A little anonymous discussion on the Internet labels Old Guy "an exceptionally bitter 40-year-old T14 law student". The person who started the discussion refers to OTLSS as
mostly the bitter ranting of a blogger ("Old Guy") who attempted to go to law school over 30: despite going to a top-ranked school and securing a federal clerkship, he seemingly had so much trouble securing gainful employment that it left him profoundly contemptuous of all forms of legal education. In his worldview, going to law school is the very worst thing you can do: law schools, even many T20s, are predatory "toilets" that exploit naive students with dreams. His writing is crisp, socially progressive, and yet sneeringly elitist somehow. ¶ Reading this blog, he's so over-the-top in his bitterness that it almost discredits him a bit.
A few other people chime in triumphantly with reports of well-paying jobs obtained on the strength of a JD from some inferior law school, often with poor grades to match:
And then There is me, getting a 6 figure job offer after graduating from a T-30-50 school (depending on the year) getting average grades all because the partner ran into my LinkedIn profile and emailed me asking if I wanted to apply.
Same but from a T-150 (b-50; aka bottom 50) with grades in the bottom 25%. Work hard and don’t be insufferable, you’ll be fine.
I went to a non-elite law school, had less than stellar grades, needed to take a 1 year break due to family stuff, graduated without employment, still eventually ended up working at a great firm, and now have a great career. It is possible, you may just need to hustle a bit harder than others.
Some blame or disparage Old Guy:
Reading his blog, you see why he's had trouble getting a job.
If you have work experience, went to a top school and clerked and you cannot get a good job, that is 100% on you lol
Judging by his writing style and blog content, he’s probably a perpetually negative asshole. Those kind of people don’t do well in any industry.
If you go to a T14 and have a federal clerkship and then cannot find a job, you or your expectations, are almost certainly the problem
Why does he always write in third person. This guy seems like a drip. Every story has a “that definitely happened” energy to it. I don’t know how anyone can read it and believe they’re getting the whole story.
Low self esteem issue. Sometimes, what passes for “elitism” is a manifestation of low self esteem. No one with a law degree should complain about unemployment. Graduating from law school, even if it’s from Oxford or Cambridge, and expecting that someone will hand you your dream job is naïve. Part of intellectual maturity is the ability to have plans A,B, and C, before even contemplating law school. ¶ The question is always what are you willing to do to be successful with your legal education, even if you have to defer your immediate financial expectations? ¶ If you’re lucky to get your dream job immediately after law school, splendid. If not, it means you have to apply the critical thinking skills you learned in law school to make adjustments and pave your own way. ¶ It’s important to understand that not everyone graduating from law school will start off making a six-figure salary. That’s part of the intellectual maturity required to face reality. Some, including those who have achieved their professional goals, never achieve that maturity and it manifests itself in different ways. . . .
Others take a contrary view:
I wouldn’t pay sticker to go to any law school in America (unless you are fully committed to PI and they have some loan forgiveness program that you fully understand)
The 30-35 year olds of my T14 were in higher demand than the 20 year olds, but it dropped off sharply. No over-35 year old in my class of 330 found Biglaw employment and no over-40 year old found any type of law firm employment. ¶ This was at a T14, I doubt it gets better outside of that. Anyone who will graduate over 35 should be prepared for reality.
Yes if you want a big law job and don't have connections you absolutely need to go to a top law school and a bunch of other things (including age) will absolutely disqualify you. But if you want to hang out your own shingle or work as a PD or DA in an average jurisdiction any law degree will do.
Yeah I think law practice is so much about perceived years of experience that being a first-year associate at age 40 really works against you.
[Answering the question of why a big law firm would hire a 40-year-old:] They're like 20 years from retirement, likely set in their ways, and unlikely to want to listen to people either their age or younger who may be in positions above them.
Rather than responding myself, I shall open this topic for your views.
Reddit law forums are a waiting room for bots and Lemmings. You’re not going to get reality there, especially on age discrimination in entry level attorney hiring.
ReplyDeleteIt’s one of those things that we both know exists, but it’s difficult to empirically prove. You’d have to get a panel of Biglaw partners together to all admit that they don’t generally hire entry level attorneys over the age of early 30s.
Plenty of people have admitted it to me. The bars are well aware but won't do a damn thing about it.
DeleteA friend who didn't believe me called a lawyer of his acquaintance who was a partner at a big firm and was told that, indeed, the firm wouldn't consider me at my age.
Oh for sure. Me too. I personally experienced it myself and I was only 35. If one thinks about what Biglaw wants in their new lawyers, it's not older people who might not want or be able to put in 12-16 hours, 6-7 days a week. Or who might cop an attitude with senior associates or partners.
DeleteI found only one article discussing age discrimination in entry-level attorney hiring. I wish I could find it but it must have been swallowed up by the sands of time.
My favorite post: "The question is always what are you willing to do to be successful with your legal education, even if you have to defer your immediate financial expectations? . . . It’s important to understand that not everyone graduating from law school will start off making a six-figure salary. That’s part of the intellectual maturity required to face reality"
ReplyDeleteThe bimodal salary distribution claims another victim! The idea that outcomes traverse a bell curve and that not being at the top still means you'll land somewhere in a comfortable middle is very engrained in our collective psych, and for good reason; law is a weird statistical anomaly in that regard.
But the truth is that not getting biglaw doesn't mean settling into some kind of normal middle class outcome. It means you very likely won't make enough to even survive. That's not an "expectation" in need of adjusting any more than a house can be made affordable by just cutting out Starbucks and avocado toast, but it's just as nonsensical and just as victim-blaming as that same sentiment.
For another example of the bimodal salary distribution, consider musicians. A handful have high incomes; the great majority have low to modest incomes. Hardly anyone is in the middle.
DeleteNote too that I never said anything about a six-figure income; I said that I, among the top few in the class at an élite law school, could seldom get so much as an interview, and that age-based discrimination was the reason. Even the dean of the law school admitted that bias against people past 30 was keeping me out; he tried to sell a "JD Advantage" line of work to me and urged me not to take a bar exam.
Factually, a lot of people who have graduated from law school in the US are bitter, and some unemployed JD's have even sued the schools they attended for fraud, promising them jobs that don't exist. I went to the best law school in my state, in a state with only 2 law schools and a population of over six million people. As a result, literally everyone I graduated with, in the mid 90's, who passed the Bar Exam on the first try and was serious, got a job quickly and without difficulty. Often grades weren't even mentioned in job interviews. My first job was low-paying, but I was like 26 years old, and served in the Army Reserve to supplement my income, so I thought it was cool. I soon got a better job, and left the Reserve, and my income began to steadily rise until it was quite respectable. But, around the year 2000, I noticed that the job market was tightening up. By 2005 it was awful. I kept managing to get and keep jobs, sometimes for many years at a time, but the pay was awful, bonuses were mostly imaginary, and partners were often very rude and condescending to their low-paid Associates. At one point I had professional pictures taken and attached to my resume, I hired an interview coach and did mock interviews: nothing changed. I was earning, less than 60,000 (in 2008 dollars) and expected to put tens of thousands of miles on my car each year, driving to courthouses all over the state, often 150 miles each way. My story does have a good ending: at age 40 I opened my own solo practice, doing a high-volume low-fee flat-fee Criminal and Serious Traffic Defense practice. It worked out great, it is in its 16th year now. But, I still harbor some residual bitterness and resentment, because I earned good money for just 18 months of my first 15 years of practice, as a senior prosecutor. Other than that, I literally had to make my own job, by opening a solo shop, to finally monetize my Juris Doctorate. Meanwhile, in other fields, people with an Associate's Degree or less earn over 100K, working 40 hour weeks, without much experience. Folks, there are 11 law schools in Florida, 9 in Pennsylvania, 9 in Virginia--the job market could support 1, possibly 2 law schools in each of those states, with a moderate-sized graduating class. Unless you have a guaranteed, locked-in-place, solid well paying job before you even begin to fill out your first application to law school, DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL. The frustration I felt that with 7 years of higher education, a 2-day Bar Exam, tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, some nurse with 4 semesters worth of education and an unimpressive IQ earned more than I did--that, in fact, car mechanics, electricians, plumbers, truck drivers, and all kinds of people, many with low IQ's and limited education, out-earned me--it enraged me. Look before you leap.
ReplyDeleteOK. Calling out the snob factor. Modern car mechanics do not have low IQ's. Nor do electricians, or plumbers. Job-shadow a home inspector and see if you still think you're hot stuff.
DeleteLots of lawyers end up in solo practice, which means self-employment—by necessity, not by choice.
DeleteLaw today is not what it was thirty years ago, when you broke into it.
Well, 11:15, I didn't appreciate the comment about low IQs, although it must be said that 3:28 referred to "many" people in that category, which does not mean that all people working in those fields have low IQs.
DeleteThe point stands, however. The lines of work that were listed do not require seven years of tertiary education costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Truck drivers are trained in a few weeks but make more than many lawyers. Many years ago I pointed out here that the switchboard operator and the janitor at a courthouse in Massachusetts made more than the lawyers employed by the court. It certainly doesn't take anything like a lawyer's training to answer telephones or mop the floor, nor does one have to pay annual fees for a license and insurance to work in those capacities.
When large numbers of lawyers struggle to find such low-paying jobs, it is fair to ask whether law school is worth the high cost in time and money.
I'm sure that some house inspectors have a range of skills. The one that I got was horrible: he spent most of the time stating that this or that fell outside the scope of his so-called inspection, leaving me to wonder what exactly he was doing for a large fee.
That's Reddit, an awful website full of people who might be 'bots or are humans as dumb as 'bots, and the amount of outright lying by users is probably pretty shocking. Legal education and employment is a booby trap, especially now in the era of Crumbing Trump.
ReplyDeleteGraduated in 2009. Just in time for the job market to go to hell. I managed to get a job at a small law firm that "went through a lot of associates," and lasted there for about 8 months before being fired for missing billable hour goals. That firm went under a few years later. Eventually I went into manufacturing, where I found a paycheck every two weeks, a health insurance card, and a matched 401k. Most of my classmates aren't practicing law, either. I wish I'd never bothered.
ReplyDeleteI did similar to you. I graduated years ago and when I realized I wasn't going to get a job at a law firm anywhere because of my lower tier law school pedigree. I immediately decided cut my losses and move on and got a job that has nothing to do with a law degree for benefits and perks. Even let my law license lapse. Never looked back. It's a waste of time and energy to pursue the pipedream any further if you don't get into a law firm 10 months after graduation. Being age 31 at the time of graduation at a lower tier law school was two strikes against me.
DeleteIt's always, in order to get a job you have to work hard and hustle. What does that mean exactly? If someone is in a position to practice law they have already been to law school and passed a bar exam. Is that not hard work? What else has to be done? Knock on doors of law firms for interviews? Hang around the courthouse on Monday morning for DUI cases? There's always one more hurdle that has to be crossed.
ReplyDeleteIn England, Canada, Australia, and many other countries, graduating from law school is not enough: one also has to complete "articles", a sort of apprenticeship, to be called to the bar. This requires finding a job. So people can go all the way through law school, even with great grades, and still be left out, unable even to "hustle" for low-grade cases at the courthouse.
DeleteOG, I wonder how common it in those countries for people to graduate law school and not find a job?
DeleteI can't claim extensive knowledge of those countries' practices, but about a decade ago Ontario insituted an alternative path to the bar because 15% of graduates could not find articles (jobs). I read about it back then. It involved taking some courses and then completing some sort of very brief mini-article that apparently was arranged by the bar. All of this cost thousands of dollars, and there were only two places in the large province (about the size of Texas and Montana combined), so many people had to move just for the course. Did this consolation prize stigmatize those who made recourse to it?
DeleteTo add insight to the fall of all education, k-12 in the 00s, undergrad in the 10s and graduate school standards now, the pharmacy school examination providers have gotten rid of the admission test for pharmacy school and removed much of the math for the licensing exam, as reflected in this year.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the huge boosts in scores from last year to this year.
https://nabp.pharmacy/wp-content/uploads/NAPLEX-Pass-Rates.pdf
“And then There is me, getting a 6 figure job offer after graduating from a T-30-50 school (depending on the year) getting average grades all because the partner ran into my LinkedIn profile and emailed me asking if I wanted to apply.”
ReplyDeleteYeah, Im calling B.S. on that one. That’s not the way things work.
Indeed, it's an obvious lie. Partners of big law firms are not hunting through LinkedIn in search of mediocre candidates from whom to solicit applications.
DeleteOld Guy, a few points.
DeleteThank you for the prior post comparing medicine and law. I am a MD JD, got the JD first, and I have commented on here before. I didn’t have much more to add to your great post and all the comments.
In regards to the dubious LinkedIn claim, I graduated from a second tier toilet law school in the mid 2000s when the legal sector and economy were purportedly booming. All the law schools claimed 99% employment with private practice salaries averaging $100k. I had good grades and law review which enabled me to participate in OCI. At OCI I interviewed with Big Law and Big Fed and was rejected by all. Not only was I rejected by all, but my peers on law review as well. After that, I applied with prosecutor offices, public defender offices, judicial clerkships, non-federal government jobs, and s—t law. I applied urban and rural and was rejected by all. I attended a legal career fair. A law firm flat out refused to even accept my resume rather than politely accept it and pitch it in the trash like every other law firm at the event. Was the problem me? Such as bad interviewer, bad networker, red flags? Well, after that I took the MCAT and went to med school. I had to travel and interview at med schools before getting accepted. I then had to travel and interview for residency and matched into a competitive residency. Then I did a fellowship. Now I’m in academic medicine.
While in law school and after graduation, I received zero cold calls or emails from recruiters or employers looking for candidates. As a resident physician, I started getting cold calls and emails from physician recruiters. And to this day I get cold calls, texts, emails, and LinkedIn messages from physician recruiters. Number of messages I get from legal recruiters? Zero.
The Reddit Law Forum sounds like a lot of BS.
For all the glowing talk of the strength of the legal market and purported ease of getting a job, I’d just refer to the objective government stats. According to the BLS, the real GDP of the legal services industry was 271.1 billion dollars in 2024 (2025 is not available yet). That number is less than 2021, 2022, 2023. In fact, it is less than 1999 when real GDP of the legal services industry was 274.7 billion dollars. Over that same period, the US economy grew about 74%. So despite the growth of the US economy, the demand for legal services has remained stagnant. That is why so many law school grads struggle to find jobs. The demand is not there.
Anon MD JD
Lol, the only way that comment could be true is if that person had some SERIOUS personal connections. Daddy talked with his golf buddy, golf buddy looked commenter up on LinkedIn, and off they went.
DeleteGood point, 8:19, about never getting a call from a recruiter. In the 13 years since I finished law school, I have never received a call of that kind. I did get calls in my previous line of work. Why is it that lawyers with experience are not recruited? Because there is little demand for us.
DeleteOK, as a JD who passed the bar and then had to get a CDL-A and drive trucks to actually make money, let me clarify a few things. First of all, the commentator stating that "many" members of various blue-collar professions are dumb and put far less into their educations...is absolutely right. There are absolutely people working as truck drivers, home inspectors, and plumbers who are so dim that they may require trained handlers to defecate and breathe at the same time. At my first trucking job, there was another guy with my first name (let's use "Tim" for this example), and the way the office staff would distinguish him and me for scheduling purposes was literally by referring to me as "Smart Tim" and him as "Stupid Tim". They would assign oversize loads to Smart Tim because I would (or just could) read the permits.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the idea that you just go to CDL school and pretty much are guaranteed a job is correct. However, entry-level jobs are generally OTR (live on the road for a month or more). Standard career progression is to work one of these jobs for a couple years to build experience, then apply to local companies. If you can't stomach long-distance driving, your employment prospects will not be great without experience. Well-paid local work certainly does exist, but is generally closer to 10-12 hour days, will actually have a large pool of applicants, and might require exotic cargo. For example, there is a plant near me where driver pay tops out somewhere around 120-140k with a pension, BUT it is competitive to get hired, they have in-cab cameras to watch for ANY bad behavior, and the cargo is specialist chemicals so your odds of surviving a wreck are pretty grim.
Trucking absolutely has a scammy end, with local businesses that will hire ANYONE who is willing to drive an illegal truck or load. However, assuming that you can withstand a few years of long-distance driving, you will be employed (assuming no felonies, no major traffic violations, and clean urine tests).
Also, a rather major advantage of most blue-collar jobs compared to going to one of America's Finest Legal Academies is that there is very little in the way of out-of-pocket expenses required to hold the job. For example, I can't imagine trying to show up to any legal job, or even attempting a solo practice, while putting on the cheapest clothes available or driving an embarrassing beater car. My current job provides me with boots, pants, shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, etc. All I have to provide for myself is socks and underwear. Try showing up to a law firm dressed in cheap rags and see how long you last before you, at best, get a conversation about professionalism in the workplace. Hope your salary is enough to pay for your loans, living expenses, AND some nice threads, AND a car that doesn't look like it rolled straight out of Honest Bobz Uzed Wheelz.
Some lawyers do show up in court wearing horrible cheap-ass polyester suits. Even those cost a lot.
DeleteI read some years ago that barristers leaving the law in England were selling the wigs that they wear to court: new ones cost some £4000. They also have to wear gowns that are similarly expensive. Again, some of them spend all that money only to be unable to make a go of it as lawyers.
There must be plenty of dumb truck drivers, but there are plenty of dumb lawyers, too. How lawyers gained a reputation for intelligence I don't know, but it is rarely deserved.