As if it had not misled the public badly enough with its "rankings", You Ass News has run an article promoting law school to people well beyond the typical age range.
Long-standing readers OTLSS will know that age-based discrimination is very real in the so-called legal profession. Old Guy in particular has written about his experience as a law student past forty: he came in at the top of the class at his élite law school only to find that he could not get so much as an interview anywhere—except for a federal clerkship that did not help him to find other work. He went through lengthy periods of unemployment before ending up in an unsatisfactory role as a lawyer.
Do not suppose that Old Guy's case is unusual. On the contrary, it reflects the reality of widespread age-based discrimination in the legal realm. But the article cited above mentions this little detail only in passing, near the end: "While you may face hurdles like age discrimination in the legal field, you may also benefit from greater life experience, more resources and connections, and higher clarity of purpose." You will experience age discrimination, and you won't benefit much from those other traits when the time comes to look for work.
Old Guy is an example of someone who Did Everything Right yet still turned out badly because of entrenched discrimination in law. A typical law student beyond age 29, without an élite law school or an élite law review or a federal clerkship or the other nominal advantages that Old Guy had, can expect to fare even worse. If you are over 29, law school is not for you. You can scream about human rights until you are blue in the face, but that will do nothing to land you a job. If you still go off to law school notwithstanding this baleful warning, do not come crying later to Old Guy.
"Law schools aren't looking for students to come in with detailed career plans."
ReplyDeleteYou can say that again.
"There are now multiple fully online J.D. programs, and even more hybrid online programs, that allow students to earn a law degree fully or primarily from home."
Let us know how that turns out.
"Many law schools have associations of Older, Wiser Law Students, or OWLS, to socialize, commiserate and share advice. "
They do? Is this guy getting a commission for everyone who reads his articles and applies to law school?
Those groups do exist at some law schools. Typically they are for complaints about social isolation in a much younger crowd or the difficulties of attending law school while also managing adult life. There won't be much useful advice on the scourge of age-based discrimination. And although the students in question may be older, they are not necessarily wiser: if they were, they would not have gone to law school at their age in a society that doesn't want them.
DeleteI know a person who works for EEOC; they admitted that they do pretty much zero when it comes to complaints about age discrimination.
DeleteWhy? In addition to the usual bureaucratic excuses-limited budget/not enough staff, etc etc-they said they have so many viable sexual harassment/discrimination complaints(which says what about our society?) they don't even bother with anything else. As they put it, the age discrimination complaints "get no traction" because nobody cares.
Besides age discrimination law schools discriminate against people with disabilities. Even though the law school websites claim the law schools comply with all federal and state laws pertaining to discrimination and they promote the lofty goals of diversity. It's a bright shining lie. They will accept people from all walks of life that brings them tuition dollars to matriculate. Upon graduating these same "protected classes" will be denied the career services. It won't be overt denial of the use of career services but very subtle. Career services knows certain groups have little chances of getting employment so they won't prioritize those groups and won't put in any effort except tell them to network then never reach back. Look at the tiny percentage of disabled attorneys at law firms versus in contrast to the percentage of law students matriculating at law schools paying tuition. A huge disparity. Even NALP and the ABA admitted this is alarming.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, people with disabilities are treated badly in the discriminatory legal world. It's disgraceful.
DeleteAt most law schools the placement/career services office only serves the top 10% of the class-in other words, the students most likely to get jobs. Everybody else is on their own-as in, no assistance at all.
DeleteI went to law school decades ago to a OG level 2 school; my excuse is that is was a state school and cheap in those days. Every job-every single one-that was listed by career services required top 10% and sometimes 10% plus law review. Every one else was forbidden from applying.
Top 10% and no damning qualities such as being past 29 or having a disability. Coming in consistently among the top of the top 10%, I got nothing from called Career Services.
DeleteEncouraging older people to go to law school is downright evil. There are many situations where people have established, well-paying careers, and often are raising children and/or support elderly parents who rely upon them--and they will decide to walk away from it all because law school "has always been my dream" or they have "passion" for it, or they "hate my job and want a change." They end up receiving zero income for three years, while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition, books, and living expenses. Afterward, they cannot find a job practicing law, of course. Often they come crawling back to their old job. I have encountered many stories of this, many times. An idiot in his early 20's, responsible only for himself, can go off to law school and enjoy a 3Y all-expenses-paid vacation without hurting anyone else. . .but a man or a woman with a good job, supporting their children, perhaps supporting their parents or other elderly relatives as well, paying a mortgage--that person will do a lot of harm to a lot of people if he or she falls for the law school scam. People really do leave good jobs for this idiocy, and come crawling back 3Y later, you can learn about their plights if you do the research.
ReplyDeleteThe "dream" of being a lawyer is heavily promoted without regard to reality. Unfortunately, this society does not facilitate changes of career even though so many lines of work today are unstable and people often have to do something else whether they want to or not.
DeleteOlder people—and 29 counts as old in law—face all of the practical problems that you correctly describe and the additional one of age-based discrimination that keeps even academically successful older people out of a meaningful career in law. Beyond age 29, please, do not go to law school.
The law schools will make it sound like even if you crawled back to your old job after graduating law school that the law degree will help you climb up the corporate ladder faster. So if you go back to your McDonald's job your critical skills that you learned might help you go from working the fryers making French fries to working the Drive Thru. Or from Starbucks associate barista to
Deletehead barista
First of all, you cannot expect to get your old job back however much you crawl. Dilbert was presumably referring to good jobs, not McDonald’s-grade shit. A person who quits a decent job in her thirties or forties should not expect the red carpet to be rolled out if she goes seeking her job back a few years later after a failed attempt to break into law. Many people leave the legal flop off the résumé and try to account otherwise for the gap of several years.
DeleteThose who are able to continue working full time while attending law school at night can avoid the problem of trying to an employment gap since there isn't one. There are various opinions about the ethics of not disclosing such a major educational event on a resume. I tend to think it is a personal matter myself if the so called lawyer is non practicing.
DeleteYes, ethically it is questionable to omit that information. Sometimes it may even be dishonest, particularly if a full report is required.
DeleteWhere it is not dishonest, I too leave it to private discretion. People have long concealed degrees that would only lead to their being framed as "overqualified" and kept out of jobs. I cannot blame them. Unemployment is no laughing matter.
So if the top 10% of a graduating class doesn't have any "legally protected classes" like blacks, disabled, etch. Then career services doesn't assist them and the law school helps perpetuate the disparities in the legal profession. It's a vicious cycle
ReplyDeleteEmployers just don't want older people, and few, I'm sorry to say, want Black people, disabled people, and others who have been kept down in this society generally. Even if the will to help us with employment were there, not much could be achieved.
DeleteMy law school was accommodating my physical disability only when I was enrolled and paying tuition. It's a muscular atrophy type condition. After I graduated and passed the bar exam the first time the career services refused to assist me with my job search. Phone calls were never returned and neither emails when I mentioned because of a physical condition I literally couldn't walk for networking events like bar mixers or golf outings. All I could do is drop off resumes. I do wonder if the career services realizes you are likely to negatively affect their employment figure anyhow so they will focus on more promising graduates?
DeleteLaw schools only publish their diversity indexes for enrollment but not what percentage of the diverse body were employed after graduation.
I am very sorry that you were treated so shamefully. I am not, however, surprised. A decent law school would disallow on-campus interviews by firms that engaged in discrimination against people with disabilities or older people. But that would mean doing the right thing and also standing up to every goddamn law firm that there is, except maybe a small one that is happy to sweep up an ugly duckling, so of course the rotten "career services" office takes part in the discrimination and doesn't give a tinker’s damn about us.
DeleteYou probably had a claim against them for not making arrangements so that you could attend events that realistically would be important for your job search. I never even heard about golf outings (haven't been golfing in my life), but you could have been offered a golf cart, and why not a chair at those bar functions?
Law schools exploit racialized people, older people, disabled people, and others outside the young, Aryan, able-bodied mold by luring us in for our money (borrowed or otherwise) under the signboard of "opportunity" only to abandon us.
We at OTLSS wish you a happy new year.
ReplyDelete