories (one above and Mack). A lot of those posts are very insightful and not every post needs to be about how screwed everyone is (even those who did "everything perfectly").

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  24. There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution. This is a positive post that may help some people.

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  25. Mack is a success story? Could've fooled me.

    Seems more of an insecure twat from what he posts on here.

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  26. "9:27: Cool story bro. I bet you've seen Morgan Fairchild naked too."

    Well, yes - but she's his great aunt. EEEWWWWW.

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  27. I think 9:27 meant to say Morgan Freeman.

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  28. "Liberal arts majors from good schools can get good jobs."

    By which I assume you mean HYP+S, WIlliams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and Wellesley. Everything else is a crapshoot these days - much in the vein of attending a non HYSCCN law school. And the dropoff is nearly as steep. I went to a lib arts college ranked btw 15 and 20, and they have had essentially no on-campus recruiting since 2007.

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  29. "I think 9:27 meant to say Morgan Freeman."

    Well, yes - but hasn't everybody?

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  30. I'm curious - if you are considering dropping out of law school with 2 or 3 semesters under your belt, what kind of graduate programs exist where you could you transfer those credits? poli sci masters? journalism? or can you even transfer those credits towards speeding through a paralegal program? 'having something to show for it' would really make this decision much easier..

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  31. If you can get your old clunker to start up in the morning, you can always deliver Pizzas.

    Ours is not to reason why, ours is to deliver pizza pie!

    Lord Byron

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  32. I saved $35K in two years as a pizza guy.

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  33. If you have an interest and follow it, you can get a good job, even without college. You need to stick with the interest and try to work in that area while you are serving lattes at Starbucks. Just going to HYP undergrad may help, but a lot of people with degrees from less known schools do very well. People always say that you must be saying this because you went to lower ranked schools. As someone who went to the highest ranked schools, I can say with all confidence, it helps but you can be very very successful from the lowest ranked school there is. A lot of people from state universities that are not superstar schools, and middle of the road local schools make it quite big.

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  34. @10:52AM

    See what I mean!

    Calzones to the left of him
    Garlic knots to the right
    Into the valley of wealth
    rode the piza guy!

    Oh shit.....my 6 figure debt is driving me insane.


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  35. The last time I made this proposal I was flamed and F bomb unmercifully. So here goes again: I think law schools ought to offer the LLB degree at the end of the first year of law school for anyone who is doing passing work. The LLB degree thus structured would not make one eligible to sit for the bar, but would be a positive addition to the resume and some justification for the expenditure of money. It would allow someone who has made the determination that law school is not worth a quarter of a million dollars to terminate their studies in a positive way. The JD degree would be rewarded for advanced study and would be the basis for taking the bar exam. The beauty of this proposal is that it probably can be done administratively with in the university so long as there is no attempt to circumvent the requirements of the ABA for bar eligibility.

    I await your flames.

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  36. @8:03 AM,

    regarding becoming a CPA, that will require at minimum another year of courses, most likely 2-3 years depending on the states requirements. same thing with nursing.

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  37. Nurse practitioners can make $120,000 salary in a city with probably much less risk of layoff than a lawyer.

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  38. LOC, that's a good idea. Schools could also give out a legal masters, similar to how PhD programs will give out masters degrees to students who abandon PhD studies.

    People keep talking about risk, and we also know how risk averse law students and lawyers are. A big part of this is how society sees the law as low risk/high reward. It also views law school as something responsible and adult.

    Take two recent college graduates. One is living at home, working at the coffee shop, and saving his money to backpack across Asia. The other is taking out six figure debt to live by himself and go to law school, even though it's a coin toss whether or not he'll practice law. Society says the second kid is the responsible one making a low risk decision, but this isn't really true.

    Once people start to understand the true nature of the risks involved, things will change.

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  39. "The LLB degree thus structured would not make one eligible to sit for the bar, but would be a positive addition to the resume and some justification for the expenditure of money."

    Combine that with a paralegal certificate, and I think you're onto something.

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  40. My guess is that if you are now *teaching* law school, you are probably only representative of about 2% of law school matriculants across the board.

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  41. 12:34
    Well I base my opinion upon 45 years in law school teaching plus having three children who have gone through law school and a couple of nieces and nephews. Other than that I know very little about the current crop because I retired from teaching last year. You may be right. I would like to see someone experiment with it. If you run the numbers with 80 students in a first-year class they are pretty positive.

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    Replies
    1. Are you talking about the risk aversion of law students? My experience with the lack of risk aversion is based on reading thread after thread on TLS for a couple of years. Everyone is willing to take the gamble until the realty of OCI hits them.

      Delete
  42. "Oh fiddlesticks!" He pouted.

    I want to hear from the HYS people.

    "By Gum!" He said. "They will know how to fix the scam.

    Because they are soooooo smart and soooooooo right all the time."

    Andd where the hell were the HYS poo people as all the lower tier toilets (which they view with so much disdain) were opening up?

    But, perhaps some of the HYS people needed to visit the necessary and got jobs as hoity- toitey tenured professors at some of the lower tier commodes?

    Anyway, and my plea: Pweese HYS! Pweeeeeese help us wee little people with 6 figure debt.

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  43. ^^

    Yeah, I got to hand it to you there.

    Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors, and HYS has 31 or more styles and forms of Hypocrisy.

    But at least Baskin Robbins is Shineola and not the other HYS thing.

    I once met an old asshole that had a Brown University patch on the breast of every blazer he owned.

    What a real first class inhumane bastard that guy was.

    But, like all of us, he got old and died, and all in the Cemetary are still impressed because the Brown University seal is on his tombstone.



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  44. LawProf,

    Is there anyway I can get in contact w/ the writer of this letter? I would like to get some ideas on which start-ups to apply to - I graduated law school, passed the bar, speak several languages (one is Spanish), have a lot of business experience, formerly worked as a mediator, did a few internships (one was for a federal judge) and am currently unemployed.

    I desperately need work and would appreciate any leads on start-ups. It seems the ones I apply to always have hundreds of applicants per position. I would love some ideas on organizations that are actually looking for people.

    Thanks for any info. anyone can give me.

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  45. Scour techcrunch.com and look at the HQ locations. If one is in your city / a city that you are willing to relocate to, reach out.

    That's it.

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  46. @8:03

    You could also go into Library Science and become a Librarian.

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  47. The law school cartel is being run by madmen.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFjdz2bRHRg&feature=related

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  48. Law Prof, over at Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith provides the link to a useful article on the sordid history of how student loans got to be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

    It's vital information for those who want to reverse this tragedy.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/moe-tkacik-student-debt-the-unconstitutional-40-year-war-on-students.html

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  49. ^^ I don't know how any law school academic can live with the reality that their ambitions and lives have all been made possibly by, and a part of a student lending antihuman dream in one part of the world, and at one time, and that all of their scholarship will most likely be viewed in that light as trivial and negated and by future generations.

    Including the work of leiter. (hope he had fun with all the money)

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  50. In other words, the sugar teat of student lending allowed any blow hard academic to spout off about whatever bullshit they wanted to write avbout in a house organ known as a law review.

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  51. LOC, I have been talking with a few friends (both faculty and students) recently about the idea of giving all students a masters at the end of the first year. This idea probably took root in my brain because I had read your comment earlier. I'm glad to know the origin of the idea and to give you credit (no blame!).

    It's an intriguing idea because it would be very easy for schools to do; from what I can tell, this is an administrative move rather than one that requires accreditation or ABA blessing. It wouldn't solve the whole problem by a long shot, but it would at least give students who leave at the end of the first year recognition of their work. That, in turn, would make it possible for students to leave after the one year.

    These students would no longer be seen as people who failed to earn a law degree, but as people who have one year of potentially useful (if pricey) graduate education. I suspect that most of the alternative jobs that law schools tout (human resources, compliance, FBI) would respect the one-year masters as much as the JD. I.e., it's either a help, neutral, or something they disregard--but in any event, it would be much cheaper! There are a lot of other intriguing down the road spin-offs from this. Maybe I'll do a main post.

    Meanwhile, thanks for mentioning this again. It's an intriguing idea and I'm also glad to be able to credit you as an originator!

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  52. What is needed by now is a very wise perspective on where all of this has been, and where all of this is going.

    DJM is up for the weekend :)

    And so let us all not mince our words and be honest and provide a real and prophetic and true picture.

    All of us, high to low, are familiar with the issues.

    How to solve the complex knot of problems?

    How to untie the knot? Or is that the wrong approach?



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  53. At least giving the students a masters at the end of the first year might stop some kids from getting completely mangled by the debt abattoir.

    That's probably the best idea I've seen recently, since it the closest you are going to get to a win-win in this lose-lose situation.

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  54. Problem is that the law degree or even a masters degree in law generally is not really that useful for human resources. One can become a highly successful human resources executive without a law degree. Also most entry level HR jobs do not pay anything more than one would earn with a college degree.

    For those attorneys who are actually in human resources-related areas, you can move from law to HR if you have a job and your company lets you make the transition. If you do not have a job or are trying to move straight from a legal job, you probably will not succeed, because all HR jobs that hire outsiders are looking for very specific experience - GUESS WHAT? IN HR. Even if you have all the listed experience they say they are looking for (which is quite rare for an attorney, because you in fact were not in HR), you are screwed because you do not have actual experience in HR, but rather as an attorney. The jobs always want actual experience doing what you would be doing on an HR job.

    To go into compliance, you need specific legal experience relevant to the compliance position, such as investment management expertise. Investment management is probably, and I say probably, because I am not in this market, an area where someone who has experience has a good shot at getting a job. Oh yes, as to compliance - you make less than in BigLaw as a general matter, but not always. Also, it is unlikely a masters in law generally would give you any edge in getting an entry-level compliance job.

    Finally, if law schools try to flood these areas with 23,000 unemployed law graduates a year, you can bet these areas will have a serve supply/ demand imbalance just like the legal profession.

    Therefore a general masters in law would be a way to save face in a losing experience of going to law school for one year, but not useful for much else.

    These institutions are not doing their students any favors by staying in business or enrolling as many people as they do, whichever way you slice it. The answer is to switch the training to health care or other areas where there is projected to be demand. The schools may actually do people favors by having accelerated classes to train displaced attorneys for the health care field - at a great discount where the school saddled them with a useless degree.

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  55. In case anyone needs a good laugh...

    http://www.cooley.edu/news/2012/study_suggests_recent_law_school_graduate_employment_better_than_expected.html

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  56. Just to add another career alternative to the list of what a college grad can do - commercial real estate broker I understand is a good area, at least if you live in a city. I understand it takes a few years to get established, so you make little for the first few years, but once you are established, at least if you make it past those first few years, you have a career. Sure beats spending 3 years paying law school tuition and THEN facing unemployment.

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  57. @3:43 - This "knot" is going to be untied the way all gordian knots are untied.

    The entire higher education "bubble" (it's not really a bubble, it's actually a pyramid scheme) has been inflated by the massive credit expansion from the 1980s through 2007 when the private credit origination system finally hit the brick wall.

    The boom times aren't coming back.

    What is occurring right now is recognition in the mind of prospective students of the fact that the boom times aren't coming back.

    This is leading to less students desiring to lard themselves up with massive debt.

    Declining enrollment will continue for the foreseeable future until such time as the system reaches something resembling equilibrium . It will still be a pyramid scheme, but it will be the less destructive pyramid scheme that it was before the credit bubble.

    It's hitting law school now. Eventually it's going to hit undergrad institutions, too.

    Schools are left with two choices. Either start *lowering* tuition or be slowly starved to death by a reduction in enrollment.

    Schools, being ignorant of the generational cycling of credit, are apparently going to choose the slow starvation route.

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  58. Undergrad school is different from law school. Undergrad school is useful in the general sense for most people. One needs that education as a general matter to get most good jobs in the United States. Law school is a horse of a different color. It really prepares one to practice law. Maybe it is helpful to someone who wants to go into business, but a law degree is anything but necessary for one to go into most businesses.

    Top colleges and even middle of the road and low ranked colleges will continue to attract substantial numbers of applicants. Economic studies show that college is worthwhile for most people in terms of lower unemployment and higher lifetime earnings. Not everyone gets an economic return on college, but that is not what a college degree promises in any event.

    Law schools are starting to suffer and will drop precipitously once the actual career economic statistics on law school outcomes are available.

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  59. "Economic studies show that college is worthwhile for most people in terms of lower unemployment and higher lifetime earnings."

    You mean the severely flawed "economic studies" that guidance counselors and 2nd-rate universities have been using for decades?

    College is a worthwhile investment - TODAY - for maybe 20% of the people going.

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  60. "Liberal arts majors from good schools can get good jobs."

    LOL - I was magna at Northwestern with experience, and ain't no good job. Is NU not a good enough school for you?

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  61. No, I do not think you can quantify what college gives a person in the way you describe. A person can work as a janitor for years and then be very successful starting a cleaning service. Did college help on that? Likely, yes. What if you surveyed that person after 10 years of being a janitor? College would seem to be a total waste. Not over till it's over for most people, and you just cannot always tell the value of college.

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  62. Northwestern Magna- When did you graduate? THis is a very tight economy with few openings. Your NU Magna can get you a good job. If you are 5 or 6 years out and you have been in retail all that time, you either didn't look, or you like retail and ought to stay in it - as your own boss perhaps. It takes a long time to land in a comfy job in this economy.

    If you graduated since 2008, start looking in one area where there is DEMAND, and do not stop until you find something.

    If you cannot figure out where there is demand, go online, then attend industry groups, and talk to people, and satisfy yourself that there may be room for a career for you.

    It can take 3 years to get something in this economy. I know. I am a lawyer and at times have had to spend not months, but years looking for the next step in my career, and have suffered in the meantime. No question you will suffer if it takes 3 years, but that is the economy for you.

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  63. DJM-
    I am glad to hear that other folks are thinking in the same direction. One of the things that I proposed last time, and which I think drew much of the flaming, was that only the top 25% or so would go on to the second level. The idea behind that was to open up the first-year class to people whose numbers might not be quite up to snuff. It has always been my feeling that the LSAT and GPA combo scores do not give much of a realistic guideline in the lower 75% of the class. I would much prefer to see a larger class with a much more open evaluation system than we are now locked into by the LSAT GPA combination. I think if such a system were constructed fairly we could expand opportunity and lower cost for the first year of law school. I understand how complicated that is but at the same time I really believe that we have created a pretty unfair and profoundly expensive system that needs to change.

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  64. @ 4:25 It was not what I was thinking of. But, sure, it is a good school. Well, you did just write that you "ain't got no good job".

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  65. @4:25-- You are right. Sorry for the snark. I should not have been as absolutist as the commenter I was responding to. Of course not every single person who goes to a good college, law school, medical school, or whatever will get a good job. My point was that liberal arts majors, I know quite a number, have gotten jobs upon graduation this year.

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  66. Hush up everyone.

    DJM is up soon, and will be posting this weekend :)

    Save your breath until then.

    As for me I need a vacation. No more comments for a while. All this election stuff is pretty awful and frankly I need to get away.

    None of any of all of this will help me anyway.

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  67. @4:11 - "Top colleges and even middle of the road and low ranked colleges will continue to attract substantial numbers of applicants."

    I don't think that you understand the financial delusion that supports the current student debt and college tuition systems.

    Eventually, economic reality is going to intrude on collegiate fantasy-land.

    The current system requires that tuition increase faster than income growth, with the difference made up by debt issuance, which attaches to 21 year olds.

    This debt issuance then works to drag down future disposable income streams because of the difference in the rates of increase between tuition growth and household income growth.

    Student loan garnishment is finally beginning to hit Social Security Retirement income streams.

    It unsustainable, so it will eventually stop and colleges are going to be caught off guard when it snaps.

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  68. @449:

    Sarcasm and typo; sure you know this.

    I have lots of schoolmates who did exactly what I did after working low-wage jobs that are "beneath us:" run to law school and partake in other educational arms racing. I know other people still working as low-level assistants in dead-end positions that they play up to make themselves feel better. The skill sets are wide-ranging; people who speak French, stats/computer science second majors, business experience, primo internships, etc. Result is the same: it's extremely hard (read: network!!!) to land a "good job" with a liberal arts degree, even from a good school.

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  69. ", was that only the top 25% or so would go on to the second level." What? If law school performance and actual legal practice performance were the same or had some high relationship to each other then mabye I could entertain this, but this is not the case.

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  70. Seriously, who the fuck is "Anon" over at Taxprof's blog? Does anybody know? This fucker, if he is a law professor, needs to be "outed" badly.

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  71. @PoorGrad: "What? If law school performance and actual legal practice performance were the same or had some high relationship to each other then mabye I could entertain this, but this is not the case."

    Law School performance and being able to pay back your loans by getting a $160K job in BigLaw is certainly linked.

    The point is that the legal field is shrinking as a % of GDP. We don't need this many lawyers and we don't need people larded up with six figure debt and no way to pay it back.

    So, maybe you cut of debt origination if you don't hit the top 25%.

    That way luxury consumers who want the status symbol of a J.D. can keep going.

    The legal jobs that do exist have a bimodal distribution. The higher mode is the one that lets you pay back your debt.

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  72. side note:

    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Psychological-Stages-of-a-RE-Bubble-Market1.png

    although this chart refers to the national housing market pricing (not value), i think it is somewhat applicable to the drop in LS applications. I think we might even see a "bear rally" in the following 2-3 years.

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  73. "LOC, I have been talking with a few ... about the idea of giving ...a masters at the end of the first year. ...from what I can tell, this is an administrative move rather than one that requires ...ABA blessing. ...would at least give students ... recognition of their work. That, in turn, would make it possible for students to leave after the one year. "


    Which is why administrations will be loathe to do this. It's within their discretion, and could incentivize students to leave after 1L. Revenue loss. There may be some break even point, for example charging the substantial equivalent of 2L year's tuition for the LLB or masters-at-law degree conferment. But I'm skeptical LS administrations would want to do it for free.

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  74. @ 6:08, "...who... is "Anon" over at Taxprof's blog? ...if he is a law professor, needs to be "outed" badly."


    I've read many of his comments. Not sure why, since they're essentially cut-paste copies of each other.

    All it does is recite the BLS data ad nauseam... ...hmmm, as I write this, it strikes me that its writing is fairly similar in this respect to that self-styled ethics guru Marshall.

    But in any event, I don't advocate for "outing" people. Even jerks. Just ignore them and don't give them airtime.

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  75. It is clearly the unlimited government spigott of non-dischargeble educational loans with no requirement that colleges and universities control costs that has caused this horrendous debt burden. Some of it is on the young generation. Some is borne by their parents.

    A secondary cause for public tuition increases is states not controlling their spending. Those state constitutions that guarantee people who start working the same level of benefits, pension accruals and health benefits as long as they work, are burdens on the younger generation. In some cases, people can retire on a pension at age 48, like police in New York City. Why should't they be required to hold a desk job or to work after school hours babysitting school age children so their parents can work in exchange for collecting that hefty pension starting at age 48? Why allow police to collect pensions for 30 years when they are fully able to work for most of those years? Questions like amending state constitutions with unsustainable employment benefits guarantees for public employees and putting public servants to work in exchange for collecting a very early and unsustainable pension as well as fully state paid medical benefits for life need to be addressed. Things need to change.

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  76. I think it might be Ted Seto. He and Anon have both made the argument that now is a great time to enter law school because the classes are smaller. "buy low" Seto called it.

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  77. I'm sure Paul Caron has an idea who Anon is, and Caron appears very sympathetic to the scambloggers' position. If/when he eventually speaks out for himself on this issue, I seriously hope he outs Anon. Anon is a fuck. His obsessive trolling is going to ruin more lives.

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  78. "hmmm, as I write this, it strikes me that its writing is fairly similar in this respect to that self-styled ethics guru Marshall."

    This.

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  79. Anon's most recent comment reads like a Leiter trolling.

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  80. "Anon's most recent comment reads like a Leiter trolling".


    Nah - you want to read something that reads like Leityear trolling... try this comment to Prof. Merritt's "Hypocrisy" post.

    http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2012/08/hypocrisy.html?showComment=1344828631063#c2131268704417463895


    Some excerpts, in all their flowery glory...

    Rather, I meant to press you on what you meant by "greedy"; I think your understanding was not coherent, and I asked whether you were not greedy by that definition. Your concession that you might well be didn't fill with me glee that you were admitting hypocrisy; rather, I persist in thinking that you really have a different understanding of true greediness that isn't spelled out (see, e.g., your comments about your attempts to renounce salary increases, which seek at some level to differentiate yourself) or, as I originally suggested, that your gripe isn't really about greediness at all, but rather depends on some sense of desert (e.g., that you deserve your salary because you work hard at your assigned roles while simultaneously not putting your head in the sand re reform). Whatever the refined criticism, I think you can find professors worthy of it, but I am pretty confident that it requires that you paint with a finer brush, and resist the temptation just to throw your own body on the bonfire (while pulling it away a short distance, too)."


    Note, I'm not saying this is Professor Leiter. I frequently poke fun at people here who claim to glimpse a Leiter hiding behind every other bit of shrubbery. But the quoted post is a lot like his style...

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  81. Re: a Masters in Law Degree:

    An internet for-profit law school, Concord Law School, mostly operates out of California and its students must pass the state's First Year Law Student's Exam (the "Baby Bar") in order to continue to study for a JD. Only 20-30% of Concord's students pass the baby bar. Naturally this has the potential to deprive the school of the additional three years of revenue (it's a four-year program) from 70-80 % of its 1Ls.

    The school mitigated this loss by offering a non-JD study track for students that don't pass the Baby Bar. Concord invented a degree called the "Executive Juris Doctorate" (EJD) which can be had after three years of study instead of four. It does not qualify one to sit for the bar, but it does represent some sort of achievement, much like the proposed "Masters of Law" discussed on this thread.

    I don't imagine anyone here has ever heard of Concord's EJD or know anyone who holds one. According to Concord the EJD can be useful to somebody who already has a good job and just wants to acquire some legal education. The school does not, I don't think, represent that this degree can help somebody unemployed become employed. Similarly, I suspect a Master's in Law given to students who leave law school after one year would likely be seen at best as a nice bit of acquired knowledge; at worst, a booby prize.

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  82. Have you guys seen this, and is it my imagination or is it completely freaking stupid?

    http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202567602357&Underserved_middle_class_could_sustain_underemployed_law_graduates&slreturn=20120717013410

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  83. Anyone know of a good ethics guru?August 16, 2012 at 10:58 PM

    It's not your imagination, it's his.

    "Ironically, while thousands of new law graduates fret about the chronic joblessness that awaits them, tens of millions of Americans need attorneys but cannot afford them."

    Not only do I wonder how new law graduates are fretting about the chronic joblessness that "awaits them" when they've already graduated and are jobless, I also wonder what the source for this statement is. Who exactly are these people crying out for legal services that they can't afford? This sounds like some Jack Marshall, fairy tale bullshit.

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