Given the overwhelming list of reasons not to go to law school (including, but in no way limited to: few jobs, high unemployment, outrageous cost, lost time, incompetent and unqualified faculty, irrelevant teaching, low career satisfaction, zero “prestige” and respect, low pay, etc.), it still amazes and frustrates me that so many people continue to blindly enroll in law school – and throw away their lives – year after year after year.
So today, let’s try a different tactic. I’m going to suggest that if you’re reading this and you’re dead set on attending law school – yes, I know you’re different from everyone else and you’re certain to succeed – then go ahead and attend.
Just not this year.
Jim Saska has an excellent article on Slate right now, entitled “You Can Do Anything With a Law Degree.” Well worth reading. Saska quotes Casey Berman (whose “Leave Law Behind” blog I’ve added to the links on this site – see the RHS of the page):
Berman believes that more college kids should focus on finding their “unique genius.” (“I know it sounds really California new age-y,” he says, adding, “what can I say, I went to Berkeley.”) If you find that specialized skillset outside of law, there’s no reason to get a J.D. “If I had the patience at 22 [for self-reflection], I wouldn’t have gone to law school,” he says.
One word stands out: patience.
Nobody needs to attend law school this year. Have a little patience. Even if your heart is set on law school and you’ve dreamed about being a lawyer ever since you were small, have a little patience. Law school will be there for you this time next year. You won’t look like the dummy who was held back a year – it’s not a race to see who can graduate the quickest and be the youngest qualified lawyer.
Once you graduate from law school, as many have pointed out, you’re pretty much locked into a career. Your debt will be so high and your qualifications so narrow that you can’t do much else other than hammer the pavement looking for some kind of job related to law. That, or eat the lost three years and the student debt and move on with your life, crippled financially and with your resume branded with one of the most useless and despised qualifications you could have obtained.
Particularly this year, with the legal education system and the economy still in turmoil, have a little patience. Sit it out, see where the dust settles. Try that other path in life – you know, the one you really dream of taking, but don’t have the courage or self-confidence to pursue. The one you think is kinda dumb and unrealistic. Stand up to your parents or whoever is pushing you into a JD. It’s just for one year. And it’s the last year you’ll be able to do this, because once you get that JD, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever have the freedom to pursue something you’ve always wanted to try.
And if all else fails during that year off, at least you tried. And then you can go to law school refreshed, happy in the knowledge that you’ve scratched something off your “things to do in life” list; one less regret. Law schools will still be around, and I promise they’ll still be more than happy – maybe even desperate – to take your money.
And you never know, you might find that your year off turns into the career you really wanted, rather than the one you’ve been told you should want.
Great post Charles.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I wish I had done in my early 20s was to take some time to really figure out (1) what I enjoyed doing and (2) what I was good at. To the people who may be reading this and thinking about law school, I would encourage them to take the Meyers-Briggs personality assessment. There is a charge for the full assessment but I think there are online versions that are free. Your particular personality type is put into buckets: introverted/extroverted, sensing/intution, thinking/feeling, etc. So my profile turned out to be Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging.
There's also an excellent book called Do What You Are. It correlates personality profiles with careers. It gave me ideas about what to do that I had never thought about. As it turns out, I am now in a job that I love but it was quite by accident. There are many people who wind up in jobs ill-suited to their temperaments. You don't want to take the plunge and spend three years of your life and $150,000 just to discover you can only get hired in a job that rewards a lawyer personality type.
And as previous posts have pointed out, a law degree will NOT help you do a lot of different things. Far too many people buy into this notion. You should only start considering law school if you absolutely, positively want to be a lawyer, and have a realistic idea of what it's actually like. And you'll only get that realistic view by watching a lawyer do actual, mind-numbingly boring work.
Do what you are—and the money will follow? Classic baby-boomer myth.
DeleteI said nothing about money and I'm not a Boomer. I hate Boomers with every ounce of my being. They're sucking us dry with their entitlements and simultaneously wrecking the environment, economy, etc. for future generations. I watch as people in their 50s and 60s glide through life in secure jobs, phoning it in and waiting for Medicare and SS to take care of them. I'm paying for their goddamm medicare and SS and it won't be available for me in another 30 years.
DeleteI'm talking about matching your skills and abilities with a job. Then at least you have a shot at career happiness. Maybe you have a better paying job, maybe you don't. But at least know thyself Grasshopper.
With all due respect, the Meyers-Briggs personality assessment produces at best useless generalizations and has been roundly discredited by many professionals as having no value in the job search or job placement process. Read 'Nickle and Dimed' by Barbara Ehrenreich for better context about the insidious role this test has and continues to play with regard to the misleading of the desperate jobless.
Delete9:43, the part about the money following is a bit of a myth. But that's not to say the alternative is "do something you hate for a shot at some cash", because that's equally bad.
DeleteIdeally, we'd all have the common sense to pick a path in life that balances our interests with a sensible financial goals. Running off and trying to make it big in Hollywood is a bad use of a year or two between undergrad and law school - that all but guarantees you'll end up in law school. But trying something like teaching or starting a small business, or trying to get a foot in the door in journalism or cooking or whatever, those are good uses of one's time between undergrad and law school that could lead to a reasonable, balanced career.
I do get the impression that there's a disconnect between what law schools try to recruit (impressionable students with no life experience) and what law firms would like to hire (mature grads who aren't K-JD, but who aren't middle-aged either.) If only law schools would encourage a little time off between undergrad and law school...but then they'd soon realize that students don't want to go to law school when they've seen what life can be like outside the grip of academia.
6:14/12:06, this is 9:43 again. Glad to see that we both hate the baby boomers something awful. Theirs is the most odious generation in history.
DeleteI thought that becoming a lawyer would be right for me. But I've been kept out of the "profession" because of factors beyond my control.
Charles, some of your suggestions seem unrealistic for many people (including myself when I was young). Starting a business ordinarily requires money. Teaching usually requires certification—fine if one is going to go into it for the long term, but unrealistic for just a year or two. Cooking could work out (although one would probably need to go to culinary school), but I would not recommend journalism.
4:29, fair point, although I didn't mean for it to be taken literally as "the" list of alternatives. The interpretation I intended was that applicants pick anything they've wanted to do and go for it. Or just pick a sensible real world path and try it for a year and see how a regular job fits in terms of income, independence, and cutting the ties with academia for a while.
DeleteTeaching does not necessarily require certification. One does not need certification to teach at a private/independent school, for example. There are also many programs that allow recent grads the opportunity to teach for a year or two (Teach For America, Mississippi Teacher Corps) or will train you while you're teaching/earning a paycheck (TNPTeaching Fellows, NYC Teaching Fellows). Not saying that all would-be law students/lawyers should be teachers instead, but for those that have an interest, they can explore that interest (and gauge their aptitude) without committing to debt or a career.
DeleteAre all these programs perfect? No. Are they for everyone? Certainly not. Do they represent a means to do the kind of gap year experience Charles is talking about instead of rushing blindly off to law school because you're worried that you're somehow "behind" and need to get caught up by becoming a lawyer ASAP.
Going K–JD should not be allowed. Invariably these people lack maturity and experience of the real world. For years now, many law schools have preferred candidates with a couple of years' working experience; Northwestern even expects it.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, one cannot wait too many years. Graduating past age 29, or 32 at the outside, is a singularly bad idea. Some of us learned this the hard way.
Also, not everyone can afford to dream the impossible dream. I'm sick of the blithe advice, widely given, to travel around the world on a "gap year" or take an unpaid "internship" in some sexy field. That stuff requires money, something that many of us do not have. I certainly have never had any sort of "gap" when I could afford to do anything other than taking whatever job was available.
Well said. Gap years are for the 1%.
DeleteNice post.
ReplyDeleteI'd add non-dischargeable debt (or perhaps NON-DISCHARGEABLE DEBT) to your list of reasons not to go to law school.
Because that's what has turned law school from being a possibly wasted three years into a life-wrecking experience for hundreds of thousands of people.
Absolutely. A glaring omission from the list.
DeletePreach it, Brother Cooper.
ReplyDelete-dupednontraditional
Have you seen this article by a Washington and Lee third year? Law School's Lessons in Frustration and Alienation http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202654681932?slreturn=20140415115827
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of patience, the law school reform movement has made enormous progress over the last three years. This fall about 37,000 people will enroll as 1Ls -- a 30% decline since 2010. (The decline in applicants has been much steeper at 40%, but schools have slashed admissions standards not merely cut class sizes).
ReplyDeleteI think there's a good argument that around 27,000 annual 1Ls is a desirable amount, since this will produce around 24,000 grads, if attrition rates remain the same. Of course there aren't that many real legal jobs -- probably more like 20,000 -- but a certain number of rich kids are going to law school as a form of conspicuous consumption, a couple of thousand others will get legally related jobs that don't require bar admission (these are of course much more scarce than law schools claim, but not completely imaginary) etc. Anyway 37,000 is a radically less dysfunctional and destructive total than 50,000+, so that's real progress.
In addition, real tuition rates are actually falling on average, as schools radically discount sticker prices. Much less progress has been made on this front than in regard to enrollment, but at least the trend is in the right direction. So the goal of half as many graduates at half the price.
BTW there was a thread at the Faculty Lounge regarding what role the scam blogs had played in all this, with some anonymous law professor claiming they had played literally no role. It's a small thing, but that sort of response is symptomatic of how so many legal "academics" don't have a genuine academic bone in their body, as any real academic would of course acknowledge that we don't have any idea precisely what relative role various potentially significant factors have played in the changes taking place in re enrollment totals and cost.
Probably half of those 37k 1Ls should be inadmissible to law schools. The decline in the quality of matriculants—capable people are staying away while mouth-breathing morons are peopling the classrooms—bodes ill for the legal "profession".
Delete@ 9:49, I've gotta believe you're right as to the decline in quality. I would love to know how LSAC handles this. Do they re-norm the LSAT so that the score distributions remain the same?
DeleteYes, they re-norm the LSAT at every single administration. But that's not all. Disproportionately many high-scoring people decide against law school. People with appallingly low scores are crowding into law schools. And that leads to a decline in quality.
DeleteAnd that's yet another part of the scam. A 165 in an application session heavy with high-achievers (like 2008) is a much smarter applicant than a 165 in a time like now where the applicants are dumber. So the 165 has the illusion of being as bright as a 165 from 5 years ago, when that is not the case.
DeleteThe fatal flaw in the test is that it assumes applicant quality is evenly distributed year over year and test over test. It is not.
It's very possible that 5 years from now, the bar pass rates at "nicer" schools will drop as the 150s and 155s start having problems passing the bar exam.
Great to hear from you, Professor Campos. Don't be a stranger.
DeleteI truly admire the way you're able to make the facts interesting. Stand up for marginal and defenseless people. Back off when it makes sense to do so. And not claim too much credit for yourself or anyone else.
A great point about falling costs. Law school isn't like the real estate market where it's time to buy because the same home might cost 10% more next year. Law school tuition levels are still falling, so waiting out for a year may end up saving significant amounts of money in the long term.
DeleteNow we cut to the chase. Prof. Campos' point about 27,000 1Ls is on the mark, but we cannot loose another 10,000 1Ls without losing a lot of the existing law schools. The death struggle has begun. No law school is going to shut itself down and send its faculty into the cold, cruel world of working for a living voluntarily. How far will admissions standards fall? How cynically will places like Vermont Law School try to sucker disadvantaged minorities into signing their lives away? This is going to get very ugly.
Delete5:22, good point. From a practical standpoint, some schools must close, as across-the-board "admission diets" are unlikely. But long before that, I see schools degrading themselves more and more - at least to the "free iPad if you enroll" level. For-profit online schools have a well-developed toolkit of embarrassingly-bad techniques for attracting idiots. I have little doubt that few law professors will complain if it's a choice between unemployment or the kind of advertising seen - so I'm told - on Internet porn sites. "Increase the length of your resume by three inches guaranteed with this simple technique!"
DeleteUnfortunately, it will have to be market forces that will ultimately force closures, because the feds won't move quickly or decisively enough, and the ABA won't do anything ever. No school will close until it has squeezed the last penny out of the last lender via the last lemming.
DeleteIn WWII U.S. Army officer candidates, during their training, were required to fill out periodic evaluations of their fellow candidates. The forms were known as "fuck your buddy sheets." It was a cruel game. Everyone knew that only a pre-set number of candidates would receive commissions and that the washouts were headed straight to the "repple depple" and the front lines as buck privates. Moreover, everyone knew that how they filled out the sheets would reflect their ability and willingness to make frank assessments of subordinates.
DeleteI think it's a good analogy for what will be going down in the coming years as the law schools engage in a cruel game of "last man standing."
"I think it's a good analogy for what will be going down in the coming years as the law schools engage in a cruel game of "last man standing.""
DeleteNo, because how their peers judge them means nothing, if they can attract sufficient student loan conduits to their school. I expect that the lesser schools which maintain standards will suffer much more than the schools who maintain class sizes. Later, in several years, they'll have problems, when their bar passage rates hit 33%.
You are wrong, Barry. Mark my words, when the supply of lemmings really starts to dry up they will start openly attacking each other in an increasingly desperate bid to survive. Bar passage, which you mention, will no doubt be one of many forms of attack. Peer review means little now (outside of USNWR rankings) but it has not yet gotten ugly.
DeleteExcellent, excellent post. Take a year (or two or three years) to be an normal working adult before you decide to sign your name in blood. It won't harm your chances of law-school admission or getting a job practicing law. If anything, it will help your chances, assuming you ultimately decide to go. And whatever you do between undergrad and law school can be spun in a positive way -- it doesn't need to be something sexy.
ReplyDelete-- One of the Lucky Ones
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ReplyDeleteOne thing that needs to be pointed out. The job market for college grads sucks - especially if the only thing you bring to the table is a useless BA degree. For many college grads, taking a year off means moving back in with the parents and donning an apron for a $10 an hour job in the service sector - basically returning to their high school days. A hell of a lot of K-JD's head off to law school to avoid this fate. Of course we know that this is a terrible mistake. Most of these people aren’t avoiding a bad fate, they are just postponing it for an even worse one. They will end up in the same boat after law school - only they will be three years older and much deeper in debt.
ReplyDeleteWorking near minimum wage after graduating with college may seem like a fate worse than death, but going to law school is ultimately much worse.
DeleteAll these poor lemmings asking "so what am I going to do now I have this BA degree if I can't go to law school?". I'd answer "I don't know, but just about anything is better than going to law school, even working a minimum wage service job".
That's what law schools (and a bunch of bottom-feeders) live off of, 22-year old whose apparent prospects s*ck. As said elsewhere, a miserable job without an extra $100K is better than one with the extra $100K .
DeleteIf you want to be a lawyer you will have to do research and find answers. In that year off, research the profession of law and don't make the classic smart person's mistake by thinking you are smarter than everyone else.
ReplyDeleteIf school is the only thing you've ever done, you are a child.
ReplyDelete18 year old high school grad, 23 year old college grad, 25 year old law school grad, 33 year old Post-doc research fellow, 55 year old tenured professor. They are all children.
Agreed. A few years outside the classroom and library does wonders for one's maturity.
DeleteI never really understand why so many 21~23 worried about being "too old" for law school. It seems like many just want to relish being graduated from law school 24 or 25 years old. And dreamed about working in big law as 25 years old and then become a biglaw partner at 32. It just seems to be that become a 32 years old biglaw partner is a given to many of these young 0L even if they don't admit. Little do they know when they graduated from law school with huge debts, their job options are usually worst than their "loser" high school classmates who didnt go to college.
ReplyDeleteYou're talking about 22 years olds who (1) have been successful at school, (2) don't have good job prospects and (3) have been told by everybody[1] that further education is always good and that law school is good option.
Delete[1] Their family, their teachers, their guidance counselors, their college career center, their friends, TV and movies and finally - law schools.
I always cringe when I read news stories of kids who graduate from college aged 13 or 14. The push to get to law school ASAP is equally misguided. If one's self worth is based upon how young one reaches certain milestones (or if one judges others on the same), what a unfulfilling existence...
Delete