Don't Go To Law School

[rkwright]

I know people now and then on here ask "should I go to law school" - I think light and truth, and misere have posted on it. There was an article on yahoo news today, which was a repost from the New York Times and the downsides of going to law school.

Article [url="http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/111784/is-law-school-a-losing-game;_ylt=AiBKqjNuJWsf5f2aiPyulLcNBa1_;_ylu=X3oDMTBzdWhmNWhlBHBvcwMxBHNlYwNhcnRpY2xlRmluYWwEc2xrAzE-?mod=edu-continuing_education"]here[/url].

Its a little long, here are some excerpts from it.

[quote]"Well, every angle except one: the view from law schools. To judge from data that law schools collect, and which is published in the closely parsed U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, the prospects of young doctors of jurisprudence are downright rosy.
In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.'s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.

And with corporations scrutinizing their legal expenses as never before, more entry-level legal work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India. It's common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry decades ago.

But improbably enough, law schools have concluded that life for newly minted grads is getting sweeter, at least by one crucial measure. In 1997, when U.S. News first published a statistic called "graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation," law schools reported an average employment rate of 84 percent. In the most recent U.S. News rankings, 93 percent of grads were working — nearly a 10-point jump.

In the Wonderland of these statistics, a remarkable number of law school grads are not just busy — they are raking it in. Many schools, even those that have failed to break into the U.S. News top 40, state that the median starting salary of graduates in the private sector is $160,000. That seems highly unlikely, given that Harvard and Yale, at the top of the pile, list the exact same figure.

How do law schools depict a feast amid so much famine?

"Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm," says William Henderson of Indiana University, one of many exasperated law professors who are asking the American Bar Association to overhaul the way law schools assess themselves. "Every time I look at this data, I feel dirty."[/quote]

[quote]"This gets to what might be the ultimate ugly truth about law school: plenty of those who borrow, study and glad-hand their way into the gated community of Big Law are miserable soon after they move in. The billable-hour business model pins them to their desks and devours their free time.

Hence the cliché: law school is a pie-eating contest where the first prize is more pie."


"Compared with the life he left four years ago, he has lost ground. That research position in Newark, he figures, would pay him $60,000 a year now, with benefits. Instead, he's vying with a crowd for jobs that pay at rates just a little higher, but that last only a few weeks at a time, with no benefits. And he's a quarter-million dollars in the hole.
Unless, somehow, the debt just goes away. Another of Mr. Wallerstein's techniques for remaining cool in a serious financial pickle: believe that the pickle might somehow disappear.

"Bank bailouts, company bailouts — I don't know, we're the generation of bailouts," he says in a hallway during a break from his Peak Discovery job. "And like, this debt of mine is just sort of, it's a little illusory. I feel like at some point, I'll negotiate it away, or they won't collect it."[/quote]

Edited January 10, 2011 by rkwright

[Semper Catholic]

We've gotten a lot more Law Kids looking at (student) JAG placement in the military that's for sure.

[Sternhauser]

There's a very funny, very true, and somewhat indecently-worded Vimeo about that on the YouTube. "So You Want To Go to Law School."

~Sternhauser

[4588686]

[b]Temp Hides Fun, Fulfilling Life From Rest Of Office[/b]
October 2, 2002 | [url="http://www.theonion.com/issue/4328/"]ISSUE 43•28[/url] [url="http://www.theonion.com/issue/3836/"]ISSUE 38•36[/url]

BOSTON—Ty Braxton, 23, continues to hide his fun and fulfilling life from the full-time employees of Hale & Dorr, the [b][u][url="http://www.theonion.com/articles/temp-hides-fun-fulfilling-life-from-rest-of-office,49/#"]Boston law firm[/url][/u][/b] for which he has temped since July.


"At a job like this, where you're surrounded by angry, perpetually stressed-out lawyers who are working 80 hours a week, it's important to hide the fact that you're enjoying a normal, balanced, happy life," Braxton said Monday. "People get really pissed when they hear stuff like that."

Braxton, who earns roughly one-fourth of what the firm's lowest-seniority full-time employees make, said he has no desire to make his coworkers feel bad about their "boring, shiitake mushroom lives."

"If somebody complains about how bad it smells of elderberries to work overtime five days straight, I just nod and agree," said Braxton, who spends his weeknights at parties, at concerts, and playing basketball in the park. "No point in rubbing in the fact that no matter how busy things are, I leave at exactly 5 p.m. every single day. If anyone asks me to stay later, I just say my agency doesn't let me do overtime."

After graduating from Wesleyan University in May 2000 with a degree in Russian literature, Braxton worked a series of part-time [url="http://www.theonion.com/articles/temp-hides-fun-fulfilling-life-from-rest-of-office,49/#"]jobs in[/url] and around Boston. In December 2001, he signed on with QualiTemps, the city's largest supplier of temporary office labor, which currently pays him $8.44 per hour.

"I have so much going on in my life right now," Braxton said. "I'm helping a friend start up a little Cajun food stand, I've gotten way into this Russian poet Mayakovsky, I've been hanging out with this really cool girl I met when my band, Sophie Drillteam, did a show with hers. Honestly, I just don't have the time or energy to put into some job."

In spite of his happiness, Braxton said he makes sure always to project an air of dissatisfaction, in both facial expression and posture, while in the office.

"If I had a great time staying out until 4 in the morning the night before, I make sure to wipe away all traces of a smile before I walk in these doors," Braxton said. "If anyone found out I'm not living a hellish existence like they are, I'd be asking for trouble."

Braxton is also careful about engaging his coworkers in conversation.

"I stopped talking about movies, because no one here ever goes to them," Braxton said. "Every time I mention a movie to someone, I have to sit there and listen to them go through the process of figuring out the last movie they saw. The other day, Andrew Walser, this intellectual-property attorney who's trying to make partner, told me that his last movie was [i]Gladiator[/i]. I was like, 'Oh, man, that's depressing.'"

In his long-term temp assignment as conference coordinator at Hale & Dorr, Braxton schedules [url="http://www.theonion.com/articles/temp-hides-fun-fulfilling-life-from-rest-of-office,49/#"]employee[/url] use of the firm's five common meeting rooms and is responsible for keeping the rooms stocked with cold refreshments and snacks. His other primary duty is to procure audio-visual equipment for meetings when requested, a situation that arises "only, like, one or two times a month."

"People e-mail me about needing rooms, and I have to e-mail them back with room assignments," Braxton said. "I also have to post the schedule on the meeting-room doors and order paper cups and things. All in all, though, it's pretty easy. Everybody's usually way too busy to give me any work to do, anyway."

During his three to four hours of "down time" each work day, Braxton reads, surfs the web, and e-mails friends. He also works on long-term personal projects. Over the past six weeks, Braxton has translated 41 pages of Alexander Pushkin's unfinished novel [i]Dubrovsky[/i] for a new English version he dreams of one day publishing.

Braxton has never mentioned his translation project to coworkers, nor has he mentioned any of his other pursuits.

"I don't want to rub in how much I get to do the things I want to do," Braxton said. "I feel sorry for them. They go home after a hard day, and they're so fried they just spend the night sitting in front of the TV. You know how these people spend their weekends? Resting. They [i]rest[/i]."

Another advantage Braxton enjoys over the full-timers is a significantly more relaxed dress code.

"They're always on the way to the dry cleaners or the barber or shopping for another expensive suit," said Braxton, who estimates that his average coworker spends five hours a week maintaining his or her personal appearance. "As long as I wear deodorant, keep my tie reasonably clean, and wash my one pair of Dockers over the weekend, no one really gives a poo what I look like."

In his efforts to hide his happy, fulfilling life from his coworkers, Braxton has even resorted to lying.

"Just yesterday, somebody asked me about my last temp job," Braxton said. "It ended in May, but I told them it ended in June. See, after it ended, I took about a month off and just kind of dicked around, traveling around Europe until my money ran out. I knew not to mention that to people who won't be able to do anything like that until they're 65."

Though Braxton said he sympathizes with his coworkers, he added that the decision to pursue a prestigious, high-paying career path was entirely their own.

"They wanted to go for the brass ring and really live the good life," Braxton said. "What they don't seem to get is that the key to living the good life is to avoid that brass ring like the flooping plague."[img]http://o.onionstatic.com/img/icons/terminator.gif[/img]

[dairygirl4u2c]

i acutally thought that onion article was a real article. then i saw the onion symbol at the end, and something ignited my suspecion when i couldn't quite pin point that it was indeed the onion symbol.
it could so be true though , see no reason it couldn't be. it'd be funny cause its's true category though, not funny in a sarcastic woudnt be true sorta way.

[CatherineM]

If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't go to law school. I'd have become a carpenter or plumber. I don't think it is just about too many law school students, I think it is about too many people going to college, period.

[Starets]

The movie "The Paper Chase" scared me away from Law School decades ago. When I was in grad studies in history, we used to refer to people who transferreed to Law as having "committed Law School"

[Luigi]

My grandfather went to law school, and he practiced law for a little while, but then he decided he'd rather make an honest living.

[Adrestia]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1294704351' post='2198739']
If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't go to law school. I'd have become a carpenter or plumber. I don't think it is just about too many law school students, I think it is about too many people going to college, period.
[/quote]

I would agree if the standards for graduating from high school had not dropped so much in the past decade. I know that not all high schools have succumbed to the "no child left behind" garbage, but far too many have. Students are being taught how to pass standardized tests rather then being challenged to think. There are myriad other issues involved, but that's beside the point. In many cases, high school diplomas might as well be attendance certificates.

[CatherineM]

I wasn't just talking about the failures of the public school system. I meant literally that we don't need everyone going to college. Seriously. In 20 years, there's going to be lots of computer programmers and lawyers and no plumbers or electricians. Why is it that a man who works on old cars in his garage on weekends is looked at as a cool guy, but a guy who works on old cars for a living is seen as not worth anything?

As to the qualify of the school system, there was a report a couple of weeks ago that 25% of high school seniors can't pass the ASVAB to get into the Army. Add to that the 50% who are physically exempt by being overweight, and the 25% that are turned down due to hearing damage from loud music, and that should give us all pause as to the potential for readiness in case of a real national emergency.

[rachael]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1294768151' post='2199001']
I wasn't just talking about the failures of the public school system. I meant literally that we don't need everyone going to college. Seriously. In 20 years, there's going to be lots of computer programmers and lawyers and no plumbers or electricians. Why is it that a man who works on old cars in his garage on weekends is looked at as a cool guy, but a guy who works on old cars for a living is seen as not worth anything?

As to the qualify of the school system, there was a report a couple of weeks ago that 25% of high school seniors can't pass the ASVAB to get into the Army. Add to that the 50% who are physically exempt by being overweight, and the 25% that are turned down due to hearing damage from loud music, and that should give us all pause as to the potential for readiness in case of a real national emergency.
[/quote]
Agreed. My fiance didn't go to college, and does better than either of my parents ever did. Unfortunately, he is going now. The job he does is taking a toll on his body and his health at age 25 (he is a cable splicer). There haven't been enough people around who are qualified to do his job, so his employers use and abuse him for his skills. He wants to get his engineering degree before he p[font="Arial"]oops[/font] out. :/ Although, he would love to love to work on old cars for a living...or be a contractor...or run an organic farm...

So, what is it that makes people ashamed doing these kinds of jobs? Or as Catherine said 'not worth anything'? I think these jobs should be paid more than lawyers, doctors, etc.

[CatherineM]

There are places right now where plumbers make more than new lawyers. I think the reason the trades are no longer valued is based in appearances. The richest family in our church growing up was one where the dad ran his own garbage business. He had a shower installed in his garage so he could take one before coming in the house every night. How many women today would even go out on a date with a garbage man?

[rachael]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1294774607' post='2199034']
There are places right now where plumbers make more than new lawyers. I think the reason the trades are no longer valued is based in appearances. The richest family in our church growing up was one where the dad ran his own garbage business. He had a shower installed in his garage so he could take one before coming in the house every night. How many women today would even go out on a date with a garbage man?
[/quote]
I would. Lol.

My fiance comes in after a long day in his work boots, mud and dirt everywhere and he usually smells to high heaven. But ask him one question about what he does, he will talk about it for hours. He loves it.

He tells me stories of how home and store owners will look down on him because of what he does. They will yell at him and treat him like dirt. He is 'worth nothing and is tailor trash' etc. But, if they want electricity, internet and TV service they rely on him.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='rachael' timestamp='1294776281' post='2199041']
I would. Lol.

My fiance comes in after a long day in his work boots, mud and dirt everywhere and he usually smells to high heaven. But ask him one question about what he does, he will talk about it for hours. He loves it.

He tells me stories of how home and store owners will look down on him because of what he does. They will yell at him and treat him like dirt. He is 'worth nothing and is tailor trash' etc. But, if they want electricity, internet and TV service they rely on him.
[/quote]

The meek will inherit the earth. Some strong words were expended on those who pile burdens on men's backs.

~Sternhauser

[Mr.Cat]

Maybe I am critical... but I sort of want quality over quantity, though I do suspect there is a casual relationship between the two.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had citizens, lawyers, judges, and politicians who were just a bit more competent in political science and culture? Perhaps just a bit more ethical too?

Edited January 11, 2011 by Mr.CatholicCat