Monday, August 12, 2013

Counterpoint #4: Reasons you SHOULD go to law school (World's Worst Advice)

Today, free of charge, your local career services gives you the world's worst advice. Let's flat out list all reasons left that you should attend law school:


  • Law school trains you to think; no other school does that at all, all other degree programs produce thoughtless robots
  • Law school trains you to research; all other degree programs do no research at all
  • Law school gives you access to print money in the form of private practice. Look at the Yellow pages to see how many others are making a living on private/solo practice; if it didn't pay, why would they be advertising?
  • Law school still sends a tiny fraction of its graduates to big law and federal clerkships; if you work, you could  make the cut. Not everybody can start on the varsity football team, but many do. Someone gets to be quarterback; may as well be you. 0L drops back and scrambles . . . touchdown!
  • Law school may be your best option "in this economy". Where else ya gonna go? Dental school? That would be like pulling teeth.
  • Law school has built-in career services offices; multiple full-time employed experts who care about setting you up with a long-term career. I bet you didn't get that in high school!
  • Law school has many subjects for you to master; dead people's now-obsolete lawsuits are more useful than you would think. 
  • "J.D.++" advantage non-attorney jobs. That's a PLUS PLUS in my book!
  • Law school graduates who sued their own schools for fraud have only won preliminary judgements in some states, not all of them. The odds are still in the schools favor!
  • Law school will make you sophisticated; a Judge himself declared this so. Just by choosing to go to a law school, you will find it hard to claim anything other than worldly sophistication in several states
You are moving up in the world and are on the right track. It's time to take the LSAT plunge into the warm and shallow waters of legal reasoning. Good luck on exams and remember, 

GO TO LAW SCHOOL!

10 comments:

  1. You can pay a lot less for a degree that "teaches you how to think", that is for sure.

    High-quality law school applicants who are determined to go to grad school should seriously think about economics. The degree is STEM-y enough that employers like it, and involves that very-valuable "thinking" and "research" training.

    A MS in economics isn't going to be cheap, but it's probably 50% the cost of law school and won't be the employer-repellant that a JD generally is.

    For most I'd recommend on-the-job training (if you can get it) and starting a career after the BS, rather than grad school. But if you really really want those thinkin' skills, there are so many choices other than a JD.

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  2. Plus, if you are an average looking female, where else can you go to school where you will be considered "hot"?!

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    Replies
    1. Engineering school. A female engineer I know tells me of how the polytechnic college she attended used to bus in women from a nearby women's college for dances in a desperate effort to achieve some rough approximation of gender balance.

      Delete
  3. Also, you can pay several hundred dollars a semester for terrific "casebooks" that are just compilations of publicly available court opinions.

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    Replies
    1. So? Is there something wrong with the book publishing business?

      Delete
    2. No, there isn't.

      But we all understand, Knorps/18th/WCTLS/Infinity, that you think there is nothing wrong with Law School and its ancillary industries. We get it. Really. We do.

      Good for you, but it still is not a good idea for many, many, many folks.

      Delete
    3. "So? Is there something wrong with the book publishing business?"

      No, there's something wrong with professors who use $200.00 textbooks to discuss basic, well-known black letter law that hasn't had a significant change in 40 years.

      Delete
    4. @12:27

      Nothing wrong with the publishing business. The problem is that professors require you to buy super expensive hard bound casebooks written by their friends (or in some cases themselves), even though you could just as easily print off the cases for free. It's just more self-dealing by "academics."

      Delete
  4. "Law school will make you sophisticated; a Judge himself declared this so. Just by choosing to go to a law school, you will find it hard to claim anything other than worldly sophistication in several states."

    Ha. Excellent.

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  5. "Law school teaches you how to think." Unfortunately, once you finally learn how to use your brain, you realize you are $150K in non-dischargeable debt and have been swindled.

    ReplyDelete