Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Legal Hiring Landscape Leaves Something to be Desired

Why do the scamblogs, who are already past their expiration date according to some critics, keep whining about job prospects for graduates and for the legal profession as a whole?  Why not just shut up, or something, already.  

Well, thanks to an upcoming article, we have yet further information to explain why the scamblogs maintain their dogged insistance on the matter:

Why, then, you may well ask, is there persistent talk of the entry-level job market’s purported improvement, and even suggestions that it is “hot”?...Well, the percentage of new graduates obtaining a Law Job has risen steadily since 2011.  And how can the portion of the graduating class getting a Law Job increase while the number of Law Jobs falls?  Easy:  The number of students graduating law school has been falling faster than the number of Law Jobs.  Here’s a picture:


Look at the above chart.  When the scamblogs say that "JD graduates have been overproduced 2-to-1 compared to available jobs for decades," it is data such as this, hot off the presses, that we are referring to.  Granted, given this recent summary, perhaps we should amend our statement to say "Ok, overproduced anywhere from 1.4 to 1.8, given the year," but the thesis still holds.  When we speak of the "lawyer glut," this is it.  And when those who cherry-pick the data say "this is the best time to go!", the reality is exactly what the quote above describes - there are relative percentages, and then there are absolute numbers.  Not the same thing.

No employer sector offers more Law Jobs today than it did ten years ago.  Non-law-firm entry-level Law-Job hiring has remained relatively flat in all sectors (other than the sudden dip experienced by nearly every sector of the hiring market when the economy crashed in 2008-2009):


Again, look at the above chart.  The fact that non-law-firm hiring has been flat does not bode well for the JD-Advantage crowd, either.  Many, many times has the Cartel lauded and praised the opportunities for JD-Advantage jobs, and many, many times have we taken those claims down.  Into this flat market have excess JD graduates been pumped, year after year.  The market is clearly not crying out for JD-trained individuals.

A final chart shows lawfirm-specific hiring:


Again, this looks very similar to the prior chart.  While some might say "oh, look, firms of 501 or more lawyers are on the upswing," but by what percentage?  Take a more critical look at the broad expanse as a whole.  These lines are not flying off the charts, are they?  They look rather flat in actuality.  The total job line, at the top, has the profile of a road with several potholes, not the long graceful upwards-curve of a suspension bridge to new heights.

Friends, this is why we say what we say.  I, for one, am greatful the Academy is publishing this information, as it needs to be made known, even though the implications are not good for the Cartel. Many of us would like nothing better than for the excesses of the past to be wiped away, and there to be Elysian Fields ahead.  But the reality is that the market does not need new JDs at the rate they have been produced.  Don't go to law school because it sounds good, only go if you have the backing and the credentials to get you there.  It's nothing personal, it is just the reality on the ground.  Too, too many have been sold a bill of goods to only learn the truth later, and we would all like to see that scenario go away in favor of gainfully employed JDs doing real work for real people.

In fact, just don't go.  The market still has yet to right-size, given prior comments from the Cartel itself. Now is not the time.           

44 comments:

  1. As a 1993 law school graduate, the first chart is particularly interesting to me. Back then, there was no such thing as blogs, and accurate information about the number of law school grads vs. the number of legal jobs was hard to come by. Still, it was clear as day to me that there were a hell of a lot more law school grads than legitimate entry level legal jobs. Thus, grads fell into three basic categories, with some overlap between them: (1) grads from elite schools, (2) grads from non-elite schools with top grades, and (3) grads with employment connections. If you didn't fall into one or more of those categories, you were going to have a hell of a time finding a job. Many never did.

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    1. 11:38 basically sums up my experience.

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    2. @ Anonymous March 5, 2019 at 11:38 AM: This pretty much is what I experienced circa 1998 when I graduated. My school was by no means a top-tier school - I guess by definition most graduates do not come from top-tier schools.

      And the 'career services' office...what a joke. No help whatsoever.

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    3. 7:34 - The scam blogs started up mainly as a result of the 2008 recession and the impact it had on legal employment. But old timers like us know that the huge gap between the number of law school graduates and the number entry level legal jobs has been around a lot longer than that. I began to realize that law school was largely a scam during OCI second year. The same 10% of the class showed up in interview attire every day while the rest of us showed up in jeans. It quickly became apparent than OCI employers were only interested in the top of the class/law review. I remember thinking at the time - how are the rest of us going to find jobs? How indeed! It took me 6 months to find a job after I graduated. I got it through an employment connection (so I guess I fell into category #3). All these years later, I’m still plugging away. I didn’t hit a home run by any means, more like a base hit. But I’m not complaining. Things easily could have turned out a lot worse. For a lot of people, including some of my friends, it did.

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    4. The problem with employment has been around for decades with the toilets, even before anyone knew they were toileted tiered.

      When I was attending my toilet, one of the profs wrote an article circa 1990 for the law student newspaper. He gave advice on how to get a attorney job and what to expect if you got one.

      To get one he said to graduate in the top 25% of this school. Top 10% would be better, but below 25% you may as well forget it.

      If you get a associate position with a firm, he said to expect to much more challenging than law school. He compared the class load to case load. If you were taking 6 classes in law school that would be the equivalent to 6 cases as a lawyer. But most lawyers are juggling perhaps 30 cases at any one time.

      His first point made sense to me, I knew the school sucked. The second I thought was a bit of a stretch, since a lawyer has a little more autonomy than a law student, even as an associate.

      Anyway, I thought when I read it, this will go over well with the Trustees. But that was about the end of his teaching career. He had started writing mystery novels author and his writing career was starting to take off and he resigned his teaching position shortly after the article was published to spend all his time on his writing career. I think he had the whole thing planned out.

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    5. Mar 05 at 11:38 am - You also summed up my experience in 1995-96.

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    6. I graduated ten years earlier, and that was my experience, too. The only difference-a small one-was that there was even less objective factual information available regarding jobs.

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    7. In 1985 I was sitting in the auditorium of McCormack Place in Chicago waiting to be sworn in to the bar with all applicants from the Cook County appellate district. Many, employed or not, had relatives there to witness what for me was just wasted billable time I'd have to make up on my own time. I overheard the father of one applicant saying that at that moment that room probably contained the thickest concentration of unemployment in the whole country. Toilets were toilets, even back then.

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  2. —— Don't go to law school because it sounds good, only go if you have the backing and the credentials to get you there.

    You should have stopped at the fifth word. At least you should have clarified "the backing and the credentials". Nowadays even a stillborn gerbil has the credentials to get to law school, perhaps even with a "scholarship".

    Let me put it this way: don't go to law school without an LSAT score of 165 or better. That statement will be criticized as rigid, unreasonable, and arbitrary, but it has the advantage of being clear and simple. If you don't like it, follow my old guideline (which I still endorse): do not attend any law school but Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Northwestern, Penn, Stanford, Virginia, or Yale, which are those in Tiers 1, 2, and 3 (http://outsidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-seven-tiers-of-law-schools.html). That rule too is clear and simple.

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    1. Mr. Old Guy, did you follow the older rule when you entered law school?

      If you did attend one of those thirteen schools--and still had monumental problems finding and keeping a legal job--then that would demonstrate at least one limitation of your rule.


      If you attended a law school outside those thirteen, then you have been persistently misrepresenting that school as "elite."

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    2. —— If you did attend one of those thirteen schools--and still had monumental problems finding and keeping a legal job--then that would demonstrate at least one limitation of your rule.

      Wrong. The rule excludes all but the élite law schools; it does not imply that attending an élite law school will work out well. Indeed, I have stated more than once that even Harvard and Yale are poor choices for many people.

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    3. Well, Mr. Old Guy, it looks like you just admitted that you've been giving advice in this forum that could work out poorly for those who follow it.

      I'd like to invite you to find a different hobby. While you and others do some good in this forum, that idiosyncratic "tier" system obscures most of what you could otherwise communicate.

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    4. I'd like to invite you to read the descriptions of the tiers (only the first three are listed here). Anyone who sees in them a recommendation to rush into a Northwestern or even a Harvard is too illiterate to be helped through written advice.

      TIER 1: Excellent choices for trust-fund babies. Others should seriously consider them while bearing in mind the very real risk of a bad outcome. You cannot, after all, eat prestige for breakfast.

      TIER 2: Rich kids should feel free to attend these. Others should not enroll without a substantial discount and should weigh the risk of a bad outcome carefully.

      TIER 3: Rich kids are likely to consider these insufficiently prestigious. Others should not even apply without a fee waiver and should not enroll without a large discount, probably at least 50% off; even then, the risk of a bad outcome would loom large.

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  3. What every 1L needs to be told on the first day of orientation:

    "Look to your left. Look to your right. At least one of you will will be marginally employed and drowning in student loan debt years after you graduate."

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    1. Only if you change that to look at yourself, and at least two of you, and probably three.

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  4. Another salient point is that even for those that are employed, legal jobs are notoriously stressful, uninteresting, and many times demeaning. There's a reason why half of all private practice attorneys end up being solos.

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    1. And most jobs in law that a fresh graduate might get don't pay enough to cover the payments on student loans well into the six figures. Those that do pay enough—mainly in Big Law—tend not to last more than a few years.

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  5. There's a proposal to support the über-toilet law skule at the University of North Dakota through a $100 surcharge on the fee for filing a civil suit (which is currently $80):

    https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/education/4580848-amendment-would-raise-civil-lawsuit-filing-fee-support-und-law-school

    North Dakota has the foulest über-toilet of all law schools at flagship state universities. If it can't support itself, close the bitch.

    The article defends the proposed surcharge on the grounds that the filing fee in North Dakota is already low. But that's not relevant to the question of whether people filing lawsuits should have to subsidize the state's über-toilet law school.

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  6. To supplement what Dupednontraditional is saying, just look at the economic numbers of the legal industry. According to the BEA, the real GDP of the legal services industry in 2017 was $210.7 billion. In 1997, the real GDP of the legal services industry was $214.8 billion. That is a decline of about 2%. Over that same period, real GDP of the entire U.S. economy grew from $11,521.9 billion to $18,050.7 billion. That is an increase of about 57%. Despite a growing economy, the demand for legal services has actually declined.

    Compare the decline of the legal services industry to the growth of the attorney population. In 1997, there were 953,260 active attorneys according to the ABA. In 2017, the number of active attorneys grew to 1,335,963. That is an increase of 40%. When the market demand for legal services declines, but ABA law schools churn out hundreds of thousands of more attorneys than needed, you get the situation discussed above by Dupednontraditional. There are more graduates than jobs available.

    Despite a growing economy, why don’t people need more attorneys? Companies and politicians have worked to eliminate the need for lawyers. Nowadays, you can’t open a checking account, get a cell phone, buy a car, get a job, or carry out many transactions without agreeing to mandatory arbitration. Consumers are now blocked from going to court to resolve disputes. Politicians have passed laws implementing caps on damages in medical malpractice cases. Also, businesses are now refusing to pay exorbitant legal fees. More lawyers are now competing for less work.

    If I opened a school to train Sears store managers or travel agents, most people would think that attending such a school would be idiotic. I could advertise that 99% of my students are employed, offer conditional scholarships, claim that I train my students to be “practice ready,” or tout the use of my training in Sears store manager advantage jobs. Everyone would think my school was absurd. But when it comes to law, snowflakes think they will be successful in a shrinking, hypercompetitive market.

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  7. I'm not sure how much the GDP grew over the last 20 years, but I'm pretty sure it has been a very minimal growth over the last ten years...which begs the question...for all of those people who are graduating with non-stem degrees, where are they finding jobs that pay reasonable, livable wages these days? Ok..Law school is out. But try getting a decent paying job in our present day service economy where it seems underpaying is a universal problem. Seems to me that you need some sort of specialization or unique service you can sell if you want to earn a reasonable income...What is everybody recommending so people can find what will ultimately result in fulfilling, well paying jobs because in the end that is the bottom line. If people don't think there is anything out there, they will still take their best shot in law school.

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    1. We've discussed that many times. I don't have any great suggestions of other lines of work, and anyway I could not recommend a line of work that would be appropriate for everyone who might have in mind to go to law school. But even if there is no other good choice at all, that does not imply that law school is anyone's "best shot". People going to law school not only forgo three or more years of income but also tend to incur debt well into the six figures that comes with high interest and is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. That, coupled with the very poor prospects of a well-paying and enduring job in law (especially for anyone coming out of a toilet law school), makes law school one of the worst shots for most people.

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    2. Ellipses troll,

      According to the BEA, the real GDP of the U.S. economy grew from $15,626.0 billion in 2007 to $18,050.7 billion in 2017. That is an increase of 15.5%. But that time period includes the Great Recession. Excluding 2007 and 2008, real GDP grew 18.7%.

      The real GDP of the legal services industry declined from $256.2 billion in 2007 to $210.7 billion in 2017. That is an astounding decline of 17.8%! Excluding 2007 and 2008, the real GDP of the legal industry still declined 12.6%. Despite a shrinking legal market, between 2007 and 2017, the total active attorney population grew from 1,143,358 to 1,335,963. That is an increase of 16.8%. The market demands significantly less legal services. If you obtain skills that are in declining demand, you are much more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.

      According to the BEA, there are several occupations that are projected to grow over 25% over the next 10 years and pay over $50,000. For instance, the BEA projects that wind turbine service technicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, statisticians, software developers, mathematicians, and information security analysts will have some of the highest growth in employment. All of these jobs pay over $50,000 a year, which is more than the average solo earns. Physician assistants, nurse practitioners, statisticians, software developers, and mathematicians all earn on average more than $100,000 a year.

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    3. As stated already in the sub-posts above, as well as prior OTLSS OPs, we here at OTLSS don't have a recommendation for what to do "instead" of law school.

      I wish we did, as we would trumpet it from the rooftops. Clearly the markets change and continue to change, so to be fair there is always risk and variability.

      That said, (1) many so-called advantages of law school and a legal career have been debunked, so avoiding law school is "low risk," and (2) as shown by 11:48 AM above, there are promising ideas that can be found without too much legwork. While we do not claim these ideas are a panacea, they are certainly worth investigating further with serious considerations as alternatives.

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    4. And 11:48 also supplies objective data regarding how bad law is as a job. Since the great recession, the economy as a whole grew, while the legal economy shrank.

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    5. Well, I suppose being debt free without a Job is superior to being loaded down with debt without a job. Either way, the person still doesn't have a job and ends up living in mom's basement, having very little control over their own lives in those situations.

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    6. What to do instead of Law School? A student who studies Nursing for two years will have multiple job offers and good salaries and benefits. More education will be subsidized by your employer, and I personally know a nurse working in an neo-natal intensive care unit making over six figures. Two years studying to be an X-ray Technician gets some fairly unintelligent people good jobs that over time grow to six figures without additional education. I once represented a Dental Hygenist whose two year Associate’s Degree led to a job making over 60,000 per year. Electricians, auto mechanics, computer programmers and many other people make excellent salaries with minimal education. The people applying Law School made a big mistake by getting a worthless 4 year degree in Political Science or some other garbage liberal arts degree. They have too much pride, and too little intelligence, to have gotten an Associate’s degree in something practical and spent the next two years working.

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    7. The real problem, that no one wants to admit, is this: we live in a nation that pretends that just about everyone who graduates from high school should go to college. The government subsidizes college with student loans, and gullible young high school students are told that college is just one big party, an endless spring break vacation with beer and sex on tap, varsity football and basketball, and all around a blast. When some fraction of the hapless dolts who stumbled onto campus get a degree, often 5 or 6 or 7 years after starting, they find out that their degree qualifies them to deliver pizza or work at McDonald’s. . . .so, they decide, more education must be the answer, and even Law School has to be easier than working, so off they go. People should not be surprised at all about the low bar pass rates. Frankly, I think an awful lot of modern law students simply are not very smart. I encounter law students, their parents, and recent grads. They all say the same thing: some law school grads start out at big firms making over 150K a year, so it’s a great bet! I look them right in the eye and say “You do understand that 9 out of 10 students won’t even be granted an interview for one of those positions, let alone a job, don’t you?” They get this deer-in-the-headlights look, and mumble something unintelligible under their breath. I never even get to the follow up question “You do know that most first-year associates are out of their job within 4 years of starting, don’t you?” I have read that associates only last 3 years at Cravath, on average, and those 3 years are quite miserable.

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    8. The big scam within the scam that demands immediate attention for being discredited is the assertion that the law degree is useful in itself, other than for the practice of law. The lower tiers profit immensely from this false belief. I believe it is one of the most, if not the most pernicious lies being propagated about law school. 'A JD is like an MBA only better.' 'A JD opens doors to other fields.' 'They can never take it away from you.' 'It hones critical reasoning skills useful for a lifetime.' 'It shows others you are smart.' 'It proves that you fought the good fight.' These lies not only help to entice new law school enrollees, but encourages others to stay in school to finish out the lost cause to the bitter end.

      It would be interesting to see the list of claims in entirety as to what a law degree can do.

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    9. Municipal employment in politically protected essential services is the path to the middle class: teaching, police, fireman, and the unionized trades in the rich blue cities and suburbs.

      That’s the answer. If you cannot pass the exams and obtain the requisite qualifications to get one of those jobs, you will not make it in law. If you fail in getting one of those jobs, your life is not ruined.

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    10. I agree with 3:35. The notion that everyone should get a bachelor's degree became standard dogma in the late 1980s, roughly when Old Guy was in university. Until the early 1980s or so, abundant well-paying blue-collar jobs were available, at least for able-bodied men (women were ordinarily relegated to pink ghettoes such as typing pools), often without even the need for a high-school diploma. For a few years in the mid-1980s, "finish high school" became dogma; then quite quickly "go to college". Soon enough almost everyone who could fog a mirror was pursuing a bachelor's degree.

      Now that degrees are handed out in boxes of Cracker Jack to people who don't even know all of the letters of the alphabet, everyone knows that they mean next to nothing. (Eighty percent of the students enrolling at CUNY need remedial classes, and half of those still need remedial classes after a year.) But of course the ejookayshun scam would never impose standards in order to keep people out who have no business seeking a degree. Instead, the ejookayshun scam promotes additional degrees. And law now has become something "for everyone", as scam-dean Frank Wu wrote in You Ass News ten years ago. Can't put a sentence together? Can't read? Don't let that stop you from becoming a rich hot-shot litigator! Such is the idiocy peddled by the law-school scam, using billions per year in public funds.

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    11. Both 3:35 and 5:46 are absolutely correct; I have given up giving advice to 0Ls and their parents, having been more than once been accused of being too "negative". I'll just point them to these two entries since they succinctly describe the scam.
      And as 3:23 points out, there are other avenues to solid employment, but ego often gets in the way.
      Here's an example: a cousin of mine dropped out of HS, eventually got a GED. Decided to join the Army, was trained as a nurse aid(a three or four month course if I recall). That's a tough, thankless job, but did it well, so Army offered to educate as LPN; agreed and got LPN. Left Army after enlistment expired, got civilian job as LPN; after a couple of years of doing well, hospital employer offered to pay for RN; agreed and took courses, got RN. After a few more years, employer agreed to pay for BSN, agreed and took courses. So now my cousin is BSN charge nurse; made every stop along the way, was a lot of hard work with job and classes, but was hard worker and paid for none-as in zero-of education and is now licenses BSN.

      Is this for everybody? No, but has a solid middle class life, family, and respected profession. So next time anyone asks what else to do...

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    12. Why can't 'Law' just be an undergraduate degree? The way fields like accounting and engineering are. Then those who are so inclined could pursue a graduate course in Law - the JD let's say - for purposes of professional qualification. Why wouldn't an undergrad degree in Bachelor of Law be as valuable as one of the popular ones today such as gender studies?

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    13. It is an undergraduate degree in some parts of the world. Often a further qualification is needed for access to the bar.

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  8. """The big scam within the scam that demands immediate attention for being discredited is the assertion that the law degree is useful in itself, other than for the practice of law.""" sour grapes talking. Maybe a law degree is not worth it due to economic return, but to claim it does not teach people useful information is baseless. This is a complex world, and understanding the rules can be very helpful whether or not you ever monetize the information or not. I learned a hell of a lot in both College and Law school, and although College is not for everyone, it is also true that having a college degree increases greatly your chances of getting a decent paying Job in the service industry rather than stocking boxes at Walmart. I automatically assume people without college degrees are generally not the smartest nor able to commit themselves to something. And all sorts of studies show how much better off people are when they have college degrees, including health wise and economically. And the employees I hired who had at least associate degrees or higher were worlds better than high school graduates who never went further. If somebody has an average low IQ, say 100 or less, then avoiding college may be for the best. But if anybody is bright in the least, college is wonderful, it exposes people to ideas and philosophy and art they may never have known about or thought about and it allows them to satiate their intellectual curiosity. If they don't have intellectual curiosity, then they are not bright to begin with so should avoid college. I was just talking to a good friend of mine who is 67, a successful cpa/tax adviser, going to night law school right now who absolutely loves the law by the way. He may never practice, or he may when he is 70, but he finds it incredibly interesting, which may not be all that surprising given he worked with financial records and taxes most of his life. In the FWIW department.

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    1. The law degree is not useful for employment outside the practice of law. If people want to spend $300k on law school just for their personal enrichment, let them—provided that they spend their own money, rather than taking out student loans guaranteed by the government.

      I certainly would not assume anything negative about the intelligence or commitment of a person who had no college degree.

      I don't see much philosophical, artistic, or intellectual sophistication in most college graduates, including those who went on to law school.

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    2. He's learned not to use ellipsis as frequently, but 11:44a is clearly the same troll who posts here again and again and again, with some small variations on the same theme: go to law school, it's a great idea. So let's look at his latest post, riddled with bad intent and half-truths, designed to scam the gullible(as if the scam schools need the help).
      1. This blog, to its everlasting credit, operates in the real world, and warns repeatedly to not go to law school because it's a bad investment. So doofus sets up a straw man, calls that advice "sour grapes" then admit getting a law degree may not have "economic" value...hello, spending 250K+ for a degree with no economic value is just stupid-unless you are that guy going to night school for the hell of it. Hope he enjoys it, but again you miss the point-if he's rich enough to enroll in law school for purely intellectual reasons, that's called a hobby, not a profession.
      2. What is your business, pray tell, that you hire so many college grads? It clearly has nothing to do with the law.
      3. While he may have "learned a hell of a lot" he didn't learn that you don't capitalize college and law school in the middle of a sentence.
      4. The rest-college is wonderful, with many rainbows and non-stop sunshine, where the Academy meets every day-and you're a member, debating Kant and working calculus with Decarte and-baloney. It's clear he's never spent a day in an American university, at least not since 1950. Welcome to the world of 500 seat lecture halls, surly TAs, and professors who don't want to teach or even acknowledge undergrads.
      His posts are toxic, and if anyone followed his advice they would stand a good chance of being financially ruined forever. Let him start his own blog, dedicated to terrible advice to all.

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    3. Rofl at looking down at people without college degrees. Look at what port authority cops make. I’d trade places with them in hard beat lol (I know a guy raking in 15k a month in pension plus healthcare: 47 years old. I’m sure he’s miserable that he doesn’t know about Plato and Motzart lol).

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    4. An Administrative Assistant without a college degree, employed by the federal government is better off, financially and health wise, that the college grad in the private sector laid off at 50, since the federal AA will enjoy a generous retirement and health coverage for life.

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    5. Go to law schoool all, prestige trumps all.

      https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-poop-patrol-employees-make-184000-a-year-2018-8

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    6. 11:44 sounds like the same one law was a good escape from an accounting career looking at numb3r5 all day. This despite accounting, when fully realized requires an undergrad degree, an MS and passage of a certification exam.Maybe our man of letters is math phobic.

      As to his newly enlightened CPA pal, he sounds semi retired already. As a night student how much fun would it be if he had a job where he had to get a report into the boss by 5, then rush to class by 6. Sit in class to 10 for 4 nights a week, be back to work at 7 or 8 and then spend the whole weekend trying to get all the case readings done.

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    7. LOL. 241 is truly the best reason to avoid law school. Small-minded, angry, aholish. Like I said, 10% of Lawyers are sociopaths and a much higher percentage are jerks. Can anybody imagine working for 241? 241 is the type of guy who when he responds to a post he doesn't agree with will say to himself, "how would a dick respond"? attributes to Bill Maher. LOL

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    8. On the contrary, 2:41 made sound points. Perhaps that is why you chose to wage a personal attack rather than speaking to substance.

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    9. Sound points or not Old Guy, 2:41 comes across as an ahole. He is not an outlier. He is typical for many law students and lawyers. That to me is the best reason for avoiding law school or especially avoiding working in the legal field. We have only one life to live. Do we want to spend it working for or with these kinds of miserable people? People like 2:41 are the type of people who suck the joy out of life. In the end, I suppose it really depends on a person's personality. If they find law or law school interesting and can tune out the many 2:41s out there, then perhaps they will lead a happy life. But if they end up working for a 2:41, or dealing with 2:41s as an inherent part of their career, I wonder if it is worth it. Why there are so many 2:41s in the law is anyone's guess. Born that way or created? who know, but they are more ubiquitous in law than any other field is my guess.

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